The Texas Legislature’s once-every-decadequest for new political maps will get a twist in 2021: The Texas House will have either a speaker whose trustworthiness is suspect or a brand-new speaker who’ll be riding in the wake of a scandal.
Item: Last week Republicans in the North Carolina House used the occasion of 9/11 to call a surprise vote, passing a budget bill with a supermajority to override the Democratic governor’s veto. They were able to do this because most Democrats were absent, some of them attending commemorative…
There has been a lot of talk lately about the electoral college. If you read social media, you will see many opinions on why it should or should not continue to choose the American president. Those who want to retain the electoral college tend to focus on the numbers and how several cities h…
Item: Last week Republicans in the North Carolina House used the occasion of 9/11 to call a surprise vote, passing a budget bill with a supermajority to override the Democratic governor’s veto. They were able to do this because most Democrats were absent, some of them attending commemorative…
There has been a lot of talk lately about the electoral college. If you read social media, you will see many opinions on why it should or should not continue to choose the American president. Those who want to retain the electoral college tend to focus on the numbers and how several cities h…
HONG KONG — Physically diminutive, intellectually acerbic and with an eye for the ironic, Margaret Ng — lawyer, writer and former legislator — is, at 71, a member of the generation for which this city’s youthful protesters have scant patience. They say the elders have been too patient about …
The left has the luxury of having lost the argument on crime for the past few decades and, as a consequence, the electorate has no recollection of the living nightmare produced by Great Liberal Ideas About Crime.
Though he’ll get little credit and even less sympathy, there is a case to be made that John Bolton deserves the nation’s thanks for helping save us from at least three Trumpian near-disasters. For a man who held the office of national security adviser for just 17 months, this is no mean feat.
God is all that the Republicans have left.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — His body dependent on opioids, he writhes, trembles and cries. He is exhausted but cannot sleep. He vomits, barely eats and has lost weight.
These are the rules of the militant open borders media:
Long before anyone knew who Drew Carey was, there was a fella named Bob who hosted a little game show called, “The Price Is Right.”
You did remember 9-11 Prayer Service yesterday didn’t you? We had a most effective program in downtown Marshall at Telegraph Park ... a special appreciation to the employers that allowed their employees observe this special day in a special way.
Old stories can be windows into our lives and into our struggles right now. There are two kinds of people in the world — those who build and those who dismantle; those who construct and those who destroy.
The masked men who recently tossed firebombs at Jimmy Lai’s home targeted one of this city’s foremost democracy advocates. Lai, a 71-year-old media billionaire, calls this summer’s ongoing protest “a martyrdom movement” and “a last-straw movement.” It has an intensity and dynamic that bewild…
Arrests made by the Marshall Police Department
The Republican Party of Texas appears to be molting. Last week, Representative Bill Flores became the 10th Texas Republican in the House to announce his retirement since the 2016 election, and the fifth this year. Others are expected this year.
Sam Gyimah was one of the purged. He’d been warned that if he supported a bill to prevent a no-deal Brexit, his political career in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party would be dead. But like 20 other terminated Tories, he put country before career. “No deal would be catastroph…
Reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency don’t usually make for riveting reading, so you may have missed last Friday’s latest, soporifically headlined “Verification and monitoring in the Islamic Republic of Iran in light of United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 (2015).”
“We know that words alone are inadequate. Words must be met with action.” — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, after a gunman in West Texas shot 32 people, killing seven of them.
Canton’s First Monday Trade Days is one of the largest flea markets in the world.
If the United States gets embroiled in a war with China, it may begin with the lights going out here in Taipei.
Paul Tough’s important new book on the broken promises of higher education begins with a chapter that he succeeds in making as suspenseful as the prologue of any serial-killer novel and as heart-rending as the climax of an epic romance. It describes a high school senior who is waiting to hea…
There are two important institutions on the face of the earth — the family and the church. One is the family of man; the other is the family of God. One originated in the Garden of Eden as a result of God’s special creation and blessing.
Tax scams are the tribute policy vice pays to policy virtue.
The state’s decision to kill straight-ticket voting could cut turnout in down-ballot races in the 2020 elections — even if more voters show up to the polls.
The Texas School Safety Update, a report highlighting progress made to keep students and teachers safe at school, was released by Gov. Greg Abbott on Aug. 27.
I can still remember the day in 1999 when two students entered Columbine High School and killed 12 fellow students and one teacher. I was an undergraduate student then and I remember spending the entire day watching the news in complete shock. This was the first of what we now call “mass sho…
Nestled on the Front Range of the Rockies, the city of Crystal was a largely upper-middle-class paradise, chock full of health-conscious and socially conscious — meaning, of course, impeccably progressive — Coloradans. Then in slithered a serpent in the form of a proposal for a new school, t…
World War II began 80 years ago this Sunday after Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a “nonaggression” pact that was, in fact, a mutual aggression pact. Adolf Hitler invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Russia’s invasion of Poland, no less murderous, followed two weeks later.
It is impossible to exaggerate what a dangerous cliff the U.S. and China are perched on today.
Nobody’s going to believe Michael Quinn Sullivan or Dennis Bonnen or Dustin Burrows until they hear the recording of what was supposed to be a private meeting in June. But as long as Sullivan’s drip-drip-drip strategy is hurting his targets, he has little incentive to give everyone a listen.
HONG KONG — Across the street that was about to become a battlefield, forces massed on each side tensely adjusted their gas masks, nervously fiddled with their weapons.
Dear fellow patriots: It’s time to stop making nice with those who are waging war on ICE.
The first coins minted by the U.S. Government were struck in 1783. The use of coins as a means of payment dates to the 5th or 6th Century BCE.
An invitation to respond to this column appears most times in some fashion or other. I’ve heard from some of you from time-to-time about things that you think.
Let us now praise an insufficiently famous man, Nevada’s Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, who in May gave his party’s presidential aspirants a much-needed example of prudence. With the national media mesmerized by those aspirants’ festival of pandering, scant attention was given to Sisolak’s g…
DO IT NOW ... before Sept. 5 (better to do it today, because there is a lot going on and we may forget), apply your fall pre-emergent granules to control annual weeds — use Dimension, Halts or Balan.
For all of the Republican talk about which GOP legislators are true enough to the conservative flag to deserve reelection next year, the real 2020 elections battle will come after the party primaries are over — in a general election where voters decide which party controls the Texas House.
As a government official in World War II, Hamilton Warren was outraged to learn that a black colleague made half as much as his white peers. So, after the war, the wealthy Harvard graduate and his wife Barbara pitched up a tent in a remote corner of northern Arizona. Working together with th…
Even before The New York Times launched its “All Slavery, All the Time” project, no one could accuse that paper of skimping on its race coverage, particularly stories about black males killed by white(ish) police officers.
AUSTIN — Gov. Greg Abbott on Aug. 22 hosted the first meeting of the Texas Safety Commission, pulling together a group of lawmakers, educators, advocates, community leaders and public safety experts.
WASHINGTON — In a trade war, as in a real one, people are wounded by friendly fire from their side. Consider some casualties in Donald Trump’s “easy to win” — his promise — trade war. Begin with the company whose green machines bear the name of the blacksmith who, in the 1830s in Grand Detou…
Last week’s ugly mess involving the abortive visit to Israel of two Democratic congresswomen was useful for only one reason: It exposed how much the Palestinian-Israeli peace process has become a pathetic festival of magical thinking, performance art, reality denial, political fund-raising a…
Gov. Greg Abbott’s Thursday morning endorsement of state Rep. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock is a signal that the Republican establishment in Texas is trying to close ranks in advance of the 2020 elections.
VIENNA, W.Va. — You might think that since President Trump opposes abortion, he’d want to help young women get birth control to avoid unwanted pregnancy.
I learned last week from a Silicon Valley whistleblower that my namesake news and opinion website is on a Google blacklist.
During my 20-plus years of working in the radio business, I met and interviewed many celebrities. Virtually all of them were promoting something (a new movie, record, book, or something else they were trying to sell), which is why they were spending time with me.
WASHINGTON — Because of the investigation led by three University of South Florida researchers, and because of exemplary journalism by the Tampa Bay Times, we now have an intensely discomforting but welcome enrichment of American literature. It requires artistry to write beautifully about ch…
Now I know, you all remember “Robin Hood” here in Texas where the “rich tax” districts had to support the poorer in school funding. That flawed system was a re-distribution of wealth and was mandated across the state. Did it improve educational results? I dare say it did not. We need to trus…
Snyder is between Lubbock and Sweetwater, in West Texas.
AUSTIN — Texas now boasts its own Domestic Terrorism Task Force, established by order of the governor in the wake of the deadly Aug. 3 shooting in El Paso.