house speaker tom craddick

Gov. Rick Perry is expressing “disappointment in lapses” at the Department of Public Safety that allowed an unknown arsonist to torch the Governor’s Mansion earlier this month.

But the spark that set the building ablaze in the early hours of June 8 was set in the offices of the state’s top three political leaders, including Perry, who consistently confuse their radical anti-government ideology with their duty to safeguard the public.

A Virginia company that books high-dollar hunting expeditions is on trial for violating federal laws by allegedly bribing Russian government on behalf of a group of Texas big gamesman, including one of Texas’s top GOP donors, according to a story in this morning’s Houston Chronicle.

Former Travis County Sheriff and Republican State Representive Terry Keel says he’s too busy trying to elect Democrat Mindy Montford in the DA runoff to bother with helping his own sister-in-law, Republican Donna Keel, in her race against Democratic state rep Valinda Bolton.

Keel, the hardline Republican who also held the seat his sister-in-law is running for before retiring and then becoming Republican House Speaker Tom Craddick’s parliamentarian, told a group this weekend that the “number one priority right now is Mindy, not Donna.”

Campaign reports are due Monday in the second round of the Travis County DA’s race, and political observers are waiting to see if the candidates will come clean in reporting who they’ve taken money from — and in one case, given money to.