U.S. Army Corp of Engineers pulls Mountain Valley natgas pipeline permit in West Virginia

(Reuters) - The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers pulled a permit last week for EQT Midstream Partners LP’s Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline from West Virginia to Virginia that could delay the $3.5 billion project’s expected late 2018 in-service date.

“This is a big one,” Katie Bays, energy analyst at Height Capital Markets in Washington, DC, said in a report on Monday, noting “The loss of the (Nationwide Permit) is not easy to reconcile and could delay the project.”

The permit, known as Nationwide Permit (NWP) 12, authorizes Mountain Valley to discharge dredged and fill materials into several rivers, including the Gauley, Greenbrier and Elk, at 591 locations.

Officials at EQT Midstream were not immediately available for comment.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eqtmidstream-mountainvalley-natgas-pi/u-s-army-pulls-mountain-valley-natgas-pipeline-permit-in-west-virginia-idUSKCN1IU275

Virginia Supreme Court upholds 11 challenged state legislative districts

The Supreme Court of Virginia declined to set aside a ruling that upheld 11 General Assembly districts that were challenged as being designed for political purposes.

In the Thursday ruling, the state’s high court upheld a March ruling by Richmond Circuit Court Judge W. Reilly Marchant.

Redistricting reform group OneVirginia2021 brought the lawsuit, and both rulings are a setback for those who want to take politics out of district line drawing, which is done by the Virginia General Assembly and approved by the governor.

The plaintiffs who sued the state argued that the districts were a politically motivated gerrymander and were not compact as required by law. But lawyers with the office of Attorney General Mark Herring and a private firm retained to represent the Virginia House of Delegates argued that the districts conformed with state constitutional requirements.

Read more: http://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/government-politics/virginia-supreme-court-upholds-challenged-state-legislative-districts/article_d192faf3-455d-572f-8a63-5e2e13b8a71c.html

The Stranglers - Walk on By

'Jihadi Circuses': The Anti-Muslim Police Training in San Angelo Was Worse Than We Thought

Earlier this month, Texas’ law enforcement accreditation agency rejected a police training given in San Angelo by the notorious anti-Muslim activist John Guandolo. The daylong course “paint[ed] an entire religion with an overly broad brush” and “provided no training value for law enforcement attendees,” wrote Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE) Director Kim Vickers in a pair of letters announcing his decision. But the Observer obtained an audio recording of the May 4 training, and found that Guandolo’s message for police that day was a tad more extreme than Vickers’ tame language let on.

An ex-FBI agent now living near Dallas, Guandolo is the type of guy who tweets out pictures of brown-skinned TSA agents with beards, calling them “terrorists.” Yet, somehow, he’s built a cottage industry peddling law enforcement trainings around the country via a company called Understanding the Threat. (Spoiler: The threat is Muslims).

Twenty-seven students — mostly police officers and sheriff’s deputies — gathered for Guandolo’s course on May 4 in a San Angelo Baptist church, according to a roster obtained from TCOLE through a public information request. There, Guandolo expounded upon, among other things, how to interpret 14th-century Islamic law, identify a Jihadi job applicant and stymie the Muslim Brotherhood’s conspiracy to topple America.

Guandolo often used a question-and-answer style to elicit participation from the cops in attendance. “Why is it OK for 60-year-old Muslim men to marry 6-year-old girls?” he asked the audience, according to an audio recording made by a TCOLE employee and obtained through a public information request. “Why is it OK for Muslims to torture?” To both questions, a number of attendees replied dutifully: “Because Muhammad did it.”

Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/jihadi-circuses-the-anti-muslim-police-training-in-san-angelo-was-worse-than-we-thought/

San Antonio Educators: 'Who Gave You The Right To Change The Name Of An Entire Group'

Supporters of a state-approved high school Mexican-American studies course are calling on the Texas State Board of Education to revert to the course’s commonly used name.

The board changed the course name to Ethnic Studies: An Overview of Americans of Mexican Descent when it approved the creation of course curriculum in April.

Educational, cultural and political groups held simultaneous news conferences in cities across Texas Wednesday with a single message for the board: When you meet in June, change the name back to Mexican-American studies.

The board is slated to give initial approval of the course’s curriculum framework on June 13.

“Our question to the nine Anglo Republican board members and one Latina Democrat: Why did you approve it?” said Juan Tejeda, a retired Mexican-American Studies Professor at Palo Alto College. “Who gave you the right to change the name of an entire group of people?

Read more: http://tpr.org/post/san-antonio-educators-who-gave-you-right-change-name-entire-group

Driver In Fatal Church Bus Crash Pleads No Contest

The driver responsible for a head-on collision in 2017 that killed 13 church members from New Braunfels pleaded no contest to multiple manslaughter counts in a Uvalde County courtroom Thursday. Jack D. Young could face decades in prison for their deaths.

On March 29 2017, Young’s vehicle veered into oncoming traffic, crashing into a bus carrying members of the First Baptist Church of New Braunfels. His original plea of not guilty was changed Thursday to no contest for 13 counts of intoxication manslaughter and one count of intoxication assault. Thirteen involuntary manslaughter charges were dropped.

Each manslaughter charge could mean two to 20 years in prison, and up to 10 years for the assault charge. The sentences could be served concurrently but potentially total 270 years.

Young had no comment as he left the Uvalde County Justice Center, but his attorney Rogelio Munoz said Young made his plea to go through with a trial.

Read more: http://tpr.org/post/driver-fatal-church-bus-crash-pleads-no-contest

The Woodlands' Residents To Weigh Pros And Cons Of Becoming A City

This week, The Woodlands will take another step towards a vote on whether to incorporate as a city with its own municipal government. The master-planned community, located 30 miles north of downtown Houston, is preparing to publish the findings of a study for residents on the pros and cons of incorporation.

Currently, most of The Woodlands’ tax revenues go to Montgomery County. Those revenues make the wealthy community an attractive target for annexation by the City of Houston or the City of Conroe.

Rice University political scientist Mark Jones said that voting to make The Woodlands a city would protect it from annexation and let it hold onto more of its tax receipts. “The cost to this,” Jones said, “is generally that by incorporating, residents will likely pay more in property taxes than they’re presently paying. They’ll get more services, and they’ll have more control over the quality and the nature of their services, but they are going to pay more.”

At present, The Woodlands is governed as a township. It has regional participation agreements with Houston and Conroe that prohibit the two cities from annexing the township until 2057. Last year, the Texas Legislature passed a law requiring cities get consent from residents before annexing territory. Jones said that the participation agreement and the law make it more difficult to annex The Woodlands, but not impossible.

Read more: https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2018/05/29/288165/the-woodlands-residents-to-weigh-pros-and-cons-of-becoming-a-city/

Santa Fe Schools Awarded $1 Million Federal Grant For Recovery

The Santa Fe Independent School District will receive $1 million from the federal government to help recover from the recent school shooting. The award was announced Thursday, the same day that President Donald Trump met with families and community leaders from Santa Fe.

In the announcement, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said that “no student, parent or educator should have to experience the trauma suffered by so many at Santa Fe High School and other schools throughout the country.”

She said that the grant will help provide services in the immediate recovery in Santa Fe. It’s part of the U.S. Education Department’s school emergency response to violence, or SERV, grant.

Earlier this year, federal officials awarded another million dollar grant to Broward County Public Schools in South Florida, which saw another massive school shooting in Parkland.

Read more: https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2018/05/31/288606/santa-fe-schools-awarded-1-million-federal-grant-for-recovery/

Anti-LGBTQ Law Firms Thrive Under Ken Paxton, Donald Trump

AUSTIN — Lawyers who espouse a conservative Christian agenda have found plenty of opportunities in Texas, suing on behalf of Bible-quoting cheerleaders and defending a third-grader who wanted to hand out Christmas cards that read in part “Jesus is the Christ!”

But for the First Liberty law firm, the last few years have been especially rewarding: Their attorneys have moved into powerful taxpayer-funded jobs at the Texas attorney general’s office and advised President Donald Trump, who nominated a current and a former First Liberty lawyer to lifetime appointments on federal courts. Another attorney went to the Department of Health and Human Services as a senior adviser on religious freedom.

It’s a remarkable rise for a modest-sized law firm near Dallas with 46 employees, and it mirrors the climb of similar firms that have quietly shifted from trying to influence government to becoming part of it. The ascent of the firms has helped propel a wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation and so-called religious-freedom laws in statehouses nationwide.

“First Liberty just struck gold with a Republican president and the Texas attorney general. It’s pretty incredible and definitely unusual,” said Daniel Bennett, a professor at John Brown University in Arkansas and author of a book on the conservative Christian legal movement.

Read more: http://www.outsmartmagazine.com/2018/05/anti-lgbtq-law-firms-thrive-under-ken-paxton-donald-trump/

Pastor with ties to San Antonio searches for extraterrestrial intelligence

The Rev. John Fluth has long turned his thoughts to the heavens — in more ways than one.

Fluth, the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Del Rio, has been a minister for almost 19 years. He also has devoted more than 20 years to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI research, which since the 1960s has analyzed signals from across the cosmos for evidence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

Fluth, whose ties to San Antonio include some graduate work at Our Lady of the Lake University, preaches both his passions in a new episode of the documentary television series “Vice.” The episode debuts at 6:30 p.m. Friday on HBO, with encore presentations on HBO channels and streaming services.

Fluth first heard about SETI research more than two decades ago as a member of Mensa, the high IQ society. He belongs to a Mensa group based in San Antonio, which also is the hometown of his late father, Methodist pastor John Adam Fluth Sr.

Read more: https://www.mysanantonio.com/entertainment/article/Pastor-with-ties-to-San-Antonio-searches-for-12958284.php