Texas Progressives have you mesmerized

For yet another week, there's plenty of interesting — good, bad and ugly — news and views in and around the Lone Star State and beyond that caught the eye of Texas Progressives in general and this corner in particular.

So, let's dig in.

Here you are.


Texana

Socratic Gadfly notes that Freedom from Religion Foundation had a lawsuit victory over Gov. Greg Abbott upheld on appeal. As he said at the initial filing, it's a case he wishes both sides could have lost in some way.

Buying a house, but not getting the land? The Observer looks at the big picture on community land trusts, in a longer read. (One thing not mentioned by the Observer: the whole myth of a home as an investment.)

The Observer welcomes Tristan Ahlone as new editor-in-chief. As a long-time reader of High Country News, familiar with his work, I say this is a great add.

Get your art fix online. The Observer has the details.

Angelo State's prez resigned without reason.

The Texas Living Waters Project reminds us that flood planning is still a thing we need to be thinking about.

Early prognostications of this year's Atlantic hurricane season aren't good.


Texas politics

Off the Kuff notes an update to that weird "ghost candidate" story from the HD142 primary.

David Bruce Collins reminds us that the Texas Green Party convention, to be done virtually, is this weekend. Register here.


Criminal justice

Grits has the receipts on "perhaps the junkiest of junk science," forensic hypnosis. When it's worse than bite marks, blood spatter and other Texas forensic pseudoscience, it has to be bad. And it is. And deadly, since we're a death penalty state.

Grits talks about how Abbott has lost round one in his thinly-coronavirus-veiled attack on bail reform.

He also offers an update on his cancer recovery.


National

Bernie wasted no time this time around in starting the sheepdogging.

David Bruce Collins, like me, wonders just how many of the #BernieOrBust folks actually will leave the Dem party Nov. 3. And by "leave," both he and I mean voting Green, not staying home and not voting at all.

Why did Bernie go Bust? Gadfly offers his thoughts, mainly based on Bernie being a bad campaigner.


Global

Turns out baby daddy Julian Assange wasn't quite so isolated, and certainly not so monastic, inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London. And the baby mommy and him have been partners for 9 years, and engaged since 2017, but marriage not on the plate until now. And, if Assange's mom is mad about invasion of privacy, she can tell her kid to start by apologizing for the Seth Rich conspiracy theory.