I never thought I'd miss Christmas commercials...

But I'd rather have Christmas ads instead of the onslaught of political junk now polluting my television. (During the morning news, it seems to get worse as a half-hour is neared, as if the candidates think people will leave on the half-hours. Strange...)

Here are the highlights and lowlights I've seen around Austin:

1. Far and away the worst: Mina Brees. Her ad is lame, with or without her son in it. That is, the son who told his mother to remove his image from her ad. (See the report for yourself, courtesy the Statesman.) Wow, your family's in sports! Big deal. It still doesn't mean you're a good choice for a judicial role.

(By the way, her son's doing pretty well this year.)

And yes, I know, the State Bar voted Ms. Brees more qualified than David Puryear. The question is, how much credence should one give to a bunch of trial lawyers?

2. Kinky Friedman: I finally saw an ad for Mr. Friedman this morning. Was he holding them back until now, or is this a last-ditch effort to get out of fourth?

3. Valinda Bolton and Bill Welch: Both have now gone negative in at least one ad. But Mr. Welch's ad rings much truer than Ms. Bolton's. First of all, Ms. Bolton's first ad places the blame for education in Texas solely on the Republicans. Let's see...who ran this state for 150 years? And by the way, where were the Democrats during some of these sessions of the Legislature to which she refers? Oh, yes: in another state. Nice try.

Anyway, Mr. Welch pointed out that Ms. Bolton moved into this district solely to run for the Legislature. Ms. Bolton just released an ad trying to tie Bill Welch to, among other things, Rick Perry's toll road advocates and Tom Delay. It's 30-seconds full of half-truths and false implications. For example, Mr. Welch is on record strongly opposing the tolling of already-paid-for roads. Nice try.

One more thing, before I forget again: Ms. Bolton claimed in her first ad that nothing had been done about education. The other day, this ad ran on either KEYE or KVUE immediately before Mark Strama (HD-50) came on and talked about what he helped accomplish for...get ready...education! Get your talking points straight, people.

4. And why does everyone have to use black-and-white, slow-motion videos of their opponents when they want to make them look bad? It's a massive turnoff, at least for me. (Then again, at this point all the ads are annoying me.)

Bring on Santa already!