Thumbs up, down
A stolen jersey is found, the Terminator talks, and the scent of treason is in the air.
It’s not exactly taking down “El Chapo,” but Houston Police Chief Art “James Bond” Acevedo took out a major international crook this week. A “credentialed member of the international media” was apprehended in Mexico with the jersey of Super Bowl LI-winning quarterback Tom Brady. You might recall that in the celebration that followed New England’s win over Atlanta at NRG Stadium last month, the jersey disappeared. HPD’s Major Offenders Division cracked the case. Brady has been vacationing since the recovery and hasn’t commented. Said Acevedo: “You don’t come to Texas and embarrass us here on our home turf.”
“Stepping Stones,” being performed tonight and tomorrow by the Houston Ballet, “made me feel as if I were drifting through space, or maybe dreams,” wrote Chronicle critic Molly Glentzer. Buy the best ticket you can; you won’t regret it. It also will affirm the importance of federal funding of the arts. Choreographer Jirí Kylián developed his work with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts — a group President Trump proposes to defund.
The University of Houston has extended an invitation to one of the higher-profile and successful first-generation Americans, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to deliver the 2017 commencement speech. UH students have origins around the globe, so tabbing an immigrant to send its scholars out into the world makes sense. Schwarzenegger, unfortunately, could be a harbinger a Hollywood star elected on name recognition who does a mediocre job at best in government. If UH needs to turn to TV stars, it ought to stick with “Billion Dollar Buyer.”
Our quote of the week comes from Rice University professor Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian. “There’s a smell of treason in the air,” Brinkley told the Washington Post after listening to James Comey’s congressional testimony. “Imagine if J. Edgar Hoover or any other FBI director would have testified against a sitting president. It would have been a mindboggling event.”
Our runner-up quote of the week comes from Rex Tillerson. The secretary of state knows who the boss is, and it’s not necessarily Donald Trump. “I didn’t want this job. I didn’t seek this job. My wife told me I’m supposed to do this,” Tillerson said to the Independent Journal Review. The conservative website was the only “news” outlet Tillerson traveled with to Asia. We hope Mrs. Tillerson educates her husband on the importance of transparency in government.
When the history books are written about funding for a birding center in McAllen, it’s unlikely they’ll reflect that the money came from a vote for hate. Confused? Read on. Republican state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst is proposing taxpayers spend $5 million for a Center for Urban Ecology in McAllen. The facility is in the district of Democratic state Sen. Eddie Lucio. At a time when most Democrats can’t get a sniff of pork, Lucio snagged the bucks after being the only D in the senate to vote “yes” on Kolkhorst’s bathroom bill. It also made for an uncomfortable family dynamic between father and state representative son, Eddie Lucio III. “My father preached love and service in my house growing up, and although I sincerely believe that his position is not rooted in hate, it is still wrong and will create adversity for many,” the younger Lucio said.
If you saw confused protesters standing outside downtown’s Hilton Americas on Friday, that’s because the event they were hoping to disrupt — Gov. Greg Abbott’s State of the State address to the Greater Houston Partnership — was canceled and moved to April 18. The governor had to hop a flight to Washington for an Oval Office photo-op with the president and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry. So what was the big news? Cable company Charter Communications is opening a new bilingual call center in McAllen and hiring 600 workers there.
Any job is a good one, but at a time when oil companies are building multibillion dollar refineries, you’d think that Abbott, Perry and Trump could find a bigger victory. Besides, is the notoriously nativist Trump really that excited for a center that makes callers press two for English?
The whole thing is part of Charter Communications plan for a $25 billion investment in its U.S. operations — a move that was announced before Trump was elected.
But after the failed Trumpcare vote, the president is desperate for good news any way he can get it. And we’re sure that GHP’s big-money donors had no problem rearranging their calendars at the last minute so that Abbott could snag his photo-op.