Re: Query from Barrett Brown (Vanity Fair, HuffPo)
Subject: Re: Query from Barrett Brown (Vanity Fair, HuffPo)
From: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>
Date: 11/1/09, 00:55
To: Ross Ramsey <rramsey@texastribune.org>
Hi, Ross-
Thanks for getting back to me. Perhaps you would be interested in an article on the effects of Texas Board of Criminal Justice Board Policy 03.91, which was passed in 2004 and which consisted mostly of the following regulation:
Outgoing special or media correspondence will be opened in cases where there have been known problems (special correspondence is defined as any official of any federal, state or local law enforcement agency, including offices of inspector general). The intent is to prohibit offenders from sending correspondence that seeks to threaten, harass or intimidate in any way (including anthrax hoaxes).
Because 03.91 also banned such material as Playboy from Texas prisons, that more salacious angle took up most of the media attention at the time. But the new policy noted above had the effect of cutting off prisoners from privileged correspondence with their lawyers as well as the press.
A spokesperson for the TBCJ explained at the time that one major intention of this was to protect journalists from, one supposes, angry or irritating letters. At the time, though, I spoke to a number of staffers at The Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, and other publications, and not a single one had any interest in being "protected" in such a manner. To the contrary, it was commonly held that this was simply a means by which to further prevent the state's prisoners from conveying important information about conditions in Texas prisons to journalists, thus helping to keep a lid on what's actually happening in our prison system - one of the worst-administered in the country according to the Government Account Office of the U.S. House of Representatives and every other organization that tracks such things.
I wrote an article on all of this for a public policy journal five years ago, about two months after 03.91 was first announced. The article I'm proposing now would examine the actual results, drawing on interviews with reporters at the major Texas dailies, criminal defense attorneys, and others with direct knowledge of how this policy has restricted information flow from prisons to public. I'd also be talking to spokespeople for the TBCJ and the governor's office.
Otherwise, I've got another article I'm working on in which I've thus far caught the provost of Vanderbilt trying to lie to me in a recent recorded telephone interview regarding an incident in which a black professor received dozens of death threats from neo-Nazis and other such colorful characters after he spoke ill of the Confederacy back in 2002. I've obtained a large amount of documentation indicating further wrongdoing on the part of several top Vanderbilt officials regarding the same incident. The professor in question, Jonathan Farley, had remained quiet on all of this until a few weeks ago when he got in touch with me after seeing a piece I'd done for HuffPo regarding Robert Stacy McCain, who himself wrote a Washington Times article on the whole affair at the time - and who was then, as I've recently learned, also coordinating with neo-Nazis and pro-Confederacy outfits himself, mostly under an assumed name. Of course, this particular story only has direction connects to Texas insomuch as that I've identified a couple of the threatening e-mails as having come from prominent Texas lawyers and other such folks that really ought not to be doing such things, so this might not necessarily be right for The Tribune except to such extent as you're interested in covering stories of regional interest.
Let me know if you'd like discuss either of these stories further.
Thanks for sending us the idea, but it's not suitable for the Tribune at this time. We're focussed on politics, government, and public policy -- you'll see when we roll out the website (texastribune.org) next Tuesday. I appreciate your interest and hope you'll keep us in mind in the future.
Ross Ramsey Managing Editor Texas Tribune 823 Congress Avenue, Suite 210 Austin, TX 78701
I wanted to check in with you to see if Texas Tribune might be interested in a piece I'm about to write about a telling little piece of state history.
I'm a regular contributor to Vanity Fair, TheHuffington Post, Skeptic, and The Onion, and my work has appeared in dozens of other outlets, including several based in Texas. My first book, Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design, and the Easter Bunny, was released in 2007; my second, Hot, Fat, and Clouded, is scheduled for publication next year.
The article in question is an allegedly humorous examination of A Texan Looks at Lyndon: A Study in Illegitimate Power, written by historian and cowman J. Evetts Haley. The book, which came out in 1964 and appears to have been something of a statewide success, covers much of Johnson's early career, obviously with a negative slant. The book itself is interesting for a number of reasons. It's packed with accounts of mid-20th century Texas corruption and written by an equally colorful fellow who ran for statewide office several times on a segregationist platform (indeed, he campaigned to redeploy the Texas Rangers as a means of enforcing the separation of the races). And Haley, though no doubt a fine historian when focused on the southwest, is laughable when dealing with anything beyond that - by the second paragraph of the preface, he has already asserted in passing that Julius Caesar was feared by the people and feared them in turn, when in fact he was so extraordinarily popular that he was appointed dictator several times, his assassins were in turn hunted down by mobs, and his adopted son was eventually made both an emperor and deity by virtue of that inherited popularity. Elsewhere, he sprinkles the book with observations of the following intellectual caliber: "History indicates that illegitimate power cannot afford to let rebellion grow and spread." And a portion of the book consists of complaints about people who have allegedly screwed him over on business deals.