Free Republic

DENTON - "Grandma" lost her argument for a contrived ballot nickname. But Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn of Austin might have found a plank on which to build a campaign against Gov. Rick Perry. It's a plank 600 miles long and a quarter-mile wide. It's a giant, privately owned, multilane tollway that would part the Texas countryside the way the governor parts his ample hair. Strayhorn, a Republican running as an independent candidate, has criticized the Trans-Texas Corridor tollway plan loudly for months. So have the other principal challengers in this traffic jam of a race, novelist Kinky Friedman of Medina...

The next meeting concerning the Trans-Texas Corridor has been set for 5-8 p.m. Feb. 10 at the Gainesville Civic Center. Officials have set forth the corridor as a way to alleviate traffic on the state's major highways by building a system of highways, railroads and utilities that stretch about 1,200-feet wide. Such a corridor also would bypass major metropolitan areas of Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and Houston. From Feb. 7 through March 31, Texas Department of Transportation officials plan to have 47 meetings throughout the Interstate 35 corridor area, which covers 800 miles in length and 77 counties, according to...