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HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Hours after 16 medically-vulnerable inmates were released from jail Friday, Harris County has halted additional releases, citing a court order. The order signed by the region's administrative judge, Herb Ritchie, couldn't be any clearer. It directs county criminal justice agencies to "ignore and wholly disregard any order and/or directive from the Harris County Judge regarding the (release of felony inmates) now in custody."

On a Jan. 15 conference call, a leading scientist at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention assured local and state public health officials from across the nation that there would soon be a test to detect a mysterious virus spreading from China. Stephen Lindstrom told them the threat was remote and they may not need the test his team was developing "unless the scope gets much larger than we anticipate," according to an email summarizing the call. "We're in good hands," a public health official who participated in the call wrote in the email to colleagues. Three weeks...

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner made a televised plea to Houston’s criminal population to just chill and take a break from committing crimes until after the COVID-19 crisis had passed.

Home Invasion At about 2:45 on Saturday afternoon, at the Carrington Place Apartments on FM 1960 West, in the 12700 block, a 53-year-old disabled woman resident used a firearm to stop a crew of criminals who were breaking into her home. One of the intruders was killed. The other two have been arrested and charged with felony murder. From khou.com: Deputies said the 18-year-old and a 17-year-old male broke a resident's patio door window. The 53-year-old disabled resident was home alone when the teens broke the window and reached inside and unlocked the door, according to investigators.The resident fired one...

Has anyone heard any rumblings about a lock down in Houston? I just got a phone call from my sister who has a job affiliated with the Fed. They were given "travelling" papers, if you will, earlier this week just in case. Tonight they were told to keep that letter with them at all times. I've seen the letter. I know it sounds paranoid, but I was asked about a lock down from someone at work. It reminds me of this line: The Baroness: You're far away. Where are you? Captain von Trapp: In a world that's disappearing, I'm afraid.

... Texas is a red state with exclusively Republican statewide elected officials, but Houston is in Harris County, which is dominated by Democrats. They run elections there. Harris County Clerk and Chief Election Officer Diane Trautman, a Democrat, was in charge of Super Tuesday’s vote. She ran for office promising to consolidate voting locations so people could cast ballots at “countywide voting centers” rather than at their precincts. Ms. Trautman’s staff gave Republicans and Democrats the same number of machines at Texas Southern, though any rookie would know that site would have a much larger Democratic primary than Republican. Ms....

There was another mass shooting in America. This time at a Molson Coors brewery in Milwaukee on February 26. An employee walked in the plant and, for inexplicable reasons, gunned down five people before committing suicide. This tragedy has once again sparked the discussion of gun control. The usual suspects are making the usual claims - and as usual - stoking demonization of Second Amendment advocates. But much of the public and media discourse about mass shootings, like the public discourse about crime in general, is fact-free. This has led to a political and ideological war. As in all wars,...

Any ranking of congresspersons’ national-security expertise would put Michael McCaul near the top. A Republican who represents the 10th District, an area spanning from Austin to the Houston suburbs, he served as a deputy to future U.S. Sen. John Cornyn when he was state attorney general. After 9/11, the Dallas-born McCaul became chief of the Terrorism and National Security Section of the west Texas federal attorney’s office. In 2004, the prosecutor won his seat in the U.S. House where he chaired the Homeland Security Committee for the full term limit of six years; he is now the ranking member of...

Last week an article from the Federalist Society about Greta Thunberg popped up on my computer. It was by David Harsanyi and titled, “The Tragedy of Greta Thunberg”. The following is the first two paragraphs of his article: “Sixteen-year-old Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg lives in the healthiest, wealthiest, safest, and most peaceful era humans have ever known. She is one of the luckiest people ever to have lived. In a just world, Thunberg would be at the United Nations thanking capitalist countries for bequeathing her this remarkable inheritance. Instead, she, like millions of other indoctrinated kids her age,...

Video of coverage at link

There’s even an acronym for the way teachers feel about these late winter and early spring months: EDOFMA, the eternal darkness of February, March and April. It’s a time when education seems like an endless slog, with little visible progress. As one blogger puts it, “For the first few weeks back from the holidays in January, things seem OK, but then reality sets in. Hard.” It’s much the same with education reform. But as dedicated teachers know, foundations are being laid even when progress isn’t visible. That’s how improvement often happens; incrementally, through persistence and dedication. What seemed like a...

Scientists around the world are scrambling to develop a vaccine to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, but the best candidate might be an experimental one stored in a Houston freezer. The vaccine, developed by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers, effectively protected mice against SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, the virus from the same family that spread in the early 2000s. The vaccine never progressed to human testing because manufacturing of it wasn’t completed until 2016, long after SARS had burned out. “It generated zero interest from pharmaceutical...

Two men born in Iraq who came to the U.S. as refugees were set to appear in court Friday on terror-related charges in California and Texas, as investigators say one of the men wrote that he wanted to travel to Syria because he was "eager to see blood." A criminal complaint unsealed Thursday accused 23-year-old Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, of Sacramento, Calif., of traveling to Syria to fight alongside terrorist organizations and lying to government investigators about it. Almost simultaneously in Houston, federal authorities announced the arrest of Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, 24, on charges of attempting to provide...

The DeLorean returns back from the future as a monster truck If Marty McFly and Doc Brown were ever to reunite for a sequel to Back to the Future III, the old time traveling DeLorean would need an upgrade of some sort to justify the ticket. How about adding 44-inch tires to a DeLorean and converting it into a monster truck? That'll do! While the DeLorean Motor Company is busy producing electric DeLoreans for a 2013 release, one DeLorean easily bested all others at the 2012 DeLorean Car Show & Convention in Orlando, Florida. What you have here is a...

DeLorean Motor Company CEO Stephen Wynne recently told KPRC in Houston that the iconic car made famous by the 1985 classic sci-fi film "Back to the Future" will go back into production for the first time in more than three decades. About 300 replica 1982 DeLoreans will be produced under a manufacturing bill approved by the federal government. "It's fantastic," Wynne told the TV station. "It's a game-changer for us. We've been wanting this to happen. ... It means we're back as a car company again." Since the company moved to Humble, Texas, in 1987, it has been refurbishing dozens...

DeLorean Motor Co., Inc. has unveiled the DeLorean EV, an electric car that marries the legendary Back to the Future DeLorean automobile of the 1980s with a lithium-ion-based, DC-powered, electric drivetrain of today. "It turns out the DeLorean is a perfect platform for electrification," noted Chris Anthony, CEO of Flux Power, Inc. and Epic Electric Vehicles, both of which worked with DeLorean Motors to develop the powertrain for the new vehicle. "It's well designed, it's lightweight, it never rusts, and it has a design aesthetic that's meant to blow you away." DeLorean's "new" EV maintains the look of the legendary...

(snip) Mr Wynne's DeLorean Motor Company (DMC) has teamed up with eco-experts Epic Electric for this newer model, taking a standard DMC12 model and ripping out the V6 petrol engine before fitting it with an electric powered version that produces the equivalent of 260bhp. Once on the road it will accelerate from 0-60mph in just 4.9 seconds. Mr Wynne said he 'got the idea for the battery-powered DeLorean after seeing the success of the Tesla Roadster, and think it would be a fitting tribute to the movie version of the car which famously needed 1.21 gigawatts of electricity to travel...

"Marty, you've got to come back with me! Back to the future!" It is one of those great bits from film history -- Doc Brown, the mad genius inventor from 1985's "Back to the Future," builds a time machine out of that iconic-but-failed sports car of the early 1980s, the DeLorean DMC-12. There is still a DeLorean Motor Co. of Humble, Texas, which supplies parts and occasionally builds new cars for DeLorean lovers, and it has now announced a new version -- a DeLorean powered entirely by electricity. "The car of the future has really become the car of the...

He may be gone--suave auto world genius John DeLorean died in 2005--but his namesake is back. My favorite car ever, the silver stainless steel DeLorean with its gull-winged doors is making a comeback (details here and here). You remember it as the time-transporting car from the hit movie, "Back to the Future." DeLorean Motor Company went out of business 25 years, but it has been reborn. The Dashing, Brilliant Late John DeLorean>p>& His Namesake Automotive Invention A new DeLorean will set you back $57,500 (today's real dollar equal to the original $25,000 price tag) and will retain the original John...

Danny Botkin's love affair with the DeLorean got off to an unpromising start. It was the early '80s and a teen-age Botkin was tagging along while his father shopped for a new car. A Ford dealer had a rear-engined, gull-winged DeLorean on display, and the flash of stainless steel automotive skin caught Danny's eye. "I was smitten," Botkin, now 40, recalls. "I said, 'Hey Dad, let's get this.' "He got a Bronco instead." Botkin had to grow up and buy his dream car himself. He drives a restored DeLorean modeled after the one that served as a time machine in...