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For decades, fire investigators walked into charred buildings in search of the same clues, the same subtle traces, that they thought indicated arson: the furniture and windows buckled by extreme heat, the burn patterns on the floor scorched by gasoline. Their methods weren’t scientific. Investigators relied on a set of assumptions—inherited knowledge passed from one generation to another—about how buildings burn. They used those pieces of evidence to send thousands of defendants to prison. And much of it was wrong.

In the past 15 years, the science of detecting arson has undergone a revolution. Research has shown definitively that many of the assumptions fire investigators once employed to distinguish an intentionally set fire from an accidental one were false.

Yet those disproved forensics sent Cameron Todd Willingham to the Texas death chamber on Feb. 17, 2004. His final claims of innocence—that he hadn’t started the 1991 house fire that killed his three daughters—were dutifully recorded before potassium chloride pumped through his veins and stopped his heart.

More than five years later, Willingham’s execution lies at the center of the biggest political scandal in Texas since Tom DeLay was roaming the halls of power. Nine of the nation’s top fire scientists have looked at the evidence against Willingham and concluded it was based on flawed and outdated assumptions, a collection of “old wives tales,” as one put it. These experts say the fire was likely accidental. If there was no arson, then there was no crime, and Willingham was innocent.

The story became even more explosive in late September when Gov. Rick Perry—in the middle of a tough re-election campaign—replaced three members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, which was investigating the Willingham case, just days before an important hearing. Perry’s new appointees promptly canceled the meeting. John Bradley, the Williamson County prosecutor Perry placed in charge of the commission, has not committed to restarting or completing the Willingham probe.

Suddenly there was the whiff of a cover-up, and the makings of a national scandal. Critics accuse Perry of trying to subvert an investigation that might prove he oversaw the execution of an innocent man (he was told of the faulty forensics before the execution). Meanwhile, anti-death penalty activists—sensing that Texas (of all places) might become the first state to admit putting an innocent man to death—latched on to the Willingham case and began rapidly firing off email blasts and organizing protests.

Perry was all too happy to play along and frame the story as a debate over the death penalty. He told reporters recently that Willingham was a “monster” and that the analysis of the nation’s leading fire experts was nothing more than “propaganda by the anti-death penalty people.”

What has been lost in the heat of political scandal is the original and central issue: the veracity of the forensic arson evidence.

For a time, it appeared the Forensic Science Commission’s investigation into the Willingham case might improve the way fire investigators in Texas do their work. The Legislature created the commission in 2005 after scandals at crime labs around the state. The commission was charged with investigating innocence claims based on flawed forensics, and bringing to light any faulty practices that may have sent innocent people to prison. It’s one of the first such governmental bodies in the nation. For once, Texas was a criminal-justice innovator.

Arson cases seemed the perfect place to start. Like the cases of Willingham and Ernest Ray Willis, who like Willingham was wrongly convicted of setting a fatal fire— a 1986 blaze in West Texas—based on the same kind of flawed interpretation of burn patterns. (Willis, however, was luckier; he was exonerated in 2004 after 17 years on death row.)

Craig Beyler, a nationally respected fire expert hired by the commission to study Willingham and Willis, concluded in a recent report that he saw no evidence of arson in either case.

Nearly 800 people are serving prison sentences in Texas for arson-related crimes. Quite a few are probably innocent. This year, the Observer has investigated some of the state’s older arson convictions in its series, “Burn Patterns,” and so far found three men who were likely wrongly convicted and remain in prison. (You can read all three stories here, here, and here.)

It’s probably still happening. In some areas of the state, poorly trained fire investigators are no doubt still using some of the old, disproved forensics to accuse and convict innocent people of arson.

Sadly, there’s no helping Willingham now. His case has been closed irrevocably. But the Forensic Science Commission’s work might have (and hopefully might yet) help many people. The commission’s report could serve as a kind of official list of flawed and outdated arson evidence that could be applied to past and future cases.

And now it’s all in doubt. That may be the greatest injustice yet.

More sad evidence this week that reforming the troubled Texas state school system — the 13 large institutions for the mentally disabled — will be a long, difficult job.

A former employee at the Lubbock State School was indicted on Tuesday on manslaughter charges. A direct care worker named Doneil Smith allegedly killed a 45 year old resident. Smith allegedly suffocated the resident to death.

The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal has more details:

The medical examiner’s office ruled Nicholson died of suffocation during a struggle.

The autopsy report cited information from investigative reports which stated that Nicholson was on a mattress with someone lying over his upper torso when he died.

Lilly Nicholson told the A-J in August that several state school employees caused his death while trying to dress him.

She said her son suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder and refused to dress while his clothes were being washed.

The Department of Aging and Disability Services (DADS), the state agency that oversees state schools, has fired Smith and five other employees at the Lubbock facility, according to the paper.

As you may know, state schools have endured well-documented problems in recent years. (You can read our story on the facilities here.)

The Legislature passed several state school reform bills last session, including a 12-percent funding increase for the chronically underfunded institutions. (You can read our coverage of the reforms here.)

I should note that lawmakers did change the name of these facilities. They’re not longer state schools. They’re “state supported living centers.”

But lawmakers ignore one major issue: They didn’t increase the salaries for state school workers, who are among the lowest paid state employees.

Caring for the mentally disabled is a demanding, difficult job, and only certainl individuals are cut out for it.

But the $8-an-hour starting salary is why the Lubbock State School — now called the Lubbock State Supported Living Center — wound up with someone like Doneil Smith caring for a vulnerable patient with mental retardation.

It’s worth noting that this incident happened in June, before the recently passed reforms took full effect.

But the incident shows it will take a lot more than a name change to fix these facilities, and without the pay increase, it’s not clear that conditions will improve.

Must-read column today by Michael Schnurman in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He details how and why national health care reform would benefit Texas.

For one, when it comes to health insurance, the free market isn’t all that free. In many states, there are too few insurance companies to spark true competition for customers.

But here’s the catch: Even in states with lots of competition (states like Texas), prices have still gone up. Schnurman writes:

Lots of competition means lots of choice and lots of benefits for consumers — at least that’s the theory.Except that in health insurance, the results have often been higher prices and more cherry-picking of the best customers.”We have lots of choices, but they aren’t affordable choices,” said Anne Dunkelberg, associate director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, an Austin research group that supports reform. “Having a lot of competitors isn’t sufficient in itself.”

Free market principles just don’t graft well on to certain policy areas — such as education. Same goes for health care. It’s proven nearly impossible to create a pure health insurance market. With health care, more competition doesn’t necessarily reduce prices.

Schnurman also piggybacks on the excellent research by CPPP that shows how much national health care reform would benefit Texas, especially if there’s a public option:

Unfortunately, a lot of people in Texas don’t get insurance from large employers or from employers at all. Just under 49 percent of Texans have employer-sponsored insurance, compared with an average of 56 percent for the nation (and 88.5 percent in Hawaii).It’s part of this group that stands to benefit from a public option. The government plan would be added to a health insurance exchange that includes private carriers and offers several tiers of coverage. The public option would be offered to individuals, as well as employees of small companies whose plans were too expensive or limited in coverage….

Like it or not, reform is coming, and Texas stands to be one of the big winners. For people looking to the health insurance exchange — and there will be a lot of them in Texas — the public option could make it even better.

Back in 2005 and 2006 several news stories about terrorists and suspected terrorists crossing the southern border circulated in the media and the blogosphere. I seldom see these kinds of stories now, which leads me to believe that it had more to do with the often-ugly immigration debate going on at the time in Washington D.C. which ended up tanking immigration reform.Most of the stories were anecdotal and had very little in the way of credible government sources. I’ve been going back and investigating some of those stories to see whether any credible links were ever made to terrorist organizations. One particular story that really caught my attention back in 2005 was an account that Border Patrol had discovered a  jacket on a dirt road outside of Hebbronville that had two unusual patches on it. One patch was a military looking patch with Arabic script. The other was a crude home made patch which showed an airplane that looked like it was flying into a tower. Overhead it said “Midnight Mission.”  Some equated this with 9-11. Another patch said DAIWA.  Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez has often cited the story about the patches in his congressional testimonies and in media interviews as proof that terrorists have crossed the southern border. Over the years, the right wing blogosphere has also circulated the account as proof of terrorists crossing the border into the United States.I called U.S. Customs and Border Protection to find out whether they were ever able to make any links between the patches and a terrorist group. I spoke with Agent Mark Qualia, a spokesperson for USCBP.  Here’s what Qualia wrote in an email:”As it was abandoned property, we cannot have a concrete sense of how it got there or how long it had been there. It is, however, highly probable that an illegal alien wore the coat and left it in that spot. Moreover, we see a lot of clothing that is procured at the “pulgas” just before crossing the border. Though we can’t speculate on the individual’s nationality or intent, we have not seen any threat or other concern arise from this incident, which is now nearly five years ago.We work diligently everyday with the intelligence community to better address and understand the threats we face at our borders, as recommended by the 9/11 Commission.”Not content with this general response, I asked Agent Qualia whether he could be more specific about the patches. What did the Arabic script mean? What country did the patch come from?Here is the second email response I received from Qualia:”Agents called a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) translator. During contact and with the translator via phone and facsimile transmission, the investigation concluded that the Arabic script patch read, “Defense Center”, “Ministry of Defense”, or “Defense Headquarters”.  The bottom of the patch read “Martyr”, “Way to Eternal Life” or “Way to Immortality”.The “Daiwa” patch is the name of a well-known corporate company, which sells Sport Fishing products with corporate offices in eight countries including Japan, the U.S., Australia, France, Germany, Taiwan, Thailand, and the UK. The patch that was located inside the jacket read “Midnight Mission”.  The logo has an airplane flying over a building and headed towards a tower.  A closer look appears to reveal that the plane is over an airport with terminal ramps and airplanes on taxiways. The appearance of the patch led the investigators to believe it is a homemade patch.At a later date is was determined that the jacket that the patches were portrayed on was manufactured in Mexico.No link was established to Al Qaeda.”Still not satisfied,  I decided to look further into the military patch with Arabic script. I reached out to a friend of a friend who speaks Arabic. What she found was fascinating and much more revealing than what I got from Homeland Security. Here is what she wrote in an email:”The literal translation is Defense Brigades/Martyrdom is the Path to Immortality.I did a google search for the Defense Brigades in Arabic and came across the Arabic Wikipedia page that says the DB is a branch of the Syrian Armed Forces that was established by former president Hafez al-Assad’s brother Rifa’t al-Assad. Rifa’t al-Assad had a falling out with the Syrian regime after he tried to lead a coup against Hafez’s government years ago. It seems that Rifat’s defense brigades were the troops that were at the forefront in the Hama massacre in Syria in 1982. It would be ironic if anyone were to claim that the Defense Brigades was connected to any type of Islamic movement since they engaged in one of the largest massacres against an Islamic movement!Also interesting is the parachute — implying that this is a paratrooper brigade. The lion is a common symbol in Syria since the president’s last name is Assad, meaning lion. “She went on to contact some friends in Syria who corroborated her findings. “I just talked to both of my friends and they echoed everything I said. Their main perception of the Brigades is that they were a very well-trained/well-paid combat force that was staunchly loyal to Rifa’t al-Assad in the 80s. They also added that the Brigades are no longer operative and they are also infamous for another massacre in 1980 called the Tadmour (Palmyra) Massacre when the Brigades killed thousands of political prisoners (mostly Muslim Brotherhood) at one of the largest prisons in Syria. My friend also added that if the Brigades were a threat to anyone, it was the Syrian people.My friend also emphasized that the popular conception of Rifa’t al-Assad is that he is very pro-peace with Israel and, to some extent, anti-Muslim.Just a note on the use of the term “martyrdom,” I wouldn’t want anyone to assume that by using the term “martyrdom” it implies suicide bombing or anything of the sort. In this way, it means that anyone who dies during war or for God, then he is a martyr.”So there you have it.  We have a military patch from a defunct air brigade in Syria that was anti-Islamist. A homemade patch picturing a plane over an airport runway and a patch with a popular Japanese fishing company on it. No known terrorist-link here but an interesting story nonetheless.

One of the more popular notions currently circulating among global warming skeptics is that the Earth has entered a cooling phase. The “theory” is based on a dishonest and faulty reading of temperature data from the last decade. This week, the AP does a very thorough job debunking the ‘global cooling’ nonsense.

The story is a fantastic example of how journalists can use an empirical analysis to fact-check the climate denialists.

WASHINGTON — Have you heard that the world is now cooling instead of warming? You may have seen some news reports on the Internet or heard about it from a provocative new book.

Only one problem: It’s not true, according to an analysis of the numbers done by several independent statisticians for The Associated Press.

The case that the Earth might be cooling partly stems from recent weather. Last year was cooler than previous years. It’s been a while since the super-hot years of 1998 and 2005. So is this a longer climate trend or just weather’s normal ups and downs?

In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.

“If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect,” said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.

[...]

Global warming skeptics base their claims on an unusually hot year in 1998. Since then, they say, temperatures have dropped — thus, a cooling trend. But it’s not that simple.

Since 1998, temperatures have dipped, soared, fallen again and are now rising once more. Records kept by the British meteorological office and satellite data used by climate skeptics still show 1998 as the hottest year. However, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA show 2005 has topped 1998. Published peer-reviewed scientific research generally cites temperatures measured by ground sensors, which are from NOAA, NASA and the British, more than the satellite data.

The recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA’s climate data center to re-examine its temperature data. It found no cooling trend.

“The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record,” said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt. “Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming.”

What I especially like about this approach is that the reporter avoids politicizing the analysis by submitting “blind” data to the statisticians. That way, the analysts have only raw data to work with and no one can accuse them of reaching conclusions based on desired outcomes.

This is in marked contrast to the climate denialist camp: Their whole point is to “debunk” global warming; they’ll twist and distort information until they can get the conclusion they want.