Following a smear campaign targeting his sexuality and HIV status, Kristopher Sharp came out victorious in UHD's election for student body vice president.

Before Kristopher Sharp even knew the final results of this month's student body vote at the University of Houston-Downtown, he learned that there was a petition circulating that was already demanding an election recall. The petition was simply the latest move in a remarkably vicious smear campaign against Sharp, a third-year social work major, who was seeking a place in the student body government along with Isaac Valdez.

Sharp had already had to deal with an as-yet-unidentified individual peppering the campus with flyers highlighting Sharp's HIV-positive status. "DON'T SUPPORT THE Isaac and Kris HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA," they read. But not only did the flyers out Sharp's health situation, they also pasted his medical records on the back of the papers, allowing the 14,000-strong student body a glimpse into a part of their peer's life that no one should have had. Graffiti later pockmarked bathroom stalls, urging students to avoid voting for the students who would bring "AIDS" to campus.

Now, during the weeklong vote, the pre-emptive petition began making the rounds. It was the latest salvo in the dirtiest election the campus had likely ever seen.

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A grand disappointment, indeed

The Boy Scouts have finally lifted their ban on including gay members within their ranks. While gay Scout leaders are still barred, young men will be allowed in regardless of orientation. For the sane among us, this is a cause for celebration.

For Gov. Rick Perry, however, this is a sign of faltering morality. Just a few weeks after equating opposition to gay Scouts with opposition to slavery -- no, seriously -- Perry has reacted to this week's vote with as much caustic, divisive idiocy as he could muster.

Perry's statement after the jump:

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Say "meow" to my little friend!

When the incoming vice president of the Boerne Police Officers Association told the Boerne Business Monthly in 2011, "Sometimes the public's perception of police officers can be associated with negative circumstances...we would like to see that change," we wonder if by "change" he meant "shoot my neighbor's cat with a motherfucking crossbow."

Because that's what Boerne authorities say Officer Lance Deleon did Tuesday. He's been charged with animal cruelty and released after posting $2,000 bail. (He was off-duty at the time of the alleged, uh, crossbowing.)

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John Royal

It's Conference USA baseball tournament time

The college baseball season is a marathon. It's nice to sprint out to a lead at the start, but the finishing kick at the end is just as important. And with seven games left in the Conference USA baseball tournament at Rice's Reckling Park, eight teams are kicking into full sprints.

The most impressive kick so far is from the Rice Owls. The Owls went at a steady pace for the regular season, never getting too big a lead, winning the conference regular season title on the last day of the season. They've now won their first two games of the tournament with astounding ease, the team's pitching staff shutting down the opposition with ease, the offense actually showing some life. And if they can shut down the Memphis Tigers (also 2-0 in the tournament) tomorrow morning, the Owls will play for the tournament title and a NCAA regional bid on Sunday afternoon.

The Houston Cougars sprinted out to a quick start this season, but faded as the regular season hit the midpoint. But they started to get back into gear the last weeks of the regular season, and after yesterday's 9-4 win over high-seeded East Carolina, the Coogs find themselves in a strong position to battle Rice on Sunday -- if the Cougars can upset Southern Miss this afternoon and take out Tulane tomorrow.

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In the wake of the West, Texas, fertilizer plant explosion, the folks over at the Chemical Safety Board got their team together and headed to Texas to start the process of sifting through the massive pile of rubble at the blast site to try and figure out what actually happened on April 17 when the fertilizer explosion killed 15 and injured more than 200 -- because that's pretty much what the CSB was created to do.

The thing is, the CSB -- a non-regulatory agency that specializes in investigating this exact kind of thing -- was locked out of the investigation by the Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which had a larger team and took control of the explosion site along with the Texas State Fire Marshal's Office.

They controlled the site for a month and altered or removed "almost all relevant physical evidence from the site," CSB Chairman Rafael Moure-Eraso states in a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer, chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. (Yep, the CSB is so angry they've actually gone to Congress on this.)

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THUN-DAH!!!

As a general rule, unless your team is in the NBA playoffs (I'd say NHL, but most of you wouldn't even know what I was talking about), this time of year can be pretty boring for sports fans. Baseball is still early in the year. There isn't the hint of football save OTAs and college sports are nearly dead as kids prepare for a summer of slurping tequila out of the belly buttons of co-eds and sneaking smokes and free beer behind the crappy restaurant they work at to make money for more partying.

For the northern half of the country, people are just beginning to fully emerge from there cocoon-like hibernation. For them, this is a time of fun in the welcoming warmth of the sun. For people who live in the south, we're just trying to stave off dehydration, usually with a mix of water, alcohol and air conditioning. But there are still things to do in sports even if it may be a tad slim pickings. Here are the best of them for this extended Memorial Day weekend.

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If Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial beginning of summer, our weather is certainly going to cooperate. After a few unseasonably cool weeks and a couple good rainstorms to help ease concerns over drought, it appears as though we have finally broken through into typical Houston summer weather. Once we clear through the next couple days when some unstable air could produce a shower or two, the heart of the holiday weekend will be hot and sunny.

Friday and Saturday are forecast to be partly cloudy with a 20 percent chance of rain. The same unstable air that has generated the devastating and violent weather across Tornado Alley is still lingering and might generate a shower or two for the Houston area, but chances are low and, if it does, it will more than likely be isolated.

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Just...no.

In the era of cell phone technology, virtually nothing goes unnoticed. Such is the tale of a sno cone vendor at Minute Maid Park this week who heard the call of Mother Nature during his shift at an Astros game. A fan in the bathroom at the same time noticed the rainbow-colored sno cones sitting on the ground inside a stall next to the vendor, who was obviously in the middle of "seeing a man about a horse."

The video was passed along to Channel 2, which aired a story. It has since gone viral and been picked up by Deadspin and Yahoo! Sports, among others. Since the incident, the vendor has been fired by Aramark, the ballpark's food services provider. Ironically, the video was filmed on new team president Reid Ryan's first day on the job.

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Photo courtesy of Mercy for Animals

One of the nearly 3,000 pigs at Country View Family Farms in Fannettsburg, Pennsylvania. The farm is a supplier for Hatfield Quality Meats, which is sold in twelve Northeastern states.

This week's story, "The Ag Gag War," goes behind the scenes of the guerilla fight between animal rights groups and Big Agriculture.

For years organizations like the Humane Society and Mercy for Animals have being going undercover at America's largest farms, using hidden cameras to show exactly how our food is produced. The footage hasn't been pretty.

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We like our shark fin soup with a dash of salt -- it helps mask the overpowering flavor of douche.

Hair Balls is scratching our head over Republican Senator Larry Taylor's recent flip-flop on a bill that would effectively ban the already federally prohibited practice of "shark finning" in Texas waters -- i.e., catching a shark, cutting off its fin for use in a very expensive soup and then tossing it back in the water, where it dies an agonizing death.

Taylor, whose district covers parts of Harris, Galveston and Brazoria counties, first introduced the bill, would would prohibit the sale, trade, purchase and transportation of shark fins in Texas.. But after fellow Republican Senator Troy Fraser came out against it, Taylor followed suit. Yep, he reversed his position on his own bill, and it died in committee.

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