Screengrab from Operation Rescue

It seems that Philadelphia might not be the only city in the United States with its very own late-term abortion doctor. That's right folks, Houston may have its very own version of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, according to a report issued by Operation Rescue.

The Kansas-based pro-life/antiabortion/whatever's-the-correct-term group issued a report with stories from three former employees of Dr. Douglas Karpen who claim that the doctor performed illegal late-term abortions at his Houston clinic on fetuses past the "viable fetus" legal cut-off point.

The women, Deborah Edge, Gigi Aguliar and Krystal Rodriguez, appear in a video produced by Life Dynamics Inc., a Denton-based antiabortion organization. The video, released on Tuesday, is from an interview from May 3, according to Life Dynamics.

In the video the women sit before a black background. Deborah Edge, who worked as a surgical assistant for Karpen for about 15 years until March 2011, does most of the talking, recounting some details that are decidedly on the grisly side.

More »

If you've never felt the need to accessorize every last thing in your life, you may have no idea about the world of options that exist when it comes to license plate customization. We're not just talking the six-letter/number message you can display, either; there are over 140 license plate backgrounds for you to choose from here in Texas.

Whether it's letting the world know how much you love Dr Pepper or showing your college pride, there are a multitude of options if you're willing to pay the price.

Today comes the announcement of a new background to add to the options, one that not only supports a good cause, but that we can see people actually using: the Green Camo plate.

More »

A better exploration of "rednecks" can be found here.

Arlington and Fort Worth are two of the ten most "redneck" cities in the country, according to a highly scientific study by a California-based real estate blog called Movoto.

Contributing blogger Natalie Grigson, an Austin native who boasts of her hometown's "open-mindedness," selected the cities based on such criteria as "percent of population that didn't complete high school," "number of Walmarts per capita," and "number of riding lawnmower/tractor repair shops per capita."

More »

Tony Diaz's Librotraficantes helped to defeat the bills that would have limited what public universities could offer to meet history requirements.

When Tony Diaz first walked up to the State Capitol last month, he had to pause. The man -- normally so well-regarded, so well-spoken -- was, of all things, tense. He'd never given testimony at such level. He'd never gone to the mat with state legislators. He'd never put his beliefs and his efforts on such a stage.

"I had to pause -- I was a little nervous," Diaz, who helps run the activist Librotraficantes organization, told Hair Balls. "You're going to be sparring intellectually with state representatives, so let's see how it is."

Diaz was appearing at the Capitol to attempt to dissuade legislators from moving forward with HB1938. That bill, sponsored by Rep. Giovanni Capriglione and paired with Sen. Dan Patrick's SB1128 in the Texas Senate, was seeking to restrict the types of classes that would meet public university history requirements in Texas. Instead of allowing Chicano, women's and African-American history classes to continue as courses fulfilling such requirements, those bills attempted to force students into either "comprehensive" or Texas-based history courses.

The move is similar to recent attempts seen in Arizona, which the Houston-based Librotraficantes have spent the last few years fighting. But while they've achieved certain successes there, their largest concern remained in Texas.

More »

Morgan Sisk, right, attempted to take a simple photo with this magazine cover -- but her principal wanted to silence discussion of gay rights on campus.

Updated with comments from Sundown Superintendent Mike Motheral and Murray Lipp, who runs Gay Marriage USA's Facebook site.

On Wednesday morning, an eighth grader at Sundown Middle School approached Morgan Sisk, a senior at Sundown's high school. The 1,400-strong town, located just west of Lubbock, is small enough that the students of all ages pass by one another with regularity, so it wasn't an entire surprise when the tween struck up a conversation with Sisk.

However, this eighth-grader wasn't looking for any form of educational advice. Rather, she wanted to share a bit of thanks, with a personal twist.

"This eighth-grader came up to me and she was like, 'I completely agree with what you're doing,'" Sisk told Hair Balls. "Then she said, 'The principal told me I should probably not let anybody at school know I'm bisexual.'...I've heard some instances of stuff like that before, where they tell people they should probably just save that stuff when you're not at school."

Stuff. Their sexuality. Their identity. As ingrained in them as their height or hair color. Something, according to Sisk, that the administration has encouraged remain hidden while students are on school grounds.

More »

The folks over at Exxon Mobil's Baytown refinery were facing a possible Norma Rae situation last week when local United Steelworkers representatives threatened a strike if the Exxon people didn't put in the health and safety provisions they'd asked for in their contracts.

Local USW rep Rich "Hoot" Landry said they'd been pushing for these provisions since a worker was burned over 25 percent of his body out at the Baytown refinery in 2011, according to The Wall Street Journal.

As if that weren't enough to make those so inclined start pulling out their cardboard strike signs, the industrial world of Texas has given us all a lot to think about in recent weeks.The same day that 15 people were killed and half the little town of West was pretty much flattened by ammonia nitrate meeting fire, an explosion at the ExxonMobil Corp. refinery in Beaumont injured 12 people, one of whom later died from his injuries.

Interesting news in its own right -- and on any other day it was something that would probably have gotten a lot more attention -- but it also happened just as United Steelworkers union representatives were negotiating with Exxon officials for new contracts at the Baytown facility, the second largest refinery in the United States. The union reps wanted Exxon to add health and safety language to the contract -- health and safety regulations that they say are already in place at other Exxon refineries, including the one in Beaumont -- and they threatened a strike if they didn't get it.

More »

Photo by Andrew Derksen/FDACS/DPI

You wouldn't pick up a Lissachatina fulica, but your kid might.

Beautiful spring weather, it's not hurricane season yet, nothing to worry about outside except the occasional mosquito, giant deadly snail and annoying neighbor kid.

What-whut? Giant deadly snail?

Yep -- if various sightings around town are to be believed, the Giant African Land Snail (Lissachatina fulica) has made its way to Texas. (Fox News, go ahead and insert your joke about it being an undocumented alien right about here.)

No one knows how it got here. The snail can reach up to eight inches in length and nearly five inches in diameter -- in other words, a size no one in their right mind would ever touch. So when your kid runs into the kitchen holding it in his hands, you've got trouble.

More »

He didn't make the list, somehow

There were plenty of moments that you expect from an NRA Convention.

You expect to see fear-based rhetoric with the best of them -- you count on hearing the murmurs of confiscation and tyranny, of the misguided concept that the only way to keep a government at bay is the 9mm wedged into your wife's bra. (As Glenn Beck alluded to over the weekend, the only thing -- the only thing! -- keeping your wife or sister from rape is a gun. The only thing.) You expect to be filled with the sort of nationalism that would make Hirohito proud. You expect to question the future of this nation and your place in it.

But there are, fortunately, some things that escape expectation. There are aspects and people and moments that make you realize there's still a bit of variation among those who attend and in the ends they all carry with them. A list can't capture anywhere near the bizarreness of it all, but, well, we'll give it a shot:

More »

Texas: Where never is heard a discouraging word (for bidness).

Even as the ruins of the West fertilizer plant continue to serve as a reminder of the dangers of lax regulations on businesses, Governor Rick Perry keeps bragging about how few regulations there are in Texas affecting honest, civic-minded entrepreneurs who would never, ever cut what few corners exist here.

His latest brag: Chief Executive magazine has named Texas the "best state for business" for the ninth year in a row.

"This vote of confidence from business leaders across the nation further highlights that Texas is the epicenter for economic prosperity in this country," Perry said. "I will continue to promote the conservative principles of restrained spending, low taxes, predictable regulations and fair courts that have guided us over the last decade in order to ensure that Texas remains the nation's healthiest economy for the next ten years."

More »

Opposing slavery is the same as opposing gay rights, right?

I don't think there are many out there that would say Rick Perry is unprincipled. The epithets are plenty, and his mistakes are many, but there are few that would claim that Perry is anything approaching the slippery flip-floppery of Mitt Romney. He's a man of his word.

Thus, when Rick Perry, flying in the face of national sentiment, continues to believe that the Boy Scouts will somehow wither and die should they allow gay scout leaders, it comes as simply yet another nail in his principled coffin. It's not especially newsworthy. But when Perry says he believes opposing gay leaders is akin to, ahem, opposing slavery, well: Then we have something to write about.

First, the video proof:

More »