Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. — The dark blue captain’s hat, with its golden oak-leaf clusters, sits atop a bookcase in Bryan Lawlor’s home, out of reach of the children. The uniform their father wears still displays the four stripes of a commercial airline captain, but the hat stays home. The rules forbid that extra display of authority, now that Mr. Lawlor has been downgraded to first officer.

On a beautiful fall day before the cold weather set in, Santa Fe high school student David Dean wasn’t goofing off with his buddies. Standing in front of the New Mexico State Capitol building with a picket sign, Dean had words for lawmakers who will gather for an emergency session dedicated to a state budget deficit next weekend: “Cut Dropout Rates, Not Budget,” Dean’s sign read.

If anyone expresses surprised by the federal government's crackdown on Texas' transparent lie that it wants to control pollution, they are either stupid or a liar.

Public schools are used to dealing with children in poverty, but this school year, San Antonio school districts are seeing more children than ever from families that have gone from struggling to put food on the table to keeping a roof over their heads.

As members of the State Board of Education trade accusations of ethical lapses, board leaders say it is time to revisit the ethics policy that governs their management of the $19.5 billion public school trust fund.

Rural Texans in particular breathed a huge sigh of relief last week when the Trans-Texas Corridor was declared officially dead. They had rightly complained that the road and rail project beloved by Gov. Rick Perry was simply too ambitious, too harmful to the farms and ranches through which it would run.

Do you remember the "Texas Miracle?" It was the supposedly successful approach to public education that then-Governor George W. Bush touted in his run for the presidency in 2000. In short, the Texas Miracle was Bush's claim that an increased emphasis on high-stakes accountability tests resulted in plunging dropout raise and soaring test scores. Even more, the accountability system was allegedly responsible for narrowing the achievement gap between white and African American and Hispanic students.

What would health care look like under Governor Grover Norquist? In Texas, we already know.

For chapters now, we have detailed how Norquist’s philosophy has touched every Texan. Norquist is the one who famously said, “[m]y goal is to cut government in half in twenty five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” Far too many Texans—who desperately need quality health care—are now in Grover’s tub.

In some ways, it’s reminiscent of the 1980s, when competing black Democrats, some who couldn’t stand each other, got in elbowing matches to stand closest to black presidential candidate Jesse Jackson.

It is scandalous that Texas is letting so many of its residents go hungry when the resources exist to feed them. But those resources — food stamps — are being processed at a snail's pace because the state has not been able to get its act together.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Texas RioGrande Legal Aid have spoken out about the possibility of some students being excluded from border schools.

THE Senate Finance Committee has for the moment rejected the idea of creating a public health insurance plan. It’s difficult to see how Americans will be able to find good, affordable health insurance without one. But if we are to go forward without a public option, it is more important than ever to make sure that we get another part of health reform right: the exchanges, where it is envisioned that small businesses and people without employer-sponsored insurance could shop for policies of their own.

Houston judge Eva Guzman will be named today by Gov. Rick Perry to replace Scott Brister on the Texas Supreme Court.

Though the court has had several women and several Hispanics judges, Guzman, the daughter of immigrants, is the first Hispanic woman to take that bench.

A statewide lawyers group that recommends nominees to the Texas Forensic Science Commission urged Gov. Rick Perry to retain commission Chairman Sam Bassett less than four weeks before the Austin lawyer was ousted in a commission shake-up that has stalled an inquiry involving a 2004 execution.

With unemployment expected to rise well into next year even as the economy slowly recovers, the Obama administration and Democratic leaders in Congress are discussing extending several safety net programs as well as proposing new tax incentives for businesses to renew hiring.

There was what President Obama likes to call a teachable moment last week, when the International Olympic Committee rejected Chicago’s bid to be host of the 2016 Summer Games.

Texans enrolled in Medicare drug plans will see changes in their coverage and out-of-pocket expenses for 2010.

Medicare released details of the private drug plans as the annual marketing period began Thursday.

A new report suggests that Texas would have sufficient hospital beds if 35 percent of its residents fall ill during the swine flu pandemic this fall, but the state has only enough antiviral medicines to prevent or treat flu in 20 to 25 percent of its population.

Doctors' offices and emergency rooms across the Dallas area have been inundated this week with sick patients complaining of flu-like symptoms.

But a closer look reveals that the patients most often are children and young adults, seeking care alongside their distraught parents.

The federal agency that oversees food stamps wants Texas to stop fingerprinting applicants as a way to save resources and speed up what the agency says is an unacceptably slow application system. But because Texas law requires the fingerprinting, the state's Health and Human Services Commission finds itself caught between what the Legislature requires and what federal officials want.