Free Republic

DENTON - "Grandma" lost her argument for a contrived ballot nickname. But Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn of Austin might have found a plank on which to build a campaign against Gov. Rick Perry. It's a plank 600 miles long and a quarter-mile wide. It's a giant, privately owned, multilane tollway that would part the Texas countryside the way the governor parts his ample hair. Strayhorn, a Republican running as an independent candidate, has criticized the Trans-Texas Corridor tollway plan loudly for months. So have the other principal challengers in this traffic jam of a race, novelist Kinky Friedman of Medina...

“Texans have a problem,” State Representative Larry Phillips said about the current statewide transportation system and its government-proposed solution, the Trans-Texas Corridors. “We can either address the problem, know what’s coming, and plan accordingly, or we can stick our heads in the sand and pretend it will go away.” Texas Governor Rick Perry proposed the corridor system in 2002. Texas Department of Transportation and other officials echo that sentiment and are looking at the TTC to offer long-term solutions for the masses. The TTC plan to date The Trans-Texas Corridor is a proposed multi-use, statewide network of transportation routes in...

It's friday

CARTOON Network, the children's television giant, is under fire from the powerful Hispanic-American lobby after removing Speedy Gonzalez from its regular programming, amid fears that the cartoon mouse fostered negative images of Mexicans. Instead of approving its sensitivity to ethnic slurs, Hispanic American groups and media have accused the station of misunderstanding Speedy. They say the fastest mouse in Mexico is a positive role model, famed for outwitting his North American nemesis, "Gringo" cat. Laurie Goldberg, a Cartoon Network spokesman, denied yesterday that Speedy was banned, but said the station "thinks twice" before putting the cartoons on, partly because they...