News Ticker: April 1

One of TxDOT's dancing trash cans

Karl Rove ruins the fun, Rick Perry takes a stand, and Lee Leffingwell dresses for success. Foolishness is on the News Ticker.

• Texas law enforcement agencies are wary after the murder of a Kaufman County DA and his wife.

• Every time Karl Rove gets in on the fun, a meme loses its wings.

• Perhaps inspired by the hoopla around One Direction, Rick Perry has decided to start his own boy band with John Cornyn (the sensitive one) and Ted Cruz (the bad boy.) Unfortunately, their single "Standing Firm" seems a bit derivative.

• Smartly, Cruz is not putting all of his eggs in one basket. He's already branching out into comedy. His appearance at the Yakov Smirnoff Theatre in Branson has been booked for months.

• At the Lege, a group of GOP House freshmen decide to turn Texas into a giant Ayn Rand amusement park. The Fountainhead is said to be a killer waterslide.

• According to Fox 7, when a mostly black crowd gets rowdy, it's a "really scary looking stampede." If a mostly white crowd does the same thing, things merely "got a little crazy."

• Speaking of racism …

• TxDOT is rebooting the "Don't Mess with Texas" campaign to appeal to millennials, who just can't get enough of Busby Berkeley-style musical numbers performed by sentient trash cans. How else to explain the career of Ke$ha.

• Nice try, Burnt Orange Report, but we did not believe for one moment that Esquire named Mayor Lee Leffingwell "America's Best Dressed Mayor." We all know true swag comes from Waco.