Fort Worth Star-Telegram

FORT WORTH, Texas — A powerful spring storm swept suddenly into the Dallas-Fort Worth area shortly after lunch on Tuesday, spawning reported tornadoes in Arlington and Kennedale, parts of Johnson County, and in Lancaster and Mesquite in Dallas County.

Television footage showed residential and commercial damage in southwest Arlington and Lancaster, and large hail fell throughout Arlington and then moved through Northeast Tarrant County.

More than plenty of opinion has been expressed about the revolting comments made last week by the talk-radio blowhard best described by Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" as "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Gross."

Much of it has drowned out reasoned discussion about what services private medical insurance properly should cover.

Too bad the brief but seismic split between Komen for the Cure and Planned Parenthood didn't explode in time for the Jan. 22 anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

What's more likely to call attention to the outrage that is the super PAC: a bunch of Occupiers showing up at federal courthouses Friday -- or Colbert Nation upending Saturday's South Carolina Republican primary by voting for Herman Cain?

Two years ago Saturday, the U.S. Supreme Court unleashed super PAC funding on American voters by ruling that key restrictions on campaign spending amounted to censorship of corporations and labor unions that wanted to pour big money into electing candidates. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the court said corporations, which are created strictly by the laws that shield them, have the same free speech rights as people, who are created by a power greater than the state.

FORT WORTH, Texas -- There's a new tumbleweed in town.

The old-fashioned tumbleweeds that long exemplified empty, desolate places have been replaced by a new symbol of blight: urban tumbleweeds -- lightweight plastic bags that get snagged in trees and bushes, pile up in streets, clog drainage systems and endanger wildlife.

A growing number of world leaders consider the bags an environmental hazard and are taking action to eliminate them.

A handful of protesters near the Fort Worth Convention Center caught my eye Saturday afternoon as I was leaving downtown.

At first I thought they might be a contingent of the "Occupy" group, but the busy hand-held signs didn't say anything about "99 percent" as I had seen at other demonstrations.