Rep. Jim Jackson, R-Carrollton, had an emergency pacemaker installed at a Boston hospital after suffering heart trouble, according to the Speaker's office.The full statement from House Speaker Tom Craddick: "Representative Jim Jackson, R-Carrollton, was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital Monday morning with a low heart rate. After receiving an emergency pace maker, his heart rate stabilized, and he is responding to treatment. Physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital report that Representative Jackson's heart rate has normalized, and he is scheduled to receive a permanent pace maker later this week. Representative Jackson is in Boston attending the National Conference of State Legislatures' Annual Meeting." UPDATE, from Craddick's office on 8.7: (AUSTIN) -- Yesterday, Rep. Jim Jackson (R-Carrollton) received a permanent pacemaker. He plans to be dismissed from Massachusetts General Hospital today and will fly home tomorrow. "This is the best I've felt in months," he said. "Sue and I want to express our heartfelt thanks for the prayers and support our many friends gave us during my hospital stay. We are especially grateful to Speaker and Mrs. Craddick and my colleagues and their spouses who gave immediate attention and support to both Sue and me." Rep. Jackson was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital on Monday where he received an emergency pacemaker. Jackson was attending the National Conference of State Legislatures Annual Meeting in Boston. Rep. Jackson assures the citizens of District 115 that he will continue to pursue his legislative duties.

State Rep. Anna Mowery, R-Fort Worth, said in a letter to Gov. Rick Perry that she'll resign from the House on August 31, setting up a special election to replace her.Mowery has been in the House since 1988 and announced at the end of this year's legislative session that she wouldn't run for another term. (Here's how she said it: "Y'all have been a big barrel of fun the whole damn time.") The general scramble among candidates and potential candidates was already well under way; this will speed it up and give an advantage to folks with well-known names and/or large campaign treasuries. The next uniform election date is in November, but Perry can choose another date if he thinks it's an emergency situation. Mowery, 76, is chairman of the House Land & Resource Management Committee. Her term isn't up until January 2009, and her replacement won't have many legislative duties until then unless there's a special session in the next 17 months. Five Republican candidates already have their names in the hat (they've filed papers naming campaign treasurers) for the HD-97 race, according to the Tarrant County Republican Party. They are Debra Coffey (a known political name — her husband is Tarrant County Criminal Court Judge Daryl Coffey), Craig Goldman, health care exec Jeff Humber, former state Rep. Bob Leonard (Mowery replaced him when he declined to seek reelection), and Dr. Mark Shelton. Mowery drew a Republican opponent in the 2006 primary — attorney Robert Higgins got 39 percent — and some locals think he could return to run again. HD-97 is generally Republican turf; GOP statewide candidates did two or three percentage points better in the district in last year's elections than they did statewide. Every statewide Republican except for Gov. Rick Perry got 56.9 percent of the vote or more; Perry, in a four-way race, got 40.7 percent. Mowery herself got 55.9 percent of the vote against Democrat Dan Barrett and Libertarian Carlos Garcia.

Democrat Rick Noriega is the first of the pack to get a U.S. Senate ad up on the web...Noriega, one of two Democrats vying to unseat U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, posted up a 60-second YouTube spot. Nobody's doing broadcast or cable yet — it's early and voters aren't anywhere close paying attention to a 2008 contest — so this is the first bit. Democrat Mikal Watts, as we've noted previously, has a longer video up on his website. Cornyn won't face either of those guys until after the primaries, so he's not in the mix yet (other than raising money and snagging free press where he can). The Noriega spot doesn't mention any of his opponents:

Not everybody got the memo telling them to slow down for the summer. State Sen. Kim Brimer, R-Fort Worth, suddenly has all kinds of stuff messing up his vacation.

Most importantly, he's got an opponent. Fort Worth City Councilwoman Wendy Davis resigned from that job Thursday night and said she intends to run as a Democrat against Brimer. She's won five city council elections and her entire district is within the borders of the Senate district, according to her campaign. She'll make a formal announcement later on, but told her fellow council members in her farewell what she's up to.

Her announcement followed a skirmish over numbers.

First came a poll from the Lone Star Project — a pack of Washington, D.C., and Texas Democrats idled, temporarily, by congressional redistricting. They organized last year and started playing in Texas legislative races and claimed some of last year's wins in the House. Now they've released a poll saying Brimer — a senator since 2003 and a House member for 14 years before that — is relatively unknown in his own district. And they contend he's vulnerable to "an adequately funded mainstream challenger."

Their poll in SD-10 was done by Opinion Analysts of Austin; the firm interviewed 400 people in the district during the last week of May, and the margin of error is +/- 4.9 percent. They found 50 percent of the people in Brimer's district didn't know enough about him to rate him at all, and that fewer than 20 percent gave him a "favorable" rating. The numbers: 18.3 percent favorable; 25.1 percent Neutral; 7 percent Unfavorable, and 49.7 percent "Haven't Heard Of."

They also put stock in numbers that showed 27.4 percent of the voters would reelect Brimer, 25 percent preferred an unnamed Democrat, and 47.7 percent said "it depends."

That's where Brimer's consultants interrupt, saying the district is strongly Republican even when Democrats are doing well. In 2006, according to the Fort Worth-based Eppstein Group, Republican congressional candidates in the district got 58 percent of the vote against Democrats; statehouse candidates got 55 percent against Democrats, and the average statewide Republican candidate got 55 percent, even with Gov. Rick Perry's 39 percent showing included.

The district isn't as Republican as the rest of the state, but Republicans did pretty well, if you look at last November's numbers. Perry got 38.7 percent in Brimer's district and 39.3 percent statewide. Democrat Chris Bell did four percentage points better there than in the rest of the state, coming in with 34.4 percent of the vote, compared to 30 percent statewide.

• It's Déjà vu time. There's a substantial rumor that U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison is going to come home and run for governor. And there's a UPS guy at the door delivering a book on women in public life by, erm, Kay Bailey Hutchison. Leading Ladies: American Trailblazers is a collection of stories about women who made history from different vantage points: in th e military, as First Ladies, journalists and writers, as activists, and so on. This is Hutchison's third book, and the second without a named co-author (she credits Howard Cohn as research and draft writer). The book's release is set for October. Hutchison toured some with her last book, when speculation about her running for governor (the last time) was high.

• Freshman Rep. Thomas Latham, R-Mesquite, wants another term in HD-101. Latham, who beat Rep. Elvira Reyna — a fellow Republican — to get to Austin, is a former cop and Vietnam vet. He'll likely have competition; the Mesquite Police Association withdrew its support for him earlier this summer — a result of what he called a dispute between rival police trade groups.

• Jim McGrody is officially in the race for Congress now; the San Antonio Republican wants a crack at U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, D-San Antonio. On his website, McGrody is keeping a tally of votes taken by Rodriguez and comparing how he himself would have voted. So far, the retired businessman reports, they disagree about 68 percent of the time. He's been talking about the race for some time and recently filed the necessary papers. Another Republican — Bexar County Commissioner Lyle Larson — has also been considering that race.

• Nelda Wells Spears picked up an endorsement from tax consultant and former state Comptroller John Sharp. Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton has also weighed in — he's with Spears.

She's the Tax Assessor-Collector in Travis County, a contest that usually wouldn't get our attention. But she's being challenged in the primary by former state Rep. Glen Maxey, an Austin Democrat who came up short in the race for state party chair last year. And, well, former statewide Democrats are playing. There's a tie to Sharp; Kelly Fero, a longtime Sharp confederate, is running Spears' campaign. Spears is touting her tax collection rate as the highest among the state's big counties. Maxey has said elsewhere that he thinks it's time for a change.

Texas Labor is now headed by Becky Moeller, the first woman elected president of the state's AFL-CIO. She's succeeding Emmett Sheppard, who announced his retirement earlier this year. Moeller, in turn, was replaced by Paul Brown, a firefighter from Big Spring, who was elected Secretary-Treasurer. Moeller worked for Southwestern Bell and came up through the Communications Workers of America; Brown, the first public employee elected to a statewide position in the 220,000-member union, came up through the Fire Fighters' Association.

Former Texas Gov. Dolph Briscoe Jr.'s name will adorn a post office in Uvalde — an idea that's been around for a while but that got stuck when the Republicans were in control of the U.S. House (Briscoe is a Democrat). President George W. Bush signed bills naming a bunch of those buildings — one of the other noteworthies on the same list was country music's Buck Owens, who got a post office in Bakersfield, CA.

The State Commission on Judicial Conduct spanked a Brown County Justice of the Peace for a variety of transgressions, saying Bob Wall improperly conducted a trial and ruled against a woman whose lawyer was stuck in another courtroom across the hall at the time; fining a trailer owner for improper wastewater dumping without giving the owner proper notice; and for trying to subpoena Brown County Judge Ray West after the judge — in an appeal of Wall's decision to suspend someone's driver license — probated the suspension. Here's a line from the Public Admonition: "After a meeting with the Brown County Attorney, Judge Wall withdrew the subpoena" against the county judge.

The Wall Street Journal has Houston's Robert Mosbacher Sr. signing on as campaign manager for John McCain. Mosbacher was on board as one of three honorary Texas chairmen with McCain (the others were former Gov. Bill Clements of Dallas and car dealer Red McCombs of San Antonio), so while the title is new, the allegiance is not. The Houston oilman was Secretary of Commerce in George H. W. Bush's administration.

Gov. Rick Perry hired a new general counsel: David Cabrales of Dallas. Cabrales will replace Brian Newby, who got promoted to chief of staff. The new guy works at Locke Liddell Sapp and is also on the Texas Racing Commission. He'll give up both posts to join the governor's staff.

Patricia Kolodzey is moving to the Texas Medical Association, where she'll join the lobby team. The former nurse had been at the Texas Hospital Association and before that worked in the state's Medicaid program.

Court Koenning, chief of staff to Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, is leaving government to reopen the consulting business he closed at the beginning of the year. Koenning started the political consulting business after a stint as former executive director of the Harris County GOP.