Brent Leisure is the new director of Texas State Parks at Texas Parks & Wildlife. He's been at the agency for 26 years and takes over from Walt Dabney, who's retiring at the end of the month after 11 years in the post.

Natalie Foerster-Gonzalez moves from the governor's budget and planning office to be clerk and general counsel to the House State Affairs Committee. She's replacing Lesley French, who's leaving the Pink Building to start a law practice.

Joe Frank Garza, former district attorney in Jim Wells County, was indicted on charges he misused more than $200,000 in asset forfeiture funds over seven years starting in 2002, paying the money to himself and others in the DA's office.

Scratch Lindy Suze, the Libertarian running for the House in HD-96. That withdrawal clears the field in what is now a two-person rematch between Rep. Chris Turner, D-Burleson, and former Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington.

Gov. Rick Perry appointed:

• Sherill Dean of Houston as judge of the 309th District Court in Harris County. She has her own law firm, working mainly in family law.

• Michael Sinha of Hurst to the 360th District Court in Tarrant County, the post left open when Debra Lehrmann joined the Texas Supreme Court.

• Laura Ryan-Heizer of Cypress to the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles Board. She's an exec with GSFS Group, an automobile finance firm based in Houston.

• Ernest Aliseda of McAllen to the Texas Military Preparedness Commission. He's a former state district judge who's now managing attorney of Loya Insurance and a municipal judge for the City of McAllen.

In the wake of a court ruling keeping state Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, on the ballot, lawyers for his Democratic opponent and the state party are deciding whether to appeal to the Texas Supreme Court. But time is short: Under state election law, Friday, August 20, is the last day a candidate who is removed from the ballot can be replaced.

On Thursday, the state's 5th Court of Appeals decided Birdwell can stay on the November ballot, throwing out the Democratic challenge that he hasn't been a resident of the state long enough to satisfy constitutional requirements.

Birdwell voted in Virginia in November 2006, and the Democrats argued that the vote established him as a resident of that state. The Texas constitution requires senators to be Texas residents for the five years before they're seated. Plaintiffs asked the court to rule whether Birdwell is eligible to serve before November 2011 — five years after his Virginia vote — or whether he was always a resident of Texas under state law even though he was voting in another state. But the court denied the petition on technical grounds, saying Democratic plaintiffs hadn't properly contested the residency and failed to submit authenticated records to the court as evidence. It never addressed whether Birdwell is, in fact, a legal resident for political purposes; it ruled instead that the court had "no authority" to make the call.

Birdwell, who won office in a special election earlier this summer, was nominated for a full term by state party officials when the incumbent senator, Kip Averitt of McGregor, resigned from office. Democrats appointed John Cullar to run against him. Cullar and the Texas Democratic Party filed suit against Birdwell the next morning, asking the courts to take the Republican off the ballot.

Because of the tight timeframe, the Democrats went directly to the appellate courts with their lawsuit. A three-judge panel from the Dallas court ruled against them and said it won't consider rehearing the case because of those pending election deadlines.

"We find no applicable section of the election code that empowers us to simply declare Birdwell ineligible and order respondents to do whatever is necessary to take Birdwell off the ballot," the judges ruled. They said the Democrats failed to go to the Republicans in the first place to demand Birdwell be taken off the ballot, and that, because they hadn't tried that remedy and been denied, the Democrats were not in a position to ask the courts to do what the Republicans wouldn't do. The Republicans, the court ruled, were never given an opportunity to refuse to fix the problem.

In addition, the judges said in their ruling, they were being asked to rely on photocopies of the Virginia voting documents instead of documents that were properly vetted. "None of the documents relied upon by relators contains any verification as to authenticity," they wrote.

The judges never actually got to the question of whether Birdwell has been a resident of Texas long enough to serve in the Senate. "Relators seek a determination from this Court as to whether Birdwell is, in fact, ineligible as a candidate. We have no authority to make such a factual determination," the judges wrote. Instead, they ruled, "We conclude the 'records' relied upon by relators, i.e., the documents attached to their petition and in the condition described above, do not conclusively establish Birdwell is an ineligible candidate for the Texas Senate."

That met with the reactions you might expect from the partisans. Birdwell and the Republicans were exultant and said the ruling proves what they've contended all along. The Democrats blamed the result on Republican judges and immediately began huddling over whether to appeal to the Texas Supreme Court, which is made up of nine Republican justices.

“I’m thrilled with today’s win, and pleased that the court clearly saw through this desperate attempt by the Democrats to thwart the will of the voters and win a senate seat through judicial activism," Birdwell said in a news release. "Two things should be obvious to everyone by now. First, I live here and am legally qualified to represent the good people of Senate District 22. And second, a majority of voters want me to represent them."

The Democrats can appeal, but they don't have much time to work with. "We’re reviewing the options with our attorneys," said party spokeswoman Kirsten Gray late Thursday afternoon. "Make no mistake: John Cullar is the only candidate whose eligibility is not in question."

Friday is the last day a candidate who's been removed from the ballot — for reasons ranging from ineligibility to second thoughts to death — can be replaced with another candidate for the November elections. If the state's high court were to decide to reverse Thursday's ruling and remove Birdwell, today is the latest that he could come off the ballot and be replaced by another Republican. A candidate removed today would then have to be replaced by Tuesday, August 24, unless the courts also moved the deadlines.

Here's another twist: A candidate removed from the ballot after today can't be replaced on the ballot without a court order. That offers an unlikely sliver of hope to Democrats who'd like to knock Birdwell off the ballot and to leave the GOP without a way to replace him.

The politics of the district overwhelmingly favor the GOP. Republican John McCain clobbered Democrat Barack Obama in SD-22 in 2008, 68 percent to 31 percent; statewide, McCain won by a slimmer margin of 55 percent to 44 percent. Short of running on a ballot with no Republican at all, Cullar, the Democrat, will have to hope voters will turn away a career military officer and victim of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon because of a dispute over whether he voted in Virginia in 2006.

Val Perkins joins the lobby shop at Gardere Wynne Sewell and will work out of the Houston and Austin offices of the firm, where he'll also continue an administrative law practice. He was most recently with the Coats Rose firm.

After General Motors announced it made $1.3 billion in the second quarter, Ed Whitacre Jr., the San Antonio exec hired to run the company after the government took it over last year, said he plans to leave at the end of the month. Whitacre's the former head of AT&T and of the board of regents at Texas Tech University.

Dallas residential real estate legend Ebby Halliday endorsed Stefani Carter for the Texas House; Carter's the Republican challenging freshman Rep. Carol Kent, in HD-102.

This one slipped by while we were on break: Marina Garcia Marmolejo is President Obama's choice for the federal court seat left open by Samuel Kent's resignation (he quit after pleading guilty to sexually harassing two female assistants). She's from San Antonio and works in the Reid Davis law firm and is a former assistant U.S. attorney.

The president isn't the only out-of-stater dragging the sack in Texas: U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minnesota, is having a fundraiser at the home of Lisa Luby Ryan and Jay Ryan in Dallas next weekend. It's $100 a head minimum.

Gov. Rick Perry appointed Victor Negrón Jr. of San Antonio as judge of the 438th District Court. Negron is an attorney and a former judge.The Guv also appointed Marc Brown of Houston as judge of the 180th District Court. Brown heads the grand jury division of the Harris County District Attorney's office.

Deaths: Monsignor Fred Bomar of Austin, former chaplain of the Texas House and the Texas Senate and more recently, the pastor of St. Peter the Apostle Church. He was 75.

The action in the state's SD-22 is all in a Dallas court now, with Democrats suing to knock Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, off the ballot, and Birdwell responding (in court filings) that the challenge itself is flawed and that he's eligible anyhow.

This is the paragraph where you catch up with Our Story So Far. Birdwell won a special election for the remaining few months of Kip Averitt's term after Averitt resigned and local Republican officials voted to put him on the ballot for a full term after Averitt gave up the nomination. Democrats voted a few days later to put John Cullar on the ballot in November, and the very next morning — that would be last Friday — he and they sued to knock Birdwell off, saying his recorded vote in a November 2006 election in Virginia means he was a resident of that state on that date. And if the courts agree, that means Birdwell won't be eligible to sit in the Texas Senate until November 2011. The state constitution says you have to be a citizen of Texas for the five years before you join the Senate (it's two year for House members).

Birdwell and the Republicans have now filed their response, saying the Democrats sued the wrong guy (Steve Munisteri, the GOP state chairman), and that the Virginia voting record doesn't, by itself, prove him ineligible to serve. They also argue that, since the Virginia records weren't available to election officials who put Birdwell on the ballot, those records can't be used against him now.

The Democrats and Cullar have to respond by the end of the week (Friday the 13th), and then it's in the hands of the 5th Court of Appeals in Dallas, and possibly the Texas Supreme Court after that. The deadlines are tight. August 20 — that's a week from now — is the last day parties can replace candidates who come off the ballot. The courts can stretch that, but you get the general idea.

How about the politics of this? It's a Republican district. The average statewide Republican walloped the average statewide Democrat in that district by 30.3 percentage points in 2006 and 2008, according to the Texas Weekly Index. It has also been, until now, a Waco district. Republican David Sibley held it before Averitt (and lost the special election to Birdwell, and could be back in the hunt if the courts kick Birdwell out of the race), and McLennan County civic leaders of both parties were hoping to keep the seat local in 2011, when lawmakers and the courts will be redrawing political district lines.

And even if Cullar loses in court, he's got the voting records to run on. Birdwell's records in Prince William, Virginia, and Tarrant County, Texas, show him voting in both places in the November 2004 elections. And the residency issue opens the door for a carpetbagger charge against the incumbent.

Birdwell's advantages are formidable. There's the makeup of the district. He's the incumbent. He's a retired Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Army who was badly burned in the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, now making his living as a motivational speaker and head of a non-profit set up to help other burn victims. And the geography, which has kept the district in Waco's hands for years, has shifted, with Johnson and Ellis counties swelling with suburbanites from the DFW metroglob. McLennan County has 29 percent of the voters in the ten-county district, but Ellis has 19 percent and Johnson has 18 percent; taken together, they can (and in the special election, did) swing the center of gravity to the northern edge of the district. Even without the partisan advantage, Birdwell has the map on his side.