U.S. Sen. John Cornyn called Tuesday for a nationwide criminal investigation into recent voter-registration efforts by ACORN, a grassroots group. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now has been at the center of a political fire...

WASHINGTON-The Texas Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments tomorrow morning in the case of the City of Dallas v. Abbott, and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, announced today that he has filed an amicus brief with the Court in support of the State Attorney General's position and against any effort that would weaken the deadlines and enforcement mechanisms contained in the Texas Public Information Act (PIA). As a member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Cornyn has been one of the leading advocates for strengthening transparency and accountability in government and he said today that the Texas PIA has served as a model for the rest of the nation. In his brief, Sen. Cornyn, a former State Attorney General and Texas Supreme Court Justice, wrote that the PIA is "arguably the strongest and most successful open government law in the nation" and noted that any weakening of the PIA would "run contrary to the expressed will of the Texas Legislature and, moreover, would undermine the PIA's well-earned status as the national model for a strong open government law."

CORPUS CHRISTI-U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, today hosted a press conference with Texas Secretary of State Hope Andrade and Corpus Christi Mayor Henry Garrett aboard the USS Lexington to discuss federal, state and local efforts to ensure military voters serving abroad are receiving the assistance they need to register to vote and complete and submit their ballots. A recent report released by the Election Assistance Commission indicated, among other disturbing statistics, that only 5.5 percent of the total eligible military and overseas citizen voters were able to cast a ballot in the November 2006 election. "Today I joined Secretary Andrade and Mayor Garrett aboard the USS Lexington to highlight our joint efforts to ensure every military vote is counted. As a symbol of the strength and courage of America's military serving overseas, the USS Lexington was an appropriate setting for today's event. The brave Americans who served on the USS Lexington decades ago fought to defend the same freedoms our men and women in uniform fight for today - not the least of which is the right to vote.