Links, Notes, and Cartoons for Saturday Morning

Just a few quick reminders:

- These open thread posts are the place to bring up any topic you want in the comments. Let us know what's on your mind. I do appreciate the story tips you all send me, and I hope you're not offended if I can't get to them all right away. Sometimes I'm swamped with other stories, and sometimes it's just other work. Feel free to post something here if you want to get the conversation started.

- We posted a banner ad to the left here that links to the donation website for the American Red Cross. They're working hard to assist the victims of this week's tornadoes. Lets all try to go donate a few bucks to pitch in and help our neighbors.

- During severe weather events like we had this week, we are most likely to provide updates by Twitter. As you may have noticed, we do now have a more detailed Lewisville Weather page, but we're still not satisfied with it, because you have to click through to the detail screen to get weather alerts like warnings and watches. It's on the list of things to improve. Some of that will take some money that we don't quite yet have coming in from ad revenue. We'll get there.

- The City of Lewisville has a new emergency alert system that can call you in the event of an emergency like these weather situations. This is different from the old Code Red system, and you will have to sign up for the new one if you haven't already. Your information will not transfer from Code Red.

- We'd love for you to "like" the Lewisville Texan Journal Facebook Page. Sometimes we share links there before posting them here - especially if they happen during the middle of the work day.

Police Witness Suicide in Lewisville Park
Wednesday afternoon, Lewisville Police were contacted by The Colony Police, who were on the phone with a suicidal man in East Hill Park. East Hill Park is at 2681 Lake Ridge in far Eastern Lewisville near the Meridian subdivision and Pier 121 Marina. Police did not approach the man because he was threatening to shoot himself if he saw police. A Lewisville officer in plain clothes and an unmarked vehicle observed from 300 feet away as the 44 year old man shot himself in the head. The man was apparently upset about a divorce, and had a do-not-resuscitate order in his hand. He died on scene.

Other Links:
Lewisville Toddler Rescues Dad

Police chief's weekly update

Here's an article that despite the title is not really about Christianity or homosexuality - but rather about how human beings treat one another: "I'm Christian unless you're gay". Here's one teen's brave response to it, after the anguish of hearing his bigoted mother bash gays.

Denton County precinct 2's decision to go "wet" has been upheld. I'll drink to that. Prohibitionists should quit trying to throw a wet blanket over other people.

Speaking of prohibition, here's a different take on "going green" - Some facts about Marijuana legalization.

Infographic: Voter suppression laws.

A life-saving weather radar sits unused in a DFW warehouse because federal funds could not be found to install it.

Here is an unrelated Washington Post article about National Weather Service (NWS) funding.

President Obama's budget plan had increases for weather satellites, but cuts to NWS operations. Republicans, who passed a nebulous Paul Ryan budget that didn't have line-items for the National Weather Service get to sit safely on the sidelines and criticize the President, yet knowing full well that some have proposed getting rid of NWS altogether. When Rick Santorum was in the Senate, he proposed a bill to outlaw the national weather service disseminating information to the public. This idiotic article from Fox News gives some insight into their ideological view on this, but it's hogwash. Weather information is a public good. The private sector is not going to be as effective at it because their goals would differ. We don't need a bunch of private companies duplicating efforts and sucking more resources out of our GDP. We have a National Weather Service which serves the public and commerce. We should fund it properly and allow them to do their mission. If private industry wants to step in and do it too, nothing is stopping them, but we the people have decided we can afford a few bucks a year to fund the agency who can help save our lives with timely information that doesn't require a paid subscription.


What William Buckley would think of current American conservatism.

Rolling back equal pay protections for workers, and allowing employers to get away with paying women less, without being sued in state court. Just one more salvo in the Republican Wars on Women and Workers. It's easy to see where their loyalties lie.

Earlier in the week, Texas' electric grid set a new record for wind power generated.

Tickets are now on sale for the April 28th double-header in women's flat track roller derby action in Denton. These events sell out quickly, so get your tickets now. Lewisville Texan Journal will have video and coverage of the bouts.