TexasTowelie
TexasTowelie's Journal67-year-old Austin man trots out "gay panic" defense in 32-year-old film editor's murder
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Austin police have charged 67-year-old James Miller in Monday’s East Austin “suspicious death,” according to an arrest affidavit.
The call to police came in around 3:45 a.m. on Sept. 21 from a service station at the 700 block of East 8th Street. Miller told Austin police “I think I killed someone,” and “I stabbed him.”
The affidavit states that Miller said “We were playing. We were doing the good music. We were playing back and forth and everything and I just let him know- Hey, I’m not gay. We been playing. We’re musicians and all that kind of stuff, but I’m not a gay guy. Then it seemed like everything was alright and everything was fine. When I got ready to go- it seemed like {expletive} just started happening.”
Once APD arrived Miller led them to a house on the 1100 block of Navasota St. Looking through the window police said they could visibly see an unresponsive man laying on the floor of the home. Whiskey bottles and beer cans were also found in the house.
Miller claimed the victim’s name was David. The deceased man was later identified as 32-year-old Daniel Spencer; he was pronounced dead at 4:38 a.m.
Read more: http://kxan.com/2015/09/23/suspect-charged-with-murder-in-east-austin-suspicious-death/
Plano Forum to Draw At Least 4 Republican White House Hopefuls
At least four presidential candidates are coming to Texas next month to participate in a forum at one of the state's largest megachurches.
The North Texas Presidential Forum is scheduled for Oct. 18 at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano. The event is being hosted by the nearly 40,000-member church and the Faith & Freedom Coalition, an influential group representing religious conservatives across the country.
All of the major Democratic and Republican candidates have been invited to address the forum. On Monday, confirmed speakers included four GOP candidates: retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, former Arkansas Gov. Huckabee and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.
Tim Head, executive director of the coalition, said Monday that he expects the forum would end up featuring about 10 candidates. The event is already sold out, with more than 7,000 people registered to attend.
Read more: http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/28/plano-forum-draw-least-4-white-house-hopefuls/
Texas' cancer-research agency survived a scandal. Now, it hopes to prove it's working
AUSTIN — The state’s cancer-research agency has survived scandal and tumult, and its leaders and boosters say it’s in its prime, flush with money, and the envy of other states.
Nearly halfway through spending the $3 billion voters gave it eight years ago, though, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas is painfully aware that it faces a big sales job. Lawmakers already have begun to debate whether the agency should continue — and if so, what it should do.
Economic development boosters praise the efforts of the agency, known as CPRIT, not just to fund basic research but commercial ventures as well. They say the agency’s bets on startup companies and grants helping lure scientists from other states are key to Texas’ becoming a “third coast” in biotech.
“Before, we were a bit of a flyover state,” said health care investment firm founder Evan Melrose, a physician and businessman who moved from San Francisco to Austin a dozen years ago. “Now, people know we’ve got great medical resources in this state.”
Read more: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/state/headlines/20150925-texas-cancer-research-agency-survived-a-scandal.-now-it-hopes-to-prove-it-s-working.ece
Before Ahmed’s fame: fantastic inventions and a fight with authority
If you want to know Ahmed Mohamed — not the hoax bomb suspect or the vindicated celebrity, but the motormouth kid with a schoolbag full of inventions and a head full of questions — ask a teacher.
Ask at Sam Houston Middle School, where the boy from Sudan mastered electronics and English, once built a remote control to prank the classroom projector and bragged of reciting his First Amendment rights in the principal’s office.
It’s also the school where Ahmed racked up weeks of suspensions, became convinced an administrator had it in for him and — before he left for the high school where he turned famous — prompted Irving ISD to review claims of anti-Muslim bullying.
If you want to know about the boy before the fame, ask Ralph Kubiak: Ahmed’s seventh-grade history teacher and fellow outsider.
Read more: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-dallas-county/headlines/20150926-before-ahmeds-fame-fantastic-inventions-and-a-fight-with-authority.ece
Jordan Spieth wins Tour Championship, has richest golf season ever
ATLANTA -- Jordan Spieth treated the Tour Championship as if it were a major. He played like it was, too.
Looking for a fitting finish to a sensational season, Spieth poured in putts from all over East Lake and never gave Henrik Stenson or anyone else much of a chance Sunday. His final stroke was an 8-foot par putt that was right in the heart for a 1-under 69, and he leaned back with a smile of pure satisfaction.
The 22-year-old Texan became golf's first $22 million man -- a PGA Tour record with just over $12 million in prize money, and the $10 million bonus for the FedEx Cup.
"This is incredible," Spieth said. "This is an event where we approach it like a major championship because we know this is possible at the end of it."
Read more: http://www.dallasnews.com/sports/golf/20150927-jordan-spieth-wins-tour-championship-has-richest-golf-season-ever.ece
Attorney: Lance Armstrong and Dallas sports promotions company settle $10 million dispute
On September 4, attorneys representing disgraced Oak Cliff-born, Plano-raised cyclist Lance Armstrong and Dallas-based sports promotions company SCA were scheduled to meet in Judge Tonya Parker courtroom at the George L. Allen Sr. Courts Building to wrestle over $10 million in prize money an arbitration panel says Armstrong owes SCA. But at the last second, for unexplained reasons, that hearing was canceled. Now, we know why:
The lawsuit has been settled.
That is according to SCA’s attorney, Dallas’ Jeff Tillotson, who says via email Sunday afternoon that the settlment resolves the parties’ long-simmering dispute, which dates back more than a decade.
“SCA has agreed to settle its dispute with Lance Armstrong,” the LBJ Freeway-headquartered promotions company says in a brief statement. “While the terms of the settlement are confidential, SCA can say that the agreement was mutually acceptable to both parties. SCA is pleased to have this matter finally resolved and beyond this statement, SCA has no further comment.”
Read more: http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2015/09/attorney-lance-armstrong-and-dallas-sports-promotions-company-settle-10-million-dispute.html/
Best Cat News Bloopers EVER
Are Texas-born children being denied citizenship?
Everyone born in Texas has a birth record filed with the state and is a U.S. citizen.
But since January 2014, three months after Ellie was born in a children’s hospital in rural Edinburg, the state of Texas has denied her mother’s request for a certified copy of her birth certificate. State officials have repeatedly refused to accept Juana’s Mexican consular card or passport as valid identification, effectively denying the child proof of her identity.
Juana is living in the country without permission and asked that the American-Statesman not use her last name or the real name of her daughter for fear of reprisals.
The denial of a copy of her child’s birth certificate is a problem Juana could share with hundreds of immigrant families in the Rio Grande Valley, more than 25 of whom are suing the Texas Department of State Health Services in Austin. The families say that in prohibiting certain forms of identification in the application for a birth certificate, the agency is depriving Texas-born children their citizenship rights based on the immigration status of their parents.
Read more: http://specials.mystatesman.com/texas-birth-certificates/
ETA: This is a lengthy article that you will need to scroll through to see it all.
A Week of Moral Epiphany, Immoral Extortion, and Dangerous Rhetoric
By Carol Morgan"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
Just like the era of Dickens’ classic novel, there is no ambivalence of opinion in what’s transpired this week. There’s no middle ground. Depending on your views (or the degree of apathy), it’s either consummate evil or merely the reality of politics. Depending on the size of your pocketbook, it’s either predatory capitalism or a smart business decision.
The gang of immoral corporatists and their political vassals in Washington and state legislatures continue to do what they do best: Hold children, sick people, the elderly (anyone who can’t fight back) and the citizens of entire nations hostage, demanding they surrender and accept their demands.
A Wall Street hedge fund multi-millionaire named Martin Shkreli, who recently bragged on Twitter about spending $9,000 on a single bottle of wine, started a company that bought the rights to a medicine called Daraprim. The company then raised the price from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill. Shkreli had the nerve to go on CBS News and say, “….it’s a reasonable profit. Not excessive at all.”
The GOP holds our nation for ransom as they threaten to shut down our country over the funding of Planned Parenthood, when doing so will cost more tax dollars than leaving it alone. And regardless of what Carly the Horrible said, there is no video of a fully gestated baby about to have its brain harvested.
The truth is this: They don’t care about this, it’s merely click bait for attention, a political love song whose purpose is to seduce their electorate into loosening the strings of their wallets. “I'm one of you, but I need money to be elected!"
Had it not been for Judge Tim Sulak, thousands of disabled Texas children would be without therapy service because of the state budget cuts, while at the same time, Texas legislators were handing out millions to their corporate overlords who fund their re-election.
But after all, we shouldn’t hold up Texas as a model of logical thought, it’s the only place in America where you can have a gun, but not a homemade clock.
Ted Cruz, the ultimate Darth Vader of politics, corrupts youth by putting a child on the Cruz’ SuperPac payroll. His newest hired hand is little man, C.J. Pearson, who blurts out blatant lies to the media and broadcasts videos disrespecting the President. It's oddly reminiscent of Gary Coleman, sans Willis.
If this is the GOP’s best attempt at minority outreach, we’re not biting.
You can tell a lot about those who use impressionable young people as a human shield, to act as their personal pitbull, to do their dirty work for them and thus, maintain the illusion that Calgary Ted’s hands are saintly and clean.
At the Value Voters summit, he alluded to killing the Ayatollah and putting Obama in prison on his first day in office. It’s no wonder that last year, the police found Heidi Cruz crying on the grassy area by a busy freeway in Houston.
Like cold water to a weary thirsty soul in the desert, came El Papa. It was an opportune moment. We needed his words, his scolding, and his admonitions.
He made the humanists of America realize they were not overly idealistic or crazy, after all. Of course, Republicans, who ALWAYS want to inject religion into everything, didn’t think so. Predictably, they clutched their pearls and gasped. Many were outraged at his visit, announcing they were boycotting his speeches, publicly proclaiming it was injecting religion into politics.
The Pope’s visit and his humble request, “Pray for me “, was a moral epiphany, a Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus-moment, for one man. Read Robert Costa’s extremely moving piece about John Boehner after the Pope’s visit. Beware, you may need tissues.
There were many dancing on Boehner’s grave on Friday morning, after he made his resignation announcement, not realizing what kind of hateful devils will ascend to the stage now.
It seems as if there is nothing that politicians and corporatists won’t say or do to fill their wallets or shore up their fragile sense of self.
Children are no longer off-limits. The elderly are not off-limits. Religion's not off limits, either.
Banker/realtors everywhere will invoke the Bible to make a favorable impression on their unwary victims.
Texas steals the future of young people by limiting their access to a college education and forces seniors to live without dignity as they wait for death, the ultimate escape from their humiliation of begging for food, medicine and perhaps, some companionship.
It falls on deaf ears, however.
Those who worship the god of capitalism even employ their own offspring as props, cast, and cameo appearances for their political theater, and to ensure the future of their family financial dynasties.
On the right, there’s nothing that’s sacred; the most acceptable substitution is the religious rhetoric that, at some level, everyone, even their supporters, knows is a lie.
Move over Dick Cheney, you’ve been usurped by a new generation.
God help us all.
And I mean that with the greatest of sincerity.
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Carol Morgan is a career/college counselor, a freelance writer, and former Democratic candidate for the Texas House. She is the award-winning author of two books: Of Tapestry, Time and Tears and Liberal in Lubbock. Email Carol at elizabethcmorgan@sbcglobal.net , follow her on Twitter and on Facebook or visit her writer’s blog at www.carolmorgan.org
http://lubbockonline.com/interact/blog-post/carol-morgan/2015-09-26/week-moral-epiphany-immoral-extortion-and-dangerous#.Vgde-pfziBZ
Permission granted to post Ms. Morgan's blog in its entirety.
Former McKinney officer in infamous pool party video had disciplinary record
The former McKinney officer who drew national attention to the city after pushing a black teen to the ground while breaking up a pool party had a disciplinary record with the police department.
Eric Casebolt resigned in June after a video of the pool party went viral. The Texas Rangers said Thursday that they’re still investigating the incident at Craig Ranch, an upscale neighborhood on the west side of McKinney.
Casebolt’s personnel file shows that McKinney police had reprimanded him three times during his 10-year career with the department. He had been disciplined for a Facebook post, for his behavior at a disturbance call involving his ex-girlfriend and for using a police car and uniform on personal business. McKinney released the documents to The Dallas Morning News late Friday after an open records request.
Tom Mills, Casebolt’s criminal defense attorney, said most of the 188 pages of documents in the personnel file released by the city were positive reviews about Casebolt’s job performance.
Read more: http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2015/09/former-mckinney-officer-in-infamous-pool-party-video-had-disciplinary-record.html/
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Gender: MaleHometown: South Texas. most of my life I lived in Austin and Dallas
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Current location: Bryan, Texas
Member since: Sun Aug 14, 2011, 03:57 AM
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