A prison lawyer, a general, mobile home regulators, and a reporter to watch them allMelinda Bozarth is the new general counsel at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. She's replacing Carl Reynolds, who left TDCJ for the Office of Court Administration earlier this year. Bozarth has worked for either the Texas prison system or the Texas attorney general's office (where she defended the prison system in court) since 1983. Most recently, she was deputy director of TDCJ's rehabilitation and reentry programs division. Brig. Gen. Charles Rodriguez will be the new adjutant general of Texas. Gov. Rick Perry appointed him to that post, overseeing state and National Guard forces in Texas. he'll replace Lt. Gen. Wayne Marty, who is retiring. Rodriguez, a West Point grad, works at the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio, where he's deputy director of the Center for Public Health Preparedness and Biomedical Research. Gov. Perry named Valeri Malone, a Wichita Falls attorney, to the center chair on the board of the Manufactured Housing Division of the State's Department of Housing and Community Affairs and reappointed her to the board. He also named Michael Bray, an El Paso Realtor, and Kimberly Shambley of Dallas, an attorney and exec with Countrywide Home Loans, to that board. Press corps moves: The Dallas Morning News moves reporter Pete Slover back to the state desk, which means he'll be covering legislative and political stories with an investigative bent. He's been working what newspapers call "projects" which means you disappear for long periods of time between stories. Slover is one of the reporters who popped the cork on misdeeds at ERCOT.

Priscilla Owen's nomination to the federal bench cleared the U.S. Senate Judiciary committee for the third time (on a 10-8 party-line vote), but there's still a question about whether she can win full Senate support.Owen, a Texas Supreme Court Justice, is one of several judicial appointees who have been unable to win votes from enough Democrats to win confirmation from the full U.S. Senate. This is the filibuster fight the Republicans in the Senate have been talking about for the last several months. President George W. Bush wants to put her on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans and first appointed her for that post four years ago.

Appointments and an electionGov. Perry reappointed Richard "Link" Linkenauger of Greenville to the Sabine River Authority of Texas. He's the president of Link International, Inc. The governor named three people to the board of regents at Texas Woman's University: Virginia Chandler Dykes of Dallas, an occupational therapist; Sharon Venable, an executive at the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce; and Lou Halsell Rodenberger of Baird, an emeritus professor of English at McMurry University. Dykes and Rodenberger are alums of TWU. The Texas Public Finance Authority is getting three seats filled by the Guv: H.L. Mijares of El Paso, president of Mijares Mora Architects; Dallas investor Marcellus Taylor; and Linda McKenna of Harlingen, a nurse and exec at Valley Baptist Health System. Taylor and McKenna are new to the board; Mijares is a reappointment. Perry named Mike Click, CEO of Brownfield Regional Medical Center, and Houston attorney Hector Longoria to the Emergency Medical Advisory Council, a panel attempting to coordinate EMS efforts at all levels of government. Carolyn Lewis Gallagher of Austin joins the ERCOT board as an independent member. That acronym is Electric Reliability Council of Texas, and they operate the state's electric grid. Gallagher, a businesswoman who's been on a mess of civic and government boards, was elected by ERCOT members after a national search.

We'll preface this by saying that it's just the kind of story that comes up only in the context of elections, and that the same people who gripe about these things are the primary promoters when the mud is on the other face.Ahem. Gov. Rick Perry's got a new list of supporters -- this time the names of State Republican Executive Committee members who say they'll support him in next year's primary. He's claiming the backing of 46 members of the 62-member SREC, and says he's been working with those folks for two decades. "Over the past twenty years, I have been proud to work with thousands of grassroots Republicans like the members of the SREC whose goal is to build a lasting Republican majority in Texas," said Perry in the written statement. But Perry hasn't been in the club that long. He was elected to the House as a Democrat in 1984 -- 21 years ago -- and switched to the GOP in 1989, running for Texas Agriculture Commissioner against Democrat Jim Hightower in 1990. Perry beat him and was on his way up the GOP side of the ballot. But just two years earlier, he was the state chair of Al Gore's Democratic primary campaign; Gore was seeking the chance to challenge then-President George H. W. Bush. And now, we return to Perry's announcement, already in progress. SREC members are elected two by two from each of the 31 Senate districts, and they're listed in that order. One caveat: The endorsements aren't from the Party, but from the SREC members as individuals. It's hard to get 46 people from either political party to agree on lunch, but these folks signed with Perry: John Cook, JoAnn McCarty, James Wiggins, Melinda Fredricks, David Teuscher, Bernice Lewis, Hal Talton, Larry Bowles, Linda Gonzales, Sharon Martin, Clint Moore, Mandy Tschoepe, Wayne Tucker, Jane Burch, William Ford, Melba McDow, Robin Armstrong, Kathy Haigler, Tom Quinones, Vickie Clements, Eugene Pack, Jan Galbraith, Brian Russell, Josh Flynn, Chris Davis, Jim Hotze, Terese Raia, Cress Ann Posten, Kim Hesley, Michael Bergsma, John Larrison, Dawn Lothringer, Oneta Leutwyler, John Tabor, Marjorie Ford, Sandra Jenkins, Skipper Wallace, Genny Hensz, Curt Nelson, Joe Solis, Thomas Mechler, Cecilia Levine, David Thackston, Kathy Gear, Benona Love and Chad Weaver. Perry said he's also got William Crocker, one of the state's two RNC members, on his side in a possible gubernatorial primary. And he said he won an endorsement from the R Club, a political action committee in Houston that's active in GOP politics.

Rep. Mary Denny, R-Aubrey, really is getting married this time.In the House chamber, during a break in the House calendar but while everybody is still milling around, on May 6. Rep. Joe Crabb, R-Humble, will be the presiding minister. The bride and her groom, Norman Tolpo, will have a reception after the event in the Speaker's Dining Room behind the Chamber. She had a highly rumored but quite erroneous marriage and honeymoon in August 2003, which remains the only fully incorrect three-sources-on-the-record story we've ever reported. This time, she's the source, and there's a copy of the invitation at this link: www.TexasWeekly.com/documents/denny.gif Denny and Tolpo will be the second couple to get married in the chamber in recent years, but the first in memory to be married while the House is in session. Rep. Dwayne Bohac, R-Houston, and his wife Dawn were married on the last Saturday of the special session of the Legislature almost a year ago. Before that, you have to go back to the days when Gib Lewis, D-Fort Worth, was Speaker of the House. One of his aides got married on the dais during a break in House business.