Free Republic

Taylor used to be a player in Williamson County, with it and Georgetown vying for funds and the attention of passers-through. But no more, and despite what many city officials will tell you, it will not be a player unless something is done to counteract the rapid growth of surrounding communities. What needs to be done is, Taylor needs to forget its past and embrace something residents see as so vile, that when I first arrived here I thought its mere mention was a dirty word. I am speaking of Rick Perry’s Trans-Texas Corridor. The Texas Department of Transportation (another...

MIAMI (Reuters) - A hurricane watch was issued for the southern portion of the Texas coast on Monday as Tropical Storm Dolly emerged from the Yucatan over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and appeared likely to become a hurricane, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Executives from the state highway department are again defending themselves at the Capitol against people who say they are using taxpayer money to advance an agenda in favor of toll roads in Texas. At the heart of the issue are claims that TxDOT has hired lobbyists, using taxpayer dollars, to push in favor of projects like the Trans-Texas Corridor. Part of that is the "Keep Texas Moving" website. "Marketing is undertaken to inform drivers in the Austin area about the opening of new toll roads, toll road locations and incentive periods, and about the benefits of paying with an electronic...

Despite pleas from the White House and the State Department, as well as an international court order to review their cases, Texas will execute five Mexicans on death row, a spokeswoman for the governor said Thursday. The first of the executions — that of José Ernesto Medellín, 33, convicted in the 1993 rape and murder of two teenage girls here — is scheduled for Aug. 5. The decision by Gov. Rick Perry to allow the executions is the latest twist in a long-running battle between Mexico, which has no death penalty, and the United States over the fate of 51...

Father of victim says U.N. body's order 'don't mean diddly' Texas is refusing to bow to yesterday's World Court order to stay the Aug. 5 lethal injection of convicted rapist-killer and illegal alien Jose Medellin. (snip) Texas Gov. Rick Perry's office rejected Mexico's complaint. "The world court has no standing in Texas, and Texas is not bound by a ruling or edict from a foreign court," Perry spokesman Robert Black said. "It is easy to get caught up in discussions of international law and justice and treaties. It's very important to remember that these individuals are on death row for...

HOLLAND - The mayor of this small community 15 miles south of Temple said Tuesday the commission of which she is president is ready to take by the horns the Texas Department of Transportation and its controversial proposal, the Trans-Texas Corridor. Armed with an 80-page manual, “How to Fight the TTC,” and backed by two non-profits who say they protect private property rights, Holland mayor Mae Smith said rural Bell County is ready for a fight. “Bell County sits here like a stepchild and they’re cramming this corridor down our throats,” Ms. Smith said, regarding the commission’s relationship with TxDOT....

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...

Melissa mayor mailing resolutions to fellow mayors to stop state from using gas tax funds for non-road projects BY DANNY GALLAGHER, McKinney Courier-Gazette Melissa Mayor David Dorman said he sits in his office everyday and watches as cars zoom down State Highway 121, a road that will soon start collecting tolls from drivers who use it to get to Dallas, McKinney, Frisco or the Dallas North Tollway and back again. Dorman said before that happens, he wants to know the roads his citizens and drivers are paying the state to use will be maintained and built with those funds. “I...

The Eucharist was stolen Friday from the tabernacle at Corpus Christi Cathedral on the 500 block of North Upper Broadway, police said. Corpus Christi Police Lt. Raymond Lara said the Eucharist, the consecrated bread used in Catholic Mass, was taken after someone entered the church through an open door. The exact time of the theft has not been determined and there have been no arrests made in the case, Lara said. Corpus Christi Cathedral officials would not comment when reached Monday.

Toll road opponents today will ask the Sunset Advisory Committee of the Texas Legislature to abolish the Texas Department of Transportation, saying the agency has become too corrupt and too dysfunctional to fix, 1200 WOAI news reports. "We want to see elected leadership at the helm of Tex-DOT," says long time toll road opponent Terri Hall, the founder of the citizen action group Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom. "We are done with this unelected beaurocracy that is just an arm of private road building companies and the lackeys of this governor." The idea of eliminating TexDOT and establishing a...

Quick! What state symbolizes the old petroleum economy? Texas, of course. Now, what state leads the way towards a future of clean, renewable wind energy? Texas again! By early 2008, Texas had installed more than 5,300 megawatts of wind production -- more than twice second place state California -- and had another 2,000 megawatts under production. Why in the name of Sam Houston is the state of Spindletop messing with wind?

READING, WRITING, WEAPONS Texas students join a nationwide movement for the right to bear arms while at college BLANCO — Cameron Schober, a 22-year-old Texas State University student, aimed his semi-automatic pistol at the outline of a man's torso just as a gust of wind blew down the target. "Everybody hold up!" hollered instructor Mike Cox. As six other shooters lowered their weapons, Schober scrambled to brace the cardboard target at a makeshift range on a deserted Hill Country ranch. Schober and fellow student Bill Downs were among 13 people who recently completed Cox's shooting proficiency and eight-hour classroom course,...

HOUSTON — Roy M. Huffington, an oilman who played a major role in developing Indonesia's oil and natural gas sector and later served as a U.S. ambassador to Austria, has died. He was 90. Huffington died Friday while traveling out of the country, according to the funeral home George H. Lewis and Sons. Huffington also founded the Huffington Foundation, which donated millions of dollars to Houston charities, and also served as the chairman of the New York-based Asia Society for more than seven years in the 1980s. Huffington served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and upon his...

An online petition for residents to carry handguns in plain sight in Texas had obtained more than 20,000 signatures last week. The petition will be submitted to Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Legislature sometime in the future. According to the petition, Texas is one of only six states in the U.S. that ban the use of publicly displayed handguns – also known as "open-carry" handguns. Ten states – Arizona, Alaska, Idaho, Kentucky, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota, Virginia, Vermont and Wyoming – allow residents to openly carry a handgun without a license, the petition stated, including those states as...

McALLEN - Barack Obama's statements that he would consider renegotiating the decade-old North American Free Trade Agreement are drawing criticism from Rio Grande Valley business leaders. The treaty, which removed most trade and investment barriers among the United States, Mexico and Canada, has quickly turned into a point of contention between Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and his Republican counterpart, John McCain, whose pro-free trade stance calls for even more NAFTA-like trade blocs - specifically with Colombia and South Korea. Obama has routinely denounced the treaty as a deal that "put special interests over workers' interests," as he said...

Local toll road activist Terri Hall, the Spring Branch home schooling mom who's campaign against toll roads made her WOAI's San Antonian of the Year for 2007,. is taking her populist campaign nationwide. Hall is among the speakers for Saturday's 'Freedom March,' in Washington DC, organized by supporters of former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, and designed to keep alive his message of smaller government and vigilance against encroaching government power. "They wanted someone to speak about the Trans Texas Corridor, and what's happening here, and the eminent domain abuses, and how all these toll roads are tied to corporate...

Many angry landowners have contacted us about a plan that, contrary to good public policy, will negatively impact property rights of rural Texans from Roberts to Jack County. The brand-new Roberts County Fresh Water Supply District No. 1, acting as an alter ego of businessman T. Boone Pickens and Mesa Power Pampa, LLC, has launched a private venture that may force landowners in 11 counties to submit to the power of eminent domain so they can pump water from the shrinking Ogallala Aquifer and sell wind-generated electricity. This new governmental entity is composed of only five people, all employees or...

Yesterday morning, I marveled at the p.c. idiocy of Dallas County (TX) commissioner John Wiley Price, who protested when his colleague Kenneth Mayfield used the term “black hole” to refer to lost paperwork. The local Fox station in Dallas-Fort Worth has the video of the exchange. The ignorance and sanctimony of John Wiley Price are something to behold.

Small-town leaders in Central Texas think they’ve found cracks in the Trans-Texas Corridor’s armor. By PETER GORMAN BARTLETT — Sitting in Lois and Jerry’s Restaurant, surrounded by a blue-jean and overalls lunch crowd, Mae Smith and Ralph Snyder don’t look like giant-killers. In fact, the small-town mayor (5’ 2”) and the salvage shop owner (6’ 6”) look more like a Mutt and Jeff comedy team. But along with mayors, business leaders, and farmers in Bell County, north of Austin, and their counterparts in several other parts of the state, Smith and Snyder are taking on a Texas Goliath — the...

ARLINGTON — Police are looking for two men accused of kidnapping a woman from a south Arlington Wal-Mart on Tuesday and then robbing her at gunpoint. The 51-year-old victim was shopping at the Supercenter at 4801 S. Cooper St. about 3 p.m. when she was approached by two men, one of whom asked her for change, police said Wednesday. Surveillance images show the men leaving the store at the same time as the victim. In the parking lot, she approached their vehicle to answer a question, and the men forced her into a silver or gray four-door car, police said....

There is always one guy in a bar spoiling for a fight and will take any movement or glance, any sound, any word as his excuse at bellicosity. In the race mongering biz the equivalent would be people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, both men who take immediate umbrage at the un-umbragable, just so that they can use the excuse to extort money out of businesses or get their mugs splashed across the papers and TV. In Dallas County the loudmouth looking for a fight is Commissioner John Wiley Price who foolishly decided that the scientific term "black hole"...

SAN ANTONIO -- It's official. Texas Department Of Transportation really does need to be more accountable, responsive and transparent. We could all guess what the Sunset Commission finally recognized: TxDOT is out of control and needs to take radical measures to restore trust. Of course, TxDOT promises to do better, but we'll believe it when we see it. They may be so far gone that the only way to fix TxDOT's mess is to disband them altogether and start over. With a Trans-Texas Corridor and toll roads in play, as well as grossly miscalculated budgets, TxDOT needs more oversight now...

On July the 4th, or Cuatro de Julio as I suspect it will someday be known, I stood at the statue of Peter Hansborough Bell, a hero of Texas independence and namesake of my home county in Texas. I couldn’t help but wonder what Mr. Bell would think of the state of his state on this Independence Day. The story of Peter Hansborough Bell isn’t told very often -- but it should be, especially in the classrooms of Bell County, Texas. Bell was a businessman in Virginia until he headed for Texas to fight for independence. He was a private...

For five years, the Big Cheese Rodent Factory operated relatively quietly in an industrial area in south Fort Worth.But in the last two months, the company has been involved in a contested zoning case and an investigation by the Fort Worth Public Health Department. The city ordered the company to control the smell from its operation after investigators determined that a steady odor was affecting nearby businesses. One investigator "experienced moments of nausea" during a site visit, according to a health department report.The company’s owners say the complaints are coming from a handful of people. Nevertheless, they’re spending tens of...

The Quorum Report July 2, 2008 4:52 PM Copyright July 2, 2008 by Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved SCHLOMACH: HOW ABOUT A MULLIGAN? -- WILL TEXANS SEE THE MARGINS TAX, PART DEAUX Economist Byron Schlomach may have moved on, but even from afar he has some thought about Texas tax contortions I don’t know how seriously to take Lt. Governor Dewhurst’s threat to revisit the margins tax. When I read about his suggestion though, it brought back a flood of memories - memories of lost opportunities and unheeded warnings. There are two reasons the margins tax is likely...

Aug. 14, 2002, 9:49PM Middle Easterners streaming to TexasStudy says most live in HoustonBy EDWARD HEGSTROM Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle Texas has one of the nation's fastest-growing Middle Eastern populations, and most of the state's immigrants live in Houston, according to a study based on census data. Researchers at the Center for Immigration Studies say Texas' Middle Eastern population more than doubled in the last decade, to just over 100,000, including more than 52,000 in Greater Houston. The state, not known as a traditional destination for Middle Easterners, now ranks third behind New York and California. "This shows Texas is...

FORT WORTH -- A man moving into a new apartment today may have found a bag containing two human hands.A prospective tenant in the 1100 block of Grainger Street in southwest Fort Worth was cleaning out a garage apartment in anticipation of moving in when he found a plastic grocery sack in the freezer, according to Fort Worth police.The man opened the sack and found what looked like "two mangled up frozen hands," according to a statement from Fort Worth Police spokesman Lt. Paul Henderson.The man called police. Some officers who arrived on the scene agreed that the items could...

WASHINGTON — Besieged Texas sheriffs have vowed to press the White House and Congress to deliver emergency assistance to law enforcement officers battling drug cartels along the Mexican border to match the $400 million on its way to Mexico. The sheriffs said they were frustrated that President Bush and Congress agreed to provide assistance to Mexico as part of the Merida Initiative, without offering additional federal help to their departments. The officers said they'd seek direct federal assistance, as well as changes in Department of Homeland Security restrictions to permit local law enforcement departments to use homeland security funds to...

Texas Archaeological Dig Challenges Assumptions about First Americans Ancient stone artifacts reveal the day-to-day lives of Clovis people while offering tantalizing clues of an even earlier culture By Elizabeth Lunday Excavations at the Gault site in central Texas. FLORENCE, TEX.—"Look at that—isn't it gorgeous?" Sandy Peck asks as she rinses dirt from a flaked stone about the length and width of a pinky finger. Peck runs a hose over soil on a fine-mesh screen, prodding at stubborn clods of clay with a muddy glove. "Look, there's another one." Peck, sorting soil that had been disturbed by a recent thunderstorm, is...

Not even a week after the Supreme Court decided that gun bans are unconstitutional, a man accused of shooting to death two burglars who were robbing his neighbor's home has been set free despite the viciousness of his act. If you'll remember the story, Joe Horn, a 61-year-old Pasadena, Tex., resident spotted two burglars breaking into his neighbor's home in Nov. 2007. He dialed 911, but despite being warned to stay in his home, he declared that he has a right to use deadly force to defend his neighbor's property and that he was going to confront the robbers. He...

There are no utilities and no public transportation in this unincorporated town of a couple hundred people along a narrow road that winds through the mountains 314 miles north of Sacramento. Many people here buy gas for their vehicles and gas or diesel for generators that power their homes. "I'm scared to death" of rising fuel prices, Hanley says. At the store, the hub for visiting whitewater rafters and residents of other isolated towns, gas cost $5.30 a gallon on a recent day when the national average was $4.07. This community may be an extreme example of how rising gas...

Youths, all 17, are being held at county jail Three 17-year-old male Bokencamp Children's Shelter detainees from Honduras were arrested by police about 8 p.m. Monday following an assault on four center staff members. Staff members told police that Edgardo Casco-Perez, Sergio Davine-Paz and Javier Nunez-Ramirez appeared to be plotting an escape attempt and they attacked staff members who attempted to separate them, according to a Tuesday police brief. The teens are suspected members of an El Salvadoran street gang, the brief said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol agents asked police to book the teens on...

From its Texas Rangers to its enthusiastic take on the death penalty, the Lone Star State has long been known for its aggressive stance on law enforcement. Thanks to a strange new law, it's a sting that may soon be felt by a number of the state's computer-repair people. A recently passed law requires that Texas computer-repair technicians have a private-investigator license, according to a story posted by a Dallas-Fort Worth CW affiliate. In order to obtain said license, technicians must receive a criminal justice degree or participate in a three-year apprenticeship. Those shops that refuse to participate will be...

A 22-year-old man who may be responsible for shooting at motorists in Garland, Mesquite, Richardson and Plano was in custody this morning, Garland police said. Garland police did not release the man's name but said he would face charges of aggravated assault, endangering a child and deadly conduct. Bond had not been set as of late Tuesday when he was arrested.  Police said a gunman who shot at three groups of motorists on Sunday and one person on Monday struck again in Plano on Tuesday on the Bush Turnpike. Witnesses told police shots were fired from a black Honda Prelude...

HOUSTON — A grand jury on Monday refused to indict a 62-year-old man who fatally shot two burglars last November as they fled his neighbor’s house.

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...

'Castle Doctrine' Gives Texans Unprecedented Authority to Take Action Against Intruders A Texas man who shot and killed two men he believed to be burglarizing his neighbor's home won't be going to trial. A grand jury today failed to indict Joe Horn, a 61-year-old computer technician who lives in an affluent subdivision in Pasadena, Texas.In the Lone Star state, where the six-gun tamed the frontier, shooting bad guys is a time-honored tradition, and Horn's case centered on a Texas state law based on the old idea that "a man's home is his castle." The "castle law" gives Texans unprecedented legal...

A Fort Worth pastor was released on bond Thursday after he was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl he met at his church. Pastor James "Jay" Virtue Robinson IV is the pastor at Southwood Baptist Church in Tarrant County. He is also at the center of a sexual assault scandal that might have never come to light if it were not for a phone call. The father of the alleged victim told authorities he heard his teenage daughter having a sexually explicit phone conversation. "That of course led to a lot of questions for her father," said Lt....

SAN JUAN -- A Mission police officer has been suspended indefinitely after a Saturday morning arrest for allegedly driving an unmarked police car while drunk, officials said. This is at least the third arrest on suspicion of driving while intoxicated for Officer Martin Flores Villarreal, 40, of Mission, and at least his second while driving an unmarked Mission police car, according to court records and Trooper Johnny Hernandez, a local spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety. The first two charges, in 2004 and 2006, were both dismissed, court records indicate. Villarreal is suspended from the department indefinitely and...

As investigators review video footage they hope will reveal why a Denville police officer shot a 21-year-old motorist five times, the dead man's mother called the officer a murderer and said she has hired an attorney. Miles holds a photo of her son Ruben Martinez when he was a junior at Morris Knolls High School. Martinez now 21 and living in Texas, was shot and killed early Thusrdsay morning by a Denville police officer.  "Last night, I kept visualizing five gunshots pounding into a young man, 140 pounds," Maureen Miles, the mother of Ruben W. Martinez, said Friday. She...

SALT LAKE CITY 26 June 2008 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints took steps today to better inform the public about differences between the Salt Lake City-based church and the polygamous group in Texas that calls itself the FLDS. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - whose members are often called "Mormons" - placed a series of video interviews on its web site to illustrate the differences between its own members in Texas and members of the isolated polygamous group. The Texas Mormons featured on the video interviews include a director of community theater, an orthopedic...

AUSTIN — The Texas Transportation Commission on Thursday selected San Antonio's Zachry Construction Corp. and a Spanish toll road developer to plan a superhighway from Texarkana to Brownsville. The $5 million contract calls for Zachry American Infrastructure and ACS Infrastructure to create a financial plan for the Interstate 69 segment of the Trans-Texas Corridor. "This team represents the best in the balance of local and global expertise necessary to complete a project of this scope," said David Zachry, chief operating officer of Zachry Construction Corp. The private developers' plan calls for seven new loops around Corpus Christi and other cities...

Mexicans urged to reclaim a piece of Texas By Tom Leonard Last Updated: 9:11PM BST 26/06/2008 Mexicans are being encouraged to reclaim a piece of Texas, more than 150 years after they lost the Lone Star state to the United States. Texan estate agents are heading south of the border to drum up the interest in buying cut-price land and property in the foreclosure-hit state. Thanks to a rising Mexican peso and an economy which is growing faster than that of the US, a country that has previously been looked on by America as a source of cheap labour is...

AUSTIN -- The second half of the massive Trans Texas Corridor will take a large step toward reality today, when state transportation officials award a $5 million design contract to a team of private toll road operators. The operators will develop a master plan for the portion of the project that will run from Northeast Texas to Houston and then to Mexico – about 650 miles. The contract will not directly authorize the winning consortium to build any part of the super highway. But it will give the winning bidder a position of power for winning the much larger construction...

CorridorWatch, a Fayette County-based group that has been active in opposing the Trans-Texas Corridor plan, wants to go beyond the Sunset Advisory Commission’s recommended shakeup of state transportation leadership. The group, led by David and Linda Stall, recommends that TxDOT answer to an elected six-member board led by a chairman appointed by the governor. CorridorWatch makes it recommendation, along with various other reactions to the Sunset commission staff’s recent report on TxDOT, in written comments submitted as part of the sunset process. TxDOT, like all state agencies, “sunsets” after 12 years unless the Legislature acts to keep it alive. As...

The Texas Transportation Commission never fails to amaze us. Bottom line - this leopard has not changed its spots. Nothing has changed. The Commission and TxDOT are hell bent to sign deals and give away the farm before the legislature can rein them in. Rain, sleet and snow won't stop the mail; and, moratoriums, legislative intent and a sunset review won't stop TxDOT. Just a week ago TxDOT tried to impress everyone with how responsive they could be as they announced their recommendation that TTC-69 focus on using existing facilities rather than building a new highway. The only thing that...

The controversial project known as Interstate 69/TransTexas Corridor became a little less so last week after the Texas Department of Transportation announced it would recommend utilizing existing highway routes rather than building new ones. The announcement comes after months of public meetings during which residents along the path of the proposed path of Interstate 69/TTC voiced varying concerns. TxDOT has designated four priority corridors to address the state's transportation needs in the next decade. "The preliminary basis for this decision centers on the review of nearly 28,000 public comments made on the Tier One Draft Environmental Impact Statement," TxDOT Executive...

EL PASO – Dozens of law enforcement agents and business owners from across the border in Ciudad Juárez are seeking political asylum here, or moving to other Texas cities, including Dallas, a situation that underscores the escalating drug war and its widening impact on families, government officials and humanitarian groups say. U.S. and Mexican officials refused to disclose the precise number of "credible fear" claims – the first step toward applying for political asylum. But other officials speaking on condition of anonymity say the number in the El Paso-Juárez corridor alone is at least 100 – dramatically higher than the...

The ACLU has announced a major fundraising drive to expand its operations in traditionally conservative states -- and the head of a conservative law firm in one of those states responds: Bring it on! The American Civil Liberties Union is has already raised $258 million through what the Associated Press calls "behind the scenes" solicitations, including $12 million from liberal billionaire political activist George Soros. The liberal legal group wants to expand operations in Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, and other traditionally conservative states. *snip* One little-known detail about the ACLU surfaced in the Associated Press reporting on the campaign: the organization...

A retreat from the Texas Department of Transportation's plan to build a new multi-lane toll road through East Texas is a clear victory for Angelina County and Diboll, local officials said last week. "I'm glad they went back to the original plan," Diboll Mayor Bill Brown said. Instead of a new Trans-Texas Corridor toll road paralleling U.S. 59, Tx- DOT now plans to widen 59 with a new bypass around Diboll and Lufkin. The planned 59 bypass, needed to avoid the signalized intersections in Diboll and Lufkin, provides in the original plan four exits for Diboll. That will be good...