SO GIVEN TEXAS PRECEDENT, IS THIS AN INDICTABLE ABUSE OF POWER? Excerpts of text messages exchanged Saturday between University of Houston Chancellor and President Renu Khator and state Sen. John Whitmire of Houston.

I DUNNO, IT’S ONLY CONJECTURE WITHOUT AN EXPERIMENT: Yep: MSNBC would react quite differently if Tea Partiers threw rocks at them.

A CARTER-STYLE HOSTAGE-RESCUE FLOP. At least nobody died.

TECHNOLOGY: Corvette Valet Mode Is Like A Russian Dashcam For Parking.

IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Coffee may keep your ears from ringing.

TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL: Book: My Parents Open Carry.

UPDATE: Much amusement at the Amazon reviews.

THE ADVANTAGES OF MARRYING YOUR OPPOSITE.

It ain’t fiction, just a natural fact. Isn’t this a nice bit of ’90s innocence? Whatever happened to MC Skat Kat?

UPDATE: Oh yeah, how could I forget this?

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FASTER, PLEASE: Harvard Researcher on Aging: There’s no ‘limit on the human lifespan.’ “Can we one day live to 150? I don’t see why not; it’s just a matter of when.”

FASTER, PLEASE: Toxic Bacteria Safely Shrink Cancer.

SCANDAL: “A very intellectually dishonest column by Catherine Rampell of the Wash Post.”

WELL, THAT’S ADMIRABLE: Spike Lee On Ferguson, MO: ‘I Just Hope That Things Will Really Blow Up.’

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Big computation brings your ideas into 3D.

JULIETTE TURNER: What Rick Perry Doesn’t Know. “What Rick Perry probably doesn’t know is that he has a lot in common with John Tyler, the tenth president of the United States. Having just completed extensive research on President Tyler for my upcoming book Our Presidents Rock, I can state that the commonalities between the two men are uncannily obvious, in more ways than one. . . . both men were persecuted for issuing a veto.”

IT’S PARTISAN HACKS ALL THE WAY DOWN: Perry Grand Juror Was An Active Democratic Party Delegate During Jury Proceedings. “Rho Chalmers, who disclosed to the Houston Chronicle yesterday that she was a member of the grand jury that indicted Texas Gov. Rick Perry, was an active delegate to the Texas Democratic Party convention during grand jury proceedings. Chalmers’ active participation in Democratic state politics is important because she claimed yesterday to the Houston Chronicle that her decision to indict Perry, a Republican, was not based on politics.”

Call me cynical, but I don’t believe her at all.

THE NARRATIVE SEEMS TO BE BREAKING DOWN: Missouri cop was badly beaten before shooting Michael Brown, says source.

Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, Mo., police officer whose fatal shooting of Michael Brown touched off more than a week of demonstrations, suffered severe facial injuries, including an orbital (eye socket) fracture, and was nearly beaten unconscious by Brown moments before firing his gun, a source close to the department’s top brass told FoxNews.com.

“The Assistant (Police) Chief took him to the hospital, his face all swollen on one side,” said the insider. “He was beaten very severely.”

According to the well-placed source, Wilson was coming off another case in the neighborhood on Aug. 9 when he ordered Michael Brown and his friend Dorain Johnson to stop walking in the middle of the road because they were obstructing traffic. However, the confrontation quickly escalated into physical violence, the source said..

“They ignored him and the officer started to get out of the car to tell them to move,” the source said. “They shoved him right back in, that’s when Michael Brown leans in and starts beating Officer Wilson in the head and the face.

Well, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays.

JAMES BOVARD: Eric Holder’s police shooting record? Dismal: When the attorney general had the chance to be tough on police shootings, he did next to nothing.

WELL, DANG: A New Surgery Risk. “Thousands of Americans every year develop an abnormal heart rhythm after having major surgery. These episodes have long been considered a fleeting phenomenon that is generally not a cause for concern. But a large new study suggests that doctors should take these abnormal heart rhythms, known as atrial fibrillation, or A-fib, more seriously. It found that patients who experienced one or more episodes after surgery had a striking increase in their risk of having a future stroke. The findings are likely to encourage doctors to potentially monitor and in some cases treat the patients who experience them.”

ASHE SCHOW: Judge denies university’s motion to dismiss student’s due process lawsuit against college. “According to Benning’s lawsuit, he and his accuser engaged in consensual sexual intercourse twice during the summer of 2012. After the relationship deteriorated in the fall of 2012, Benning began seeing a friend of his accuser. Following this, Benning alleges, his accuser filed two informal complaints with the university claiming she had been sexually assaulted.”

SEE, THIS SEEMS A BIT HUBRISTIC: With New Delivery Service, Uber Declares War on Google and Amazon. But maybe not! “Tuesday, Uber announced a pilot program for what it calls Uber Corner Store, a service that would allow Uber users in the Washington D.C. area to get staple items like toothpaste and bandages delivered from local stores. According to a blog post, the program will only last a few weeks, but it hints at CEO Travis Kalanick’s long-term vision for Uber, which is to transform the company from a pure transportation play into a full-fledged logistics company.”

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SPYING ON ASHLEY MADISON USERS TO FIND OUT WHY WOMEN CHEAT: “Middle-age women who cheat on their husbands are looking for passion and sex, but don’t want to divorce their husbands over it, new research suggests. The new data comes from a sample of married women who used AshleyMadison.com, a dating website aimed at people seeking to cheat on their partners. The new conclusions challenge the popular conception that women cheat because they are generally unhappy with their relationships, said study lead author Eric Anderson, a professor of sport, masculinity and sexuality at the University of Winchester in England.” Emma Bovary was unavailable for comment.

WELL, THAT’S COMFORTING: Researchers Hack Into Michigan’s Traffic Lights: Security flaws in a system of networked stoplights point to looming problems with an increasingly connected infrastructure.

See, lousy security is why I’m bearish on the Internet Of Things.

WAR ON PHOTOGRAPHY: Man arrested, strip-searched after photographing NYPD wins $125,000. “The settlement, first reported Monday by the Daily News, comes weeks after the NYPD reminded its officers that it was legal to peacefully record police activity. That department-wide memo followed the videotaped NYPD arrest of a man who died after being subdued by a chokehold last month.”

I THINK I LIKE THEM BETTER ALREADY: Google’s Self-Driving Cars Flout the Speed Limit Just Like You Do.