Silver Lining: Texas Oil & Gas Jobs Rebound

Texas' oil and gas industry is recording employment levels not seen for the better part of three years, while oil production is outpacing that of natural gas for the first time in more than a decade, according to an index of state energy activity:

The Lone Star State employed 224,200 workers in exploration and production in June, according to the Texas Petro Index -- more than the 223,200 at the height of the last energy boom in October 2008 and nearly 15 percent more than in June 2010, said Karr Ingham, the Midland economist who created and maintains the index.

Oil production also beat out natural gas as the dominant Texas fossil fuel product by value during the first six months of 2011, reversing a trend that started in 1997 when natural gas began to dominate the state's energy production.

"In the past 12 months, the industry has added more than 28,600 jobs, which is nearly 13 percent of all jobs added to the Texas economy," Ingham said.

The oil and gas industry only accounts for about 2 percent of the state's entire workforce payroll, Ingham says, but it tends to have an oversized impact on the entire state economy because it is so capital-intensive. By some estimates, as much as two-thirds of Texas' job creation in the past year could be tied directly and indirectly to the oil and gas exploration business.

"That's really an accomplishment, considering the TPI in June indicates the industry still has not recovered to the level of economic health that created the last jobs milestone," Ingham said.

[More]

The Lone Star State continues to enjoy an unemployment rate lower than the national average. It was 8.2 percent in Texas in June, compared to a national unemployment rate of 9.2 percent.

- JP

Glenn Beck: Yes, I'm moving to Texas

As we noted on July 2, Glenn Beck is moving to Texas. Beck consfirmed it today on his radio program:

“I’m moving to Dallas, Texas, and my family is there now, and I will be there shortly. We’re keeping our business, Mercury, in New York. Nobody is surprised by this, I’m sure. We have been planning for a long time,” Glenn said.

It's not just Beck and his family, who are coming to the Lone Star State, but "a small number of staff members will shortly be relocating" to the Dallas area. The talk show icon also has plans "to build a film and television center and radio center in Dallas," thus creating even more jobs in the state which leads the nation in job creation.

h/t: Michelle McCormick

- JP

More MSNBC Maddow Misinformation

For someone touted by the media as brilliant, MSNBC's left wing prime time host Rachel Maddow is wrong much of the time. Her latest exercise in misinformation came on her Thursday program, much of which she devoted to the execution of convicted rapist-murderer Humbarto Leal in Texas. Maddow criticized Gov. Perry and the U.S. supreme Court for refusing to delay Leal's death by lethal injection so Congress could have more time to pass legislation dealing with how the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations should be applied to such cases:

Leal, who in 1994 raped a 16-year-old girl and then strangled her and crushed her skull with a 35-pound piece of asphalt, was sent to prison in 1998 but did not discover until two years later that he was supposed to be legally entitled to ask for help from the Mexican consulate in his defense.

Maddow never informed viewers that neither Leal nor his defense attorneys asked for such assistance before his trial, or that article 36 of the Vienna Convention which she refers to does not seem to require arresting authorities to contact a prisoner’s home country unless he requests it.

The MSNBC host instead went on to dismiss the "conservative" U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that allowed the execution to take place as scheduled, and incorrectly claimed that Texas was not following the law.

[More]

Like most liberals, Maddow never lets such pesky trivialities as facts get in the way of a good left wing rant.

- JP

Supreme Court denies stay, Texas executes illegal alien

The State of Texas executed an illegal alien Thursday for the rape-slaying of a teenager after his attorneys and the Obama White House had pleaded in vain for a Supreme Court stay:

In his last minutes, Humberto Leal repeatedly said he was sorry and accepted responsibility.

"I have hurt a lot of people. ... I take full blame for everything. I am sorry for what I did," he said in the death chamber.

"One more thing," he said as the drugs began taking effect. Then he shouted twice, "Viva Mexico!"

[...]


Leal was sentenced to death for the 1994 murder of 16-year-old Adria Sauceda, whose brutalized nude body was found hours after he left a San Antonio street party with her. She was bludgeoned with a piece of 30- to 40-pound chunk of asphalt.

Leal was just a toddler when he and his family moved to the U.S. from Monterrey, Mexico, but his citizenship became a key element of his attorneys' efforts to win a stay. They said police never told him following his arrest that he could seek legal assistance from the Mexican government under an international treaty.

Mexico, the Obama administration and others had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to delay Leal's execution so Congress could consider a law that would require court reviews in cases where condemned foreign nationals did not receive help from their consulates. They said the case could affect not only foreigners in the U.S. but Americans detained in other countries.

The court rejected the request 5-4.

[More]

Human Events staff writer John Hayward, noting that arguments against executing Leal cited the Vienna Convention -- which requires that a foreign citizen be told he has the right to contact his nation’s consulate after being arrested -- has a question:

Hasn’t the Obama Administration stated that it’s unthinkable to ask a captured criminal about his immigration status? In that case, how are we supposed to apply the Vienna Convention? Slip every non-Caucuasian detainee a card with the phone numbers of every embassy from every nation in the continent he might conceivably have originated from?

[...]

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights wrote a letter to Texas governor Rick Perry, demanding that Leal’s sentence be commuted to life in prison. “The lack of consular assistance raises concerns about whether or not Mr. Leal Garcia’s right to a fair trial was fully upheld,” said a spokesman for the commissioner.

CNN quotes U.N. Special Repporteur Christof Heyns expanding on this point: "If the scheduled execution of Mr. Leal Garcia goes ahead, the United States government will have implemented a death penalty after a trial that did not comply with due process rights. This will be tantamount to an arbitrary deprivation of life."

This would be same United Nations that puts North Korea in charge of arms-control conferences, Libya on the Human Rights Commission, and cannot bring itself to denounce Bashar Assad as a criminal despite the wanton murder of over 1,400 Syrians, including women and children. Tell you what, fellows: get back to us when you’re not a sickening global joke on the subject of human rights. The world is more threatened by murderous dictators than the execution of a brutal rapist who illegally invaded the country where he committed his crime.

[More]

- JP

14 Texas redistricting cases filed... so far

At least 14 lawsuits have been filed against the legislature's recent redistricting efforts, and, according to the Star-Telegram's political blog, even more such challenges are likely:

Every decade, Texas lawmakers are responsible for redrawing political boundaries in light of population changes. The matter always ends up in court.

A wide range of groups and voters hope the courts throw out the maps approved by state lawmakers earlier this year and draw the districts themselves. Time is of the essence, as the new districts must be ready in time for candidates to file this year for the 2012 ballot.

Last week, the state of Texas filed a report in several of the cases outlining every redistricting case pending so far. As of June 29, there were 14 cases in total: seven in federal court and seven in state court.

Key issues in the cases include Latino representation, how prisoners should be counted and whether redistricting plans already drawn up are unconstitutional because they relied on U.S. Census data which counted illegal immigrants.

[More]

A summary of the 14 cases can be found here.

- JP

Inspired by Sarah Palin, Bowie County Clerk 'Fights Like a Girl'

To say that Bowie County in northeast Texas is a Democratic Party bastion would be a gross understatement. The 923 square-mile jurisdiction, which has a population of almost 90,000, had never in its history elected a Republican to county office before 2010, when a determined 34-year old conservative defeated her Democrat opponent for the County Clerk's job. Now, six months after taking office, she finds herself engaged in cultural combat with those liberals who are still clinging to power on the Texas side of the border with Arkansas.

Pamela Geller has a chronicle of Natalie Nichols and her struggle with the entrenched Bowie County "progressives":

Natalie Nichols, a newly elected county clerk in Texas, is fighting back against a rogue court that actually voted to remove the Pledge of Allegiance and an opening prayer from the court's official records. She refuses to do it, has made it her official stance and is now actually being threatened with legal action by a representative of the district attorney's office. But Nichols is standing firm: She has stated that she would rather be removed from office than acquiesce to this.

Of course, the district attorney is a Democrat. Nichols, who was inspired to go into politics by watching Sarah Palin in 2008, was the first-ever Republican woman elected to a county-wide office in the history of Bowie County, Texas. "Since our county's been in existence," she told me, "it was just understood that if you wanted to run for office, you ran as a Democrat or you had no chance." Nichols, however, was not interested in doing that: "I wasn't about to compromise my values to get into office, and I will not compromise them now that I am in office. I ran as a Christian conservative and I am a Christian conservative."

As county clerk, Nichols keeps the minutes of the proceedings of the Commissioners Court, which are held before an audience and begin with a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. While Nichols was away attending a county clerk training conference on June 13, the Commissioners Court voted to remove the invocation from the minutes of a previous meeting. Why? Nichols said that County Judge Sterling Lacy told her that he "didn't want some group like the ACLU to come in and sue."

They removed the Pledge from the minutes also. Nichols commented: "Are we now afraid to be patriotic in America? Well, I am not. I will not sit down while people drag our country into a direction that makes me not even recognize it anymore." Nichols is fighting this decision, against heavy odds. Judge Lacy remarked ominously: "What she hasn't thought through are the unintended consequences" of her stand.

Nichols responded: "Contrary to what Judge Lacy seems to understand, I have thought through the unintended consequences of being a party to removing an official record of saying the prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. I have thought through the impact it will have on my grandchildren to read the history of our county and errantly think that our customs were such that we didn't proudly proclaim a love of God and Country."

[More]

Examiner Devonia Smith, on how Natalie Nichols found inspiration in 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to "fight like a girl" for the principles she believes in:

A hint about why Nichols didn't hesitate to challenge the court can be found in Nichol's personal choice of heroines. A twelfth generation American, Nichols shares that, although she never voted before the last presidential election, she was "inspired by Sarah Palin and realized there were conservative, strong women out there, like myself, and that we actually could make a difference."

She went on to explain why she admired Palin, "mainly because she is a mother and doesn't apologize for that. She's holding strong in her convictions and she doesn't hide her Christianity, which is very important to me."

Smith has more on Natalie Nichols, including the transcript of her "scathing address to the Texas Bowie Commissioner Court" here.

Nichols is a district coordinator for Smart Girl Politics and is active in the Texarkana TEA Patriots and the faith-based Bowie County Patriots. She's the founder of Texans 4 Sarah, a Sarah Palin support group. A detailed profile of Natalie Nichols is here (PDF).

- JP

Obama Administration intervenes in Texas execution

The Obama administration asked the Supreme Court Friday to prevent Texas from executing a Mexican national who was convicted of raping and killing a 16-year-old girl:

The administration said the court should delay the planned July 7 execution of Humberto Leal for up to six months to give Congress time to consider legislation that would directly affect Leal’s case.

The 38-year-old native of Monterrey, Mexico, wasn’t told he could contact the Mexican consulate after his arrest for the murder of Adria Sauceda. His lawyers say police violated an international treaty by not telling Leal he could have consular assistance.

Legislation pending in the Senate would allow federal courts to review cases of condemned foreign nationals to determine if the lack of consular help made a significant difference in the outcome of their cases. Last week, a federal judge refused to delay the execution.

The Supreme Court has previously ruled that states can’t be forced to comply with the provisions of treaties without some intervening federal legislation.

The federal government rarely intervenes in state death penalty cases. The thrust of the administration’s legal argument deals with the government’s international treaty obligations, not Leal’s guilt or innocence, or even whether he should ultimately be executed.

[More]

Today we learned that there is no justice for Caylee Anthony. Will there be no justice for Adria Sauceda as well? God protect the innocent and vulnerable because our sick society refuses to do so.

h/t: Ed Morrissey

- JP

Witching for water in Llano, TX

The town of Llano, 65 miles northwest of Austin, has avoided a drought-related crisis and found water under the ground, thanks to the 15th Century technique of "witching," also known as dowsing:

The Llano River was dangerously close to drying up as Texas faces a punishing and record-breaking drought. Residents of this Hill Country town west of Austin depend on the river for their entire water supply.

It neared zero flow this week, and the city was looking at trucking in water from 20 miles away, when city leaders employed the old-fashioned "witching" technique to strike water in the limestone bedrock near the city's water treatment plant.

"It was done by the use of two brass spindles ... and you walk with them in either hand," said City Manager Finley deGraffenried.

Witching is a centuries-old practice used mainly in rural areas to find underground water. Lacking professional advice from hydrologists, many farmers walked their property holding sticks or rods that they believed would move when water was found underground. They would decide where to drill a well based on the witching results.

The National Ground Water Association, which represents the water industry, said on its website that experimental tests show the technique is totally without scientific merit and performs no better than chance. But water-starved Llano residents believe it worked.

DeGraffenried says crews were able to punch a drill through the limestone bedrock and strike water, celebrated by the residents as much as any oil gusher.

"It turned out to do quite well," he said. "It's producing 92,000 gallons a minute. It is not by any means a silver bullet, but it will allow our stored water to last us much much longer in the event the river does go to a zero flow."

[More]

A USDA report issued Thursday reveals how widespread the drought, which now encompasses some 97 percent of Texas counties, has been in the Lone Star State. Between October and May, Texas suffered the driest eight-month period since such data have been recorded, beginning in 1895.

- JP

Rewind: Sarah Palin in Tyler, Texas - June 26, 2010

"We have a scarcity of common sense in Washington, DC."
*
Gov. Palin was on a roll when she addressed energy matters a little over a year ago at the Oil Palace in Tyler:


No, she didn't need a TelePrompTer.

h/t: Mike

- JP

Thinking of going to Mexico for the 4th? Think again.

According to CNN, the Clinton News Network, Lone State State lawmen are advising Texans not to cross over to the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo during the Fourth of July weekend. Their intel warns that a Mexican drug cartel plans to target U.S. citizens:

The violent Zetas drug cartel, which operates in Nuevo Laredo, will be targeting crimes at Americans who cross the border into the city this weekend, the Texas Department of Public Safety and Webb County Sheriff's Office said Saturday.

"According to the information we have received, the Zetas are planning a possible surge in criminal activity, such as robberies, extortions, car-jackings and vehicle theft, specifically against U.S. citizens," DPS Director Steven McCraw said in a statement. "We urge U.S. citizens to avoid travel to Nuevo Laredo this weekend if it can be avoided."

[...]

Nuevo Laredo, like most Mexican border cities, offers rows of bars, inexpensive dentists, restaurants and cultural events to draw tourists. But tourism has sharply declined in the past six years as drug cartel violence has spiraled in Mexico. Because of the various bridges into the United States and access to a major highway, Nuevo Laredo has been a turf contested by rival drug cartels.

[More]

The Zetas, apparently not satisfied with limiting their nefarious activities to drug trafficking, have earned a reputation for engaging in such violent endeavors as extortion, kidnapping and human smuggling. These are some bad hombres.

Related: Zetas try to enter Matamoros; priest killed in crossfire

- JP

Max Borders: A Texas-sized let down

Max Borders, executive editor at the Free To Choose Network, has penned an opinion piece for The Daily Caller in which he expresses his disappointment in the governor so many in the GOP establishment and the corrupt media are hyping to run for president:

Would you let your mother, daughter, friends and neighbors continue to suffer unwarranted indignities at the hands of government agents if you had the power to stop them?

That’s exactly what Texas Governor Rick Perry just did.

Perry stood by and let Texas’s TSA anti-groping bill die in the state legislature. According to observers, instead of promoting the bill, Perry dithered. He never pressed the lieutenant governor to call the bill during the regular legislative session. Only after Perry was shamed by a legislator did he agree to put the bill on the agenda during the Texas Legislature’s recently concluded special session.

At one point, after enthusiasm for the anti-groping bill had grown, the presumptive presidential candidate saw an opportunity. Perry appeared on The Glenn Beck Show, where he seemed to claim credit for the measure... saying he was prepared to defend Texans from abuse by the federal government. But behind the scenes, Perry had been stonewalling the bill.

[More]

Borders' exit question: "Now, if Perry is prepared to let political expedience come before the rights of Americans, is he fit to be president?"

- JP

10 of top 20 cities for job growth are in Texas

Killeen-Temple-Fort Hood, Bryan-College Station & Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos in top 6
*
Merv at Prairie Pundit found a study conducted by News Geography to be very interesting. It seems that ten of the top twenty U.S. cities for job growth are located in Texas.

The Killeen-Temple-Fort Hood area tops the list, with Bryan-College Station in fourth, Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos sixth, Odessa eleventh, Corpus Christi twelfth, Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown fourteenth, San Antonio-New Braunfels seventeenth, and metro Dallas-Plano-Irving is eighteenth.

New Geography's rankings of all cities are here, where you can also view the lists broken down by the size of the cities. An explanation of the methodology used to compile the lists is here.

- JP

Texas set to become next state to defund Planned Parenthood

The Texas state legislature this week approved the Senate Bill 7 Conference Committee Report that would revoke the taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood's abortion racket in the Lone Star State. All the measure needs now is the signature of Governor Rick Perry to become law:

“This will defund Planned Parenthood, stop taxpayer funding of elective abortions, and regulate adult stem cell research in Texas,” says Texas Alliance for Life. “The final step is for pro-life Gov. Rick Perry to sign this bill into law, which will defund Planned Parenthood $34 million or more over the biennium.”

[...]

Senate Bill 7, authored by Sen. Jane Nelson (R-Flower Mound) and Rep. John Zerwas (R-Simonton), has three significant pro-life provisions strongly supported by Texas Alliance for Life and leading pro-life organizations and individuals.

The first defunds Planned Parenthood of $34 million or more. Another provision, by Rep. Wayne Christian (R-Nacogdoches), prevents local tax funding for elective abortions by hospital districts, including Travis County’s Central Health. The third, by Rep. Rick Hardcastle (R-Vernon), allows the state to regulate autologous adult stem cell banks and encourage more live-saving treatments using adult, not embryonic, stem cells.

Jonathan Saenz, legislative director for Liberty Institute, which supported SB 7 at the Texas Capitol, too, also applauded the vote and says the bill “effectively ends taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood in Texas.

“The passing of this legislation is a defining moment in Texas history for the pro-life and taxpayer protection movement,” he said. “Texas leaders have sent a clear message: Planned Parenthood and similar abortion groups can no longer use taxpayer funds to support their agenda.”

[...]

The state budget allocated $166,030,952 to family planning. Estimates are that Planned Parenthood currently receives approximately $30 million a year in taxpayer funds in Texas, and its own annual report confirms $363 million received nationwide. More than 300 non-abortion agencies across the state qualify to provide family planning services and they do not do abortions or refer for them.

[More]

Earlier this year, Planned Parenthood of Central Texas closed two of its centers but did not give any reasons for shutting down the facilities.

- JP

Welcome to Texas, Glenn Beck

Houston-based Yahoo! contributor Mark Whittington reports that Glenn Beck, late of Fox News, may be packing it all up and moving to Texas:

Beck seemed to suggest Texas was in his future in an interview with Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Beck's Mercury Radio Arts company, which controls a small media empire that includes his radio show, an online newspaper called "The Blaze" and a fledgling subscription TV talk show on GBTV has 150 employees.

Texas has a number of advantages for a business over New York, currently Beck's base of operations. Texas has no personal state income tax and a regulatory environment that encourages the formation of small businesses. New York, on the other hand, has a confiscatory tax system and a regulatory regime that would put the Byzantine Empire to shame.

Beck may also have a personal motive for contemplating a move to Texas. Recently he and his family were attacked by a group of ruffians while in New York's Bryant Park. There is nothing like a good old-fashioned New York City street altercation to motivate a man into pulling up roots and moving to a more friendly environment.

[More]

According to multiple sources quoted by name in an item in the New York Daily News, Beck and his family have leased a seven-bedroom spread set on 2 acres of land in the upscale Vaquero Ranch area of Westlake, between Dallas and Fort Worth.

Beck has some history in Texas. While still in his teens, he was a Top 40 morning deejay at Corpus Christi's KZFM, and in 1989, he worked for a while in Houston at KRBE, then known as "Power 104." After a troubled career in music radio, in which Beck was fired from a number of stations for stunts which -- to put it mildly -- overreached, he embraced the talk format in 2000 and struck gold in Florida, taking an 18th-ranked AM station in Tampa to the top in the ratings.

Just two years later, Premiere Radio Networks syndicated his show on 47 stations across the nation. Today Beck's program is third in the national ratings behind Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and is heard on hundreds of stations as well as satellite radio. He would not be the first conservative radio talker to vacate New York for more taxpayer-friendly locales. Rush Limbaugh moved to Palm Beach, Florida in March, 1996, where he now broadcasts his top-rated show.

- JP

Texas Music Break: 'What I Like About Texas'

Gary P. Nunn (1996)


h/t: Into The Morning

- JP

J. E. Dyer: The EPA assault on Texas

Former Naval intelligence officer J. E. Dyer warns that the economic well being of Texas – a rare ray of light a dark recession – is severely threatened by the Obama Administration's EPA. The envionmentaal agency has challenged the engine of the Lone Star State's economic health: energy.

This would be one thing if Texas were an outlier among the 50 states in terms of dirty air or an otherwise demonstrably imperiled environment. But the truth is closer to the opposite: the air in Texas has been getting cleaner; in the urban areas, much cleaner. And in spite of being by far the largest electric power producer of the 50 states, and heavily reliant on coal, Texas has been steadily reducing its emissions of the EPA’s least-favored compounds from coal combustion (e.g., sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide). Its emissions of NOx and SO2 are substantially lower than the national average; Texas is ranked the 11th lowest in NOx emissions (.098 lb/mmBtu in 2009, versus a national average of .159 lb/mmBtu), and 24th in SO2 (.309 lb/mmBtu in 2009, versus a national average of .458 lb/mmBtu).

But the EPA isn’t really making the argument that Texas is an environmental pigsty. It’s not putting any data or findings behind that premise, at any rate. Instead, it is simply acting high-handedly, assuming an authority that nothing in written law confers on it, to pronounce Texas’s procedures in violation of EPA rules – even when there is no basis for making that claim. To put it bluntly, the EPA is making a power grab.

There are three principal facets to the power grab. One began with an EPA decision in January 2010 that the Texas air-permit program was invalid, and that every facility operating under such a permit in the state would have to be re-permitted. The argument was not that Texas plants were emitting too much. Rather, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, the Texas “air-permit program … caps emissions of air pollutants from an entire facility, but the EPA wants to scrutinize and restrict emissions from every polluting unit of a plant.” Texas, along with a number of other states, is concerned that regulating on the EPA’s basis will cost considerably more, without improving air quality.

[...]

The permit invalidation was just the beginning, however. The second facet of the power grab, the Obama EPA’s war on coal, will have at least as damaging an effect on Texas as on other states, and in some ways perhaps more. The war on coal is part of a larger regulatory assault on emissions and industrial byproducts of all kinds, which will, if implemented as intended, ensure life as we know it cannot continue in the United States. The impact on Texas is discussed in the testimony submitted to Congress by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) in March.

The findings include the likelihood that the new regulations adopted by the Obama EPA will shut down more than 5700 MW of electrical generating capacity in Texas, or about one-twelfth of the peak demand levied by state users in the last couple of years. Meanwhile, based on economic trends, Texas expects to need as much as 25% more capacity by 2020.

[...]

But what about natural gas? The EPA is way ahead of us, with the third facet of its power grab. Ben Voth wrote a piece for American Thinker in January calling out the new EPA assault on the production of natural gas in Texas. And if you think the EPA’s particular beef is with fracking (hydraulic fracturing) chemicals, think again. The basis for the EPA’s abrupt move against a Texas natural gas driller in December 2010 was methane and benzene found in local water.

It all fit nicely with the emotional appeal of the “documentary” Gasland, which did for the natural gas industry what Michael Moore did for 9/11. The problem is that not only was Gasland full of errors and misrepresentations, the EPA case against Range Resources in Texas was full of holes as well. Based on analysis of their nitrogen content, the methane and benzene in the afflicted water came not from the natural-gas drilling by Range Resources, but through natural seepage from a shallower nearby gas formation – one that is not being drilled. In other words, there’s nothing humans could have done to prevent the seepage.

We highly recommend reading the full article, where you will find all the links and Dyer's full argument here.

- JP

Texas shines an incandescent light for common sense & freedom

Texas has told the nanny state federal government what it can do with its expensive and potentially hazardous compact fluorescent light bulbs. The state legislature has passed, and Gov. Perry has signed into law, a measure which nullifies the Federal ban on incandescent light bulbs. The new law began as a bill proposed by State Rep. George Lavender (R-Texarkana), who recently appeared on "Fox & Friends" to discuss the genesis of his legislation:


To no one's surprise, watermelons ("environmentalists" who are green on the outside and pinko on the inside) are not amused. They want to dictate how we live our lives and what products we may or may not purchase, all for "the common good."

- JP

New gun law law allows Texans to reclaim some of our freedom

Employers can no longer prevent their workers from safely and legally storing personal firearms in their locked vehicle while it sits in the company parking lot, thanks to Senate Bill 321, bill championed by State Senator Glenn Hegar (R-Fort Bend) and recently signed into law by the governor:

Hegar said he filed the bill in response to a number of instances where employees had been denied the right to protect themselves while traveling to and from work because their employers had adopted what he called “overly restrictive policies.”

“I want to thank my legislative colleagues both in the Senate and the Texas House for supporting this important legislation,” Hegar said. “I especially want to thank State Rep. Tim Kleinschmidt (R-Lexington), who sponsored the bill in the Texas House of Representatives and who worked tirelessly to help ensure that it received the strong support of House members.”

Alice Tripp, legislative director for the Texas State Rifle Association, said passage of the bill showed why Hegar was “the Texas State Rifle Association’s Doc Brown Legislator of the Year award winner.”

“After seven long years, the bill has finally crossed the finished line; Senate Bill 321 is clear and finally passed. Thanks to Sen. Hegar, Texas commuters will be protected on their way to and from the workplace,” Tripp said.

[More]

Hegar poined out that many Texans with concealed handgun licenses carry their firearms with them during what are sometimes long commutes to and from work for personal protection. Also, many sportsmen hunt before or after work, and many competitive and recreational shooters like to stop at the local shooting range before heading home for the day. The new law saves them an extra round trip to an from their homes to pick up their guns.

The legislation, which is similar to laws already on the books in Oklahoma, Louisiana and 11 other states, goes into effect September 1.

- JP