News & Commentary

Last Sunday night in Irving, Texas, a 14-year-old boy named Ahmed Mohamed got bored. But instead of firing up his X-Box for a few rounds of Counterstrike or checking up on his fantasy football progress, Ahmed decided to build a digital clock from scratch. He likes to tinker.

In a Facebook post earlier this month, the Waller County Sheriff’s Office expressed its “condolences to the Sandra Bland family for their loss.” The sentiments would be welcome, were they sincere.

This week the Houston Police Officers’ Union invited controversial psychology professor William Lewinski to conduct training seminars for 140 of its officers. Unfortunately it won’t be the sort of training that will rebuild community trust in law enforcement or save lives. Quite the opposite.

The 5th Circuit’s ruling on Texas’s voter ID law is welcome, but not enough.

The most diverse city in the country needs an equal rights ordinance.

Now that the dust has settled and the hand-wringing over the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges seems mostly to have subsided, it’s worth reflecting on what the case means. In the last month, we’ve heard from pundits and politicians of every stripe, who rushed to explain the decision’s import. For some, the recognition of same-sex marriage in all fifty states ushered in a new era of equality, while others warned that it heralded the end of the Republic.

County governments almost never find themselves on the front lines of constitutional struggles, but you wouldn’t have known that had you attended the Hood County Commissioners’ Court hearing last Tuesday morning. At issue was the attempt by some local residents to remove from the public library two LGBT-tolerant children’s books, Princess Boy and This Day in June. After hours of impassioned debate, in the end what I witnessed was a big victory for the First Amendment over the threat of censorship.

Some residents in Granbury, Texas, are lobbying to remove Princess Boy and This Day in June from the Hood County Library because they “indoctrinate children to the LGBT lifestyle” and “promote perversion." Hood County Library Director Courtney Kincaid decided to keep the books on the shelves, but next week the commissioners’ court will meet to discuss whether or not to reverse her decision. Book banning is one of the worst crimes one can commit against the human intellect, and undermines the free exchange of ideas that is one of the pillars of our democracy. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the commissioners’ court’s deliberations, but in the meantime, we thought we’d take a quick look at other books that have been either banned or challenged in Texas.

Hot on the heels of Governor Abbott’s disingenuous lead, last Sunday Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a statement regarding the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that is functionally incoherent, willfully misleading, and legally wrong. Were this merely more bluster from an extremist state official unsettled by Friday’s happy turn in the course of American history, we could comfortably ignore him. However, Paxton’s recklessness could lead to ruinous consequences for public officials who might heed his bad advice. For now, it appears as though they will not.