Free Republic

Rick O'Donnell, a former special adviser to the University of Texas System who received a $70,000 settlement, this week skewered top UT officials for trying to block the release of faculty productivity data, accusing them of orchestrating a scare campaign to pit donors and alumni against regents pushing for changes at the system. He also took shots at state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, who chairs the higher education committee, saying she went to bat for university brass due to overly cozy relations between lawmakers and public universities. Faculty and administrators "basically want to be left alone," O'Donnell said. "They push...

Two Others Hospitalized MEXICO -- Authorities investigated a crime scene along the U.S.-Mexico border Thursday morning after shots were fired on the embankment on Mexico's side, near Paisano by Asarco. According to our partners at the El Paso Times, a Juarez traffic officer was ambushed and killed by an unknown shooter near the U.S. border. Roxana Monroyl, 33, was shot about 10:30 a.m., said Juarez city spokesman Jaime Torres. After she was shot, she called for help. Two other traffic officers arrived at the scene to assist her and were also shot, he said. Those officers were taken to a...

A judge has ruled that two Christians fired by the University of Texas at Arlington for praying for a fellow employee, will get their "day in court." The women were fired in 2006 for praying at work after hours for the coworker, who at the time was not even aware of their desire to pray for her needs. Officials at U.T.A. in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, claimed the women were fired because praying for someone was a form of "harassment." Judge Terry R. Means of the Northern District Court in Texas says, "Can a prayer for someone constitute harassment...

Longhorn fans may be jumping the gun, but with players like Colt McCoy who’s a Heisman contender, Jordan Shipley a semifinalist for the Biletnikoff Award, and Earl Thomas a semifinalist for the Jim Thorpe Award, fans anticipate the best. Not to mention Texas has one of the leading defensive lines in the conference. So how does Coach Mack Brown feel about his key players? "I do feel like, the way Colt has been playing the last two weeks, that he's right back in the middle of the Heisman race," said Coach Brown. What about the Texas defense? "It's unusual to...

Transportation officials in Texas are scrambling to prevent hackers from changing messages on digital road signs after one sign in Austin was altered to read, "Zombies Ahead." Chris Lippincott, director of media relations for the Texas Department of Transportation, confirmed that a portable traffic sign at Lamar Boulevard and West 15th Street, near the University of Texas at Austin, was hacked into during the early hours of Jan. 19. "It was clever, kind of cute, but not what it was intended for," said Lippincott, who saw the sign during his morning commute. "Those signs are deployed for a reason —...

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...

ROBSTOWN, Tex. — Leon Little’s farm here near Corpus Christi would not be seized for Texas’s proposed $184-billion-plus superhighway project for 5 or 10 years, if ever. But Mr. Little was alarmed enough to show up Wednesday night with hundreds of his South Texas coastal neighbors to do what the Texas Department of Transportation has been urging: “Go ahead, don’t hold back.” Don’t worry. Texans have gotten the message, swamping hearings and town meetings across the state to grill and often excoriate agency officials about a colossal traffic makeover known as the Trans-Texas Corridor, a public-private partnership unrivaled in the...

Even though he didn't get a majority for re-election last year, Gov. Rick Perry's 39 percent was ahead of everybody else. And so he's now in a term that lasts into 2011. In the eyes of some of his detractors in the blogosphere, that's too long. Political activist Linda Curtis has started a website calling on legislators in 2009 to impeach the governor (www.impeachperry.indytexans.org/). That's a pretty rash idea. But since Texas doesn't allow for recall elections, like the one that nailed California Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in 2003, Texans' only way to toss Perry out before the 2010 election...

There are two universities operating under the name the University of Texas. One is a world-class academic institution. Its faculty is professional and dedicated to disinterested scholarly inquiry. Its courses observe the principles of scientific method, and its students are taught to respect evidence and to demand more than one perspective on matters that are controversial. But there is a second university, which is quite different in its methods and goals. This university's faculty regard themselves as activists, not scholars, and their method is that of authority, not science. Their curriculum is designed not to teach students how to conduct...

As Phanta "Jack" Phoummarath lay dying of alcohol poisoning, members of the club he was trying to join defaced his body with anti-gay epithets and obscene drawings, according to a medical examiner's report. "It was disgusting and despicable behavior," said Houston attorney Randy Sorrels, who represents Phoummarath's family. Sorrels said Phoummarath was not gay. The 18-year-old freshman from Houston, who wanted to join the Lambda Phi Epsilon fraternity at the University of Texas at Austin, died Dec. 10, 2005, after ingesting large amounts of alcohol at a party at the fraternity house. The medical examiner reported his blood-alcohol content was...

This is absolutely hillarious! The Young Conservatives of Texas - University of Texas Chapter announced today that they will be displaying an “ACLU Nativity Scene” on the West Mall of the University of Texas campus on Monday and Tuesday, December 4th and 5th. The group’s intent is to raise awareness on the extremity of the ACLU, and bring to light its secular-progressive efforts to remove Christmas from the public sphere. The display, the first of its kind in the nation, will feature characters that are quite a bit different than the standard crèche. “We’ve got Gary and Joseph instead of...

AUSTIN - A University of Texas biology professor has been targeted by talk radio, bloggers and vitriolic e-mails - including a death threat - after a published report that he advocated death for most of the population as a means of saving the Earth. But Eric Pianka said Monday his remarks about what he believes is an impending pandemic were taken out of context. "What we really need to do is start thinking about controlling our population before it's too late," he said. "It's already too late, but we're not even thinking about it. We're just mindlessly rushing ahead breeding...

WASHINGTON — A Texas congressman has received "most of the materials'' he requested about why the U.S. Energy Department awarded a contract for Los Alamos National Laboratory to a team that includes the University of California, his spokeswoman said. Lisa Miller, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee that Joe Barton heads, said discussions between DOE and the committee were continuing. She had no details about Barton's reaction. Barton, R-Texas, demanded the information last month when the DOE awarded the contract to run the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab to UC and three corporations instead of to a team...

The bitter truth, as we feast on the bounty of the empire -Our myth of Thanksgiving warps a history of genocide ONE indication of moral and intellectual progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day with a National Day of Atonement. Indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas. But the thought of changing this white-supremacist holiday is hard to...

A student who cursed, gestured after Ann Coulter's speech is escorted out in handcuffs AUSTIN - Note to hecklers at the University of Texas: When jeering, keep it clean or face possible arrest. Ajai Raj, a 19-year-old English major, thought he was exercising his right to free speech when he quizzed conservative pundit Ann Coulter on her definition of marriage after a lecture she delivered at the LBJ Library. Trouble was, he used profanity and then made obscene gestures while walking away from a microphone set up for the question-and-answer portion of Tuesday's event. Moments later, university police were inside...

MAY 5--Months after members of "Al Pieda" marred a campus speech by Ann Coulter, another appearance by the controversial conservative commentator has been disrupted by a protester. During a speech last night at the University of Texas in Austin, a 19-year-old UT student was busted after asking Coulter a lewd question, which he followed up with equally inappropriate hand gestures, according to the below police affidavit. The student, Ajai Raj, was arrested by campus police and hit with a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge. The police affidavit notes that Coulter's lecture was attended by "several children under the age of...

Robert Jensen (rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu) is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also the author of Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity. In an article written for The Austin American Statesman, Jensen recently claimed that “The United States has lost the war in Iraq, and that's a good thing.” While Jensen was careful to say that the loss of American lives is not to be celebrated, he insulted our soldiers deeply by saying that their deaths “haven't protected Americans or brought freedom to Iraqis.” Instead, he brushed off their service to our...

Robert Jensen (rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu) is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also the author of "Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity." In an article written for The Austin American Statesman, Jensen recently claimed that “The United States has lost the war in Iraq, and that's a good thing.” While Jensen was careful to say that the loss of American lives is not to be celebrated, he insulted our soldiers deeply by saying that their deaths “haven't protected Americans or brought freedom to Iraqis.” Instead, he brushed off their service to our...

AUSTIN, TEXAS — The University of Texas is considering requiring students to study another culture, and some students are upset. "It absolutely is political correctness gone amok," said Mark Tait, director of internal affairs for  the Young Conservatives of Texas. Arguing that the University of Texas is already culturally inclusive, Tait said, "Students don't need bureaucracy to tell them to increase and broaden their cultural perspective."

University of Texas President Larry Faulkner announced this week a plan to make UT a more welcoming place for minorities. One suggestion calls for moving the statues of Confederate icons (on campus).