Morning Roundup: That'll get you detention edition

Good morning, Houston. Did you hear the one about the high school teacher who might have appeared in a bunch of gay sex videos? Well, now you have. He's a faculty member at Clements High in Sugar Land, and Fort Bend ISD officials got a tip last week that he has appeared in dozens of sexually explicit videos under an assumed name. The district has removed the teacher from the classroom while it investigates the tip, which the teacher denied: "I cannot believe what I am reading, and neither should anyone else," he said in an e-mail to KHOU. "I take this very seriously and deny the validity of this supposed tip."

>> Oh, Priscilla: Ex-TSU President Priscilla Slade's former assistant gave jurors a taste of her old boss's spending habits during Slade's trial Tuesday. Erica Vallier testified that Slade charged a nearly $40,000 dining set from Neiman Marcus to the university — and in doing so, she didn't pay tax on the crystal, china and silverware. The bill for the dining service, which was used at Slade's home, was paid from funds meant for equipment and furniture for Slade's office, as was more than $8,000 more on dining utensils. "They went to Dr. Slade's home," Vallier testified. "Eventually they were stored in a storage room on campus." Slade, you'll remember, is accused of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in university funds on personal expenses; her attorney, Mike DeGuerin, maintains that the expenditures were necessary to improve TSU's image. And if a Neiman's dining set for 25 doesn't scream "class," we just can't imagine what does.

>> Heavy, heavy: The state of Texas is in the habit of giving trucks permits to carry extra-heavy loads — and according to some experts, our roads and bridges could be suffering because of it. "Overweight trucks stress those bridges and can lead to catastrophic failure," the Texas Conference of Urban Counties said in a statement. "These are bridges that families and school buses use every day. We are fortunate we have not had a catastrophe here due to overweight trucks." The DPS agrees that heavy trucks aren't too good for the pavement: "The damage of heavy vehicles, it breaks the road down," DPS Sgt. David Johnson said. "Potholes is one example." Problem is, the state Legislature regulates overweight trucks, and it's letting them go — and meanwhile, the state estimates that every 40-ton truck does the same amount of damage as 9,600 cars.

>> Today's weather: The rain we were promised yesterday never really materialized — but we could see it today. Expect a 60 percent chance of showers, mostly after lunch, with an afternoon high around 87. The overnight low will be in the mid-70s, followed by a rainy Thursday and Friday.

Now, some more headlines ...