Free Republic

Gubernatorial candidate and professional wiseacre Kinky Friedman was accused Wednesday of making another racially offensive remark _ this time in a year-old interview in which he said sexual predators should be thrown in prison and forced to "listen to a Negro talking to himself." The independent candidate already was under fire for referring to Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Texas "crackheads and thugs." ... The Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Houston Chronicle have reported on an interview with Friedman that aired on CNBC last year in which the country singer and comedian was asked what to do with sexual predators. "Throw...

AUSTIN (AP) - Weeks after demanding the information, state officials have received the names of registered Louisiana sex offenders who sought federal disaster assistance in Texas after Hurricane Katrina. Texas has been seeking the names so it can give them to law enforcement agencies around the state. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security provided the computerized list Monday to the Texas Department of Public Safety. Using its own resources, the state determined there were at least 140 of the evacuee sex offenders in Texas, but officials expect there are more. It will take several days to run the names provided...

Winfred Compton no longer hears gunshots ringing through his neighborhood. He wonders, he said, why it took a natural disaster - and unspeakable tragedy he witnessed and experienced - to help him escape the crime-riddled New Orleans' Sixth Ward to find hope, peace and a future in Lubbock. "I feel safe. There's people out there that really do care," said Compton, a 59-year-old disabled veteran. "I just wanted to thank the people of Lubbock for giving me this." Compton cannot remember the date he arrived in Lubbock, only that it was after he spent too many days in the New...

Foxy licked Tanya Richard's nose, then snuggled close as the tearful woman held and hugged her dog tightly. At long last, Foxy the feisty Pomeranian had found her family. "She'll be happy now," Clyde Scott III said, talking as much about Richard as about Foxy, who was reunited Wednesday with the New Orleans couple who has resettled in Lubbock. Before the emotional reunion at Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport, Richard and Scott last saw Foxy on Sept. 4 when they were evacuated from flooded New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. "They just told us to grab our stuff...

In the weeks that followed Hurricane Katrina, IT professionals and volunteers scrambled to assemble technology to reunite evacuees with their loved ones. But while technology eventually prevailed, many reunions were delayed as IT and bureaucracy clashed in the face of the unprecedented disaster. On arrival at Houston's Astrodome shortly after the hurricane, approximately 25,000 evacuees filled out a form with their personal information and gave it to the American Red Cross. Volunteers then entered the data into a pilot database program called the Coordinated Assistance Network (CAN), run by a group of nonprofit organizations, including the American Red Cross and...

Travis and Austin officers help New Orleans jailer make Austin home ~ Marcel Weathers stood on the runway at Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans, his eyes locked on a sign that listed three possible destinations for thousands of weary hurricane evacuees. The 38-year-old father of two, exhausted from days without sleep and separated from his family, had only a few minutes to make a decision. Houston? San Antonio? Austin? Five days earlier, on Aug. 29, Hurricane Katrina had blasted through his hometown in St. Bernard Parish outside New Orleans, killing dozens of people and obliterating homes, businesses and...

HOUSTON COUPLE, touched by traumatic story of evacuation, provide house for women and child HOUSTON (AP) - When the TV is off and the only sounds in the neat, three-bedroom house come from the hum of the air conditioner and the gurgle of an aquarium, 89-year-old Nita LaGarde sometimes has to fight back tears as she falls asleep in her white wooden bed with clean linens. "This is nice," she says. The tears are not so much for what she lost, but for what she has found - a new life and new, loving friends in Houston, a city she...

Just when the flood of Vietnamese evacuees from Katrina started to subside, a wave of Vietnamese Rita victims showed up at a popular Asian mall in southwest Houston this week. "We had 200 people outside our door (Tuesday) morning," said Tram Nguyen, with Boat People S.O.S., an organization that, through its office in the Hong Kong City Mall on Bellaire, has led the effort to help Vietnamese evacuees. Nguyen estimates there are more than 500 Vietnamese evacuees from Rita in Houston. Nearly 5,000 Vietnamese live in Port Arthur and Beaumont, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. As with the Vietnamese...

DALLAS -- Louis Oubre's belongings languish in the sludge of New Orleans East. Oubre escaped his hometown with his 2005 Mazda Tribute, a little cash, three pairs of shorts, his size-14 sneakers, a McDonogh 35 High School shirt, one pair of underwear and one pair of socks. Oubre thought he would be back in a day or two but now might never return. He's starting over in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, with his fiance and her two children. Oubre's biggest regret is not lost possessions, not even the memorabilia from his days as an Oklahoma football All-American. His...

GRAND PRAIRIE (AP) - After fleeing Hurricane Katrina and learning their Louisiana home was stewing in foul water, Mike and Sherry Chimento finally found refuge in this Dallas suburb. Shortly after their arrival, they were hit with a much more painful blow: their 10-year-old son, Drew, was diagnosed with leukemia. "Now I don't care about my house," said Sherry Chimento, 50, as her son snuggled up to her on a couch in the house they're renting. "He's the man of the hour. " Before the hurricane hit, the Chimentos left the home they'd lived in for 27 years in Chalmette,...

Displaced high school seniors may opt out of TAKS. Byron Thomas stepped off the school bus at the Austin Convention Center Monday with a ho-hum attitude about his day at Lanier High School. After all, the 18-year-old resident of New Orleans' Third Ward never planned to spend his senior year in Austin. But his eyes lit up when told he may be able to receive a Louisiana high school diploma. "I was born in New Orleans — I'd rather graduate from one of them schools," he said. "I want to follow in my sister's footsteps and go to (the University...

HOUSTON -- First lady Laura Bush served smothered chicken to Hurricane Katrina refugees Monday at the city's convention center shelter, still home to about 300 survivors uprooted by the storm. Bush also met with religious leaders and volunteers during a three-hour visit to Houston. "This type of relief never could have happened without all of us," Bush said as she sat in a semicircle of Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders at the George R. Brown Convention Center. "It will be a long road for us. We have to stay with them every step as they rebuild their lives and it...

AUSTIN (AP) - Katherine Reedholm and her husband booked a seven-day Caribbean cruise out of Galveston as a family Christmas gift for the couple's four children. Now, she says, Carnival Cruise Lines has canceled the trip to shift around ships to accommodate a $192 million Hurricane Katrina relief contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and offered the Reedholms a refund or the opportunity to book another cruise at a higher rate. Reedholm says she understands the need to provide housing to refugees and emergency workers, who are living on Carnival ships off the New Orleans coast. But she says...

David Phillips waved goodbye to volunteers as he pulled away from the shelter at the Reese Technology Center on Wednesday morning. Piled in the back of a city truck were an acoustic guitar, three televisions, a microwave and bags of clothes - items Phillips and his family have amassed since landing in Lubbock a week and a half ago. Within hours, the family of six had unpacked and settled into their new home - a two-bedroom apartment at the Salvation Army's downtown shelter. "I feel good about this. We're making the best of what we have," said Cheryl Phillips, David's...

NEW ORLEANS - Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, fallen tree branches, standing water and layers of muck still block vehicles from getting to Carter G. Woodson Middle School, a building near the Magnolia public housing complex that has long held the state title "academically unacceptable." The damage to Woodson and many of the 126 public school buildings in Orleans Parish doesn't bother school board member Jimmy Fahrenholtz, who is happy that the system's 65,000-plus students have been forced to find new schools in Louisiana, Texas and elsewhere. "A lot of them we never should have had...

The man approached her at the school bus stop Monday afternoon. The 14-year-old freshman had just gotten off the bus from Eastern Hills High School. The man tried to talk to her. She ignored him and walked away, but he followed. Police say the girl called 911 and kept the operator on the phone during the chase that followed. Her quick thinking helped them catch the man. Glenn E. Holloway, 28, an evacuee from New Orleans, remained in the Mansfield Jail Tuesday night facing a charge of unlawful restraint of a person younger than age 17. The man chased her...

Lubbock's Hurricane Katrina shelter will close today, a week and a half after 408 evacuees from New Orleans touched down in the Hub City. The American Red Cross and city of Lubbock will close the shelter in a hangar at the Reese Technology Center at noon today. About 20 people were still at the Reese Center on Tuesday night. Most of the shelter's residents have been sent to live with friends or family or set up in apartments in Lubbock. About three or four may be transferred to the Salvation Army shelter. "We want to get folks into as normal...

AUSTIN (AP) - Texas schools won't get federal emergency funds to pay for additional teachers and textbooks to accommodate students displaced by Hurricane Katrina, according to a memo released by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Texas schools will need an estimated $450 million to educate the anticipated influx of students. Officials had hoped those costs would be covered by grants from FEMA because Texas has been included in the disaster declaration. But, according to a FEMA memo sent to state officials Saturday, Texas schools will be eligible for reimbursement for temporary classroom buildings, mental health counselors and school computers. Hiring...

Eighty-five-year-old Clothilde Mack watched in horror as, inch-by-inch, her world slipped away. The flood waters had already overtaken her car, her home — and possibly her three beloved cats. Now, as she stood alone in the attic of her house, the elderly New Orleans woman feared that the water would soon overtake her as well. (snip) At one point, the water covered her body up to her neck. In a journal, the elderly widow wrote, “I have lost everything in the house. I don’t know what damage (there is) on the outside. I am sure I lost my car.” (snip)...

We cannot express the kindness that our adopted family and neighbors of Lubbock have shown to the people of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. We appreciate all the love and kindness that you have shown us. Especially, the mayor of Lubbock, City Councilmen, senator representatives, doctors, nurses, nursing assistants, volunteers, American Red Cross officials, and all the people of Lubbock who have shown the people of New Orleans that the people of Lubbock do truthfully live as one big family. In addition, we appreciate the Lubbock Police Department, the Lubbock Fire Department, EMS Services, all charitable associates, ministers who...