Rick Perry must have a secret plan to recapture George W. Bush's long-squandered image as an aisle-crossing Texas governor and run for president to the left of the Tea Party-addled Republican field. Or maybe he just decided to something right for a change. Whatever his motivation, the Texas guv signed into law a bill that requires natural gas drillers to disclose the chemicals they're pumping into ground during hydrofracking.
The new law makes Texas the first state in the country to require companies to give up this information. In the past, drilling companies have argued that asking them to reveal the formulas for fracking fluid would be like asking Coke to give up its secret recipe. But as more communities affected by fracking have found more creepy chemicals seeping into their water supplies, that argument has become less convincing, even to Texas Republicans. We never thought we'd say this, but big ups to you, Rick Perry.
