Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

The fire moved quickly through the house, a one-story wood-frame structure in a working-class neighborhood of Corsicana, in northeast Texas. Flames spread along the walls, bursting through doorways, blistering paint and tiles and furniture. Smoke pressed against the ceiling, then banked downward, seeping into each room and through crevices in the windows, staining the morning sky.

IN the annals of American excess, there often arrives a moment when those with too much money, too much clout and too much hubris just can’t stop themselves from tempting the fates. They throw an over-the-top party in public, or parade their wealth and power before the press, and the next thing you know their world, and sometimes ours, has crashed.

Gov. Rick Perry looks like a desperate man with his decision to jettison the chairman of the state's forensic science panel.

The panel's post-mortem look at the Cameron Todd Willingham arson-murder case goes to the heart of Texas justice – including the governor's role in it – and whether an innocent man was railroaded into the death chamber at Huntsville.

It would be a dangerous political liability for any candidate: The possibility that, as governor, Rick Perry presided over the execution of an innocent man

As the Chronicle's Lisa Falkenberg noted so vividly in her column Tuesday, trying to sign up for food stamps in Houston these days is a demeaning and dispiriting exercise.

A week after a Texas agency reported health care reform legislation would cost the state's Medicaid program an extra $20 billion over the next 10 years, a non-partisan foundation says inaction will exact a greater price.

Gov. Rick Perry was blasted Wednesday after he swept three appointees from their jobs just two days before they were set to critically examine a flawed arson investigation that contributed to the execution of a Corsicana man.

The viability of high-speed rail transportation in the United States has been widely questioned since the Obama administration gave it a big push and Congress set aside stimulus money. Viability in Texas has been ridiculed.

Why do payday loans run 1,100 percent interest on the streets of Texas?

Why is it that from 2001 to 2005, Texas families saw their health insurance premiums soar 86 percent — six times faster than their Medicaid incomes increased?

What’s it like to see the sunrise at the top of Texas?

Here in God’s country we call that rise and shine—and here’s how it works.

First, set your alarm for 5.30am. I know, it’s really early! Sunrise is the summer is around 6.10am, so rising early is the key to rise and shine. Then set course for the Patriot Freeway and Trans Mountain Road. That’s the best hike in town.

Early in the 81st Session of the Texas Legislature, Governor Rick Perry gave his state of the state speech. Here's what he said:

"Ladies and gentlemen, the State of our State is good."

The American Medical Association, insurance companies, businesses and even labor have taken turns at opposing "socialized medicine" over the past six decades.

A smaller share of Americans married, drove to work alone, owned their own home or moved to a new residence last year than the year before.

Many local officials on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande are panning Texas Gov. Rick Perry's latest initiative to stem illegal activity along the U.S.-Mexico border, complaining that the governor is wrongly painting their region as a lawless no man's land.

Doctors hunting for jobs in Texas can reduce the waiting time before they are allowed to practice, but only if they will work in El Paso or other underserved communities.

Health-care administrators and officials of the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce marked the recent passage of a bill that grants provisional licenses to qualified doctors awaiting their licenses from the Texas Medical Board.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas wants to know a lot more about Gov. Rick Perry’s decision to send Department of Public Safety "Ranger Recon" teams to the border.

Family health care premiums rose about 4 ½ times as fast as earnings for Texas workers from 2000 through 2009, according to a report released Tuesday by a consumer advocacy group.

Here's a number to remember: 20 percent. In fact, memorize it. It tells the story of America's future, especially in big states like Texas, California and New York.

It's the percentage of America's public school students who are Hispanic. In the two largest states, California and Texas, the figure is closer to 50 percent.

Minus twenty sounds like the temperature in the Arctic. So what does minus twenty have to do with the sun here in Texas? Here’s the story.

Gov. Rick Perry gave Texas border sheriffs another $2 million for a virtual border wall of web cameras that in its first full year failed to meet nearly every law enforcement goal his office originally set.