EoT: Farrah’s Face and a Fairy Tale Debate

A roundup of news, columns and features about the state, from media around the world.

The University of Texas at Austin is not giving up its fight to collect a portrait of UT alum Farrah Fawcett by Andy Warhol. When Fawcett died, she bequeathed her art collection to UT, but the portrait has remained with Fawcett’s lover, actor Ryan O’Neal. A California trial court ruled last year that he could keep the painting. The university recently decided to appeal, according to McClatchy’s Washington D.C. bureau. The legal battle has already cost the school more than $1 million in legal fees, but the portrait is appraised at $12 million.

San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro compared state Sen. Dan Patrick to a “Big Bad Wolf” gone “Little Red Riding Hood,” for trying to conceal his hard-line views on immigration during a debate earlier this week. Both Castro and Patrick are rising stars in Texas politics, though from different parties. Castro and his twin brother U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, or the “Texas Twins,” as the New York Times calls them, are Democrats. According to the Times, supporters hope Mayor Castro will become vice presidential material by 2016, but not without brushing up on his Spanish first. Patrick, a tea party favorite, is running for lieutenant governor as a Republican. Castro first took the national stage when he was a keynote speaker at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, the first Latino politician to do so.

An intellectually disabled man will get a new trial after spending more than 33 years in prison near Gatesville without a conviction, according to The Week. Jerry Hartfield, 57, was convicted in 1977 of a murder that took place in Bay City and sentenced to death. The conviction was overturned three years later, but Hartfield remained in prison. Hartfield didn’t challenge his imprisonment until 2006. Last week, District Judge Craig Estlinbaum in Matagorda County said that although Texas has been negligent in handling the case, Hartfield, who has an IQ of 51, had not “suffered any anxiety relating to his pretrial detention.”