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FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) – Four women are facing felony charges, accused of being part of what Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office called an organized voter fraud ring in Fort Worth. The voter fraud charges involve mail-in ballots sent in ahead of the 2016 primary election in Texas. Paxton’s office said the case targeted elderly voters on the north side of Fort Worth.

Last night, President Obama and Eric Cantor exchanged harsh words over the debt ceiling, and on the Senate floor just now, Harry Reid uncorked a harsh attack on Cantor that suggests Dems are embarking on a new strategy: Isolating Cantor as the new public face of GOP intransigence.

Michelle Malkin will be joining Jim during Sound Off Connecticut this morning (Wednesday). Her new book is number 1 in books on Amazon.com. Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies is an up-to-date review of the nepotism, ethics deficiencies and hypocrisy apparent in the current administration.

WASHINGTOON (AF) — It’s a new day in America. President Bush on Friday signed Executive Order 4-01-07, giving himself and future presidents the unprecedented right to use a presidential subpoena as necessary to investigate corruption and malfeasance in the other two branches of government. “This step is necessary,” the president said, “because I noticed the courts have a subpoena power and Congress has a subpoena power and I don’t have any power. That’s not right. “Karl [Rove] and I got to talking about it and decided to just write ourselves up some law. Everybody knows there is supposed to be...

Re: Unless the Democrats in Congress knew about it and said nothing. Here is copy of an email I sent PoliPundit this morning: FYI, you may have heard this, but Selena Zito with the Pittsburgh Tribune Review (I’m pretty sure that’s right) called in on a local (Birmingham, Alabama) talk radio program this morning. She said a major story might break today that a high ranking Democrat knew about the Foley matter and she hinted there was coordination with ABC, probably through George Stephanopoulos to release the story. (Not taking away from what a disgusting creep Foley is, but considering...

It just occured to me the Miers nomitaion might be a ruse. think about it for a moment.. why would Bush do this? there is a month to go til the process starts.. the hearings. This is already taking out a lot of hot air from the democrats.. tire them out maybe and Miers will step out on her own. bring in another nominee.. touche.

<p>The March 2 primary election indicates the spirit of the Gray Davis recall is alive and well. The recall of the unpopular Democratic Davis and the combined 62 percent of the vote captured by Republicans Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom McClintock upended assumptions that Democratic dominance of California politics was part of the natural order of the universe. Last week's primary election is further evidence that the electorate is refusing to abide by its image as the "Left Coast," and contains strong messages for Republicans and Democrats alike.</p>

<p>State lawmakers have yet to take action on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's spending plans more than two weeks after the governor proposed his budget for next year and more than two months after he asked for $2 billion in immediate spending cuts.</p>

<p>Arnold Schwarzenegger promised Californians that if elected governor, he'd grab the Capitol's politicians by their necks and force them to change their ways, often alluding to his robot-hero figure from the "Terminator" movie series.</p> <p>Given the Legislature's chaotic and often juvenile ambience, however, one might think that "Kindergarten Cop" would have been a more appropriate cinematic reference -- tough-guy cop finds himself trying to manage a classroom full of rambunctious children.</p>

<p>In a little-noticed provision of his initial budget proposal, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is asking the Legislature to deny welfare recipients a cost-of-living increase that would have been triggered by his rolling back of the state car tax.</p> <p>The proposal came to light Wednesday as lawmakers started asking questions about the budget package Schwarzenegger unveiled the day before and held a strained first meeting with the governor's finance director.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON -- As Congress limps toward adjournment, the rancor between Republicans and Democrats is palpable on Capitol Hill, and much of the people's business is languishing. A Medicare prescription-drug plan is stalled. An energy bill has been bottled up for weeks in a conference committee. And filibusters are everywhere.</p>

The average state worker now has a $56,800 compensation package, including about $12,700 in benefits -- excluding those in the legislature, judiciary, or university systems. Workers can accrue up to 16 weeks of annual leave -- that can eventually be cashed out, and they get 13 holidays a year, far more than most private-sector workers. And many state workers are paid more than private-sector employees who do similar work. The California Public Employees' Retirement System -- which provides an average $1,594 per month to 388,126 retired state workers -- has been in crisis as the stock market floundered, forcing the...

ADD another billion, more or less, to California's budget crisis. When state lawmakers finally got around to approving a budget, they managed to make the document look a mere $8.1 billion in the red -- significantly lower than the earlier estimate of $38 billion. But the politicians' dirty little secret is that many of the savings they claim to have achieved were imaginary -- derived from accounting gimmicks, borrowing, and forecasts based on rosy assumptions that had little chance of ever coming true. One of those rosy predictions was that the state's public-employee unions would agree to forgo the pay...

<p>The Democrats who control the state Legislature, including Orange County Sen. Joe Dunn of Santa Ana, and Gov. Gray Davis believe that people who break the nation's immigration laws should be entitled to a state driver's license.</p> <p>What are they thinking in this post-9/11 era?</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO (AP) - Registered domestic partners in California would have many of the same rights and responsibilities as married couples under a bill approved Thursday by the state Senate.</p> <p>The bill, by Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, would give registered domestic partners the ability to ask for child support and alimony, the right to health coverage under a partner's plan and the ability to make funeral arrangements for a partner.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO, Calif. - With new polling showing Gov. Gray Davis facing tough odds to save his job, jittery Democrats met around the state Monday to consider breaking ranks and urging U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein or another prominent party leader to run in the historic recall race.</p>

<p>Declaring that California is running on fiscal fumes, state finance officials "pulled the trigger" Friday to raise the vehicle license fee for at least a year to ease a staggering budget deficit.</p> <p>"California is broke," said Steve Peace, director of Gov. Gray Davis' finance department. "This is the first time that we've been in a position where we actually have none of our own money. We are operating as of today totally on borrowed cash."</p>

<p>NOT LONG AGO the Assembly Appropriations Committee, facing California's $38.2 billion budget deficit, shelved one proposed spending bill after another, spending being a pointless topic. I watched as committee chairman Darrell Steinberg noted the only good news was that President Bush was sending Sacramento $2.4 billion in relief.</p>

<p>Numerology is the pseudoscience that seeks occult meanings in numbers, but one needn't be an adherent to find significance in the recurring appearance of $8 billion in the state's budget crisis.</p> <p>That was how much, more or less, Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature foolishly spent out of a one-time windfall of income taxes three years ago. And that's roughly how much out of balance the state budget has been every year since.</p>