Free Republic

Former Texas home of Bushes burned by arsonist 19 minutes ago A home where President George W. Bush lived as a young boy with his parents in Odessa, Texas, and that is now part of a presidential museum there was damaged on Thursday by a fire that investigators blamed on arson. "I can tell you it has been determined that it was intentionally set, but I cannot discuss anything about evidence or possible suspects because this is an ongoing criminal investigation," said city of Odessa spokeswoman Andrea Goodson. Museum administrator Lettie England said no motive for the blaze had been...

Austin, Tex. – The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) announced it will form a working group to develop a financial master plan a Ports-to-Plains Corridor, which would create new jobs and economic opportunity for West Texas. Ports-to-Plains is a proposed divided highway corridor stretching from Laredo on the Mexican border, through Midland/Odessa, Lubbock, and Amarillo in West Texas north to Denver, Colorado. Designated as a High Priority Corridor by Congress in 1998, the Ports-to-Plains corridor is intended to expand economic opportunity and serve international trade from Mexico to Canada. Despite the congressional designation, adequate federal funding has not been provided...

A bulk purchase of disposable cell phones across The South Plains is turning into a federal investigation. Muleshoe authorities have questioned a man, who according to police reports, confesses to buying 60 pre-paid cell phones that might later be used to detonate bombs in the Middle East. The man reportedly bought the phones from stores like Dollar General, Family Dollar and even Wal-mart's across the region. Lubbock is included in the towns he confessed to buying the phones in. Again, in police reports he admits to a store manager the cell phones would eventually be used as bomb detonators in...

As the proposed implementation of a pilot cross-border trucking program draws near, another international trade corridor project is drawing heat from local residents in Texas. The March 18 New York Times reported on the reactions of residents of the West Texas towns of Marfa and Alpine to a hearing held by the Texas Department of Transportation on the development of an official trade corridor, La Entrada al Pacifico, or “Gateway to the Pacific.” It would link the port of Topolobampo in Mexico’s Sinaloa state through Chihuahua to the U.S. market, via the border crossing at Presidio, Texas, and the oil...

  Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Chuck Morse, the author of The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism - Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin al-Husseini. Mr. Morse will be speaking at the International Institute for Holocaust Research-Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, March 23. He is a Republican candidate for Congress in Massachusetts where he is campaigning against Barney Frank.Glazov: Chuck Morse, welcome to Frontpage Interview. Morse: Thank you. Glazov: Tell us why you wrote your book. Morse: After the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001, I was searching for an answer to the question of how people could be so filled with hate for...

HOUSTON, July 31 - When the school board in Odessa, the West Texas oil town, voted unanimously in April to add an elective Bible study course to the 2006 high school curriculum, some parents dropped to their knees in prayerful thanks that God would be returned to the classroom, while others assailed it as an effort to instill religious training in the public schools. Prof. David Newman of Odessa College, whose daughter attends an Odessa school, said he found the Bible course's curriculum unacceptably sectarian. "Someone is being disingenuous; I'd like to know who," he says. Readers John Waggoner, at...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - A religious watchdog group complained Monday that a Bible study course taught in hundreds of public schools in Texas and across the country promotes a fundamentalist Christian view and violates religious freedom. The Texas Freedom Network, which includes clergy of several faiths, also said the course offered by the Greensboro, N.C.-based National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools is full of errors and dubious research. The producers of the Bible class dismissed the Texas Freedom Network as a "far left" organization trying to suppress study of a historical text. The National Council on Bible Curriculum...

When the school board in Odessa, the West Texas oil town, voted unanimously in April to add an elective Bible study course to the 2006 high school curriculum, some parents dropped to their knees in prayerful thanks that God would be returned to the classroom, while others assailed it as an effort to instill religious training in the public schools. Hundreds of miles away, leaders of the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools notched another victory. A religious advocacy group based in Greensboro, N.C., the council has been pressing a 12-year campaign to get school boards across the...

ODESSA, Texas - (KRT) - This hardscrabble town of 90,000 on the West Texas oil patch famous for its obsession with high school football is becoming the new ground zero in a culture war. The Ector County Independent School District unanimously approved an elective course in biblical literacy in April, an action underscoring the marked increase of such "Bible study" classes nationally. Constitutional scholars are concerned that these classes constitute a subtle erosion of what they see as the traditional and necessary wall of separation between church and state. More than 300 school districts in 35 states use course material...

On the surface there would seem to be little to unite the Aryan racialists of the neo-Nazi movement with the terrorists of radical Islam. To the neo-Nazis, Muslims are almost all members of ``inferior`` races; and to the Islamic terrorists, the neo-Nazis are almost without exception either atheists or members of fringe quasi-Christian sects. But the reality is that there has been close cooperation between Muslim extremists and Fascists ever since the founding of the Nazi movement in the 1920`s. For all of their differences, Muslim extremists and Nazis have always been united by a common group of beliefs and...

Juan Peron was an Argentinian president who was a dictator who Fascist tendencies from 1946-1955 and 1972-1974, when he died. He was a soldier originally who in a coup became Secretary of Labor in 1943, then he went to prison, because some military personals feared he was getting powerful in 1945, which he goes to jail. Then in October 17th, a large rally occurs calling for the release of Juan Peron, which he is released. He marries Maria Eva Duarte, who becomes Evita Peron. This was Juan Peron's second marriage. His first wife died of cancer. He is elected in...

How did you know about Nazis fleeing to South America, particularly Argentina? I found this to be common knowledge. Almost everyone I know is aware of Nazis fleeing to Argentina and South America. Also, are you aware of Nazis fleeing to the Middle East?

61 arrested in ‘Healing Touch’ case Warrants out for 13 others in prostitution roundup By David J. Lee Odessa American Sixty-one area residents — including prominent attorneys, business owners and a senior editor for the Odessa American — slogged into rain-soaked Salinas Park throughout the morning Tuesday to surrender as suspects in a yearlong prostitution investigation. Warrants remained outstanding Tuesday night for another 13 suspects who didn’t show up at the Odessa Police Department’s makeshift booking station in the park — including one for a former ECISD board member. In all, the 74 people — seven women and 67 men...

Okay, okay... I know this is late for The Birthday, but I just received it.  I checked snopes and they don't seem to have it yet.  The e-mail came from a woman whose brother went to high school with Bum at French High School (Beaumont, Tx), so I'm thinking he really wrote it.  It sure sounds like him, anyway.  Does anyone know him personally so we can verify? HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TEXAS -- FROM BUM PHILLIPS  Being Texan by Bum PhillipsDear Friends,   Last year, I wrote a small piece about what it means to me to be a Texan. My...

New state senator will be back up at bat again soon Thursday, February 19, 2004 Democrat Paul Sadler made up a lot of distance in Tuesday's runoff election in Senate District 1 in Northeast Texas, but he couldn't overcome former Tyler Mayor Kevin Eltife's huge lead in Tyler and Longview. With about 51.9 percent of the votes, Eltife won the remaining three years of the four-year term of former Sen. Bill Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant. He quit in January. In the West Texas runoff, former Amarillo Mayor Kel Seliger's lead in the northern end of Senate District 31 more than offset...

Runoffs to replace state Senate icons Associated Press Accusations have been flying and the money has been flowing in East and West Texas as state Senate candidates engage in runoff elections today to replace Republicans Bill Ratliff and Teel Bivins. The two longtime senators resigned, and an election in January to replace them did not produce a winner. The top two candidates in each race advanced to a runoff. In West Texas, Kel Seliger, who served four terms as mayor of Amarillo, faces fellow Republican and Odessa businessman Kirk Edwards in District 31 to replace Bivins. District 31 includes Dallam,...

Seliger, Edwards face runoff to fill Bivins' District 31 seat AUSTIN (AP) — Former Amarillo Mayor Kel Seliger and Odessa businessman Kirk Edwards, both Republicans, are headed for a runoff election for the state Senate District 31 seat. The special election was called to re place Sen. Teel Bivins, who resigned after he was nominated by President Bush to serve as ambassador to Sweden. Seliger received 36 percent of the vote with 100 percent of the precincts re porting. Ed wards, 44, pulled in 21 percent of the vote. "I'm just very excited and energized by it and ready to...

Thursday, January 15, 2004 Millionaire Teel Bivins' replacement in the Texas Senate most likely will be another man capable of putting a lot of his own money into the contest. The Panhandle-to-Midland/Odessa district Bivins represented for 15 years, including stints chairing the Nominations, Education, and Finance committees, came vacant when he resigned Monday to become President Bush's nominee for United States ambassador to Sweden. The probable front-runner to be his replacement in Tuesday's special election is the former Amarillo mayor, Kel Seliger, 50, who left that office in 2001. Of the six other candidates, the three chief competitors, based on...

TIRASPOL, Moldova -- In the ethnic conflicts that surrounded the collapse of the Soviet Union, fighters in several countries seized upon an unlikely new weapon: a small, thin rocket known as the Alazan. Originally built for weather experiments, the Alazan was transformed into a terror weapon, packed with explosives and lobbed into cities. Military records show that at least 38 Alazan warheads were modified to carry radioactive material, effectively creating the world's first surface-to-surface dirty bomb. The warheads are not known to have been used. But now, according to experts and officials, they have disappeared.

Redistricting foes bash move GOP-fueled bid sparks outcry at Lubbock hearing By JOHN FUQUAY AVALANCHE-JOURNAL Some of the harshest remarks at a congressional redistricting hearing Thursday in Lubbock were an attack on the process rather than the boundaries. Speakers at the daylong hearing, one of six across the state, accused Republicans of gerrymandering and wasting tax dollars. Gov. Rick Perry has called a special session on redistricting that will convene Monday. The issue has been hotly contested and led 51 Democratic House members to walk out of the regular session in May, busting a quorum and blocking a vote on...

Getting to bottom of crater mystery 06/22/2003By ALEXANDRA WITZE / The Dallas Morning News ODESSA – It took two hours for Vance Holliday to travel back thousands of years. For a time machine, he drilled into the dirt of the meteor crater just west of Odessa. The deeper he went, the closer Dr. Holliday got to his goal – discovering the crater's age. When the Odessa meteorite hit, some tens of thousands of years ago, it would have been a fearsome sight. An iron rock nearly 50 feet across fell screaming from the sky, hitting with energy roughly equivalent to...

Attorney subpoenas 57 sex offenders June 17, 2003 08:43 AM CDT Associated Press ODESSA, Texas - A defense attorney has subpoenaed 57 sex offenders in the trial of a man accused of an attack on a child. Attorney Michael McLeaish is defending David Means of Odessa in a trial scheduled to begin Tuesday afternoon in Judge Tryon Lewis' 161st District Court. Means is accused of aggravated sexual assault of a child in December 2002. "Hopefully, it can be demonstrated to the jury that there are successful probationers out there," McLeaish said. McLeaish said the names of those serving probation after...