Free Republic

...When his candidate for governor, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, fell to Gov. Rick Perry, he switched his support to Democrat Bill White. Madden is one of a number of former Hutchison supporters who have crossed parties to support the former Houston mayor, including Houstonians Matt Simmons, CEO of Simmons & Co. International, and James Flores, CEO of Plains Exploration & Production Co. In a Republican-red state like Texas, White has to lure crossover voters, big-ticket and otherwise, if he is to have any chance at all of defeating the longest-serving governor in Texas history, although wooing Republicans and independents...

AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) - UPDATE - Carson County Sheriff Department is reporting that FM 2373 is closed from I-40 north. Officials are also reporting the east side of the Pantex Plant is completely inaccessible.

AMARILLO, Texas (AP) — The last of the nation's most powerful nuclear bombs — a weapon hundreds of times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima — is being disassembled nearly half a century after it was put into service at the height of the Cold War. The final components of the B53 bomb will be broken down Tuesday at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, the nation's only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility. The completion of the dismantling program is a year ahead of schedule, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, and aligns...

The Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration PANTEX Plant, the nation's only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility located 17 miles northeast of Amarillo, Texas, is on lockdown, according to a news release from the facility, the text of which appears below:

AMARILLO - Three Pantex employees remain on paid administrative leave for violating nuclear safety procedures after workers failed to keep a close lookout on a nuclear warhead for a few minutes last week, a top Pantex official said Wednesday. The incident violated long-standing "buddy system" rules aimed at preventing unauthorized access to nuclear weapons. B&W Pantex President and General Manager Dan Swaim said workers failed to keep proper visual surveillance of the warhead for less than eight minutes on Jan. 10. A fourth employee entered the area and discovered the violation, which was promptly corrected. The warhead remained under protective...

WASHINGTON — An accident that occurred as a decades-old nuclear warhead was being dismantled at the government's Pantex facility near Amarillo, Texas, could have caused the device to detonate, a nonprofit organization charged Thursday. The Project on Government Oversight said the "near miss" event, which led the Energy Department to fine the plant's operator $110,000, was due partly to requirements that technicians at the plant work up to 72 hours per week. The Pantex plant, 17 miles northeast of Amarillo, is the country's only factory for assembly and disassembly of nuclear weapons. The organization said it was told by unidentified...

Workers Taped Together Explosive Pieces By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Workers at the only U.S. factory for dismantling nuclear weapons risked an explosion this month by taping together broken pieces of high explosive being removed from the plutonium trigger of an old warhead, federal investigators said. The unorthodox handling of the unstable explosive increased the risk that the technicians would drop it and set off a "violent reaction," the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board said Tuesday in a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham (news - web sites). Such a reaction could have "potentially unacceptable consequences," board...