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Editorial
- Texas and Gommorah
- As this issue of the Observer went to press, Jehovah had not yet seen fit to rain fire and devastation on the wicked citizenry of Houston. Not since Hurricane Ike, anyway. But if you ask Eric Story, Republican candidate for Congress from Houston’s 29th District, the Good Lord was barely getting …
READ MORE » - Burning Justice
- 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 …
READ MORE » - Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
- Rick Perry has spent much of 2009 on a one-man mission to ensure that Texas retains its reputation, in the post-Dubya era, for swaggering backwardness and proudly willful ignorance. With his battle against unemployment benefits, his George Wallace impersonation at the tea parties and his batty crusade against health-care reform as …
READ MORE » - Real Women of Texas
- Like most folks who weren’t born in Texas—and took their time getting here—I’ve spent more of my life imbibing stereotypes and myths than absorbing actual information about this big, confounding state. Take Texas women. As a lifelong political nerd, my knowledge of approximately one-half of the Texas population relied mostly on …
READ MORE » - Flipping the Health-Care Script
- I set out early and blurry on the final Saturday in August, bound for Waco to witness one of the last town-hall free-for-alls in this summer of health-care hysteria. What could be more fun to watch and tape-record and scribble about? Especially since the local Democratic congressman, Chet Edwards, had tried …
READ MORE » - Gay Panic
- Back in the good old wonderful days, Texas politicians knew how to insult each other with style. (Sam Houston on legislator Thomas Jefferson Green: “He has all the characteristics of a dog except loyalty.”) But the ultimate insult in today’s Texas politics—the call-out to end all call-outs—is a mere three-letter affair …
READ MORE » - Mutual Assured Destruction
- Last summer, when she was still being whispered about as John McCain’s possible running mate, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison took the podium at the National Rifle Association’s Celebration of American Values conference in Louisville, Ky., and told the crowd of aggrieved white males exactly what they’d come to hear. “Sometimes I …
READ MORE » - Writing into the Sunset
- There I was, sweating midnight puddles in a nylon tent at the Enchanted Rock campground, convincing myself that if I survived the swelter and the pre-sunrise walk to the summit I’d come for, I would drive into Fredericksburg and see if Berkman Books was open on the Fourth of July. If …
READ MORE » - The Lost Lege of 2009
- Terror for Life
- Bob Moser on anti-abortion terrorism and its impact on Texas.
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Texas and Gommorah
As this issue of the Observer went to press, Jehovah had not yet seen fit to rain fire and devastation on the wicked citizenry of Houston. Not since Hurricane Ike, anyway. But if you ask Eric Story, Republican candidate for Congress from Houston’s 29th District, the Good Lord was barely getting …
READ MORE »
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