Legal roundup: March 25, 2011.

I saw the stories about a Texas state legislator allegedly pulling a knife on her husband, but I didn’t think this was blog fodder. Domestic disputes among our legislators are nothing new; heck, we even had a former Speaker of the House capped by his wife (who walked away scott-free).

Then I discovered by way of Say Uncle that the legislator in question, Barbara Caraway, voted against the concealed carry on campus bill. And it appears from the linked Pajamas Media article that there’s been more than a little covering up going on in Dallas. Seems that Ms. Caraway’s husband is the Dallas mayor, and is a little embarrassed by the whole affair. I can understand that: but I’m not married, and my non-existent wife who didn’t pull a knife on me isn’t a member of the “Homeland Security & Public Safety Committee” of the Ledge.

Another story that I was kind of watching was the saga of Miss San Antonio, Domonique Ramirez (who I will concede is reasonably attractive, though too young for me). Miss Ramirez won the Miss San Antonio contest last year. It appears that since she won the title, there’s been a change of management, and the new contest management was not, shall we say, completely happy with Miss Ramirez. There were claims that she didn’t write thank-you notes, was late (or didn’t show up) to events, and apparently there were some unfortunate comments made about Miss Ramirez needing to “get off the tacos”.

By the way, one of the members of the new management team for the contest did time in a Federal prison for tax evasion and Medicaid fraud.

Anyway, things got ugly, the contest stripped Miss Ramirez of the Miss San Antonio crown and awarded it to the first runner-up, and Miss Ramirez promptly sued.

Yesterday, Miss Ramirez won her case, and has been reinstated as Miss San Antonio. Of course, there are questions about how much support Miss Ramirez will get from a group of people who appear to be actively hostile to her.  I think there’s also legitimate questions to be asked about the value of organized beauty contests in contemporary society; frankly, the whole Miss San Antonio dispute looks like a bunch of people fighting over small stakes.

Edited to add: Ah. Found the AP version of the story on the Statesman site, which contains this quote:

…a top pageant official says she will do nothing to help Ramirez advance to the Miss Texas and Miss America crowns.

“I’m sorry, there’s no way I would represent her as talent. She’s trouble,” pageant director Linda Woods said.

Ms. Woods, it should be noted, is not the person who did time. (Can you call a Federal prison for women a “pound me in the A– prison“?) Here’s some more background on the executive director who did.

2 Responses to “Legal roundup: March 25, 2011.”

  1. Earl Cooley III says:

    Some of the images of Domonique Ramirez online appear to have been photoshopped with horizontal stretching.

  2. stainles says:

    All the photos I saw were on the MySanAntonio site, and I didn’t notice any obvious stretching or Photoshoping.

    Of course, the MySanAntonio site is the site for the San Antonio Express-News, and it would be absolutely unheard of for a San Antonio paper to do something sleezy like that.