After the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a draft report on Thursday declaring that, in his own words, "The government has no public safety justification to ban" hyrdraulic fracturing, or fracking, Houston Chronicle business writer Chris Tomlinson falsely claimed that the industry believes it "needs no regulation."

Tomlinson formerly toiled at the Associated Press, and it shows. One of his low points there was hypocritically taking James O'Keefe to task for "editing" his videos, even though the Project Veritas founder routinely posts accompanying raw footage, something those in the far more heavily-edited mainstream press where Tomlinson works rarely do. In the current instance, he accused the American Petroleum Institute of making an argument that anyone who read the first sentence of its press release would know it didn't make.

The Houston Chronicle reports that the city's liberal Democratic mayor, Annise Parker, has spearheaded efforts by the city to subpoena sermons from local churches whose ministers have been critical of the city's new "equal rights" ordinance. That law requires private businesses to permit transgendered persons to use the bathroom of the gender of their self-identity as opposed to their biological sex.

When the government pushes to destroy America’s biggest source of energy, you can certainly trust the media to jump on board.

On June 1, the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled drastic new limits on carbon emissions, mandating steep emission cuts within 16 years. It’s a move that may cost  hundreds of thousands of jobs each year, but only 13 of the 20 major United States newspapers discussed the issue in editorials. Eleven of those papers actually promoted the new regulations with editorials or official endorsements – from their editorial board.

A longtime but recently inactive Hispanic leader in Dallas has been arrested and, according to the FBI, is the "Mesh Mask Bandit" responsible for robbing 19 banks since New Year’s Eve."

Imagine if a recent Tea Party leader of the stature of Luis de la Garza (as named at his Wikipedia page; the linked story at CBS 11 in Dallas uses "delagarza" as his last name) were arrested in similar circumstances. First, it would become prominent national news. Second, his or her fellow activists wouldn't be offering up the pathetic excuses readers will see after the jump -- or if they did, the ridicule would justifiably be never-ending (bolds are mine throughout this post):

And the problem is unusually cold weather in Houston to the extent that city had its earliest recorded snowfall on Friday. Plus much of the rest of Texas also had quite cold weather which caused the cancellation of a global warming lecture at the University of Texas in Austin. 

Here is the e-mail received by the Houston Chronicle SciGuy blogger Eric Berger:

Global Warming lecture postponed due to cooling

Given the travel advisories issued and the likelihood of freezing weather for the Austin area tomorrow evening, we are postponing the December 4 event, Global Warming - Lone Star Impacts.