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Robert Kimball, whose criticism of the privately run school where HISD sends its troubled students was so stinging (or effective) that the school is suing to shut him up, won a round in court today.

Community Education Partners is suing Kimball because he's been making clear he believes CEP is a "dropout factory." They claim he's hurting their opportunities to sign contracts with other districts.

Kimball has demanded CEP provide him with whatever data they have on dropout rates; CEP has refused and even called on the judge to sanction Kimball for asking.

Today the judge ordered CEP to give Kimball the data, after they block out all identifying information such as students' names and Social Security numbers.

Howard Lehrman, even after all these years, still considers himself an "anti-noise pollution activist," battling "Audio Terrorism" and the "Boomheads."

Boomheads are the guys who crank the bass in their cars, rattling windows and victimizing and booming to death - as Lehrman says - decent law-abiding citizens.

"People are getting more and more fed up with this nonsense all over the country, except Houston for some strange reason," Lehrman tells Hair Balls.

Lehrman's current Number One peeve involves Christ the Incarnate Word Catholic Church, about half a mile from his house. Each February, the mainly Vietnamese church puts on a festival, and the outdoor music that's playing always includes, sure enough, thundering bass.

"My whole house is vibrating with all the doors and windows closed," Lehrman says. "People don't understand that heavy bass travels through walls, through foundations, through windows. You don't just hear it, you feel it. That's what I'm talking about."

Some working stiffs would love to hear their boss tell them, "Hey, don't worry about those stuffy work clothes." But when that boss is HPD Chief Harold Hurtt, and those stiffs are three officers announcing a lawsuit against two men who publicly accused them of brutality, it smacks of top brass refusing to support the troops on the ground, Houston Police Officers Union President Gary Blankinship tells Hair Balls.

Three HPD officers who were accused of using excessive force on Marvin Driver Jr. -- father of NFL wide receiver Donald Driver -- have sued Driver and activist Quanell X for making what they say are false allegations about the November incident. (The department's investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing on the officers' part.) They appeared at the Feb. 6 press conference announcing the suit in civilian attire, as per Hurtt's directive to Blankinship.

A piece about the situation in this month's Badge & Gun, HPOU's monthly newsletter, is highly critical of what it called the chief's "disgusting morale-lowering decisions." Harsh words that Blankinship isn't afraid to echo.

 "Just another example of the chief not supporting his troops," he tells us. "The one time they want to stand up for being falsely accused in that uniform, the department and city don't back them up. It makes me sick."

This year's rodeo brouhaha -- there usually is one -- surrounds the alleged lack of diversity of the event's staff, vendors and performers.

State Sen. Mario Gallegos has filed a bill calling on the rodeo to open its books and get better about being inclusionary; local ctivist ben Mendez has circulated an e-mail calling for protests and listing grievances.

The rodeo has responded, at great length.

Some of this is inherently silly -- arguing whether Hispanic entertainer Little Joe got paid enough for his performance (tell him to talk to his agent, man).

But the rodeo has had to fight off accusations before that it's a good-ol'-boys network, and it's tough to look at Black Heritage Night and Hispanic Heritage Night without thinking tokenism.

At any rate, the original mendez memo, and rodeo's very detailed and very defensive response,are after the jump.

Photo courtesy Polk County

A couple of students from Harvard Law School recently got a taste of the Polk County Sheriff's Office and spent some time in the county jail after going out on assignment for their internships at a Houston legal clinic.

The students had driven to Livingston to interview a Polunsky Unit guard at his house, helping attorneys from the Texas Defender Service get favorable statements about Willie Pondexter, an inmate scheduled for execution on Tuesday.  

When they got to the property, the guard's mother told them to drive "around the bend" to her son's house, according to the affidavit of student Ariel Rothstein. They spoke to the guard, who said he didn't know Pondexter. He then asked the students to leave, and they did.

A Polk County sheriff's deputy -- Terry White -- pulled over the students as they were driving back to town and told Rothstein that "driving to a guard's house [is] illegal."

Photo by John Nova Lomax

Inspired by the "Chicago Tea Party" of CNBC fame, right-wingers from coast to coast gathered to protest, um, a bunch of stuff. Creeping socialism, Wall Street, arms control, liberals in general, freeloaders... You name it, these folks are pissed about it. About 300 people (by very rough estimate) turned out to Houston's tea party, which is ongoing until two on the hill that faces the amphitheater stage in Discovery Green.

Click here for more photos.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, rodeo bullriders, but we're rooting against you. Don't take it personally, it's just that when wagering on an average human male vs. 1,500 pounds of pissed off ungulate, we're taking the bull. And wearing that pansy-ass body armor isn't very endearing either. In any event, here are some of the more memorable bovine assaults in cinema history:

5. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) Movie experts agree the "fetchez la vache" sequence is still among cinema's funniest. Or would be, if you hadn't already heard the entire movie quoted in its entirety by three-decades' worth of nerds.

Photo by foxtongue

The count is in, and the number of hate groups in the U.S. exploded to 926 in 2008, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center's totally non-fearmongerishly titled "Year in Hate" issue of the Intelligence Report. And Texas can proudly boast the second-highest hate group count, at 66, right behind California's 84.

From whence comes all this hate? According to the SPLC's website, "The number of hate groups operating in the United States continued to rise in 2008 and has grown by 54 percent since 2000 -- an increase fueled last year by immigration fears, a failing economy and the successful campaign of Barack Obama..." Which clearly means that if McCain won, there wouldn't have been such a run on white sheets and pointy-pillow-case hoods. Damn that Obamamania!

Houston is home to a fair share of these groups, including the United White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the New Black Panther Party, the Gospel Broadcasting Association, and the generically monikered Aryan Nations. (Seriously, mein bruders, is that the best you could come up with?)

Hair Balls searched for these groups' websites, only to find that many were defunct or mostly inactive, which makes us question the veracity of the SPLC's count. But for those of you racist folk who aren't sure which group best meets your particular brand of hate, we present the following:

Photo by Monica Fuentes

Things are getting nuts out at Wilshire Village, that odd-but-strategically-locatedapartment complex at Alabama and Dunvale.

Swamplot and its commenters have been following developments fanatically, as city officials join in the chorus telling the few residents left they have to leave.

One resident tells Hair Balls of the crazy/grim events:

this whole thing is getting more and more bizarre...and i smell a turd in the punchbowl. most of the residents are 2 hairs away from calling in the 'national' media with what all is going on here. i'm trying to keep a journal but packing, storing and finding a new place to move within the next 48 hours is making us all insane. there's Cohen, there's Dilick, there's city official who don't know crap, city counsel persons simply responding to our pleas with trite "get an attorney". hell, if we could afford a freakin' corporate attorney, we wouldn't have any problems with moving

He says some people are hoping the city or the owner can help pay for the sudden move.

Today, of course, is Go Texan Day, marking the opening of the rodeo.

It's the day when secretaries all over downtown wear "western" blouses and skirts, adventurous guys sport bolo ties and cowboy hats, and the rest of us cringe.

Longtime Houstonians know to never, ever schedule any friends to come visit on this day, especially if they're from back east. There's only so many times you can say "Yeah, ummm, it's really just a tradition this one day. You don't see people dressed up like that all the time."

You then say goodbye at the airport, fully confident that the bars in the trendy parts of Brooklyn will soon be regaled with stories of how the goobers in Houston dress all the time.

Five things to remember about Go Texan Day: