Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

By now, the Rick Perry, Radical Republican agenda is clear. During the 82nd Session of the Texas Legislature, TEA party Republicans mean to wage war on Hispanics.

In Perry’s party, which just took 22 seats away from Democrats to create a supermajority in the Texas House, the agenda is now crystal clear—cut taxes for the billionaires that funded Perry’s last election, cut budgets for key programs that invest in Hispanic education and health, cut regulations to corporations like the predatory lenders whose PACs pay for House wins and do anything possible to keep Hispanics away from the ballot box.

No one knows what history will make of the present — least of all journalists, who can at best write history’s sloppy first draft. But if I were to place an incautious bet on which political event will prove the most significant of February 2010, I wouldn’t choose the kabuki health care summit that generated all the ink and 24/7 cable chatter in Washington. I’d put my money instead on the murder-suicide of Andrew Joseph Stack III, the tax protester who flew a plane into an office building housing Internal Revenue Service employees in Austin, Tex., on Feb. 18. It was a flare with the dark afterlife of an omen.

Karen Young from Lawrenceburg borrowed less than $200 from a payday lender to cover her musician husband’s transportation expenses. She repaid it in two weeks but it didn’t stop there. She still needed cash. She wrote a new check to take out a new loan. She got caught in a cycle.The cycle went on for 18 months. Payday loans didn’t help Karen hold off a crisis. They added to her debts.

Project Bravo will begin its Green Affordable Housing project today in Montana Vista.

The group will mark the construction of the first green affordable home in the area.

"Minus Twenty" -- forecast for El Paso?"

Minus twenty sounds like the temperature in the Arctic.

So what does it mean in Texas?