A Year Since Disclosure Law, Fracking Fluid Remains a Mystery

A year ago, a Texas law was supposed to bring the raw ingredients used in hydraulic fracturing out of the shadows and into the sunlight. The process, which involves blasting millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals into shale formations a mile below the surface, isn’t subject to the…

Rep. Bill Zedler’s Birther Bill is So…2009

Putting his time to its best and highest use, for the benefit of his constituents in Arlington, state Representative Bill Zedler has written an essential piece of legislation; a bill of our times, for our times — if our times were still, like, nearly four years ago. Proving, we suppose,…

Judge Punts on Landowner’s Keystone Pipeline Challenge

The Nacogdoches judge who granted a Douglass landowner’s request for a temporary restraining order against the Keystone pipeline back in November now is telling him to take his case to another court. County Court at Law Judge Jack Sinz ruled last week that he could not hear Mike Bishop’s fraud…

There Will Be Tar Sand

One after the other, Cherokee County Sheriff’s deputies wearing straw cowboy hats dragged bearded, zip-cuffed young men toward a waiting van. Strands of snot and spit set flowing by doses of pepper spray dangled from their bowed heads. A company man wearing a hardhat trailed them, recording a video of…

After Chest-Thumping Over International Election Observers, Greg Abbott Admits Texas Sovereignty In No Danger

In an exercise in states’ rights fetishization, the Texas Legislature tasked Attorney General Greg Abbott with figuring out whether international organizations are usurping Lone Star sovereignty. If you’ll recall, there was an ugly scene leading up to the 2012 presidential election, wherein Abbott, chest out-thrust in his best chickenhawk approximation,…