More of Texas's ugly side

For those who can't get enough. This story in the Chronicle today is extremely sad. It's about an incident that happened back in April when a grad student at UT's music school, who spent quite a bit of time helping out one of the professors who had MS, flipped out and killed her one day. The whole thing could have been avoided if the student had gotten proper care for his mental illness, which he tried repeatedly to do. But since he was a student, he had to use the state services, which are unsurprisingly over-booked and underfunded. He was repeatedly diagnosed as bipolar, a misdiagnosis that ended up costing a woman her life and him his freedom. Even the cops who were called to the scene--by him--realized that the young man was suffering from schizophrenia, since he seemed to be unaware that he had killed someone but insisted that he was trying to get a computer chip out of her head. This tragedy has only helped increase the volume of requests that state services be funded and managed properly, but I don't expect much to come out of it.

And then there is this item from The Daily Texan about a group that doesn't want UT to move a statue dedicated to the Confederacy off the South Mall. It's a mind-bending story, where the group suggests that racial harmony is nice and all, but not if the price we pay is moving this stupid statue. And for those who think that "Christians" only hate gays, here's a nice reminder that there's room for hating blacks in the name of Jesus, too.

After praying in front of the statue of Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Texas Division declared their opposition to a proposal to move Confederate statues off the South Mall.

Not to leave the homo-haters out, here's a news item about how Texas legislators, feeling left out of the homo-hating legislative race, are proposing amending our constitution to ban gay marriage, too. Granted, we amend our state constitution like 200 times a year or something like that, but this is still a big, sucky shame. If this gets on the ballot, and it almost surely will, I plan to harangue my friends until they remember to go vote against it. Not that it will help, but you do what you can.