Columns/Opinions

Our two congregations have been partners for forty-five years. We’ve shared joint worship services, joint vacation Bible schools, and joint mission projects, prayed together, eaten together, attended funerals together, and learned to just be together. Many of our members have become friends and no small part of our members’ friendship has been because so many of them are now or have been part of our local public schools as teachers, administrators, staff, and occasionally school board members. Additionally, we’ve been in PTA/PTO together, done school fundraisers, and supported school events, not to mention our own children who have been or are now students in the schools.

Warning: Adult content ahead, enter at your own risk.

Last Friday night I watched some of the “Bruce Jenner-The Interview” special on ABC, and I came away disgusted. I wasn’t necessarily disgusted with Jenner himself, although there were several points where I wondered to myself if he was “on something.” What I was most disgusted with is the fact that ABC News aired the special to begin with. There were some very adult themes that were being discussed and all of this was being broadcast on national television. I kept thinking, ‘there is some twelve year old kid out there watching this; they don’t need to be seeing this stuff.’ Look, I don’t think what Jenner  is doing is right, I don’tbelieve in it in Biblical terms, but it’s also not my job to judge.

The Texas Senate on April 14 passed its version of the 2016-2017 state budget. Because the House- and Senate- approved budgets are $1.6 billion apart, five Senate members and five House members will be appointed to a conference committee to resolve differences. The Senate’s version of the budget totals $211 billion in state and federal funds to pay for state services over the next two fiscal years. Senate Finance Committee Chair Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, who spearheaded the writing of the legislation, said the budget is one that “will keep our state strong, prosperous and compassionate.”

Statewide authority

to investigate and prosecute public corruption would be moved out of the Travis County District Attorney’s Office under Senate Bill 10, legislation approved by the  Senate on April 9.Sen. Joan Huffman, chair of the Senate State Affairs Committee, wrote the legislation under which the Texas Rangers, a division of the Department of Public Safety, would reestablish and support the state’s Public Integrity Unit and assume the initial investigatory role when a complaint is filed against a public official. Cases would be prosecuted in the county where a public official resides.

 

The Texas Attorney General’s Office today defended an injunction stopping the Obama Administration’s unconstitutional executive amnesty program from taking effect. The Texas-led coalition of 26 states made its case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. “At the very core of our republic is the separation of powers, preventing the supremacy of one branch over another and balancing the bodies of government to the benefit of the people it serves,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said. “The executive branch is bound by our legal system and U.S. Constitution – it cannot simply create new laws unilaterally.