"checked a few sites after a Google search and was lead to places where us conservatives aren't welcome.  I couldn't honestly sift through all the vitriol so I left.  I am curious but not enough to sift through all the unnecessary garbage associated with the articles.  Tell me what you know."

Such is the problem with information on the Web. I feel your pain. It seems like anytime I try to do some Web research, I'm confronted with propaganda disguised as information. From either side. But I digress. Here's why I mentioned Curtis Mathes and his clan:

Bush campaigned for governor of Texas on a platform that included personal property rights. Just prior to the election, he said, "I will do everything I can to defend private property and property rights when I am governor of this state."

This apparently did not include thirteen acres of land that happened to be located next to what would become the Ballpark at Arlington. Bush hired lobbyists to help push a special bill through Texas legislature, a bill that created the Arlington Sports Facilities Developmental Authority. Said Authority--an appropriate name, considering the powers granted it by Bush's bill--handled land acquisition for the ballpark.

The Authority offered the Mathes family $817,000 for its thirteen acres--$4 million less than its appraised value. But so what? The Bush bill granted the Authority the power of condemnation, so after their 'offer' was rejected, all the Rangers' owners had to do was sieze the Mathes' property, claiming eminent domain.

Of course, the Mathes family sued, and won $5 million. The Rangers claimed the judgement wasn't against them, but the Airlington Sports Facilities Development Authority. This buck-passing continued. Rangers ownership danced around the judgement for years, finally passing it on to a new ownership group after the team was sold.

So we're talking about a guy who not only openly breaks a campaign pledge, but grinds his heel into the eye of anyone who gets in his way. As I said, very shrewd. But compassionate? Hardly. Conservative? Not at all. Heartless? Indeed.

"From what I can tell here, he was trying to get some companies which were exempt from polution control laws enacted in '71 to voluntarily bring their plants up to post '90 codes.  At the expense of ??  Again, I'd be glad to listen to whatever you have to say.  You have your side and I'd like to hear it."

At the expense of??? You must be kidding. How about Texas air? You're right in pointing out that these companies were exempt from pollution control laws--their facilities had been grandfathered in during passage of the 1971 legislation. But don't forget that more than $500,000 was pumped into Bush's gubernatorial fund by thirty-eight of these polluters. And don't forget that legislation to close the "grandfather" loophole was gaining steam in Texas at the time. What did Bush do? He organized twenty of the aforementioned polluters into a "Grandfathered Emissions Workgroup," closed their meetings to the public, and had them all meet at the Exxon Building in Houston.

Memos from Jim Kennedy, DuPont's man on the committee, to his superiors show exactly what the Workgroup was all about. He notes: "The belief was clearly communicated at the meeting that this industry group was going to be in the leadership role in transforming the concepts into a program that would be approved by the governor's office...the concept paper has no 'meat' with respect to actual emissions reductions."

I'm not sure how you understand CARE to mean that Bush was "trying" to get these companies to reduce their emissions. The legislation, in point of fact, amounted to nothing more than a polite invitation to do so. No penalties. None. It should come as no surprise that 90 percent of the companies in question declined the invitation.

If you're still unclear as to whose expense this sad joke was perpetrated, look up a few of the parents of the quarter-million kids who went to school near these facilities.

"As Pat said...she accepted Jesus sometime before being executed and showed total remorse for what she'd done.  I remember she made an appeal to have her execution stayed but it was denied.  I also remember her accepting the decision with unheard of grace.  I don't recall if Bush could have done anything in that particular case even if he wanted to.  The people of Texas elected him to uphold their laws as governor and he did that.  I don't know that this speaks of anything other than the fact that he did what he was supposed to do. 

Should Bush have stopped her execution if it were within his powers?  What was he to do the next time somebody on death row claimed they were a changed person and sorry for what they'd done?"

Believe it or not, I didn't mention Tucker to start a debate on the death penalty, or Bush's cavalier attitude toward it in general (he dropped the governor's review period for each execution from thirty to fifteen minutes, allowed executions of inmates whose lawyers slept through their trials--then laughed when asked about it by CNN's Jeff Greenfield--and opposed legislation improving defense for impoverished inmates and banning execution of the mentally retarded).

I mentioned Karla Faye because of Bush's 11/18/99 Boston Herald interview with Tucker Carlson, the one in which he was asked whether he'd ever spoken with Karla Faye. Responding that he had not, that he saw no point, he was then asked what he imagined she might say to him if she had the chance. He responded by twisting his face into a sneer and whimpering, "Please don't kill me!"

Is it okay for comedians and pundits to mock inmates on death row? That's open for debate. But is it okay for our elected leaders to do so? I tend to think no. I'd rather not be led by such an example. Tucker was guilty by all accounts, and perhaps she deserved to die. But her religious transformation prompted many leaders of the Christian right (including that old bastard Pat Robertson) to ask Bush to spare her life. To allow the execution to proceed would have been enough. To make fun of her as she awaited death exposed him (again) as the heartless sonofabitch he is.