Free Republic

DALLAS, Texas -- A Texas State Representative, Giovanni Capriglione (R-Southlake), shocked Tea Party activists in Fort Worth Monday night, November 10, when he declared he would be supporting the current Speaker of the Texas House, Joe Straus, instead of the Tea Party favorite son, State Representative Scott Turner (R-Rockwall). The announcement came during the NE Tarrant Tea Party final meeting of 2014 as a pre-84th Texas legislative session panel discussion on the upcoming race for the Speakership in the Texas House. Many conservatives and Tea Party leaders across Texas are rallying around Turner. However, in front of over 200 Tarrant...

This is liberalism at its finest. Get really angry with someone who holds views different from your own, and then berate that person with hyper-emotional drivel. In this case, the victim was Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who received sexually explicit questions from Dartmouth's student body regarding anal sex during a visit to the college. Perry is a social conservative. According to the Dartmouth, the student newspaper, Perry was there to discuss the midterms, border security, energy initiatives and foreign policy. There was a Q&A session–and that’s when things devolved. Both presidents of the College Democrats and Republicans condemned the actions of...

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) said in a video posted Monday that impeaching President Obama "would be a consideration" if he moves forward with executive action on immigration. "Impeachment is indicting in the House and that’s a possibility," Barton said on Newsmax TV. "But you still have to convict in the Senate and that takes a two-thirds vote. But impeachment would be a consideration, yes sir.” Republicans and Obama are clashing over the president's planned executive actions on immigration. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has in the past dismissed talk of impeachment as a Democratic "scam" fueled by Democrats to boost fundraising....

A student at Dartmouth College asked Texas Governor Rick Perry Sunday if he would accept anal sex in exchange for $102 million in campaign contributions. Senior Emily Sellers, a member of The Dartmouth, the official campus newspaper, posed the question to confront Perry’s stance on homosexuality. Another student, Timothy Messen, accused Perry of comparing homosexuality to alcoholism.

Kior, Inc., the Houston-area biofuels maker that hoped to tap new technology to produce clean energy, filed for bankruptcy Sunday. The company listed $58.3 million in assets along with $261.3 million debts in its filing in the federal bankruptcy court in Delaware, where the company is incorporated. The company was at one-time considered a leader in the development of what’s known as cellulosic fuel — gasoline and diesel that is made from inedible plant material like woodchips and grass clippings. Though other biofuels are made from plants — ethanol, for example, is made from corn or sugarcane — cellulosic fuels...

A conventional wisdom bubbled up among media people like myself about the tenor of Republican Dan Patrick’s message on immigration. We concluded that his hard-edged border security focus in his campaign for lieutenant governor was going to stampede Hispanic voters into the waiting arms of Democratic statewides. Wrong. Or at least partially wrong. Patrick trailed Leticia Van de Putte among Hispanic voters by only 52-46, according to NBC’s exit polling on the race. I said “only,” because the 40 percentage range among Hispanics was once a mark of distinction for statewide Republicans. When George W. Bush reached 40 percent among...

House Republicans will have their largest majority since the 1930s next year, but that doesn't mean Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) job will be easy.The House GOP leadership's struggles in keeping members in line over the past four years have been well documented. Some of the incoming freshmen will likely join the ranks of conservatives who frequently oppose leadership initiatives.Among the new freshmen, for instance, is one congressman-elect who has called Hillary Clinton the "anti-Christ," another who has suggested Muslims don't deserve First Amendment rights, and yet another who has declared himself open to the idea of the United States invading...

AUSTIN, Texas -- It has been an up-and-down week for Texas State Representative Ron Reynolds. On Tuesday, Reynolds, an attorney and Democrat representing Missouri Springs, coasted to an easy re-election, winning 66 percent of the vote against his Republican opponent. Wednesday, he was in a Montgomery County courtroom -- not to represent a client, but to face trial for 10 felony counts of "barratry," the illegal solicitation of clients by attorneys commonly referred to as "ambulance chasing." Finally, on Friday, he managed to avoid a felony conviction, but was found guilty of six misdemeanor counts for a lesser charge of...

I think I can speak for nearly all the pundits in the right side blogosphere when I say that we’re going to miss Wendy Davis. Few candidates have offered more fun coverage and easy peasy headlines than the pink sneaker wonder delivered during the 2014 races. When the end came, it came down like a hammer, and even with all of the rosy pictures being drawn by Texas Democrats about shifting demographics and a new majority, Davis took home a brutal, 20 point drubbing for her efforts. (Prompting Salon to proclaim that White Women had let down the entire state.)...

A US nurse who got infected with Ebola but has recovered got a special gift on Friday, November 7, when former President George W. Bush visited the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where the first case of the disease in the US was diagnosed. Bush gave Amber Vinson a kiss and a big hug during a visit to the hospital, where she works, to celebrate the end of the Ebola outbreak in Texas. Vinson, along with colleague Nina Pham, contracted the disease while treating index patient, Thomas Eric Duncan from Liberia.

Not that it mattered, of course. Greg Abbott absolutely routed his opponent in the general election on Tuesday night. But it is disconcerting that when a voter went to pull the lever for the governor-elect, his name was...nowhere to be found. Instead, former Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s name appeared, a guy who ran for a completely different office in Texas and lost in the primary: The company that supplies Bexar County with iVotronic ballot machines acknowledged Wednesday that a glitch caused an electronic ballot to display the wrong name for the Republican candidate in the race for Texas governor. A...

In a story titled THE AFTERLIFE, W. Bush recounts a recent day when the family feared their patriarch was about to pass away. "In November 2012, Dad checked into Houston Methodist hospital with a bad cough. When Laura and I went to visit a few days later, he was wearing a brace around his abdomen and obviously suffering serious pain. 'How you feeling, Dad?' I asked. He smiled. 'It's not the cough that carries you off; it's the coffin you go off in,' he quipped. In typical fashion, he lifted our spirits. His condition worsened in early December. The brutal,...

Ron Paul, House representative of the 14th district of Texas, believes that US foreign policy must be reformed to avoid conflicts around the world. The interview was conducted outside the Foreign Relations Committee. Press TV: What is your opinion on the idea of the US blocking Iran's oil exports and preventing its gasoline imports from reaching the country (based on H. Con. Res. 362 previously sought by US congressmen)? Paul: I think it is an outrage I think it is a blockade. It is the use of force to stop the inflow of petroleum products and people and goods,...

The local HEB (grocery store) in Bastrop is back in business after spending the better part of a week cleaning up after a fire. In that time it revealed how few resources there are in rural areas for people looking for healthy groceries... "I mean you're going to have to drive 20 miles to another HEB."

OK, let’s not mince words. It was abject slaughter in Texas. Republican Greg Abbott beat Democrat Wendy Davis by 21 points [59/38]. Then again, the pro-abortion Davis never really had a chance to win this election in the first place. Yet, from the darkened lair that is Salon.com, comes a horrid story of the “erasure” of votes cast by women of color in Texas, or something. Jenny Kutner, the editor who wrote about her plans to have an abortion, wrote this [emphasis mine]: I am well aware that Wendy Davis lost the Texas governor’s race by a wide margin. It’s salt in...

AUSTIN — The prosecutor handling the indictment against Rick Perry is pressing a judge not to dismiss the case, arguing that doing so would amount to making an exception for the governor. In a series of filings made public Friday evening, special prosecutor Michael McCrum argues the only way to deal with the allegations against Perry is to let the facts come out during a trial and ask a jury to decide the governor’s fate ... In seeking a dismissal of the case, Perry’s defense team has argued the indictment violates Perry’s right to free speech, defies the separation of...

The Ebola outbreak in Texas has ended. As of midnight Friday, it was 21 days since anyone got Ebola or was in contact with someone who got Ebola. “God willing, we are going to be Ebola-free Friday midnight,” said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, the elected official who oversaw the county’s response to its three-person outbreak, before the deadline passed.

t's no secret that Houston's office market is driven by the energy sector. But how much of a boost is oil and gas to Houston's commercial real estate market? It's significant, according to CBRE Group Inc. The commercial real estate brokerage firm analyzed 33 cities across the world and found that the average prime office rental growth is up by 25.2 percent in energy dependent cities, compared to 4.5 percent in non-energy dependent cities. This means that oil and gas cities can see as much as five times the growth in office rental market than other non-energy cities. There are...

Chevron Phillips Chemical is considering adding yet another expansion to its Baytown plant, joining a wave of other petrochemical companies scrambling to take advantage of cheap raw materials unleashed by the U.S. shale boom. The company, which is already building a $6 billion expansion at the same Cedar Bayou plant, this week said it’s studying how to increase the plant’s capacity to produce polyalphaolefins, synthetic lubricants used in high-performance motor oils. “There’s a pretty strong demand for that and fairly limited supply worldwide,” Mark Lashier, executive vice president of olefins and polyolefins, said in an interview with Fuel Fix. “It’s...

Will Hurd Tuesday night was an historic night for the Republican Party in a lot of ways. Mia Love became the first black Republican woman elected to Congress. Joni Ernst became the first woman elected to represent Iowa in U.S. Senate history. Elise Stefanik, at the age of 30, is the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, representing New York’s 21st congressional district. It appears that Carl DeMaio, who ran for Congress in California, will be the first openly gay Republican ever elected to Congress. And, Tim Scott became the first black Senator elected in the South since Reconstruction. But,...