Free Republic

CorridorWatch, a Fayette County-based group that has been active in opposing the Trans-Texas Corridor plan, wants to go beyond the Sunset Advisory Commission’s recommended shakeup of state transportation leadership. The group, led by David and Linda Stall, recommends that TxDOT answer to an elected six-member board led by a chairman appointed by the governor. CorridorWatch makes it recommendation, along with various other reactions to the Sunset commission staff’s recent report on TxDOT, in written comments submitted as part of the sunset process. TxDOT, like all state agencies, “sunsets” after 12 years unless the Legislature acts to keep it alive. As...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry wants to build a big highway through the Lone Star State. No, make that a really big highway, as in a monstrously big highway. The exact route hasn't been determined. The mega-highway would run roughly from Laredo on the Rio Grande River through the Hill Country and the Piney Woods and then through Texarkana in that tiny portion of the state that borders Arkansas. Imagine for a moment if that thoroughfare would be pointed in the other direction - from the Valley, through the South Plains and then through the heart of the Panhandle, right past...

State Rep. Jim McReynolds has sent a letter to the Texas Department of Transportation saying he thinks TxDOT should drop the idea of tying the Trans-Texas Corridor in with plans for routing Interstate 69 through East Texas. McReynolds says tremendous negative outcry from his constituents and other East Texas residents has made it clear to him no one wants infrastructure that massive and disruptive to the quality of life to be built, taking big swaths out of the Pineywoods countryside. "Within the past several weeks, I have personally attended every TxDOT hearing held in my district regarding this proposed corridor,"...

The Texas Department of Transportation says it can't afford to build new roads without more funds, but a Panhandle lawmaker called the move an attempt to hold projects for ransom. TxDOT argues costs have skyrocketed and federal and state lawmakers have diverted millions to other priorities, Amarillo District Engineer Mark Tomlinson said. State legislators moved more than $1.5 billion from the 2008-09 state highway fund for other missions, he said. So TxDOT must cut $1.1 billion from its 2008-09 construction budget and focus on maintenance of the state's 79,000 miles of existing roadways, Tomlinson said. Next week, Tomlinson will list...

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson brought his message of beefing up the military and securing the nation's borders to the conservative Florida Panhandle on Friday as he worked to bolster his poll numbers. Thompson, who trails the four top Republican presidential candidates in Florida, told about 100 supporters that the average 20-year-old soldier in Iraq has a better understanding of national security than the average 20-year-veteran of Capitol Hill. And the U.S. should not pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan with "our tail between our legs. We will regret it," said Thompson, who held a private meeting earlier with about...

DALLAS -- Royal Dutch Shell and Dallas-based TXU Corporation agreed to jointly develop a wind-powered electricity generation project in the Texas High Plains on Friday. The proposed 3,000-megawatt project would be situated in Briscoe County, southeast of Amarillo. One megawatt of electricity is enough to light 1,000 homes. The deal between Shell Wind Energy and TXU subsidiary Luminant also commits both sides to work together on other renewable energy projects in Texas. Both companies said they'll also research whether compressed air can be stored and used to drive the wind-driven turbines at times of low winds or peak demand.

PENSACOLA BEACH -- Souvenir shops that line this sugary white Panhandle beach display Confederate flag beach towels, window decals and T-shirts. Hooters and other bars fly POW-MIA, Marine and Navy flags and cater to the sailors and Marines from the nearby base. Vacationing Southern families usually fill the hotels and condominiums in this slice of paradise long nicknamed "The Redneck Riviera." But every Memorial Day they mostly stay away as this Florida Panhandle town becomes more like trendy Miami Beach -- 700 miles and a world away. Starting in the mid-1980s, gay men from New Orleans and other nearby cities...

I just don’t get it. Many city governments have had a chance to do something about serious panhandling problems but have been reluctant because of the First Amendment. For example, one of the local “leaders” in my hometown once refused to support an anti-panhandling ordinance because of free speech. Sadly, the aforementioned politician had previously refused to support a local school teacher who used the word “niggardly” simply because it sounded like a word he didn’t like. In other words, he isn’t a defender of free speech. He just a) assumes that all panhandlers are black, and b) always sides...

Details are sketchy, but this is what I'm hearing on Lubbock, Texas, TV weather reports. (Ron Roberts on KAMC says it might have gone down the main drag of Childress).

My son is a firefighter in Pampa, Texas, a town 50 miles East of Amarillo. He called this afternoon saying that there were bad grass fires all around their area. Since that time I have not heard from him again, but am getting reports from different people in that area. They are evacuating 7 towns, two complete counties (Wheeler and Roberts), one county, Hutchinson, is completely "lost". Cars are backed up on the highways trying to get out of the area. Wind has been blowing in excess of 60MPH.

EASTPOINT - Hurricane Dennis proved a bedeviling storm that left some of the worst damage nearly 200 miles from where it came ashore. While much of the recovery effort focused near the Pensacola area where Dennis made landfall, L.C. Catnei sat on his damaged houseboat and waited for help. He returned from his daughter's home inland on Monday to find the boat resting on the side of U.S. 98, with a huge gash in its side. ``I don't have any more money so I'm just going to sit here and wait for help,'' said Catnei, 72, a retired commercial fisherman....

Preserving the buffalos Fate of Texas herd rests with donated bulls By BETSY BLANEY Associated Press CAPROCK CANYONS STATE PARK, Texas The rumble from stampeding bison used to shake the earth as thousands of the majestic animals thundered across these parts centuries ago. That sound has faded almost entirely now, and the fate of one of the last pure herds in North America begun by famed cattleman Charles Goodnight rests with a trio of bulls donated by media tycoon Ted Turner. The herd, once 250 strong, has dwindled to 53, and more than a century of inbreeding threatens it survival....

  Its official. Bush lost at least 12,677 votes in the Florida panhandle due to the early call for Gore by the networks in 2000. I can see why they tried this after seeing the margins Bush won by in both 2000 and 2004. To arrive at my number of 12,677 I used the following assumptions: - I subtracted Bush’s overall improvement statewide in 2004 (approx. 5.02%) to arrive at an expected margin of victory by county in 2000 based on 2004 margins (this is a worst case correction factor to filter out Bush’s overall improvement in the 2004...

Anyone still remember the mess all the news outlets made of reporting election results in 2000? Many of us still wonder if that wasn't a contrived deal to help Gore. Newscasters actually were calling the winner in states (like Florida) while citizens were still voting. The problem started with a company named Voter News Service. VNS was owned by the Associated Press and the television networks. It was a profit making organization, a business. The rabidly left AP ran a large part of VNS, so there's little surprise about how they reported things. Generally, through polls and exit polls, VNS...

AT 7 AM CDT...1200Z...THE CENTER OF TROPICAL STORM BONNIE WAS ESTIMATED NEAR LATITUDE 29.0 NORTH... LONGITUDE 86.1 WEST OR ABOUT 80 MILES SOUTHWEST OF APALACHICOLA FLORIDA. BONNIE HAS BEEN ACCELERATING THIS MORNING AND NOW IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTHEAST NEAR 22 MPH. A NORTHEASTWARD MOTION WITH AN INCREASE IN FORWARD SPEED IS EXPECTED OVER THE NEXT 24 HOURS. ON THE FORECAST TRACK...BONNIE IS EXPECTED TO MAKE LANDFALL ON THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE BETWEEN PANAMA CITY AND APALACHICOLA WITHIN THE NEXT FEW HOURS. REPORTS FROM AN AIR FORCE RESERVE HURRICANE HUNTER INDICATE THAT BONNIE HAS REGAINED A LITTLE STRENGTH. MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...

Rare artifacts shed new light on Spanish outpost in Panhandle By BILL KACZORPublished Sunday, July 11, 2004 Associated Press Writer SANTA ROSA ISLAND, Fla. A flood of rare artifacts and the rotted remains of wooden buildings offer surprising insights into life at a Spanish presidio, or military outpost, that vanished under the shifting sands of this barrier island 250 years ago. University of West Florida archaeologists and students, aided by public volunteers, last year recovered more than 40,000 artifacts, and they are digging up more this summer. What they've found shows Presidio Isla de Santa Rosa was more than a...

Strong storms bring death, destruction to Panhandle MORRIS NEWS SERVICE One fatality was attributed to the storms Monday night that battered the Texas Panhandle, bringing winds of more than 70 mph and hail the size of baseballs as residents scrambled to recover Tuesday. Bobbie Kidd, general manager at Greenbelt Lake near Clarendon, said Tuesday that an unidentified Amarillo man was killed when the wind flipped a boat onto him while he was trying to tie it up to shore. Official word on whether the man died of injuries from the boat or was drowned was not immediately available. The Monday...

Thursday, January 15, 2004 Millionaire Teel Bivins' replacement in the Texas Senate most likely will be another man capable of putting a lot of his own money into the contest. The Panhandle-to-Midland/Odessa district Bivins represented for 15 years, including stints chairing the Nominations, Education, and Finance committees, came vacant when he resigned Monday to become President Bush's nominee for United States ambassador to Sweden. The probable front-runner to be his replacement in Tuesday's special election is the former Amarillo mayor, Kel Seliger, 50, who left that office in 2001. Of the six other candidates, the three chief competitors, based on...

EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE — People in the western Florida Panhandle and southern Alabama may hear a loud boom and see a column of smoke Tuesday from another test of the “Mother of All Bombs,” Air Force officials said Friday. The second test of MOAB, officially the Massive Ordnance Air Blast but nicknamed otherwise, is planned between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. CST, if the weather cooperates Rain is in the forecast for early next week and that may postpone the test, probably until the next clear day, said Eglin spokesman Jake Swinson. MOAB, which weighs 21,000 pounds, including 18,000...

<p>U.S. cities and businesses have been coming up with a variety of ways to deal with homelessness – and advocates for the homeless apparently don't like any of them.</p> <p>Work for food, panhandler registration, homes at sea. ... Officials and business reps say these solutions help the homeless – and get them out of the public's way. But advocates for the homeless say these so-called "creative" solutions miss the point about homelessness: that it is an economic and political problem.</p>