Good morning, Houston. When it comes to politics, we suppose there's a lot to be said for the shock factor — which is why Brian Klock, a candidate for Congressional District 22, is getting some attention. Klock, one of 10 people vying for the Republican nomination for CD 22, has put up a billboard showing downtown Houston being destroyed by a huge explosion. "The Threat Is Real," the billboard reads. "Ask Brian Klock." And......

Wow — it's still six months to Christmas, and yet we're getting gifts already: The AP reports that everyone's favorite golden-haired politico, Shelley Sekula Gibbs, is laying the groundwork for her campaign to return to Congress. Oh, yes. Sekula Gibbs (notice that she's dropped the hyphen, which she worried could be a problem during her write-in campaign for Congress last year) announced that she has some high-profile Republican supporters for her 2008 campaign, including homebuilder......

Good morning, Houston. We hope you got your fill of the Texas Legislature, because the 80th session is officially over. Your Senators and Representatives have been hard at work since January, passing lots of bills and making even more news, and now they'll be taking a break. The Houston contingent did us proud, from strip club taxes to baby-selling to overcoming liver transplants. We hope all the Texas political blogs can survive until 2009.......

If you didn't get a chance to vote in Saturday's election, don't worry. You'll get another one on June 16 - that's when Roy Morales and Melissa Noriega will go head-to-head in a runoff. That's also Mayor White's birthday, so let's make him proud, although he was coy about who he voted for himself. The special election was held on Saturday to fill the vacant at-large seat formerly held by Shelley Sekula-Gibbs. The S. S.......

The Chronicle's update on fund-raising among candidates for Shelley Sekula-Gibbs' former at-large City Council seat probably has Melissa Noriega feeling pretty good: Noriega, it seems, has raised about four times as much as her two closest competitors in the race. Noriega — the wife of state Rep. Rick Noriega (D-Houston), has raised more than $100,000 in total and still has more than half that in the bank headed toward the May 12 election. That's 10......

Remember Tom Nixon, the HPD officer who was reassigned and later fired after publicly criticizing the department's chase policy? Two bits of news about him this week: First, City Council is set to decide whether to spend $35,000 more fighting his suit, which alleges the city abridged his First Amendment rights by firing him; and second, Nixon is running for a seat on City Council. (Yeah, Nixon's candidacy in the special election for Shelley Sekula-Gibbs'......

Slampo's Place had some choice words for Chronicle columnist Rick Casey, who announced last weekend that he was going on a 5-month sabbatical. Casey says he will spend his time of "resting, reading, and reflecting," which inspired cutting sarcasm in bloggers all over the city. We still don't understand exactly what Casey is doing over these five months, and apparently neither does Slampo's Place. Something to do with lawyers in San Antonio? Well, as for......

We know Houstonist is your window into the lives of famous Houstonians. We also know that you've been wondering what the upper crust of Houston is doing to celebrate Valentine's Day, and we firmly believe that if you don't know the answer to a question, you should make one up. So here's what we imagine some of our favorite Houston celebrities are doing to celebrate February 14th, love triangles and all. In an effort to......

Well, it looks like Mayor Bill White has given up on his quest to avoid holding a special election to fill former City Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs' seat: Yesterday, the mayor asked for a special election to be held May 12, setting off a process he has estimated could cost as much as $4 million. White had planned to ask the state Legislature for an exception to Texas election law so that the city wouldn't have......

As we noted a while back, Nov. 20 was a special day for Houstonist: It was our first birthday. It seems like yesterday when we started talking about car chases, hamburgers and the fair-haired Shelley Sekula-Gibbs — it's really hard to believe it's been a whole year (yes, technically a year and someodd days now, we know). We've had a great time keeping up with the city and getting to know our 11 faithful readers,......

More on the possibility of the city having to hold a costly special election to fill Shelley Sekula-Gibbs' vacant City Council seat for a few months: According to the Chronicle, Mayor Bill White plans to ask the state Legislature for some leeway in the election law that would require a special election. The issue: A special election couldn't be held before May, meaning that whoever won it would have to run again in a general......

If you're hiking, consider charging up your iPod, as Seattlest finds out that a man lost during a hike was found by the glow of his iPod. That cleverness seems to be devoid in cops who were using police cruiser instant messaging clients - although we imagine IMs "so are you nakie" to be included in cop shows, just for realism. If only the cops were busting the Hummer-driving jerk who made a poor......

So we were pretty excited when we noticed a KTRK report that promised an explanation from U.S. Rep. Shelley Sekula-Gibbs as to why her Washington office's staff walked out on her last week. And here's the blockbuster explanation, straight from the horse's congresswoman's mouth: "I knew I would have to get to work and work fast," she said. And she did, already voting on the floor and pushing for money for Ellington Field and NASA.......

Because Shelley Sekula-Gibbs is only going to be a congresswoman for a few weeks, we suppose she feels the need to make the news as often as possible: Earlier this week, Tom DeLay's staffers walked out on Sekula-Gibbs, and now Shelley is accusing those staffers of inappropriately wiping all the office computers clean before they left. We smell a developing Capitol Hill smackdown — no, not the one between Shelley's people and DeLay's people; we're......

Looks like everyone's favorite brief-tenure congresswoman, Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, has made an impact on Washington already: According to Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, former Congressman Tom DeLay's aides quit en masse yesterday, apparently after finding the golden-haired Sekula-Gibbs a little hard to work with. The full text of the Roll Call article is only available to subscribers, but we'll summarize: As you remember, Sekula-Gibbs won the special election last week to fill former Congressman Tom......

More on the City Council seat that will be left vacant when Shelley Sekula-Gibbs heads off for her congressional jaunt: There will be a special election to fill the seat; it will probably be held in May; and it could cost $2 million. "It's sort of a shame that we have to pay a lot of money to hold a special election, but that's the state law as it exists," Mayor Bill White said. The......

Shelley Sekula-Gibbs told the Chronicle this morning that she will resign her seat on the Houston City Council as soon as the results of Tuesday's Congressional District 22 special election are certified, paving the way for her to head to Washington to spread a little sunshine around the halls of Congress. For a few weeks, anyway. Sekula-Gibbs, a write-in Republican candidate to fill out Tom DeLay's expired term in the House, beat out three other......

Houstonist stayed up half the night glued to our television just to bring you the latest election results, locally, state-wide, and nationally. Let's look at how things went down yesterday. Locally: Much to the mayor's delight, propositions A-H all passed. This means good things for Houston's libraries, parks, police force, airports, etc. Mayor White is keeping the city moving, literally and figuratively. The Chronicle offers complete election results, but we're going to look at a......

If you're Republican CD22 candidate Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, we guess it's pretty cool when the president comes to town to campaign for you — and if you're President George W. Bush, where better to get an enthusiastic reception than Sugar Land? So it seems only natural that Bush turned out yesterday to stump for Sekula-Gibbs, who is trying to win Tom DeLay's congressional seat on a write-in campaign. Bush's visit was largely instructional: "See, if you......

If you were planning not to vote this fall because the government might be trying to mess with you through those eSlate machines, well, find another excuse: Harris County's voting machines have passed a state-mandated accuracy test, which means they should record your vote properly. We can't guarantee they won't steal your soul, but hey, that's a chance you take anytime you use electronics. County clerk's office employees put 2,400 fake votes into eSlate machines......

A couple of City Councilmembers have come up with 11th-hour alternatives to the city's proposed smoking ban, which council is supposed to take up tomorrow. The proposal would ban smoking at all workplaces in Houston, including restaurants and bars; exceptions would be patio areas and businesses designated as tobacconists or cigar bars. Councilwoman Toni Lawrence has one alternative: She's begun circulating a petition that would exempt standalone bars and clubs from the citywide ban. "My......

During yesterday's City Council meeting, many councilmembers took the chance to offer their condolences to the family of Rodney Johnson, the HPD officer who police say was killed by an illegal immigrant during a traffic stop last week — but gilt-haired Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs went one step farther, saying Mayor Bill White should use Johnson's death as a platform to change the police department's policy on immigrants. And that didn't sit well with other councilmembers,......

A man who caused a Gulf Freeway traffic accident that killed three will face charges of intoxication manslaughter Ex-TSU President Priscilla Slade appeared in court this morning, but her case was reset for Sept. 14 Autopsies were performed this morning on the bodies of two men found on the west end of Galveston Island yesterday morning City Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs will seek Tom DeLay's seat in Congress, she announced today Capital murder charges have been......

So you would think that teens and their parents would have some pretty strong opinions about the city's proposed 10 p.m. juvenile curfew, right? If City Council invited everyone who wanted to sound off on the issue down to City Hall, you'd think teens would flood the place, waving placards written on the back of Ashlee Simpson posters and demanding to be able to keep their two hours of nightly freedom, wouldn't you? Well, apparently......

A group is trying to get the city charter changed to allow HPD officers to get more involved in immigration enforcement by removing a policy that prevents officers from asking people about their immigration status and giving them access to federal databases. The group, Protect Our Citizens, kicked off a petition drive yesterday at City Hall to try to get the 20,000 signatures required to put the measure on the November ballot. Under HPD's current......

Catching up with City Council activity this week: On Wednesday, councilmembers voted to approve $100,000 in funding for a day-labor site in the Second Ward, a proposal that sparked a debate in council over the last two weeks. Some councilmembers opposed using the money, part of a Community Development Block Grant, to fund the day-labor site because they said some of the people using the site might be illegal immigrants and it would be illegal......

City Council on Wednesday delayed a vote again on renewing federal funding to a Second Ward day-labor site after some citizens claimed funding the facility was a violation of federal law. The debate started last week when some councilmembers expressed concern over the best use of the $100,000 from the Community Development Block Grant — particularly the honey-maned Shelley Sekula Gibbs, who has supported day-labor sites in the past but did a 180 on the......

There's nothing quite like a good City Council rumble to close out the week, and we had one Wednesday courtesy of the national immigration debate — more specifically, a local plan to renew city funding to a day-labor site. The flap started after some councilmembers delayed a vote on the federally funded $100,000 contract that would allow Neighborhood Centers to continue running the site in the Second Ward where day laborers wait for jobs. The......

Whatever your political leanings, you're going to want to mark June 9 on your calendar: It's the day you'll want to get together with friends and have a farewell party for Tom DeLay. Whether you mope or celebrate is your business — but can you think of anything else DeLay has done that has the potential of bringing so many people together? Look out, liquor cabinet! DeLay wrote House Speaker Dennis Hastert yesterday that June......

City Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs said today she'll seek the nomination for Tom DeLay's seat in the November election The mother of missing 3-year-old Kendrick Jackson is standing by Kendrick's dad, Roderick Fountain, the prime suspect in the disappearance Community leaders said they'll work to increase support of the TSU/HISD Lab School, which is included on the school district's list of campuses to close A man was rescued from his car last night after driving into......