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- The Mayor & The Mogul
- by Dave Mann
- On Dec. 4, the day that three-term Houston mayor Bill White jumped into the race for governor, many Texas Democrats started dreaming big. Their perfect scenario goes like this: Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison slug it out in an expensive Republican primary. Perry wins, but limps into the …
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- Features
- Commentary »
- Have You Ever Seen SMU from a DC-9 at Night?
- by Ruth Pennebaker
- If you were shocked when George W. Bush chose Southern Methodist University in Dallas for his presidential center, you must have been nearly comatose after his two long terms in office. After all, most rumors reported the Bushes would be settling in Dallas, which they preferred to Austin. Laura Bush is …
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- Features »
- Conversion Story
- by Saul Elbein
- Abby Johnson was the 29-year-old executive director of Planned Parenthood in Bryan when she resigned in October. A month later, she was on Mike Huckabee’s FOX News show explaining why she had joined the Coalition for Life, a Bryan pro-life group founded to shut down Planned Parenthood.
- Features »
- Lessons Unlearned
- by Heather Green Wooten
- As the nation obsesses over whether swine flu will eventually mutate into an unstoppable pandemic, a germ from the past has been making an unlikely comeback in the Lone Star State—pertussis, or whooping cough. The disease is highly contagious, usually infects children and can be deadly for infants. Oddly enough, there’s …
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- Departments
- EDITORIAL »
- Blessed Intervention
- by Texas Observer Staff
- John Bolton once famously declared that if the top 10 floors of the United Nations building in New York disappeared, the world wouldn’t know the difference.
We’re not big on Bolton, but if the headquarters of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality disappeared tomorrow, it’s debatable whether the state of …
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- POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE »
- Katz Being Katz
- Marc Katz revels in doing things a little differently. He’s best known for owning a New York-style deli in downtown Austin. Though he’s never held an elected position, he decided this fall to run for lieutenant governor of Texas, perhaps the state’s most powerful office. He began his campaign by mockingly …
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- JIM HIGHTOWER »
- Let’s Chuck the Bottle
- I know we’re a nation of inveterate consumers, but who would buy pollution in a bottle?
Millions of Americans do, to the tune of $11 billion worth a year. That’s the size of the bottled water industry in our country, dominated by such giants as Nestle and Coca Cola. …
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- Books & the Culture
- CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK »
- Lone Star Sundance
- by Josh Rosenblatt
- This past December, the new director of the Sundance Film Festival, John Cooper, told The New York Times that the watchword for this year’s event was …
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- CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK »
- Spoon Fed
- by Josh Rosenblatt
- When the Austin indie-rock band Spoon released their first LP, Telephono, in 1996, they were acolytes of the Pixies’ raucous aesthetic; every one of their songs …
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- DATELINE »
- Close to Homeless
- by Michael Hoinski
- No food or water. No money. No cell phone. Just proof of I.D., the clothes on our backs, and a backpack stuffed with a sleeping bag. That’s what 14 of us are allowed on our Street Retreat, a weekend immersion into the homeless population of Austin organized by the homeless-advocacy nonprofit …
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