News Ticker: October 10

Grover Norquist gets testy, Ted Cruz gets profiled, and West Fertilizer gets dinged. Safety is on the News Ticker.

• Grover Norquist is again taking swipes at Sen. Ted Cruz. We hope this all ends in Jello wrestling.

• The takeaway from People magazine's profile on Cruz is that he makes his children wear Crocs. If that isn't proof of evil, we don't know what is.

• Speaking about the federal shutdown, Sen. John Cornyn told reporters, "The negotiating always gets more tense before the ice breaks and a solution is floated." To us, that sounds like the ending to the Titanic. Maybe he just didn't realize that those were dead bodies in the water, not solutions.

• The Elisa Chan and Donna Campbell senatorial campaigns are fussing over the endorsement of Roger Legrand, Chan's charmingly homophobic communication chief. We would say that it's like two dogs fighting over a puddle of vomit, but that battle is at least worth the effort.

• The Republican National Committee is pouring money into the Greg Abbott gubernatorial campaign to help with Hispanic outreach, although we are still not sure that hiring armed guards to patrol the border is most accurately described as "outreach."

• If there's anything that Sen. Wendy Davis and Abbott agree on, it's that Bikini's is the best darn breastaurant in this mother lovin' state. Or maybe it was the government shutdown. News stories tend to blur together after lunch.

• The authors of the recently released University of Texas fracking study say that their work is being twisted to support political agendas. For example, it does not prove Obamacare will cause insurance premiums to rise.

• Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Sen. Dan Patrick both want to do away with the 17th amendment. Instead of Texans being able to directly elect their federal representatives, the pair propose that three "precogs" predict who the state would be most likely to vote for. The plan is going to require a ton of viscous fluids.

• Surprise! The West Fertilizer plant may not be the safest workplace. We haven't been this surprised since Ross wound up with Rachel at the end of Friends.