DPS: Man seeking dry socks unworthy to hold sales license
In two stark examples of how state regulators can zealously apply a law in apparent defiance of common sense, the Texas Department of Public Safety late last year denied a Tarrant County man permission...
View ArticleFederal court: Texas’s protection plan for rare lizard ok
Hand out photo of the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard (Sand Dune Lizard) Sceloporus arenicolus. CREDIT: Mike Hill/USFWS. Received 07/28/12 for 072812 hastings edit. Texas’s voluntary and privately administered...
View ArticleTxDPS case highlights how licensing ex-cons can work
Late last year, regulators at the Texas Department of Public Safety moved to deny a state burglar alarm installer’s license to a new applicant. The reason: a crime he’d committed when he was 19 years...
View ArticleHigh court delivers another blow to Texas
So it’s not the U.S. Supreme Court throwing wrenches into the state’s new abortion restrictions or affirmative action programs or same-sex marriage prohibitions. But in all the excitement over the...
View ArticleState seeks teacher’s suspension for making kids “uncomfortable”
Citizens expect government regulators to protect them from all sorts of dangers, including predatory teachers. And the Texas Education Agency, which licenses teachers, has recently reported a spike in...
View ArticleDallas County won’t release bad cop list. So we will.
Two months ago, my colleague Ciara O’Rourke and I published a couple of stories (here and here) about the poor job Texas district attorneys’ offices do keeping track of so-called Brady cops — police...
View ArticleMan exonerated after police mis-identify drug
When Houston police stopped Andrew Wheeler last spring, they noted that he “appeared to be very nervous.” A voluntary search turned up hydrocodone pills and a small baggie of methamphetamine. In July,...
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