(AP Photo/Erich Schlegel; previous weekly reviews for this season are here) Texas Longhorns 51 Kansas 20 The 3rd-ranked Longhorns (11-0/7-0) continued their seemingly unstoppable roll to the BCS Championship Game with another laugher against a Big 12 North opponent,... [...]
Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is one of the best Texas novels of our time. The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel was later made into a wonderful television mini-series, which starred Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones as the iconic former Texas... [...]
The fundamental problem with the American health care finance system is that reliance on tax-deductible, employer-based health insurance and government subsidized insurance (such as Medicaid, Medicare) created a culture since WWII in which consumers of health care at the... [...]
Peter Wallison and Steve Randy Waldman have each written a thought-provoking and important analysis of the effect of regulation on the recent financial crisis. First Wallison: What caused the financial crisis? The widely accepted narrative, prominent in the media... [...]
Looks as if Tilman Fertitta is about to endure a bit of his own medicine. As this post from a couple of months ago explains in detail, Landry's Restaurants, Inc. shareholders have had a wild -- and mostly bad... [...]
(AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez; previous weekly reviews for this season are here) Central Florida 37 Houston Cougars 32 As I've noted many times, Houston (10-2/4-2) games over the past several seasons are just different. The game against Central Florida (6-4/4-2)...' [...]
Thank goodness. Despite the government's sordid expansion of crimes against business people over the past decade, at least it's not a crime to decline to throw in the towel on a business venture simply because there are signs that... [...]
As with many folks in the financial and legal world, I'm finishing up Andrew Ross Sorkin's entertaining new best-seller, Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System---and Themselves (Viking...' [...]
(AP Photo/Tom Stratton; previous weekly reviews for this season are here) Colts 20 Texans 17 The Texans (5-4) basically rolled over and playing dead against the Colts (8-0) for the first quarter and a half. By early in the... [...]
Robert Duvall -- in his classic role of former Texas Ranger Gus McCrae in Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove -- reminds a bartender the importance of good customer service.... [...]
Andrew Ferguson is not impressed with Bob Dylan or his new Christmas CD: The production and packaging are professional. The band is competent in a midnight-at-the-Nashville Hyatt sort of way--maybe a little heavy on the tremolo but still. And... [...]
Everyone who follows football around these parts is feeling bad for Texans' TE Owen Daniels, who blew out an ACL in this past Sunday's game against Buffalo. He is done for the remainder of the season. At the time...' [...]
Last week, we learned that Timothy Geithner, while the head of the New York Fed, let Goldman Sachs and several other large investment banks fleece the Fed in connection with the AIG bailout. Then, over the weekend, we learn... [...]
(AP Photo/Don Heupel; previous weekly reviews for this season are here) Texans 31 Bills 10 The Texans (5-3) dominated the game, but somehow found themselves trailing the Bills (3-5) after three quarters. Previous Texans teams probably would have folded,... [...]
The Houston legal community remains in shock over the death yesterday in a car accident of famed trial lawyer, John O'Quinn. He was 68 years old at the time of his death. O'Quinn was a remarkably talented plaintiff's lawyer...' [...]
Say what? Timothy Geithner -- while heading up the New York Fed in 2008 -- left upwards of $13 billion of taxpayer money on the table to the likes of Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank during negotiations... [...]
Stetson College of Law Professor Ellen S. Podgor, who authors the popular White Collar Crime Prof Blog, has written an important law review article on a key issue that is confronting defense attorneys and courts in this age of... [...]
(AP Photo/Dave Einsel; previous weekly reviews for this season are here) Texans 24 49ers 21 The Texans (4-3) inched above .500 for one of the rare times in their eight season history with the win over the 49ers (3-3),... [...]
Still one of the finest endings in the history of cinema. Charles Dutton as Rudy's mentor Fortune, Jon Favreau as D-Bob and Ned Beatty as Rudy's father steal the scene.... [...]
Mark over at the Kaddy's Korner provides this interesting post about his experience in filling in as Tom Watson's caddy during the Champions Tour's Administaff Open at the Tournament Course in The Woodlands last weekend. Mark concludes his post... [...]
Clear Thinkers favorite Holman Jenkins has yet another excellent column this week entitled When Bad Luck is a Crime (or, stated another way, the new crime of violating the obligation to throw in the towel). Among other points, Jenkins... [...]
So, the Fifth Circuit followed the instructions of the U.S. Supreme Court and finally directed the U.S. District Court in Houston to dismiss all remaining charges against former Enron Broadband executive, Scott Yeager. The appellate court's order effectively ends... [...]
(AP Photo/Donna McWilliam; previous weekly reviews for this season are here) Texas Longhorns 16 Oklahoma 13 In an entertaining but sloppily-played game, 3rd-ranked Texas (6-0/3-0) rode their hard-hitting defense to tense victory over the now-reeling Sooners (3-3/1-1), who have... [...]
Colbert was on fire this week. The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cThe Money Shotwww.colbertnation.comColbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorMichael Moore... [...]
During football season, two Clear Thinkers favorite subjects are the annual Texas-OU game and former Texas head coach Darrell Royal (here, here, here, here and here). So, this Barking Carnival post on the epic 1976 game -- Royal's last... [...]
You know, it's not every day that a federal appellate court concludes that a newspaper's coverage of a particular event was a major factor in the creation of a presumption of community prejudice. But that's precisely what the Fifth... [...]
On the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision earlier this year to hear Conrad Black's appeal of his criminal conviction on honest services wire-fraud charges under 18 U.S.C. § 1346 ("Section 1346), the Court yesterday granted former Enron... [...]
I went over to Baton Rouge this past Saturday with my friend John Stevenson and his family to visit my old friend Dan McCarney -- who is now the Assistant Head Coach of the Florida Gators -- and to... [...]
(AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin; previous weekly reviews for this season are here) Cardinals 28 Texans 21 The Texans 3rd loss in the fifth game of their eighth season (2-3) was actually four games in one: The first 28 minutes,... [...]
Disgraced New York City attorney Marc Dreier's letter to his sentencing judge was quite interesting. His recent 60 Minutes interview is just as fascinating. Dreier -- who unquestionably stole over $400 million -- received a lighter prison sentence than former... [...]
A couple of interesting health care-related items caught my eye today. First, I went by my internist's office for my annual physical and noticed that another group of doctors had leased a much larger office across the hall from... [...]
(AP Photo/Dave J. Phillip; previous weekly reviews for this season are here) Texans 29 Raiders 6 So, what happens when the NFL's worst defense meets one of the NFL's worst offenses? Well, this time, Raiders (1-3) QB JaMarcus Russell... [...]
Whole Foods' CEO John Mackey, who is certainly not a conventional business executive, provides in this Stephen Moore/WSJ interview a compelling counterbalance to Michael Moore's indictment of a market-based economy: His odyssey from a long-haired counterculture anticapitalist in the...' [...]
Larry Ribstein, who has written extensively about filmmakers' generally negative views toward business -- zeroes in on the irony of Michael Moore's new reductionist documentary on the evils of capitalism: The irony is that many of these films could...' [...]
I've never really understood the basis of the widespread criticism that professional football players are paid too much. In light of the pubic disclosure of the findings of a National Football League-sponsored study regarding the high rate of dementia...' [...]
The best local restaurant evaluation guide -- Fearless Critic Houston Restaurant Guide 2010 -- is now available. The brutally honest restaurant guide is put together by a group of undercover local critics who "dine incognito, don't accept freebies, and...' [...]
In addition to being quite frustrating from a purely football standpoint, attending Houston Texans games is incredibly expensive. And as ESPN.com's Lestor Munson points out, if the NFL has its way in the American Needle case currently pending before... [...]
(AP Photo/Dave J. Phillip; previous weekly reviews for this season are here) Houston Cougars 29 Texas Tech 28 In one of the most entertaining games of the young season, the now 12th-ranked Cougars (3-0) pulled out the victory over... [...]
The legal and business communities are still buzzing over U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff's scathing refusal earlier in the week to approve the proposed $33 million "settlement" (i.e., sweep under the rug) between the SEC and Bank of America... [...]
Please indulge me one last Texans-related post for the week. John McClain, the lead Chronicle sportswriter covering the Texans, condemned this past Sunday's Texans' loss as the worst in the team's history. Now that normally wouldn't be all that... [...]
(AP Photo/Dave J. Phillip; previous weekly reviews for this season are here) Jets 24 Texans 7 Well, as one salty high school football coach used to put it, "That went over about as well as a fart in church!"... [...]
The late Townes Van Zandt tells how he met Pancho & Lefty in Brenham. And almost 10 years later, he delivers arguably his best television performance of his legendary song:... [...]
Year Eight of the Houston Texans begins this Sunday with a home game against the Jets, so it's time for my sixth annual preview of the team (previous annual previews are here). Largely ignored amidst the inexplicable interest over... [...]
There are bad stock plays and there are horrible stock plays. And then there is Houston-based Landry's Restaurants, Inc. This story began back in July of 2007 when the company announced that it was delinquent in its regulatory filings... [...]
Having been raised by one, I've always been drawn to great teachers wherever I find them. Jeff Ritter is a young golf teaching professional in the Phoenix area who combines excellent analytical ability with formidable communication skills to provide...' [...]
When young attorneys ask me how they can become more effective advocates in the courtroom, I usually tell them: "Become better at telling stories." Several years ago, Derek Sivers interviewed the late Kurt Vonnegut, who was no slouch as... [...]
As our own country confronts the difficult issues involved in conducting war, it seems appropriate to recall the closing defense argument in one of the all-time great lawyer movies, Breaker Morant.... [...]
Continuing on the thread of creative advertising, check out this brilliant series of Cinnamon Toast Crunch commercials by McCann Erickson/Campbell Mithun. ... [...]
Anything that happens in U.S. Open tennis over the Labor Day weekend is unlikely to match this hilarious post-match interview of Andy Roddick during the 2007 Australian Open after Roger Federer had defeated him in particularly dominating style.... [...]
The only two airline-security measures that really matter -- fortified cockpit doors and the awareness of the flying public as to what a hijacking can mean -- have been in place virtually since the attacks of September 11, 2001.... [...]
Yet another example of how commercials (see earlier examples here) are providing some of the most creative product on television(H/T Glenn Reynolds ):... [...]
If you read one article health care-related this week, make it this extraordinary Sheri Fink/NY Times Magazine article on the impossible choices that the heroic doctors -- including Dr. Anna Pou -- faced at the former Memorial Medical Center... [...]
The Stanford Financial Group scandal has been anything but typical, but yesterday's developments may have been the most bizarre yet. The big news, other than the hospitalization of R. Allen Stanford, was the guilty plea that Stanford's right-hand man... [...]
The Observer provides this entertaining compilation of quotes from Muhammad Ali, who just turned 67. My two favorites: On his Parkinson's disease: "It wasn't the boxing, it was the autographs." (2003) On his biggest battle: "My toughest fight was...' [...]
In the first of a series of upcoming blog posts that will interest most Texans, The Atlantic's Graeme Wood addresses many of the difficult issues facing Mexico that have been a frequent topic on this blog. Wood is re-tracing...' [...]
One fringe benefit of economic downturns is that local public officials generally defer their financial decisions, which tend to be uniformly bad even during good economic times. Except apparently in Houston. Over the past few days, Houstonians have been... [...]
Given the inexplicable popularity of NFL football practice in these parts, who cares about Major League Baseball anymore, anyway? As expected, the Stros (59-62) faded into obscurity during the third quarter of the 2009 season, going 19-21 during that... [...]
With inexplicably popular NFL football practice in full swing, who cares about Major League Baseball in these parts, anyway? As expected, the Stros (59-62) faded into obscurity during the third quarter of the 2009 season, going 19-21 during that stretch.... [...]
Never one to avoid a lively debate, Harvard law prof Alan S. Dershowitz (previous posts here) lays the wood to Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in this Daily Beast op-ed over the extent of their rationalizations... [...]
Given the achievement of covering his 200th major golf tournament at the U.S. Open this past June, Clear Thinkers favorite and fellow Texan Dan Jenkins has been making the interview rounds and it has been a rollicking good time.... [...]
Longtime Washington political columnist and television political pundit Robert D. Novak died yesterday, ending a virtually unparalleled 60-year career of reporting on national politics from the nation's capitol. David Broder, Jack Shafer. Tim Carney, Stephen Miller, Jeffrey Bell and...' [...]
If you watch just one TED video this year, check out this 17 minute presentation by Alain de Botton on the cult of meritocracy and related issues. H/T Epicurean Dealmaker.... [...]
A couple of stories caught my eye over the weekend. The first was the one involving Bob Dylan being pulled over by a couple of young cops while taking a walk in a New Jersey neighborhood a few hours... [...]
