In Fact...

FIVE-OH FOR THE OBSERVER

Given Texas's sorry luck to be the home of George W. Bush, Tom DeLay, Ken Lay et al., Northern liberals sometimes forget about the state's robust progressive tradition. One of the crown gems of that lustrous heritage is The Texas Observer, which turned fifty this year. Throughout its half-century run, the muckraking monthly has cut through the rhetorical fog, dug up the buried corruption and afflicted the powerful. From its coverage of the murder of an African-American teenager by East Texas night riders in the 1950s to the Sharpstown banking scandal that implicated state legislators in the 1970s to the Tulia drug sweep in 2001, the Observer has reported fearlessly. It has apprenticed a succession of gifted editors, including Ronnie Dugger, Willie Morris, Lawrence Goodwyn, Robert Sherrill, Molly Ivins, Jim Hightower, Lou Dubose and Nate Blakeslee. Currently upholding tradition are Jake Bernstein and Barbara Belejack. There'll be a big birthday bash in Austin, where the magazine is based, on December 4, with Bill Moyers and Willie Nelson presiding.

THE FLU STORY

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