The filing period opened today for the May 12th Lewisville elections. The office of Mayor and City Council, Place 2 are up for re-election.

Mayor Dean Ueckert is running again for re-election. Ueckert was first elected to Lewisville City Council in 1998, serving until 2009 when he was elected Mayor by a wide margin. We endorsed Ueckert in that election.

Councilman Neil Ferguson is also running for re-election. Ferguson was elected this past December in a special election to fill the seat vacated upon the death of Councilman David Thornhill. We endorsed Ferguson in that race.

LTJ is covering the Lewisville City Council annual retreat today, and will have more information about any other candidates who file.

Video from Thursday's Lewisville City Council retreat is posted on YouTube in this playlist.

I'll link them up individually here by topic when I get time. We'll be on-hand for Friday and Saturday's meetings as well.

In case you haven’t tuned in to the news over the past couple of days, the Susan G. Komen Foundation tried to quietly inform Planned Parenthood that it will no longer provide funding for breast cancer screening. Planned Parenthood has received money for this purpose since 2005 from the high-profile charity whose avowed mission is “to save lives, empower people, ensure quality care for all and energize science to find the cures.” Last year the amount was $680,000.

The action of cutting off funds was bad enough. But its explanations so far have been downright insulting.

There is little doubt that defunding Planned Parenthood as part of its breast cancer screening program was politically motivated. Komen has been under pressure from right wing and anti-abortion groups to pull these funds from the beginning of the organizational relationship. Its founder, Nancy Brinker, is a major donor to Republican candidates and is reportedly close to the Bush family. And it recently hired Karen Handel, a stridently anti-abortion 2010 gubernatorial candidate in Georgia as its Sr. Vice-President for policy.

In a statement on its website and in a video released by Nancy Brinker, the Komen Foundation vehemently denied the decision was politically motivated, which is unadulterated B.S. It’s bad enough to make a decision completely contrary to one of their avowed tenets (“ensure quality care for all”), but to lie to the public completely destroys the credibility of its executives.

Lewisville missionaries John and Wanda Casias were gunned down in Mexico Tuesday, killed in a home invasion in Monterrey.

The guy who filed a $16 affidavit of adverse possession and took over a Flower Mound house is being evicted. (Finally)

After the worst year of drought in state history, experts predict more drought for Texas. The Dallas-Fort Worth area was just reclassified as finally not being in a drought.

The First Amendment freedom of the press is under attack in America, which is why the U.S. currently ranks #37 in the world. So much for being a shining example of liberty. Just yesterday, the Chairman of the House Energy and Environment Committee, Andy Harris had journalists thrown out of the public hearing on hydraulic fracturing, citing a committee rule that is clearly in violation of the constitution. Here is an article about how in Illinois, it's a felony punishable by 15 years in prison to videotape a police officer making an arrest. Since the upcoming G8 summit will be in Chicago, there will be arrests, and there will be plenty of press.

In case you don't have it memorized, here is the full text of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

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Holy Smack-tastic, Batman! It's ketchup time, I mean, CATCH UP time. Oh how fast the wheels turn in the derby world. It's been a long while since I've written. I guess I kinda left y'all hanging. Oops. Sorry. (Insert lame excuse of preference here.) Enjoy the next installment of the Derby series. (and I'm leaving out the drama of personality conflicts I had with a bonafide sociopath crazy bitch from hell) Let's just say she's an asshat.