Relatively big news: The Texas Supreme Court said yesterday that it would rehear the case pitting ExxonMobil against the O’Connor family in South Texas and the new operator on their lease. From the AP:

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday said it will again hear arguments in the nearly 15-year legal battle over accusations that Exxon Mobil Corp. loaded abandoned wells with junk, sludge and even explosives to keep other companies from drilling there.

A small drilling company that tried to enter the wells near Corpus Christi, and the land owners, accused the world’s largest publicly traded oil company of intentionally wrecking the wells.

The plaintiffs won at trial in 1999, but the Texas Supreme Court reversed the finding in March. That ruling from the state’s highest civil court sparked a campaign to rehear the case led by the Texas land commissioner and state comptroller.

If this sounds familiar to you it may be because of the no-stone-unturned, 9,000-word story about the case by Mimi Swartz that we published in our November issue, you know, the issue with Bonfire on the cover. Now, far be it from me to say that Mimi’s masterful bit of legal reporting had anything to do with the court’s decision. Of course not. That’s preposterous! But there are some passages in the piece–which has been sitting on newsstands for the past 30 days–that, um, don’t look so good for the court. Like this one:

This particular case seemed to be a very difficult one for the justices to grasp, especially when it came to Emerald’s and the O’Connors’ claims. In the past, the Texas Supreme Court had been extremely familiar with oil and gas law, but not anymore. Justice Nathan Hecht asked whether Exxon’s damage to the wells—cutting the casing, pouring contaminants in a flowing well, depositing junk in the hole—meant that the oil was lost forever or just harder to get at. (Answer: lost forever.) Hecht also asked why the operator couldn’t just “move over ten feet and drill another well.” (Answer: because the spacing of wells is regulated by the Railroad Commission—and besides, drilling a new one costs a fortune.)

Justice Dale Wainwright needed a definition of “junk,” which is a term of art in oil and gas law. “If there weren’t paper cups in the hole, what was in the hole?” he asked. Chief Justice Wallace B. Jefferson asked whether there were regulations that govern how a well is plugged. (Answer: uh, yes.) Various justices seemed dumbfounded to learn that in Texas law there are two kinds of waste: physical waste (something happens to the reservoir that makes it impossible to produce the minerals) and economic waste (the minerals are not efficiently developed or the reservoir is left in a condition that makes it unreasonably expensive to produce the minerals). Though in this case both kinds of waste were at issue (and often difficult to distinguish between), the justices still seemed out of their depth.

Justice David Medina seemed unclear on the long, brutal history of oil field tactics, asking O’Neill, “What interest would Exxon or any other party have to deliberately sabotage the well hole?” Even though the Supreme Court is not supposed to reweigh the facts of a case—only what the law is and whether it was correctly applied—the justices repeatedly got bogged down in or conflated particular dates and events.

What happens next will be very interesting. It’s entirely possible that the court will rule the same way and this is just an opportunity for it to refine its opinion. We’ll see. But I find it amazing how this case just refuses to die. Mimi has a theory about that. As we put it in the display type: Since 1996, a legal battle has raged between ExxonMobil and a powerful South Texas ranching clan that believes the oil company sabotaged wells on the family property. Even after a ruling by the state Supreme Court earlier this year, the bitter feud shows no signs of letting up. Maybe that’s because it’s about something far more important than money.

Tagged: Exxon, O’Connor, Supreme Court.

The New York Times is hopelessly addicted to stories about how cool Marfa is. Like this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one. Today’s story is about how much of a foodie town Marfa has become.

At the weekly farmers’ market the next morning, housed under a gigantic shade pavilion downtown beside the railroad tracks, I try a savory pork asado burrito and buy a half dozen chicken tamales for later, before stocking up on tortillas, pecan brittle, bok choy, bread, yogurt and eggs, all with a vague feeling that I can’t believe my luck.
…

A few days after I’ve eaten at Cochineal — enjoying a salt-and-pepper shrimp salad over fennel and oranges in a gravel courtyard under an orange-streaked sunset — the restaurant’s owner, Tom Rapp, tells me that he and his partner, Toshifumi Sakihara, opened it last year as an extension of the “global home cooking” they did at their restaurant, Etats-Unis, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Mr. Rapp is pithy about the history of Marfa that’s made Cochineal viable: “In the beginning there was cattle, sheep and the railroad. Then there was Judd. Judd begat Crowley,” he says, referring to Tim Crowley, a philanthropic Houstonian central to the town’s revitalization. “Judd made Marfa a destination but did little in remaking the town. It’s in a fourth phase now that there is infrastructure, hotel space, restaurant space. It’s a solidification of what they gave.”

There’s nothing more unappealingly bourgie than whining about how bourgie something has become, so I’ll refrain. I’m all for farmers’ markets and nice little homegrown restaurants that give people jobs and contribute to the local economy. But is it really true that fancy restaurants and new hotels are a “solidification of what [Judd] gave”? Seems like he fled out to the desert to get away from all that crap. He once said, “In West Texas, there is a lot of land but nowhere to go.” I don’t think what he meant was that he really wanted a smoothie.

Tagged: marfa.

The plans for the Bush Library are officially unveiled today, which means it’s time for everyone to put on their architectural critic hats and pretend to be able to read symbols and hidden messages in the size or shape of the plazas and the number of columns leading up to the front door. David Dillon, the DMN’s actual architectural critic, likes the outdoor areas better than the building itself, which he calls “muddled and unresolved.” He finds most to complain about in the south facade, “a jumble of advancing and receding forms intended to make a large building – about 225,000 square feet – seem light on its feet but that say little about what’s inside.” What Dillon doesn’t realize, of course, is that once the building is complete there will be a huge “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” banner hanging along the south facade.

The most appealing element is Freedom Plaza, the main entrance on SMU (formerly Yale) Boulevard. A pair of simple one-story brick and limestone volumes frame a plaza and a colonnade, and lead to a dramatic ceremonial space, Freedom Hall, that looks out to Van Valkenburgh’s garden and the downtown skyline.

It makes for a restrained but gracious approach, appropriately scaled and reminiscent of the forecourt of George Dahl’s Meadows School of the Arts, still the best modern building on campus.

Dillon’s favorite part of the library is the gardens, which do look really, really nice from the renderings. And he makes the astute point that it’s a way of bringing the ranch to the city. No word on who will clear the brush, but the lawns are special lawns that don’t get mowed. (Here’s a simulation of what they’ll look like in three years.)

Van Valkenburgh’s garden, on the other hand, is scenographic, flowing from the base of the library almost to Mockingbird Lane, where it turns into tennis courts and playing fields for SMU. It makes the strong connection between building and landscape.

Yet unlike the formal, tree-lined landscape of the main campus, this garden contains hills and draws and winding paths that conceal surveillance cameras and other security equipment. The garden is more rural than urban – Crawford comes to Big D. It is a low-water landscape in which runoff is harvested and lawns are unmowed; it will also function as a laboratory for developing drought-resistant turf for Texas.

Van Valkenburgh says the garden reflects the wishes of the Bushes for an informal landscape that functions as a park for the neighbors and SMU.

“His connection to the landscape and the out-of-doors is a hallmark of his identity,” he notes.

Tagged: Bush library, SMU.

The December issue hits newsstands this week. Here’s the gorgeous cover–a couple dancing at the Quihi Gun club and Dance Hall, one of the great old spots on our tour of classic country dance halls this month.

A note on the rest of contents: We closed this issue the Thursday before last around noon. Two hours later, as we all know, Major Nidal Hasan killed 13 people at Fort Hood. To be honest, I was so consumed with the terrible tragedy that afternoon that at first I didn’t even think about the implications for the magazine. Even if I had, there was nothing we could have done. By a matter of hours, the December issue had gone to press by the time the awful events of that day were known. Since then we’ve blogged about the shootings, run a photo essay on Veteran’s Day, and revisited all the many stories Texas Monthly has published about Fort Hood over the years. But the December issue, alas, does not contain anything about this tragedy.

What makes it even stranger is that the December issue does contain a piece recognizing Texans who died in 2009, from the famous (Farrah Fawcett, Patrick Swayze) to the unfamous-but-fascinating (Meyer Reiswerg, whose Strand Surplus Senter in Galveston was for decades one of the most bizarre and satisfying retail experiences in Texas). We knew going into this that we would not be able to include anyone who died between November 5, 2009 and January 1, 2010. Little did we know that November 5 itself would be such a dark day on the calendar.

Tagged: quihi gun club and dance hall.

The stories of the 13 men and women killed at Fort Hood last Thursday are incredibly moving. The pride, diversity, and commitment to service–service not just to the abstract idea of country, but to the very real people around them, on bases, overseas, and in their private lives–should stand as an inspiration to everyone. Here’s a couple links that tell their stories.

-The NYTimes put up this interactive feature over the weekend.

-The WSJ Dispatch blog has short profiles of the thirteen. Comments are particularly affecting.

About Maj. Libardo Caraveo, Eduardo wrote:

My uncle was an unbelievable man. He was the epitome of the word perseverance. He work hard for all he accomplished and overcame many obstacles because he was Mexican/American. When I was kid, I recall him attending college and holding down a job to support his wife and kids. He was a role model for myself and my cousins as he was the first to attend college. He broke many barriers and stereotypes that gave some of us the egaerness to be successful in life. He will truly be missed as this world as lost a loving husband, father, brother, uncle, and friend.

About Staff Sgt. Justin M. DeCrow, Anonymous wrote:

My husband was one of Justin’s students who would then become colleagues for two years. My husband woke this morning angry that world was cruel to take someone as Great as Justin…he was an incredible instructor and apparently one heck of a dodge ball player “Matrix like” It is unfortunate that in our time we had not established a relationship with Justin’s family, for I am pained to imagine their sorrow. Indeed the loss here at Fort Gordon is great. I hope that Justin’s family will reach out if ever they should need us, as we are so sorry for their loss and only hope to console as best we can.

About Spc. Frederick Greene, USASOC FT BRADD NC wrote:

From all of the Tennessee boys with 7th SFG, 3rd SFG, JFKSWCS, 4th PSYOP GRP, and 97th CA BN. god bless and our prayers go out to your family and friends. All our brothers in arms will be waiting for you on your PCS to paradise.

-And then, there was the president’s memorializing of the dead during his speech at Fort Hood yesterday:

(more…)

Lilyea ’s shorthand. The Times today has a story in each category, both of them disturbing. This one about the FBI’s monitoring of Hasan’s emails with radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. And this one about stress and violence at Ft Hood. In both cases the theme is failure of oversight/monitoring on behalf of the authorities that are supposed to keep Bad Things from happening, whether we’re talking about intelligence agents or mental health professionals.

Lots of disturbing and compelling new details in this NYTimes story. The tick-tock of the shooting itself is horrifying. And I don’t know what to make of this:

An uncle who lives in Ramallah said Major Hasan chose psychiatry over surgery after fainting while observing childbirth during his medical training. The uncle, Rafiq Hamad, described Major Hasan as a gentle, quiet, deeply sensitive man who once owned a bird that he fed by placing it in his mouth and allowing it to eat masticated food.

When the bird died, Mr. Hamad said, Major Hasan “mourned for two or three months, dug a grave for it and visited it.”

Good DMN story trying to piece together who this guy is. Seems like it’s going to emerge as we learn more about him that Hasan’s actions were, unfortunately, intricately tied up in his conflicts about the war and his ideas about his faith. Rep. McCaul certainly thinks so:

U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul of Austin, a senior Republican on the Homeland Security Committee briefed Friday by investigators and military officials, said a picture emerged of a man torn.

“He has this internal conflict between his religious convictions and his opposition to the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and his official capacity in the U.S. military,” McCaul said. “His deployment to Afghanistan was the final straw that made him snap.”

Reihan Salam has a good piece in the Daily Beast about the “collateral damage” of Hasan’s actions for Muslim Americans, and, in turn, for the country at large. How far will the fear that Hasan has sown go? Tidbits like this  one from the DMN story won’t help: “Hasan described himself as ‘a Muslim first and an American second,’” according to a classmate of his at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda. Salam notes that:

Back in 2004, a survey sponsored by Cornell University found that 29 percent of Americans believed that “all Muslim Americans should be required to register their whereabouts with the federal government,” a policy that would be a massive propaganda coup for America’s rivals.  And it should go without saying that opinions about Muslims aren’t evenly distributed across the country. Muslims living in regions and neighborhoods where high levels of mistrust prevail are likely to feel alienated from the American mainstream, which could then lead them to live narrow, impoverished lives—or, worse still, turn to the kind of nihilistic violence we’ve occasionally seen from the Muslim youth of France and Holland and Britain, where riots and gang violence with a militant edge have grown too common.

The AtlanticWire, to which I have become hopelessly addicted, had a good rundown yesterday on what a few military blogs have been writing about the massacre at Fort Hood. Military bloggers have rightly been incensed at the meme that PTSD or more generally the “stress on the military” had something to do with this. It is as wrongheaded, at this point, as assuming that he did it because he’s a Muslim. Both notions just use Major Hasan’s madness to advance an ideological argument. In general, there’s been a predictable rush to assign blame. We need to have an explanation for something so horrifying, so people reach for logic: He was a psychiatrist treating PTSD so he must have had some kind of “secondary PTSD” ; or he shouted “Allahu Akbar!” as he began shooting so he must be a lone jihadi. But logic isn’t very useful when you’re dealing with a psychotic killer, which is clearly what we’re dealing with here. We may find out as the pieces of this puzzle come together that one of these explanations is correct, but for now it’s all just speculation. PTSD is real, but this is obviously not a case of it since Hasan had never deployed. Radical Islamic terrorism is also real, but let’s not confuse it with plain old madness. We may never know why Hasan did what he did. Sure, he’s alive to tell us at some point, but I’d be suspicious of his explanation, if he even has one. One of the bloggers that the Atlantic cited, John Lilyea from This Ain’t Hell, gets at this:

Here’s a theory I have, that won’t be very popular; Hasan was/is a cheesy pogue pussy. He liked the amenities of being stationed near his home and living in the big city with a Major’s salary and suddenly he found himself at nasty-ass Fort Hood (I spent two years there and every minute trying to leave) looking at a deployment to a nastier place.

I don’t think he did it because of his faith (but he’ll use it as an excuse), or because of PTSD (ditto). The Army doesn’t train their psychiatrists to shoot rooms full of people, so it’s not the Army’s fault. It’s this spoiled little rich kid (by the way, he ignored his father’s advice when he joined the Army – listen to your father), who couldn’t stand the thought of being uncomfortable.

What? Too simple? No room for anyone to use him as their poster boy? Exactly.

I don’t know if Lilyea’s explanation is right or wrong, but his point is right on the mark.

Emily Ramshaw at the Texas Tribune is reporting that jurors have returned a guilty verdict in the first trial of the 12 members of the FLDS sect charged with underage marriages. If the 12 men are all found guilty, the state’s handling of this case will have to be re-evaluated. Katy Vine suggested as much in her story last month:

If the plan all along has been to take aim at the problem of bigamy and underage marriage within the FLDS from a criminal angle instead of through civil proceedings, one can only imagine that the attorney general is holding his breath as the criminal trials get under way. (Perhaps he is also counting on additional convictions from an ongoing federal investigation regarding violations of the Mann Act and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.)

MSNBC is reporting 7 dead and 12 injured. Still not clear what happened.

Sterry Butcher of the Big Bend Sentinel in Marfa has an excellent piece today about the new DHS plan to re-route illegal immigrants captured in Arizona through the Big Bend. 

Tuesday was the third day of the program and the Presidio office of Mexican Conul Hector Raul Acosta Flores was busy. Upon their arrival in Ojinaga, detainees are offered a bus ticket back to their place of residence, whether it’s in Chiapas or Chihuahua.

“The federal Mexican government has the intention to support their needs to return to their residence,” Acosta said.

Critics of the Border Patrol’s repatriation plan worry that the detainees may stay in Ojinaga, or try to cross illegally into the United States at Presidio. So far, all the detainees have taken advantage of the government’s bus ticket offer.

700 immigrants a week will pass through Presidio as part of this program. 700! That’s about fifteen percent of the population of Presidio. As the Sentinel reported last week, it’s also equivalent to the number of BP agents currently assigned to the Marfa Sector.

My favorite new detail about the bizarre case of Willis Willis, the maintenance man whose $1 million lottery winnings were gaffled by the clerk at the store where he went to redeem his ticket–I mean, my favorite part aside from the fact that the poor guy’s name is Willis Willis, or that the store clerk fled the country and is believed to in Nepal somewhere, or that the store at which the ticket was purchased is called the Lucky Food Store, or that Willis Willis, a Navy veteran, has asked to have two minutes alone in a room with his nemeis–is that the Texas Lottery Commission is now in the ridiculous position of insisting that Pankaj Joshi is the rightful winner of the cash. So apparently the quickest way to get rich in America these days is to work at a store that sells lottery tickets, wait for a man with two first names to attempt to redeem his million dollar ticket, and then head for the Himalayas. Thanks, Lottery Commission.

A Mexican polling firm asked people how many times per day they curse and found that…teenage girls in Mexico City have potty mouths. The New York Times is on the case. (h/t Cecilia)

If the estimates are true, the survey noted that Mexicans use 1.35 billion curse words daily, or 500 billion annually. The study’s authors, who probably sling their fair share of curse words, did not appear alarmed. “We shouldn’t be concerned when we hear such words, and it might be better to stop considering them curses at all,” they said.

The old slippery slope. And keep in mind that this doesn’t even include all the people whose response to the poll was, “How the f— should I know?”

I was on Michael Berry’s show in Houston a couple days ago and he asked me this. Now, I’m not an Aggie and Michael’s not an Aggie, so what do we know? But his question was: “You’re president of A&M. Do you bring Bonfire back?” This is pretty much the last question you want to be asked on the radio. There’s no good answer. So naturally I tried to dodge it. But he pressed me for an answer so I ended up telling him that considering what had happened, it was impossible to imagine that Bonfire could be brought back to campus without huge changes in how it was built, more oversight, etc. If there weren’t these changes, and god forbid there was another accident, how could you ever forgive yourself? But if you made those changes then Bonfire would be something different, since the whole point was that the students were in charge. As one of the Aggies in this month’s Bonfire oral history put it, to contract any part of the process out to a construction company would be “basically the equivalent of parents doing their kid’s science fair project.” And this is where part of the tragedy lies: That the particular experience of Bonfire (the student leadership, the rowdy glory, everything) was truly old-school, and in a lot of ways fundamentally at odds with the modern obsession with liability and safety and so on. So I told him no. (Plus, Student Bonfire is growing.) But like I said, I’m not an Aggie, so what do I know? There’s an open forum this afternoon at A&M for students to voice their opinions. Let me put Michael’s question to you: “You’re in charge. Do you bring it back?”