Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

A Senate committee took up a sweeping House homeland security measure Monday, with a border senator saying members could support it but warning that the bill should not seek to enforce immigration law.

The director of financial aid at the University of Texas was fired Monday after an investigation that found he had violated campus and UT System rules by investing in a company and then placing its student lending subsidiary on a list of recommended lenders.

Rising energy costs and environmental concerns are threatening to snuff out the common incandescent light bulb, Thomas Edison's creation that changed the world.

The Bush administration killed a proposal to clamp down on the student loan industry six years ago following allegations that companies sought to shower universities with financial favors to help generate business, according to documents and interviews with government officials.

Students are leaving college with more debt than ever, now that more of them have to rely on loans, tuition keeps rising and credit cards are being pushed on many campuses. Many are struggling to afford college; nearly a quarter charge part of their tuition. And most need to get used to managing expenses, learning -- often the hard way -- as they go along.

Of course you didn’t watch the first Republican presidential debate on MSNBC. Even the party’s most loyal base didn’t abandon Fox News, where Bill O’Reilly, interviewing the already overexposed George Tenet, drew far more viewers. Yet the few telling video scraps that entered the 24/7 mediasphere did turn the event into an instant “Saturday Night Live” parody without “SNL” having to lift a finger. The row of 10 middle-aged white candidates, David Letterman said, looked like “guys waiting to tee off at a restricted country club.”

A proposal by state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, calls for the state water development board to study the consequences of climate change on the Rio Grande. The bill passed the Senate, and with two weeks left in the legislative session, it sits in a House committee.

Until we remove all the CHIP enrollment barriers, eligible children will continue to unfairly lose their health coverage. We must encourage HHSC to adopt policies and issue administrative directives that are inclusive, and not exclusive, for providing CHIP coverage for our children.

Texas students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high school classes would get a scholarship worth about $1,500 per year to any state university but would not be guaranteed admission to the school of their choice under a plan approved Friday by the Texas Senate.

The fiscally responsible approach to funding a program in Texas should include the overall impact on the taxpayer at local, state and federal levels.

House budget writers approved a $150.1 billion, two-year state spending plan Wednesday, trying to ease the pain of rising college tuition, lure physicians to accept Medicaid patients and secure the U.S.-Mexico border.

Gov. Rick Perry's staff knew as early as June 2005 that two administrators at a Texas Youth Commission facility were not being prosecuted on claims that they were sexually abusing youths in their custody...

Perry's office was told in 2005 that abuse allegations at West Texas facility weren't being prosecuted.

Legislators should get over an attitude that kids don't deserve health coverage if their parents can't afford it. Pass CHIP and protect Texas children.

Brutal violence is an everyday occurrence at the Youth Commission largely because the state of Texas is allowing under-trained, understaffed and underpaid correctional officers to oversee youths

After this session, we will see the 'Rise of the City-States.' On September 20, 2006, Ric Williamson, head of TxDOT, said, " Right now, we face increased congestion, deteriorating roads, safety issues, and air pollution, all of which hinder mobility as well as current and future economic opportunities." He said, we have $86 billion in roads to build and no money.

Hundreds of boarding homes across Dallas warehouse the elderly, the disabled and the mentally ill in privatized bedlam. They are what the head of the region's mental health system flatly calls "mental health slums."

In the past year, banks and private investment firms have fallen in love with public infrastructure. They're smitten by the rich cash flows that roads, bridges, airports, parking garages, and shipping ports generate—and the monopolistic advantages that keep those cash flows as steady as a beating heart.

Anywhere from 5 percent (at UT-El Paso) to 42 percent (at UT-Austin) of students get their diplomas in four years, based on the most recent figures. Those rates have remained relatively flat over time.

Many of the state's more than 150 public and private colleges and universities are reviewing their financial aid practices as the various investigations unfold. The UT System last week ordered its 15 academic and health campuses to stop using preferred lender lists, at least temporarily, while it examines lending practices.