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The Hardball Briefing On MSNBC
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MSNBC's coverage of Decision 2006 officially gets underway next Monday on the
night before President Bush's State of the Union address, but Hardball is
hitting the road early tonight to get started on an exciting election season.
Tonight, Chris comes to you from Houston, Texas -- deep in the heart of the
president's home state and a political hotbed where dull moments are few and
far between. This year, the Lone Star State has an increasingly intriguing
governor's race, in which a familiar press secretary's mother is challenging
the incumbent, and, of course, the reelection campaign of former House
Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Stay tuned for an exclusive interview
with DeLay on Hardball next week and a special sneak preview on Hardball
tonight!
Tonight, Chris will kick things off with an interview with Carole Keeton
Strayhorn, independent candidate for Texas governor and mother of White House
Spokesman Scott McClellan. Strayhorn is challenging incumbent Republican Gov.
Rick Perry, the man who took over for then-Gov. Bush when he was first elected
president in 2000. Check out Strayhorn's bio on her campaign website:
http://www.carolestrayhorn.com/About.aspx.
Chris also will talk with Robert Stein, a political science professor and
social sciences dean at Rice University, about Texas and the other southern
states with hot races in 2006. Here's more about Stein:
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~poli/People/Faculty_profile/R_M_STEIN.html.
Paul Burka, senior executive editor of Texas Monthly magazine, will share his
thoughts on years of covering the larger-than-life figures of Texas politics.
Meet Burka and read his work here:
http://www.texasmonthly.com/mag/issues/authors/paulburka.php.
Plus, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) and Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) will join
Chris to talk about the big issues and party politics of the upcoming 2006
midterm elections!
Also tonight, Time's Adam Zagorin and Newsweek's Michael Isikoff will be here
with the latest in the debate over domestic spying, the Abramoff fallout, and
much more! Isikoff has a piece in Newsweek about the Pentagon's own domestic
spying program: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10965509/site/newsweek/. And here's
Zagorin's article in Time about photos of the president with Abramoff:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1151784,00.html
Here are some things you might not have read yet today:
--AP reports on the White House reaction to those Bush-Abramoff photos
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10987915/
--AP hears the former NSA director's support for the formerly secret domestic
spying http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10990829/
--MSNBC updates on the president's NSA-related remarks today in Kansas
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10991763/
--Hardblogger (!) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5445086/
--NBC's First Read http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3626796/
--Doonesbury http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html
Brooke Brower compiled the "Hardball Briefing" in Washington, D.C.
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