The QueQue: Northside ISD sued in child’s shooting, Defunding firefighters, Chimp alert!

“A lot of these guys need equipment right now, they need funding right now,” Barron said, but a backlog of preexisting requests, estimated in the millions, has already kept crews waiting in line for months. “I know a lot of these guys are taking money out of their own pocket books just to keep the departments open,” he said. “Some will eventually have to shut their doors.”

Chimp alert!

If any of you jobless and/or homeless homo sapiens care to reinvigorate your sense of humanity: nothing works better than by speaking up for a fellow primate. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine gave it a try by petitioning the USDA to investigate the treatment of 14 chimpanzees recently transferred from Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico to the primate research center at San Antonio’s Texas Biomedical Research Institute (you may remember it as the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research). The unlucky 14 were to be part of a larger bundle of 200 transferred chimps before the National Institutes of Health agreed to an investigation on the topic of whether or not chimps are even needed for medical research, now being led by the Institute of Medicine. “We think they are incapable of taking care of chimpanzees, witness the fact that they have so many violations that they are now part of an active investigation [by the USDA],” said Dallas-based medical doctor and PCRM Director of Academic Affairs John Pippin. “We want them to undo this thing we claim was done illegally and under the radar until this report.” The 14 chimps have already been subjected to invasive research in San Antonio, according to records released to PCRM under federal open-records law, but Que2 was unable to gain comment from the USDA about the petition of investigative action prior to press deadline Tuesday.

Tar Sands (public hearing) to Texas

Late last month, as thousands of environmental activists dug in for a “wave of civil disobedience” in Washington, D.C., to decry the planned $7 billion, 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline proposed to move tar-sands oil from Alberta to Texas refineries and ports, news out of the State Department inflamed tempers. In its long-anticipated analysis of the project, the State Department declared the pipeline would cause minimal environmental harm, despite a litany of cases and concerns continually cited by both activists and the EPA. But with the White House protest and over 1,200 arrests behind us, the State Department heads into national hearings to discuss if the project is in the national interest, including in Port Arthur (September 26) and in Austin (September 28). The final hearing on the matter will take place in D.C. on October 7.