The good ol’ boys club that wants the Harris County District Attorney’s office to go back to the good old days of injustice for all (but them and their friends) had another bad day yesterday. After a year of harassing former DA Pat Lykos with a THIRD grand jury, once again the verdict is – nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.
But don’t worry. I’m sure the boys and girls consoled themselves with a few Jack and cokes. Maybe even a little clandestine parking lot sex. Probably popped the caps on a few six packs of Lone Star and popped off a few real caps down at the shooting range. After all, boys will be boys.
Houston Chronicle reporter Brian Rogers couldn’t help himself, getting in yet another shot at the former DA by including a quote from gadfly Chip Lewis, a noted hater of Lykos and supporter of the guy that beat her in last year’s contentious primary, Mike “Hang ’em high” Anderson. Heck, if you believe Lewis, he’s the one that schooled Rogers on how bad the former DA’s DWI prosecution policy was, so it is no wonder or coincidence that Rogers ran to him for a quote. If you are expecting great investigative work on the current DA from Mr. Rogers, I hope you aren’t holding your breath. But don’t worry, some of us folks that aren’t real reporters are doing the job reporters refuse to do. Texas Public Information Act requests really aren’t that hard to make.
Can anyone make sense of this sentence that Mr. Rogers wrote in his “report”? [EMPHASIS ADDED IN CAPS]
A Harris County grand jury scrutinizing former District Attorney Pat Lykos and her administration CLEARED Lykos Thursday of allegations of misuse of public resources stemming from an INVESTIGATION by the DA’s office into another grand jury last year.
Um… if the grand jury “cleared” her of that allegation, doesn’t that mean that they, the special prosecutor and the Texas Rangers determined that she DIDN’T “investigate” the prior grand jury?
Yeah, I think that is what it means. Which is probably why the article has been updated and that sentence changed – it no longer includes “stemming from an INVESTIGATION by the DA’s office into another grand jury last year.”. You’ll also notice that there is no longer a reference in that article about former Judge, now First Assistant DA Belinda Hill’s role in appointing the special prosecutor. Why? I’d suggest that deleting the reference is worse than leaving it in but then again, I’m not the one trying to protect the current DA.
And another thing. Apparently the official allegation they were looking at Lykos for was “MISUSE OF PUBLIC RESOURCES stemming from an investigation by the DA’s office into another grand jury last year.”
So it seems to me we’ve learned two things from the grand jury’s exoneration:
1. Lykos was telling the truth about the scope of her office’s activities, and over a year of rummaging around didn’t uncover anything to the contrary.
And perhaps more interestingly…
2. Whatever Lykos and McWilliams did–which again, has been detailed publicly–wasn’t considered by this grand jury, or the special prosecutors, or the Texas Rangers, to be a “misuse of public resources.”
So presumably it was a proper use of public resources.
In other words, they were justified in doing what they did.
Why would that be?
What did they know–that perhaps still hasn’t been revealed publicly–that would have made their actions a proper use of public resources?
Ponder that one awhile. Think hard. Go back to the make-up of the runaway grand jury.
A real reporter would start asking questions about that, and might even consider using sources that aren’t tied to the hip of the current district attorney and his henchmen.
But don’t worry – some non-reporter will someday put that information out there. That’s a guarantee.