http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/special/07/legislature/4535418.html
Perry’s vaccination order still stoking fires
AUSTIN — Blowback continued at the Capitol on Wednesday over Gov. Rick Perry’s order mandating
that schoolgirls be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted disease linked to cervical cancer.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/special/07/legislature/4528909.html
Critics rip Perry’s vaccine mandate
Governor rejects opponents’ calls to reverse order
AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry stood firm Monday against a political firestorm generated by his
order that sixth-grade girls be inoculated against a sexually transmitted virus linked to cervical cancer.
Social conservatives from Texas to Washington called on Perry to reverse his order making
Texas the first state to require the vaccine, saying the mandate makes sex seem permissible
and that parents should be the ones to decide whether to immunize their daughters.
And several Texas lawmakers expressed outrage at Perry for circumventing the legislative process.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/us/26texas.html
The vaccine, Gardasil, is manufactured by Merck, which was represented in Austin by the
lobbyist Mike Toomey, who was chief of staff for Mr. Perry from 2002 to 2004.
Gay rumors complicate Rick Perry’s presidential prospects
http://rt.com/usa/news/gay-rick-perry-campaign/
Naked City The Real Sins of Gov. Perry
http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2004-02-27/198958/
On Tuesday morning, a small group of protesters (almost outnumbered by reporters and photographers)
gathered at the Governor’s Mansion for what was disingenuously billed as a “support rally” for Gov. Rick Perry,
under the theme, “It’s OK to Be Gay.” As any Austinite with access to e-mail or a cell phone knows by now,
for a couple of months rumors concerning the governor’s personal life have been flying furiously around the Capitol,
the capital city, the state, and indeed most of the Western Hemisphere.
The variations are multiple and quite inventive – we won’t recount them here –
but at their core is the tale that the governor’s marriage is in trouble, that his
wife Anita has/will/may decide to divorce him, and that the issue is Rick’s alleged infidelity,
with one or another member of his administration of undetermined gender.
(Rumors of this sort, about multitudinous politicians, circulate all the time,
but the current Perry rumors are indeed extraordinary in their baroque detail and remarkable persistence.)