Shopping for a new athletic conference? Make sure the political alignment matches up with the school alignment.
TribBlog: Political Football [Updated]
TribBlog: Campaigns Sound Off Over ‘Fight Club’ [Updated]
The day after the Texas Tribune and the Houston Chronicle collaborated to expose a fight club — this one involving young girls at a Houston-area residential treatment center for foster kids — gubernatorial hopeful Bill White’s campaign sounded off on it, blaming Gov. Rick Perry for not being aware of the abuse.
The Brief: June 7, 2010
Forecasters pegging a looming state budget shortfall at $18 billion don’t have Gov. Rick Perry particularly worried.
A New Pollution Battlefront
The Environmental Protection Agency has issued a new rule on sulfur dioxide emissions that will impact coal plants in Texas. As KUT’s Erika Aguilar reports, it comes as tensions between the EPA and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality continue are boiling over.
Navigating “Navigable”
Congress is known for having arcane battles, but the biggest fight these days in water law is over a single word in a 1970s-era measure designed to reduce pollution in America’s waterways. Texas environmentalists and ranchers are anxiously awaiting the outcome.
Going the Distance
Increasing numbers of college students are attending classes, and even completing some degree programs, online — an innovation that could be welcome in an era of rising enrollments and shrinking budgets. But virtual higher ed has its critics, who say the distance learning model will never match what one lawmaker terms the “interpersonal Aristotle style” of education.
Again?
The beginning of a real race for speaker of the House looks the same as a dud. The proper mix includes one or more popular people who want the job, a high level of dissatisfaction with the person currently in the post, and a level of frustration in the rank and file that is sufficient to overcome every member’s natural reluctance to get involved in a political knife fight.
T-Squared: About the Tribune-Chronicle Partnership…
“On some wide-ranging stories, two news organizations are certainly better than one in pursing the truth,” Houston Chronicle editor Jeff Cohen says. We couldn’t agree more.
Forced to Fight
Workers at a center for distressed children in Manvel provoked seven developmentally disabled girls into a fight of biting and bruising, while they laughed, cheered and promised the winners after-school snacks. The fight was one of more than 250 incidents of abuse and mistreatment in residential treatment centers over the last two years, based on a Houston Chronicle/Texas Tribune review of Department of Family and Protective Services records.



