The QueQue: Biery barks on school prayer, Texas' big dry future, Ames Jones's final RRC shot against EPA

They're quibbling over semantics because those findings could easily cause regulatory reverberations in Texas. Under White House guidelines, the commissioners say, an investigation that presents "controversial or precedent-setting" findings shouldn't be given "draft report" status, but subjected to greater scrutiny. And the RRC, like most in the drilling industry, fears the EPA could use its investigation to push for federal regulations on fracking, something currently overseen at the state level by agencies like the RRC.

In the letter, the RRC goes back to August 2010 to dig up bad blood between the two regulators, recalling complaints from a couple in North Texas' Parker County who claimed their tap water had become flammable from methane contamination. The EPA investigated and linked the contamination to nearby fracking activity by Range Resources, issuing an endangerment order against the company. The RRC quickly bit back, launching their own investigation, which they say disproves the EPA's findings.

Jones and co. go on to say the "strong regulatory regime in Texas has helped us avoid a single proven case of groundwater contamination occurring as a result of hydraulic fracturing." In other words: we got this.•

PEDAL PUSHING. James and Christopher Taylor, who plan on finalizing their union with a marriage license in Iowa, kiss outside a mass marriage ceremony on the steps of the Bexar County Courthouse at the stroke of midnight on Valentine's Day. Roughly a dozen same-sex couples participated in the ceremony as a protest, declaring themselves married. If only the State of Texas would agree...