Judge Dennise Garcia Video

Wanted to give you a heads up about the new campaign video from my wife, Judge Dennise Garcia. It's a website video, intended for you to:
1) watch for yourself, and then
2) send off to your friends with a note about Dennise and why they should vote for her.

Click here to watch the video.

Here's the link if you want to copy it and send it along to your personal friends, with an email note from yourself:
http://www.dennisegarcia.com/page7/page15/movies/2006movie.html

Click here for a quick comparison of the two candidates for this race. (pdf format) As you can see, Dennise is far superior to her opponent in terms of being qualified for a Family Court bench.

Here's that same link, in case you want to send it around to people too:
http://www.dennisegarcia.com/candidatecomparison.pdf

Thanks for doing what you can to spread the word about Dennise.

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Judge Merrill Hartman

In the midst of this election season, it's seems a good time to remember a judge who is retiring, and whose legacy will stay with the Dallas Community for years to come.

The judge is Merrill Hartman, and he is retiring from the bench after being a State District Judge in Dallas County since 1984. Judge Hartman's story intersects with passions of mine (And Dennise's) in many different ways
he's a lover of music...
he's committed to a deep sense of justice for all people....
and he sees it as a high duty of all people of means to serve the poor.

I met Judge Hartman just two years ago, when my wife was elected Judge of the 303rd Family District Court. This court was Judge Hartman's original court, and I know Dennise finds it a high honor to continue to serve in the court where he once served. Judge Hartman started his judicial career as a Democrat, but switched parties at some point.

As I mentioned, Judge Hartman has a passion for music. In his home, there is a study filled with CDs, cassettes and eight-track-tapes. It's also lined with pictures he has taken with his old brownie camera.

Judge Hartman and I found an immediate bond about music. He's wild about music. He's a passionate Elvis fan, but he's certainly not lost in the 50s. He's also a huge fan of jazz, and just about any other music that's out there. As someone who himself still has over 500 old LPs on the shelf in the other room, it was wonderful for me to see Judge Hartman's passion for music, and his diverse tastes. After our first conversation about music, I burned several CDs of my own music for him, and every time he sees me now, he remembers to tell me how much he enjoys it.

Judge Hartman is also passionate about serving the poor. He is widely recognized as one of the forces behind the founding of Dallas' first free legal clinic.

Here's the story of how it happened, as it appears in a Dallas Bar website profile of Judge Hartman:

Often recognized for his many contributions to pro bono legal services, Hartman said he realized he had a gift as an attorney and knew that his services would likely be prohibitively expensive for the most vulnerable among our community to obtain. He also felt a strong moral responsibility as a Christian to love his fellow man. In 1983, Judge Hartman began to offer his legal assistance to the poor. He often tells the story of two of his colleagues, and long-time friends, in attempt to recruit other young lawyers to pro bono service.

When Judge Hartman decided to start a neighborhood legal clinic that would meet at the Dallas Bethlehem Center, he called his friend Will Pryor. The second volunteer to join them was Ellen Smith, at the time a plaintiff’s lawyer with the firm then known as Carter Jones Magee Rudberg & Mayes. Judge Hartman, Will Pryor, Ellen Smith, and others would offer their services on Tuesday evenings, often helping mothers collect child support or obtain temporary restraining orders. They would then meet afterwords for Mexican food to recap the evening’s events. It was not long thereafter that Ellen Smith suffered a terrible cycling accident. She was thrown from her bicycle and run over by a truck, breaking her back. Will Pryor and Judge Hartman visited her in the hospital daily; during this time Will and Ellen fell in love and were later married.

Judge Hartman went on to often recruit friends and colleagues from the Dallas Bar Association and Legal Services of North Texas to start additional clinics. He continues to enlist more volunteer lawyers to help represent low-income clients in court.

After becoming judge of the 303rd Family District Court in 1984, Hartman began holding court at legal clinics as a convenience to clients and their pro bono lawyers. He continues to hold court at clinics at least once a month to accommodate their needs by bringing access to justice for many who might not otherwise be able to make it to court.

Because of Judge Hartman’s pioneering efforts, thousands of people in Dallas have received free legal services. Hartman is constantly recruiting volunteer lawyers, taking time to visit law firms, Bar associations, and pro bono recruiting functions to speak about the importance of assisting low-income people in need of legal help.

The story briefly touches on Judge Hartman's Christian faith. He is certainly not evangelical about his faith --he would never break into long proselitizing stories-- but it's clear in my conversations with others that his quiet faith is what initially called him to the service of being a judge, and drew him to start those legal clinics.

Mutual friends have told me that Judge Hartman will sometimes share the story of being in a hotel room, and of reading a Gideon Bible. Something in that Bible, some passage about God's challenge to serve the poor, touched Judge Hartman deeply. And he resolved to leave his career as a high-powered litigator, and move into public service.

Whenever we talk, the conversation takes a theological tone, and he always mentions how a person of faith has an ethical obligation to help the poor. Which, of course, they do.

Judge Hartman has Parkinson's Disease, and has served honorably these past few years and the disease has progressed. Parkinson's is a tough disease. But his mind is still sharp as a tack. And his wit is still all there. You may have to patiently wait for him to finish a thought, or tell a joke, but it's still always well worth the wait.

Dennise's life intersected with Judge Hartman's in one more key way recently. The Dallas Volunteer Attorney program, which has grown out of Judge Hartman's first free legal clinic, recently held an awards ceremony to honor those attorneys and firms that have contributed volunteer time this past year.

The totals are astounding. An estimated $7.5 million dollars of free legal work was donated to the poor and needy of Dallas County through this program. (The actual figure would surely be much higher, as it is computed at $100/billable hour..) That translates to thousands of hours that attorneys give back to the Dallas community.

And it all came from the pioneering work of Merrill Hartman.

Well, at this awards banquet recently, they honored Judge Hartman. They recognized that the Dallas Volunteer Attorney program might never have existed without him. And then, they announced the creation of a new award to honor him:
"The Judge Merrill Hartman Judicial Service Award."

Created to honor a judge who has given much volunteer time to the service of the Dallas Community, it was bestowed for the first time during that recent Thursday night.

And the first recipient?

Judge Dennise Garcia.

Couldn't be prouder. And she couldn't be more honored.

Dennise can be found at the DVAP clinic almost every time it's open. So, I can testify to the fact that she does volunteer quite a bit. But beyond this, I know she's is honored to be honored with an award named for Judge Hartman.

But more than any award, and like thousand of others in the Dallas area, we are just honored to be able to say we know the man.

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Rest in Peace, Buck...

For all of those who are regular readers of my blog, you may be worried that I've fallen off the planet or something. Nothing of the sort. But, with the election looming, now eighteen-days-away, things are little hectic around our household.

Every spare moment I have these past few weeks has been devoted to working Dennise's campaign. As such, I've been unable to post on a whole host of delicious news stories:

The death of Ann Richards...
T.O. Owens' "accidental" overdose...
The Mark Foley scandal...
The continuing war in Iraq...
The upcoming World Series...

And probably many other things that I'm forgetting off the top of my head right now.

But the thing I've been most eager to write about, believe it or not, is the death of Buck O'Neil. Buck died about two weeks ago now, and since that time I've had several hundred folks stop by to read my blog entry about Buck from last year. I'll refer you there, should you have no idea who Buck O'Neil is.



And all I can say right now is that Buck's death makes me extremely sad. Sad because now an injustice can never be corrected...at least not the way it should be.

Last year, Major League Baseball corrected one great injustice, but created another, when it voted to welcome many of the most famous Negro League figures into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The injustice that was created is that Buck O'Neil wasn't on the list.

I supposed that the special committee responsible for inducting the figures from the Negro League days might still get together and vote Buck in. But Buck deserved to be there in the first place, and he lived long enough to deserve to see it too.

Rest in peace, Buck. Millions of us are deeply saddened that you never got the honors you deserved.

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