Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Texas operates 13 schools across the state, including one in Corpus Christi, for the severely mentally retarded. The schools have been the subject of intense scrutiny since the Justice Department in December, 2005, found widespread abuses of residents at the Lubbock School.

Gov. Rick Perry has arranged to have one of his budget aides, Alfonso Royal, named chief of staff of the Texas Youth Commission. It’s an odd appointment given that, despite his position on the governor’s staff at the time, Royal had little or nothing to do with uncovering last year’s scandal at the commission.

With college costs rising faster than federal aid and family paychecks, students in Texas and elsewhere are turning more to loans that are not subsidized or backed by the federal government. What the pitches for these so-called private or alternative loans often fail to mention, or bury in fine print, is that they almost always cost more than federally backed ones, with interest rates that can rival those of some credit cards.

Everyone knew something was amiss at Lynacre Academy – its school board members, its accountant and Texas Education Agency regulators charged with monitoring charter schools.But nobody fixed it, and the school that was supposed to help poor, struggling students in South Dallas ran out of money and closed on Feb. 1.

Every year, payday lenders strip $4.2 billion in excessive fees from Americans who think they’re getting a two-week loan and end up trapped in debt. Payday lending, commonly known as cash advance or payday loans, is the practice of using a post-dated check or electronic checking account information as collateral for a short-term loan.

Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton received more than 72,000 votes in Collin County's presidential primary – the most outside of Texas' major urban centers and 20,000 more than the Republican candidates combined despite record GOP turnout.

The El Paso democrat's remarks were read out a news conference organized by border wall critics. He singled out Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff for criticism and pointed out that many people around the world are calling the border fence “muro de odio” - the wall of hatred.

Providing more commuters with this option must remain a top priority for the North Texas delegation in next year's Legislature. Lawmakers have failed their constituents by not approving new funding methods, despite local elected officials' calls to do so these past four years.

Despite months of urging from federal Homeland Security officials, an opinion from the Texas attorney general who OK'd enhanced licenses and pressure from border leaders from El Paso to Browns ville to implement new technology to speed crossings, a spokesman for Perry's said Texas was backing away from the program.

Mr. Pigg and the rest of the Wimberley school board voted last fall to withhold the payment of an estimated $3.1 million in local property taxes – one-sixth of the district's total revenue – that was supposed to be sent to the state under the share-the-wealth school finance law passed in 1993. The law was passed in response to a series of court orders calling for equalized funding among school districts.

"For a few years now we've seen auto rates either flat or decreasing, but there is a cyclical nature to insurance rates, so it's not unusual to see some upward movement," said Jerry Hagins, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Insurance. "But we're reviewing these rates to make sure they're justified."

In most recent years, the state hasn't spent enough money to provide grants for all eligible students, forcing families to rely more heavily on loans – and those don't always fill the gaps. Experts say those trends will grow more critical unless something changes.

Backers of both Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton turned out with passionate support for their candidate in last week's Texas primary. But once they got in the voting booth, they did something different. Obama supporters were more likely to vote in the presidential race and then skip the other contests than Clinton supporters, who tended to continue voting down the ballot, a Dallas Morning News analysis finds.

Staffing shortages and poor training among border personnel, along with outdated facilities, an overwhelming workload, and the absence of standardized, tamperproof travel document requirements are contributing to long wait times and security lapses at U.S. borders, officials said.

For the 2009 budget, the White House requested $93.7 billion for the VA, including $41.2 billion for medical care for all veterans—not just those from Iraq and Afghanistan. That's an increase of $2.3 billion over the current budget. But critics say that is not enough for a system that has a backlog of about 400,000 pending medical claims and complaints, especially in mental health care.

According to information maintained on the Web site of the Centers for Disease Control, as of 2004, about one-fifth of all HIV infection and almost all hepatitis C infection are the result of injecting drugs with used needles. These viruses are then transmitted further via unprotected sex and sharing of contaminated needles. Pregnant women can transmit these diseases to their babies at birth or by breast-feeding.

More than $41 million churned through the Texas political system in 2007, a year in which there were no high-profile races and only a few constitutional amendments on the ballot.

At least 150,000 registered voters in Texas —about 1 percent — don't have the kind of government-issued photo identification that the Legislature has considered requiring at Texas polls, a legislative committee was told Friday.

Tom Craddick got the point. He has called for a special committee to examine care at the state's 13 schools for the mentally disabled. This newspaper reported last year on stunning abuse at some of those schools, and House Democrats and the Justice Department have done their own investigations.

Anyone who depends on higher-ups to approve funding for an annual budget knows the drill: Whatever they give you this year, spend it; if not, they might think you don't need as much next year. In a nutshell, that's how top officials at the Texas Youth Commission – yes, that Texas Youth Commission – found themselves in the soup again.