Free Republic

Rep. Van Taylor (R-TX) suspended his campaign on Wednesday upon admitting he had an affair with “ISIS bride” Tania Joya, which Breitbart News reported earlier in the week. “About a year ago, I made a horrible mistake that has caused deep hurt and pain among those I love most in this world. I had an affair, it was wrong, and it was the greatest failure of my life,” he said in a public statement.

<p>Voting irregularities - including potentially thousands of votes cast by non-citizens and the dead - were reported during the first phase of the Texas Secretary of State’s forensic audit of the 2020 general election, but critics deemed it more of a risk-limiting audit at this point.</p>

AUSTIN - Under existing Texas laws, the Secretary of State has the authority to conduct a full and comprehensive forensic audit of any election and has already begun the process in Texas’ two largest Democrat counties and two largest Republican counties—Dallas, Harris, Tarrant, and Collin—for the 2020 election. We anticipate the Legislature will provide funds for this purpose.

A judge in Texas earlier this year effectively denied a U.S. citizen her constitutionally protected due process rights, choosing instead to order her to appear before an Islamic tribunal where her testimony is considered inferior. And when her lawyers sounded the alarm — the judge doubled down. What are the details? In March, Collin County District Judge Andrea Thompson ordered a Muslim woman seeking a divorce from her husband to undergo arbitration not through regular channels but through an Islamic court, also known as a Fiqh Panel — a move that the woman’s lawyers argue is an obvious and unconscionable...

TEXAS COUNTY DROPS FROM 4600+ ACTIVE COVID CASES TO UNDER 100 AFTER AUDIT Doubting the accuracy of State of Texas Covid-19 numbers, Collin Co., Texas, dropped its active case numbers from over 4600 to under 100 overnight after an audit. Earlier this month, Collin Co.’s ‘Covid-19 Dashboard’ claimed over 4600 active cases in the county based on data provided by the Texas Dept. of State Health Services, prompting county officials to question the accuracy of the data because, presumably, the county’s hospitals weren’t overloaded. The DSHS data reported over 4600 active cases in Collin Co. on Aug. 25 Compare that...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton turned himself in Monday morning at the Collin County Jail in McKinney to be booked on three felony charges. Paxton posted a total of $35,000 bond on two counts of securities fraud and one count of failing to register as an investment adviser. Sources said a grand jury in Collin County handed up the indictments Tuesday, which were immediately sealed. The charges stem from an investigation carried out by the Texas Rangers. The first two are first-degree felonies punishable by up to 99 years in prison on conviction. The last is a third-degree felony that...

A special prosecutor said Wednesday that he’ll ask a Collin County grand jury to indict Texas Attorney Ken Paxton on first-degree felony charges of violating state securities law. The prosecutor, Houston defense attorney Kent Schaffer, says a Texas Rangers investigation of Paxton revealed that the attorney general broke laws beyond what he admitted to last year, when he was fined $1,000 by the State Securities Board. “That’s what we intend to present to the grand jury,” said Schaffer of a first-degree felony case. “We have a sufficient amount of evidence. Whether it leads to a criminal indictment or not is...

Melissa mayor mailing resolutions to fellow mayors to stop state from using gas tax funds for non-road projects BY DANNY GALLAGHER, McKinney Courier-Gazette Melissa Mayor David Dorman said he sits in his office everyday and watches as cars zoom down State Highway 121, a road that will soon start collecting tolls from drivers who use it to get to Dallas, McKinney, Frisco or the Dallas North Tollway and back again. Dorman said before that happens, he wants to know the roads his citizens and drivers are paying the state to use will be maintained and built with those funds. “I...

Members of the Collin County Commissioners Court are entering unknown waters in the area of transportation. They need to make sure they don't get in over their heads. At issue is their recent vote to explore formation of the county's own tollway agency, which could compete with the North Texas Tollway Authority for future road projects. Exploration, fine. Given the scarcity of road-building dollars, exploring alternative ways of paying for highways and seeking fair treatment for Collin County makes sense. As County Judge Keith Self puts it, "We need to educate ourselves." As Commissioner Joe Jaynes puts it, "We owe...

South Texas is not only going to get its first interstate - it is also going to get a second and a third. State transportation officials knew one of three southern highways - U.S. Highway 281 in Hidalgo County, U.S. Highway 77 in Cameron County or U.S. Highway 59 in Webb County - would eventually become part of an interstate stretching from the Texas-Mexico border to Texarkana, in the northeast part of the state. Only Webb County is currently served by an interstate. The state's Trans-Texas Corridor plan calls for an Interstate 69 extension linking South Texas to points north,...

Texas needs the Trans-Texas Corridor because of its surging population, a representative for Gov. Rick Perry said Tuesday while speaking in Cleburne. Plans are to build the multi-lane highway and rail system parallel to Interstate 35, north-south through the center of the state. Kris Heckmann, deputy director of Perry’s Legislative Division spoke at the Cleburne Civic Center at the invitation of the Johnson County Republican Women for their monthly meeting. Every decade since World War II, Texas’ population has increased by at least 20 percent, Heckmann said. In 1990, the state’s population was 16.5 million, and today the population is...

Ric Williamson and his fellow transportation commissioners will find themselves in a tight corner today as they meet in Austin to decide who will build the State Highway 121 toll road. On one level, the commission is simply fulfilling its duty as the Texas Department of Transportation's governing board by deciding whether to award a multibillion-dollar contract to Spanish construction firm Cintra or give it to the North Texas Tollway Authority. But a whole lot more is going on at another level. The Highway 121 decision also pits Mr. Williamson's desire to support Gov. Rick Perry's ambitious highway-building agenda against...

It's not the least bit hard to describe the choice that Texas Transportation Commission members will face Thursday at their meeting in Austin: (1) Agree with the overwhelming preference of this region's elected officials and allow the North Texas Tollway Authority to build the Texas 121 toll road in Denton and Collin counties, or (2) award the lucrative project to the apparent favorite among state toll road devotees, the Spanish company Cintra.From here, it's an easy decision: Pick NTTA.But there is reason to worry that in the boiling pot of Austin politics, the commission may see things differently. Because of...

In the political world, rapid change only occurs when the public focuses attention on a specific issue. We have that situation right now in Austin. Public and legislative attention is focused on the Texas Department of Transportation and a proposed moratorium on the Comprehensive Development Agreement process, including the recently announced CDA to construct State Highway 121 in Collin County. This public and legislative attention may offer an opportunity for Texas to reaffirm our commitment to focus government spending on core functions – in this case, transportation. There are many subplots swirling in this complex CDA moratorium issue – reining...

Anger. Confusion. Concern. These were just some feelings that the majority of people in the packed Collin County Central Jury Room expressed in the three-hour-long public hearing held Tuesday night about the technically preferred alignment of the Outer Loop. About 16 people officially spoke during the public comment period of the meeting, where the court voted 4-1 to approve the technically preferred alignment. Commissioner Joe Jaynes made the motion to approve the alignment, Commissioner Phyllis Cole seconded the motion, and Commissioners Jack Hatchell and Jerry Hoagland voted to approve the alignment. County Judge Ron Harris voted against the motion. He...

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).

Regional planners are considering three Collin County routes as options for the state's proposed Trans-Texas Corridor, which would link Mexico to the Oklahoma border. The President George Bush Turnpike, Dallas North Tollway and the proposed Collin County Outer Loop are included on a Trans-Texas Corridor study conducted by the North Central Texas Council of Governments. The agency manages the Regional Transportation Council, which allocates federal transportation funds. The agency developed maps for potential auto, freight and rail traffic. The state will narrow study options for the corridor's future in the next few weeks. No decisions on narrowing potential paths for...