Free Republic

Member of the Texas Sunset Commission today recommended 'radical' changes in the administration of the Texas Department of Transportation, including placing the troubled and controversial agency into a four year legislative 'receivership' and abolishing the Texas Transportation Commission, which runs TexDOT, and appointment of a Transportation Commissioner who would be answerable to the Legislature, 1200 WOAI news reports. But Sunset Commission member Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon (D-San Antonio) suggested going one step further. "What I am hearing form the public is that they are wanting to see an elected commissioner," she said to loud applause from the TexDOT opponents who...

A special meeting about Dallas County traffic tickets turned tense and bizarre this afternoon. County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts.

Spine surgeons at Pine Creek Medical Center in Dallas have established themselves as the leaders of a cutting-edge surgical procedure that utilizes a patient's own adult stem cells to regenerate tissue.   Doctors Douglas Won, Michael Rimlawi, and Francisco J. Battle, all spine surgeons, have extensive experience in harvesting adult stem cells during routine spinal procedures and delivering those cells back to their patients to aid in the treatment of severe back pain.  According to the World Research Group, disorders of the spine are one of the largest public health problems in the U.S. and as the population ages, incidents of...

Late-Term Abortion Facility in Dallas To Close - Eighth Closure Since Bishop Began Prayer at Clinics 24 hours a day, 7 days a week ecumenical effort was organized, with more than 800 people from 89 churches and several denominations The Catholic Pro-Life Committee, the Respect Life Ministry of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas, has reported that Aaron Women's Health Center, a late-term abortion facility in Dallas will be closing its doors on June 28. Aaron's was one of three abortion clinics in Texas authorized to perform late-term abortions on unborn babies older than 16 weeks gestation.  When Bishop Charles Grahmann...

Pro-Life Groups Celebrate Closing of Dallas Late-Term Abortion Business Dallas, TX (LifeNews.com) -- The rash of abortion centers closing down continues and pro-life advocates in Dallas, Texas are excited to learn that they're next on the list. Aaron Women’s Health Center, a late-term abortion facility, will be closing its doors, and that's good news for the people who have prayed for this day to come. The closing follows on the heels of recent closures of abortion centers in other states, including Kentucky and New York.

Two suspects offered jailhouse confessions in the murders of a Garland music studio owner and his friend. Memorial services were held Monday for Matthew Butler and Stephen Swan. The two were found shot to death outside of Zion Gate Records last Thursday. A bicyclist discovered their bodies near State Street and Glenbrook in the early morning hours of June 19. Police said both men were shot several times. Monday Demarius Cummings and James Broadnax, the two teens accused of killing the men, talked about what they say happened that night. The two confessions couldn't have been more different - one...

Drivers who get safely off Interstate 35E after arriving in Dallas from Austin or San Antonio have a certain look of relief – like they just outran a buffalo stampede. Only on I-35, the stampede is trucks. The white-knuckle experience helps make the case for some kind of reliever road, even a tolled one. Making that same case has been a harder sell for U.S. highways along the Gulf Coast and East Texas. Drivers there can judge their own level of congestion, and they have insisted that their mostly rural corridor doesn't warrant the major undertaking of a parallel turnpike....

The City Council's Trinity River Corridor Project committee should open its meeting in about 10 minutes. First item up - a briefing on the name change plan for Industrial Boulevard. There should be some interesting back and forth after a city sponsored survey ended in an overwhelming win to rename the road Cesar Chavez Boulevard. We'll be live blogging the debate. Hope you can join us. Also, in the next blog item, we'll invite your comments and hopefully start a single thread.

AUSTIN — Deirdre Delisi once aspired to be a diplomat, and Gov. Rick Perry may have finally granted her wish. As head of the Texas Transportation Commission, Perry's former chief of staff will test her diplomatic skills in an emotion-filled arena in which a state senator has already called her a "political hack." In an early sign of her peacemaking potential, the 35-year-old Delisi scheduled one of her first meetings as chair with that senator, Transportation and Homeland Security Committee Chairman John Carona, R-Dallas. "I was left with the impression that she genuinely wants a new and fresh start for...

DALLAS - Interstate 30 is closed in both directions at Beckley Avenue in Dallas due to holes in the Beckley Street Bridge. Reports described the hole to be about 6-feet in size and covering the westbound lanes of I-30. Sr. Cpl. Janice Crowther said the interstate was closed to allow TxDOT and the City of Dallas Streets Department to inspect the bridge for safety concerns. Crowther said the "significant size holes" possible posed a danger and there was no word yet on when I-30 would reopen.

It appears as if the illegal’s support is running out of steam here in Dallas. The link is to video I shot of the "protest march" staged by criminal illegal alien Border and immigration law violators. They marched and nobody cared. VIDEO

Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch have written an interesting piece for today's Washington Post in which they argue that the 80's television drama "Dallas" helped win the Cold War. Their case is overstated, but not entirely invalid: It was the booze-and-sex-soaked caricature of free enterprise and executive lifestyles that proved irresistible not just to stagflation-weary Americans but viewers from France to the Soviet Union to Ceau?escu's Romania. "Dallas" wasn't simply a television show. It was an atmosphere-altering cultural force. The voluptuous charms of big oil, beautiful women, and sprawling ranches were dangled before viewers in nearly 100 countries, and spoke...

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright will deliver a sermon at a Dallas church Sunday, one of the first by Obama's former pastor since a media firestorm erupted over controversial clips from his older sermons. Wright will serve as guest pastor at Friendship-West Baptist Church in honor of the Rev. Frederick Haynes' 25th anniversary as the church's senior pastor. Haynes, who has called Wright his mentor, is a finalist to be the next head of the NAACP. Wright will speak during the 8 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. services. Media cameras are being banned from the event in order to prevent Wright's remarks...

Dale Hansen of Dallas's Channel 8 News is "unhinged" about the Pacman Jones trade and believes signing Osama Bin Laden as Wide Receiver would be the moral equivalent. Video here: http://www.wfaa.com/video/index.html?nvid=239208

AUSTIN — Maybe Texas’ transportation problems are a lot simpler to understand than recent fights over toll roads make it seem, North Texas leaders told state senators Wednesday. “My first recommendation: You need to provide a lot more revenue for transportation,” Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments, told the Texas Senate transportation committee. That was hardly the only suggestion from Mr. Morris or the many others who spoke to the committee, which is seeking input as it readies an approach on toll roads, TxDOT and more for the next legislative session. But it might...

Pacman heading to Dallas Irving, TX (Sports Network) - The Dallas Cowboys and Tennessee Titans have agreed in principle on a trade for suspended cornerback Adam "Pacman" Jones, though terms of the deal are unknown as of yet. According to the Titans, final details are still to be worked out prior to the draft and Jones must pass a physical before the trade will be finalized. The teams were rumored to have first discussed a trade more than a month ago. As late as Tuesday, however, the Cowboys were pessimistic on the prospect of a deal getting done. Jones was...

For years, Texas has been planning a privately financed super turnpike from Mexico to the Oklahoma border. But like rush-hour traffic, the plan for a Trans-Texas Corridor is only inching along. "It ran into a firestorm of controversy in Texas,� said Neal McCaleb, a former Oklahoma transportation secretary. Critics have a wide range of concerns about the corridor, which has a key stretch that would parallel Interstate 35. (Another stretch would extend from the Texarkana/Shreveport area to Mexico.) Particularly upset are landowners who may be in the corridor's path. The Texas Transportation Department calls many concerns myths. The department says,...

Some Republicans groaned at Gov. Rick Perry's announcement that he plans to seek another term in 2010, but Mayor Bill White's camp reacted with glee. White has made no effort to hide the fact that he is looking to run for governor after being term-limited out of the mayor's office next year. And Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the biggest vote-getter in Texas history, has been more than hinting that she plans to "come home" to run for the same office. She outlined to Texas Monthly last November a plan to resign the Senate in 2009 to make the race, while...

Texas Department of Transportation that claims it has no money for roads uses $20 million in gas tax funds to build a park. Woodall Rodgers ParkThe Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation announced yesterday that the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) would hand over $20 million in gas tax funds to help build a 5.2 acre park near downtown Dallas. The $67 million park is intended to serve as a model public-private partnership with a restaurant, a children's playground and a dog park. It will have no roads. "The park... will connect Uptown, Downtown and the Arts District, and is expected to...

DALLAS (AP) - The fourth suicide this year among mentally ill patients treated at the Dallas VA Medical Center has led the hospital to close its psychiatric ward to new patients, and investigators from the national Veterans Affairs office are expected to arrive next week to assess safety. Joseph Dalpiaz, director of the VA North Texas Health Care System, ordered the shutdown after a man hanged himself April 4. The hospital stopped admitting patients to its 51-bed psychiatric unit the next day; 10 previously admitted veterans are still being treated there. Dalpiaz "decided he wanted to ... give us some...

Official warns against hiring illegal immigrants in Dallas07:48 AM CDT on Thursday, April 10, 2008By DIANNE SOLÍS / The Dallas Morning News dsolis@dallasnews.com Assistant Homeland Security chief Julie Myers had some tough talk for Dallas business owners Wednesday: The crackdown on employers who hire illegal immigrants will continue. And just in case they don't believe her, she detailed recent prosecutions of managers. Ms. Myers, in town for a luncheon hosted by the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce, also talked about an initiative aimed at ensuring deportation of criminal illegal immigrants in local jails. Ms. Myers oversees Homeland Security's Immigration and...

As the state's population continues to grow in its urban centers, expansion plans for the highway system continue to be the focus for transportation improvements. The Trans Texas Corridor proposal is aimed to alleviate traffic congestion, improve air quality and provide safer traveling for drivers, among other goals. In 2002, Texas Governor Rick Perry released the plan to create the passageway, which spans northeast from Laredo to Oklahoma and is set to total 4,000 miles in the next 50 years. The $140 billion project calls for the incorporation of new toll roads, commuter railways, power lines and gas pipelines, while...

Cars have been a huge part of our lives. We use them to get around anywhere. It might have been the best invention mankind came up with, but we all hate several common things about cars, such as the cost of gas prices and traffic. We think sometimes in our imagination how awesome it would be if cars had wings, so maybe one day we will fly through terrific! We also despise accidents, high insurance and drunk driving. Sometimes, I feel that we need other alternative means of transportation, such as a subway system in the state of Texas; maybe...

Parent's objection led to the motto being painted over at a Dallas-area elementary --- THE COLONY — A Dallas-area school will put "In God We Trust" back on a gymnasium wall after the U.S. motto was painted over when one parent objected. The motto had been on a wall at B.B. Owen Elementary School in The Colony. District spokesman Dean Tackett said a parent complained about displaying the word "God" in school, so the phrase was painted over. But Tackett said on Tuesday, in response to complaints from other parents about the hasty removal, "In God We Trust" will be...

FORT WORTH -- The Trans-Texas Corridor is now so controversial, merely uttering the words in most political circles is taboo. "We're calling it a 'regional loop' because you can't say 'Trans-Texas Corridor' in the state of Texas anymore," said Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments. "The Trans-Texas Corridor is a lightning rod," he told visiting state representatives this week while explaining how the corridor would connect to regional highways by 2030. Opposition to the proposed construction of a $184 billion network of toll roads during the next 50 years is so strong statewide that...

DALLAS — Four Texas metropolitan areas were among the biggest population gainers as Americans continued their trend of moving to the Sun Belt in 2006 and 2007, according to Census Bureau estimates to be released Thursday. Dallas-Fort Worth added more than 162,000 residents between July 2006 and July 2007, more than any other metro area. Three other Texas areas -- Houston, Austin and San Antonio -- also cracked the top 10.

South Texas is not only going to get its first interstate - it is also going to get a second and a third. State transportation officials knew one of three southern highways - U.S. Highway 281 in Hidalgo County, U.S. Highway 77 in Cameron County or U.S. Highway 59 in Webb County - would eventually become part of an interstate stretching from the Texas-Mexico border to Texarkana, in the northeast part of the state. Only Webb County is currently served by an interstate. The state's Trans-Texas Corridor plan calls for an Interstate 69 extension linking South Texas to points north,...

DALLAS – Three cars were set on fire in Oak Cliff overnight, the third time in less than a month that arsonists have targeted vehicles in neighborhoods south of Interstate 30. -snip-

SH 130 Concession Company LLC finalized the legal details of a financial close with Texas DOT on a $1,360m toll concession to build SH130 segments 5&6 Thursday and Friday last week in bankers' offices in New York City - at Orrick, 666 Fifth Avenue. The actual money flows should occur on Thursday or Friday (Mar 13 or 14) this week, Jose Maria Lopez de Fuentes, president of Cintra North America, told us this morning. Hundreds of documents and over 20 lawyers were involved last week representing TxDOT, private equity people, banks, mostly European, the TIFIA loan group from FHWA, and...

DALLAS — Artwork depicting the Virgin Mary as a stripper stirred trouble while on display at a small Catholic university before the piece was apparently stolen. The print was part of an exhibit last month at the University of Dallas that featured the work of students at Murray State University in Kentucky. Joanna Gianulis, a senior art major at Murray State, said she was trying to raise questions about perceptions of saints and sinners and didn't intend to be sacrilegious. "How do we know that an exotic dancer is sinful?" she said. "What if she has the best intentions and...

Driving down to Austin lately has become a real trip. I-35 is usually packed for most of the 185 miles, and what used to take three or four hours now can take five or six. Flying down can take almost as long, when you figure in airline security delays, more flight delays, and the time it takes getting into and out of crowded airports. But what if it took 45 minutes to travel from the Metroplex to Austin by train or an hour to make a trip to Houston? Advocates of high-speed rail lines are floating these ideas once again...

HEMPSTEAD -- The Trans Texas Corridor may be the most controversial highway ever built in Texas. That is, if it ever gets built. All month, there have been public hearings throughout the area where people have been showing up in droves to oppose it. People don’t drive very fast on Odis Styers’ family ranch near Hempstead, but TxDOT wants that to change. “It’s quiet, it’s peaceful,” Styers said. “It’s a shame a road is gonna mess it up.” The road is the Trans Texas Corridor. The plans call for it to come through here, and with it: separate lanes for...

Report: Security relaxed at Obama speech Published: Feb. 21, 2008 at 6:27 PM Print story Email to a friend Font size:DALLAS, Feb. 21 (UPI) -- The Secret Service told Dallas police to stop screening for weapons while people were still arriving at a campaign rally for Barack Obama, a report said. Police stopped checking people for weapons at the front gates of Reunion Arena more than an hour before the Democratic presidential hopeful appeared on stage Wednesday, the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram reported. Police said the order to stop using metal detectors and checking purses and laptop bags constituted a...

DALLAS -- Security details at Barack Obama's rally Wednesday stopped screening people for weapons at the front gates more than an hour before the Democratic presidential candidate took the stage at Reunion Arena. The order to put down the metal detectors and stop checking purses and laptop bags came as a surprise to several Dallas police officers who said they believed it was a lapse in security. Dallas Deputy Police Chief T.W. Lawrence, head of the Police Department's homeland security and special operations divisions, said the order -- apparently made by the U.S. Secret Service -- was meant to speed...

DALLAS -- Security details at Barack Obama's rally Wednesday stopped screening people for weapons at the front gates more than an hour before the Democratic presidential candidate took the stage at Reunion Arena. The order to put down the metal detectors and stop checking purses and laptop bags came as a surprise to several Dallas police officers who said they believed it was a lapse in security.

TYLER - Heated debates are cropping up in rural East Texas communities as the Texas Department of Transportation hold hearings on the proposed the Trans-Texas Corridor. It's the first construction project of it's kind in the country. The Texas Department of Transportation says they want it to make room for a growing state. "A thousand people a day move to texas," says spokesman Larry Krantz,"where are these people going to drive? The population in Texas is going to explode by 60% in the year 2030." Their plans involve moving commercial trucks off existing interstate highways and onto one of two...

AUSTIN - When it comes to road improvement and maintenance, by most accounts, the South Plains and Panhandle are fortunate. Despite a $1.1 billion accounting error, the Texas Department of Transportation recently reported no projects in the region have been canceled or delayed while cities like Dallas, Houston and Laredo had at least a half dozen highway projects delayed. But the $1.1 billion-error, which occurred because TxDOT inadvertently counted some bond money twice and consequently allocated more funding than it had, is just the latest problem plaguing the beleaguered agency. For months, TxDOT executive director Amadeo Saenz and other transportation...

DALLAS (Reuters) - A batch of old documents linked to the slaying of President John F. Kennedy has reportedly been unearthed, including a highly suspect transcript of a conversation between assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald's killer Jack Ruby, the Dallas Morning News said on Sunday. The newspaper said the Dallas County district attorney's office, which uncovered the documents, would display its discovery at a news conference on Monday morning. The Morning News said the items found in an old safe in a Dallas courthouse included personal letters from former District Attorney Henry Wade, the prosecutor in the Ruby trial....

DALLAS (AP) - Conspiracy theorists will love the latest find related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A highly suspect transcript discussing a plot to kill the president is part of some JFK-related memorabilia discovered by the Dallas County District Attorney's Office.

Dallas rape suspect beaten, shot in melee 01:46 PM CST on Saturday, February 9, 2008 By TANYA EISERER / The Dallas Morning News WFAA-TV People at the apartment complex are refusing to talk about the incident. A mob turned the tables on a man accused of raping a mother at knifepoint in her Red Bird-area apartment with her children present, authorities said. The 26-year-old man, who had not been identified, was undergoing surgery Friday afternoon after being beaten with a baseball bat and shot at least twice, apparently once in the head. "I would have to say this is unusual,"...

Dallas hospital room where JFK died now stored in Kansas Odd move closes artifacts to public, may add to mystery 10:52 PM CST on Wednesday, February 6, 2008 By David Flick A piece of JFK assassination history now lies buried in the most unlikely of places: a former limestone quarry in Kansas. It is the end – at least for now – in the long and sometimes strange journey of Parkland Memorial Hospital Trauma Room No. 1, where President John F. Kennedy died on Nov. 22, 1963. The entire room was purchased by the federal government 35 years ago, when...

With rents in many cities skyrocketing, men and women marrying later and a divorce rate for first-time marriages that hovers at about 45%, it's no wonder more American couples are deciding to shack up. There were an estimated 6,017,462 unmarried-partner households in the U.S. in 2006, according to the Census' latest research. This number includes 779,867 same-sex households. When the Census began measuring unmarried partners in 1996, there were only 2,858,000 opposite-sex couples. Though you likely know at least one cohabiting pair, unlike their married and single peers, unmarried couples are not an easy group to quantify. They cannot check...

A big protest is planned for Monday afternoon, ahead of the latest public hearing on the proposed statewide tollway. Lots of landowners are upset about the state’s plan to build a tollway from Mexico to northeast Texas. There have already been several town hall meetings about the Trans-Texas Corridor. Most of the people who have spoken out about the plan say it will put them out of business. But state officials argue the tollway is necessary to keep up with the growing population in Texas. Monday’s meeting is being held in Huntsville. It starts at 6:30 p.m. at the Walker...

*Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas is a fairly famous institution and for a variety of reasons:* *1. John F. Kennedy died there in 1963* *2. Lee Harvey Oswald died there shortly after* *3. Jack Ruby-who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, died there a few years later..by coincidence* *'On the flip side, Parkland is also home to the second busiest maternity ward in the country with almost 16,000 new babies arriving each year. (That's almost 44 per day---every day)* *A recent patient survey indicated that 70 percent of the women who gave birth at Parkland in the first three months of...

Gov. Rick Perry's ambitious Trans-Texas Corridor plan, and his advocacy of toll funding for future roads, hit the skids in a skeptical Legislature last spring. The road shows no signs of getting any smoother as state transportation officials try to sell the plan to Houston-area audiences. "This will wipe me out," Dee Bond told a panel of corridor advocates at a town hall meeting in Rosenberg last week. The panel, which included Texas Transportation Commissioner Ned Holmes of Houston and Steve Simmons, deputy executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation, was there to explain and gather comment on a...

The “I� word is denied in Dallas comment by Jerry GordonPictures are worth a ten thousand words. Contrast these America’s Truth Forum Symposium bill board in Southlake, TX in the Dallas Forth Worth Metroplex. Note the very PC language changes in the two bill board design. The missing “I� word for Islamists says it all. Note this comment from Bob Spencer at Jihad Watch: Why the changes? The sales manager of a Dallas-area billboard company explained: “My boss wouldn’t go along with this type of advertising since we have an international clientele — some of whom might be on...

At least they'll always have Mexico. Dallas Cowboys star Tony Romo has reportedly dumped Jessica Simpson, who was widely blamed for costing him a shot at the Super Bowl. "Tony is now starting to blame her himself," a pal told OK! magazine. "Before dating Jessica, he was Texas' golden boy. Now he's become a joke." A few days after the Giants bounced the Cowboys from the playoffs, Romo called the "Dukes of Hazzard" star to tell her their romance was over. "He said he thought it was better if they went back to being friends," a pal of hers said....

Contact: Frank Salvato Executive Director/Director of Terrorism Studies Basics Project PO Box 583, Downers Grove, IL 60515 (202) 536-2836 info@basicsproject.org www.BasicsProject.org Nuclear Team Added to Terror Threat Symposium Dais Basics Project, in association with America's Truth Forum, is proud to announce the addition of two nuclear specialists and experts to the speakers dais for a seminal educational and informational event, February 1 & 2 in the Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas area: Exposing the Threat of Islamist Terrorism: A Symposium. Nuclear engineer and expert, Lee Boyland, former Explosive Ordnance Disposal officer in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Atomic Support Agency...

95% Respond Negatively to Illegal Immigrant as Texan of the Year By Noel Sheppard | January 7, 2008 - 17:37 ET On December 30, NewsBusters voiced its displeasure with the Dallas Morning News naming the illegal immigrant as its 2007 Texan of the Year. As it turns out, Morning News readers were just as offended.In fact, according to Saturday's "Ask the Editor" piece on the subject, 95 percent of readers that sent in letters or e-mail messages were highly negative about the paper's choice (emphasis added throughout, h/t Tim Graham):   By midday Friday, some 700 reader comments had...