Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Texas trauma centers and emergency rooms are overflowing, and it's time to take action to contain the flood.

They say everything's bigger and better in Texas, and it's true that Texans have a lot to be proud of, but the Lone Star State has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to providing affordable health coverage. Statistics show that Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the nation. That's nothing to brag about.

State Rep. Dora Olivo told a gathering of Las Comadres members that issues important to women, such as family and children, will not get heard in the legislature until more of them vote.

In a quarter-century plan to create what he called “the first environmentally sustainable 21st-century city,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg proposed a sweeping and politically contentious vision yesterday of 127 projects, regulations and innovations for New York and the region.

The federal probe into corruption related to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff could be inching closer to former U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay of Sugar Land as investigators focus on a former DeLay chief of staff who later employed the Republican leader's wife.

President Bush came to the White House with an entirely different understanding. Not since the days of Watergate, when our judicial system and intelligence community were deployed by the White House in the service of partisan politics, have we seen such abuses.

Aaaaargh! When a newly minted doctor investigating Americans’ access to medical care has no insurance — then you know that our health care system is truly bankrupt.

The Legislature to date has put no money into the well-intentioned but empty "Texas Rail Relocation and Improvement Fund"— not one dime, even though the Texas Department of Transportation estimates there are at least $17 billion worth of such rail relocations that could benefit the state right now.

They're watching, and they want you to behave. The Houston Police Department said Monday it now uses cameras to snare red-light violators at 50 intersections. But catching traffic scofflaws on camera is just the beginning.

As much as Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst would like it to be true, there are no "do-overs" in politics. Backpedaling makes things worse. Apologies can, but don't always, soften the blow.

Royal Masset knows as much about the nuts and bolts of Republican politics as anyone in Texas. He spent 15 years as the political director of the Republican Party of Texas. Masset is particularly disturbed by the voter identification bill that Republicans have been trying to push through the legislature.

Once again a minority bulwark of Democratic state senators has blocked the advance of sloppily crafted, partisan legislation in Austin. The legislation would have required Texas voters to produce a confusing welter of identification in order to cast ballots.

Seven-time Tour de France winner and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong put his celebrity power behind a late push to get a $3 billion cancer research referendum before Texas voters.

The owners of dogs that violently attack people could face up to 20 years in prison under a bill approved Thursday by the Texas Senate.

Tens of thousands more youngsters in working-poor families are closer to getting medical coverage in the next two years after a Senate committee approved a plan late Thursday to expand the Children's Health Insurance Program. But a bigger CHIP still isn't a sure thing.

The Texas Legislature is a lot like pro basketball. You can see a dazzling play or a spectacular breakdown at any point, but the winners and losers are almost inevitably determined in the closing minutes of the game.

Forty-two days ago, the Texas House overwhelmingly gave final approval to changes in the Children's Health Insurance Program that sponsors say could add 100,000 children to the rolls. Soon after, the proposal was referred to the Senate Finance Committee, but it has not been scheduled for a public hearing.

A border bill strongly supported by the Texas Border Coalition is in danger of not passing because it is stuck in, of all places, the House Border and International Affairs Committee.

From Farmers Branch to Hazleton, Pa., more than 100 municipalities across the country are taking it upon themselves to tackle illegal immigration.

Placing barriers that limit access to higher education will only harm the state's economy in the long run.