Note: I recently had the great luck of having a professional writer volunteer to help me with my campaign. He has taken the original version of this blog, edited it, added to it, made it easier to read, more informative and yes, humorous. I invite those of you who have already read the blog to read this new and improved version.

Each and every year, the State Bar of Texas requires licensed attorneys to complete at least 15 hours of Continuing Legal Education (CLE). If they do not adhere to this injunction, the Bar may revoke their licenses.

For each and every attorney, at least three of these hours, or 20% of the total, must be in ethics. The State Bar increases the ethics requirement every now and then. Why? I presume, to assuage their guilt over their otherwise do-nothing attitude toward widespread government lawyer corruption.

Be advised: these CLE courses are also big business. In my own experience, these courses cost a minimum of $300 per year. The American Bar Association's most recent data as of 2004 lists 65,983 active and resident Texas lawyers. If my own fees reflect the average, that means the Texas Bar alone reaps close to $20 million per year in gross CLE revenue (nineteen million seven hundred ninety four thousand nine hundred dollars to be exact). And if you don't complete your CLE by the Bar-mandated deadline (the last day of one's birth month), the Bar also imposes astronomical fines. In short, $20 million is probably a low ball figure. Every year I pay the State Bar to take CLE ethics for the esteemed privilege of listening to another lawyer tell me what is right from wrong. Apparently, ethics doesn't come cheap. Or does it?

I discovered recently that none other than Jaime Esparza has taught CLE ethics to his own employees. This would be the same Jaime Esparza who testified under oath that he is not setting bonds though his own written office policies say that he is. The same Jaime Esparza who had Nancy Hollebeke thrown in jail and viciously tried to prosecute her for the crime of reporting that she had been raped (her mistake was that the "alleged" rapist is a cop and his father works for Esparza). The same Jaime Esparza who unsuccessfully prosecuted one member of commissioner's court-members of the court vote on Esparza's budget-and then turned around and refused to prosecute another member of the court citing a conflict of interest because he couldn't prosecute someone who voted on his budget. I wonder which member happened to be Esparza's friend? The same Jaime Esparza who recently dismissed charges against two UTEP football players accused of felony assault on a peace officer. The same Esparza who relentlessly and ruthlessly prosecutes others who happen to be INNOCENT but charged with exactly the same offense. Of course to my knowledge, none of those Esparza has prosecuted and is prosecuting played football for UTEP. It's called selective prosecution and favoritism. The Bar actually offers ethics courses on this very issue. Who knows? Maybe this one's Esparza's specialty. You'd have to ask his staff. They ought to know. He's not just their boss. He's their ethics teacher.

If Jaime Esparza of all people is teaching ethics, I wondered, by what possible criteria does the State Bar assess those they select to teach. I called the Bar to ask. The woman on the phone seemed surprised, "What do you mean?" she asked me. "How do you know that the person you are admitting to teach CLE ethics is in fact ETHICAL?" I wondered. "Good question," she said, "I don't know." And that was that.

As for Esparza's ethics course, a friend of mine actually attended. He tells me Esparza's version of ethics consists of recounting his own favorite trials and telling his own glorious war stories. Some solace though. At least he does encourage student participation. For example (and the name is fictitious to protect the innocent): Esparza calls on one of his flock. "Jennifer (office employee), do you have a question?" "Yes. Jaime. Tell us about your favorite case." Is this ethics?

Keep your eyes open. US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned today. Let's see what position George Smith, the Bar;s gatekeeper of Texas lawyer ethics, takes on Mr. Gonzales' conduct. With Esparza teaching ethics with the State Bar stamp of approval, apparently anything is possible. Maybe Mr. Smith can nominate Alberto Gonzales to be prosecutor of the year. In the meantime, I better get started on next year's CLE.

On Monday, August 20, 2007, DA Jaime Esparza will appear before El Paso County Commissioner's Court asking for hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to run his controversial, unconstitutional and illegal program called DIMS. DIMS was started by DA Esparza in 1995 and stands for the District Attorney's Information Management System. The program requires two things in order to survive: a) an uninformed or dishonest taxing entity willing to fund it and b) millions of your tax dollars. There is no provision for DIMS in the US Constitution or in the Texas Penal Code or Texas Code of Criminal Procedure. In other words, there is no basis for DIMS in law. DIMS is purely a creature of Jaime Esparza's brain.

I have blogged on DIMS earlier in my campaign and encourage my readers to go back and read these blogs. In a nutshell, DIMS is a program whereby the District Attorney has vested in himself the power to decide who gets arrested and who does not. Esparza even trumps the police because he has duped them into agreeing to a program where they have to go to Esparza for permission to arrest someone. This is why former Mayor Joe Wardy, Esparza's ally, did not get arrested for possessing a handgun at the airport in clear violation of state law. Keep in mind that if you had been caught at the airport with a loaded handgun, Esparza would have ordered your arrest and the police would have obeyed and you would have been in court facing felony charges. Amongst many things, DIMS has produced a lopsided, legal system that favors the well positioned and the powerful while it simultaneously disenfranchises the average person by stripping him of his longstanding constitutional rights of having a police department that is independent of the DA and having a magistrate act as a check and balance to the arrest process. What happened?

For ten years, 12,000 to 15,000 individuals were arrested by EPPD a year under DIMS. Instead of the police taking the person to a magistrate for review of the arrest, as dictated by the law, the police went straight to the DA who then made the decision. If the DA said "Go to Jail," the arrestee was booked into jail with a bond given by who? Not by a neutral and detached magistrate as outlined by black letter law, but by the DA himself. DIMS is so bad that in the DA's handbook, Esparza actually specifically exempted himself, his employees and public officials from the DIMS process.

There have been multiple civil rights lawsuits attacking this illegal system. The lawsuits were dismissed a few months ago with the Federal judges citing that the issue of the constitutionality of DIMS had not been properly raised by the pleadings and that they were therefore not ruling on its constitutionality one way or the other. Contrary to these clear opinions, Esparza stated publicly that the judges had delcared DIMS legal. Bob Harp at Channel 7 did a wonderful job exposing Esparza's lie on this issue.

Now Esparza is asking the overburdened taxpayers of this county to pony up over half a million dollars to pay for this law defying program which does nothing, absolutely nothing, but take the arrest decision out of the hands of the police and place it into the hands of Esparza and cost you more money in taxes. For over a hundred years, El Pasoans lived without the DIMS program, and you should know that despite Esparza's exhaustive efforts to peddle it to other counties, there is nothing like DIMS in its original form anywhere else, in the state of Texas. Call your commissioner and tell her that you want her to vote against DIMS and you want our tax dollars to go toward mandated functions like repairing our decrepid roads and bridges, running the courts, funding indigent defense, etc. I will do away with this program my first day in office, saving you over a million dollars a year. Send Esparza packing.

This is an update on what has been going on. I attended the monthly meeting at the County Democratic Headquarters yesterday evening after my trial broke. Since several of the judicial races have drawn opponents as well as the Sheriff's office, the meeting boasted the presence of quite a few of the incumbents and the aspirants. The meeting started at 6:00 p.m. and right as it was winding down at 7:00, my opponent arrived. According to people who regularly attend, Esparza has recently started showing up for party functions, whereas before as one attendee stated, "he has never before done anything for the party."--A little competition keeps everyone on their toes.

The FBI probe continues and we have heard absolutely nothing from the sitting District Attorney. Once again, the issue becomes why has the District Attorney been so silent regarding alleged corruption in the very building he has worked in for the last 14 years? According to some news accounts, this is the biggest corruption probe this county has ever seen. Is it fiction or is my opponent completely blind to what is going on around him. I encourage voters and readers of this website to PROBE Jaime Esparza on this issue the next time he goes on the radio. Don't let him get away with his famous out which is, "this is a federal matter." Texas has conspiracy and bribery statutes too. And if Texas laws are being broken, it is his job and only his job to enforce Texas law.

As soon as I am out of my current trial, I will be blogging on the rest of the Nancy Hollebeke case. Also thank you to the people who have called and offered their support and who have brought information to my office and home.

The State Bar of Texas' do nothing attitude toward unethical District Attorneys and their employees has reached such a zenith that it has become a topic of national discussion before the US Congress. But first some background. The State Bar of Texas licenses attorneys. It also has the job of enforcing the Code of Professional Responsibility, or rather ethics. Mr. George Smith is an attorney employee at the State Bar who is supposed to review grievances filed against Texas attorneys for possible action and even file his own grievances against unethical lawyers. This is what the Texas taxpayers pay him to do. His office is in San Antonio, Texas, the office that covers the El Paso District. Smith's supervisor is another attorney named Mr. James Ayler. All attorneys in Texas, including Mr. Smith and Mr. Ayler, are obligated to report any attorney who has violated the canons of ethics. You should also know that attorneys are mandated to pay for and take ethics courses every year in order to maintain their licenses. It is BIG money business for the Bar. We can take these courses live at seminars or take them online. These classes teach things like identifying and avoiding conflicts of interests. We then have to send proof that we have taken the classes to the State Bar which employs all kinds of people to make sure we have paid our money and complied. My thoughts on all of this are the obvious. Anyone who doesn't possess a knowledge of right from wrong by the time he or she is a licensed attorney, ain't going to learn in a one hour ethics class. It is simply too late.

We all have watched my opponent, Jaime Esparza, over the years, act in ways that one would think would be clearly prohibited by the rules of ethics, i.e. the Nancy Hollebeke case, over 100,000 DIMS cases, the Mark Bittikas case, the Tony Soto/Dean Kinder case, the Brandon Moon case, the Albert Ocegueda case, etc., etc., etc. Many of these cases have received state and nationwide attention. The question becomes, where is the State Bar of Texas? Why have Mr. Smith and Mr. Ayler, who are obligated to move against an unethical attorney, remained so silent? What in fact do they do all day long? By their own admission, which I found shocking, they have no criminal experience and yet they review grievances filed against attorneys who practice CRIMINAL LAW. Did you know that the State Bar has given Jaime Esparza permission to teach ethics classes to his employees? That's right, Esparza teaches continuing legal education ethics with the full sanction of the Texas State Bar. I called the State Bar and asked, "What is the process for getting permission to teach ethics? How do you know that the person teaching is in fact ethical?" The person answered, "I don't know. Good question." What do you think of them apples? Comforting isn't it?

I bring this up because it has long been my observation that the State Bar of Texas and its attorneys seem to be deaf, dumb, blind and totally and wilfully oblivious to what is going on around them on the part of prosecutors and I have previously written a blog about this. The State Bar of Texas and its employees' "alleged" willingness to allow outrageous, ethical violations on the part of prosecutors to go unchecked is now a matter of national discourse. Less than a week ago, on Tuesday, July 31, 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Foreign Affairs held hearings on the Ramos/Compean convictions. During those hearings, Congessional members of the Committee and witnesses specifically discussed the Do Nothing attitude on the part of the employees at the State Bar of Texas regarding prosecutors. It was remarkable and should be deeply embarassing for the Texas Bar.

Congressman Poe, stated/asked Texas attorney David Botsford (witness), "If Michael Nifong had been in Texas nothing would have happened to him." Botsford replied, "That's a fair statement." (Remember, Michael Nifong was the North Carolina District Attorney who was recently stripped of his license to practice law and publicly pilloried by the NC Bar for his despicable, abusive behavior in the Duke/Lacrosse players case. Nifong engaged in conduct we have seen Jaime Esparza engage in. See my earlier blog on Nifong.) Congressman Paul also went on to say, in paraphrase, that "Prosecutors in Texas can go wild..." and remain unchecked by the State Bar. There was talk about how over a hundred people in Texas have been released after serving time on wrongful convictions that were overturned (See Brandon Moon case) and that nothing has happened to the prosecutors in any of those cases. The discussion regarding the State Bar of Texas went on for a quite a bit of time. You can watch it for yourself at www.internationalrelations.house.gov. After clicking there, scroll to testimony/transcripts. Then go to the Ramos/Compean section and click on the video. Fast forward to hour two where you will hear all of this.

What you will learn after watching the video is that Mr. Smith and Mr. Ayler and their cohort attorneys at the State Bar of Texas can try and hide behind the anonymity of the monolithic Texas State Bar seal, but we see them. The cat is out of the bag. We know their names and where they work and that it has been business as usual around here for way too long and too many people have been hurt. When individuals testifying before Congress take the time to talk about the lawyer employees at the State Bar of Texas allowing Texas prosecutors to "run wild," who do Mr. Ayler and Mr. Smith think these statements apply to? And if they don't think this description applies to them, who do they think Botsford and Paul are talking about? And if they don't think these comments apply to them, why not? What actions have Smith and Ayler taken that they can cite to prove that they don't fall into the category of State Bar employees who let "Texas prosecutors run wild?" I for one would really like to know. Wouldn't you?

One day some Court is going to order the release of State Bar records and the Public is going to find out exactly what information Mr. Smith and Mr. Ayler and all the others have been sitting on for years. And one day, some wrongfuly convicted person will SUE the State Bar and every one of its lazy, scared, incompetent, dishonest and stupid employees for knowingly allowing an unethical prosecutor to go unchecked and for wilfully and wrongfully failing to protect him, for failing to protect the Public, for failing to uphold the law and for failing to perform their duties and SHUT THEM DOWN and put them clean out of business in the process. They think it can't happen. It can.

Today at 8:30 a.m., an historic event took place. Current El Paso Police Officer and former police union vice-president, Dean Kinder, was formally arraigned on his criminal charges of Aggravated Perjury. These charges are a direct result of an investigation by a Court of Inquiry. According to El Diario today, there are no records that ever, in the history of El Paso, have charges resulted from a Court of Inquiry into government corruption before. These charges are unprecedented.

Dean Kinder's criminal arraignment for lying under oath took place in the 409th District Court presided over by the Honorable Sam Medrano. According to a court room observer, Judge Medrano treated Dean Kinder the same way he treats all other criminal defendants. Good for Judge Medrano. The Judge brought Kinder before the bench, had him raise his right hand to be sworn in, informed Kinder in open court that he was being charged with Aggravted Perjury and then took Kinder's plea of "not guilty" (a plea of not guilty is customary at the arraignment, especially for criminal defendants out on bond like Kinder is). The State of Texas was represented not by its elected official Jaime Esparza but by Special Prosecutors, local attorney Mario Martinez and former Judge of the 120th, Judge Robert Dinsmoor. Jaime Esparza cannot do his job and represent the State in this matter since he put Kinder on the stand and vouched for his testimony; this is the same testimony Kinder is now being prosecuted for giving. Kinder is represented by CLEAT attorney Jerry Cichon. To this day, Esparza refuses to admit that he made a huge "mistake" regarding Kinder.

Is the police department trying to bully the Special Prosecutors to protect Kinder? According to the court room observer, he heard Judge Dinsmoor tell Attorney Cichon that he had received a request from the police department asking for a transcript of the Grand Jury testimony that resulted in Kinder's indictment. Judge Dinsmoor told the union attorney that he would not be handing that transcript over since it is confidential. It is well established law, and the police department knows it, that Grand Jury proceedings are secret. So what is the purpose of the "request?"

Also present and looking unhappy was police detective Diane Kinder, wife of Dean Kinder. She spent part of the proceedings glaring at the court room observer who has followed this case since the beginning. Does Diane Kinder think that dirty looks are going to scare the public off at this point? Have the Kinders and the police department not learned that attorney Ed Hernandez has worked too hard to see that justice is done to allow his supporters to be bullied at this point?

The Press: Today, El Diario reporter Alberto Ponce de Leon wrote an article advising the public that the Kinder case was set for arraignment. Why was there no mention of this by Dionicio Flores in the El Paso Times? Does Mr. Flores at the Times believe that this historic event is not newsworthy? Does Mr. Flores believe that the English speaking public does not need to know this information? Or does Mr. Flores believe that his readers do need to know this information but he is just not going to tell them?