Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Far from the battlefields of California and Missouri, combatants in the fight over embryonic stem-cell research in Texas stand in a kind of uneasy cease fire.

VoucherMan hasn't completely given up, but obviously has decided its time to change tactics. James Leininger seems to have encountered the political equivalent of Kryptonite, that used to weaken Superman's super powers.

Last Wednesday, members of a scrappy little advocacy group assembled in New York outside the Citigroup Center, where Merrill Lynch has a branch office. Dressed in top hats, carrying bags of coal and calling themselves “Billionaires for Coal,” the group was protesting what it felt was the hypocrisy of a giant investment bank that proclaims a devout commitment to “environmental excellence” even as it provides financing for dirty power plants.

Five years after 9/11, the terrorists would seem to have us just where they want us — asleep — even as the system is blinking red once again.

The school year is young, but charity is at full throttle at area campuses such as Socorro High, where students using a variety of fundraisers have scrambled to help the victims of recent flooding.

Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, manned a wheelbarrow as a day of work began at the house with dozens of volunteers. He carted off loads of dirt that volunteers shoveled from Flood's property.

We have an exciting agenda this legislative session. Right now, El Paso is the best place to be. With Ft. Bliss, our Medical Center of the Americas and Downtown Revitalization, El Paso is on the move.

A recent poll, commissioned by the Texas State Teachers Association and conducted late last month, showed that 33 percent of the 802 active voters surveyed listed public education as the state's top priority.

Former Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff joined several high-profile Texas business leaders on Feb. 12 to announce a new public education advocacy group that's opposed to private school vouchers and wants to replace the state's standardized tests.

States that imposed identification requirements on voters reduced turnout at the polls in the 2004 presidential election by about 3 percent, and by two to three times as much for minorities, new research suggests.

A few years ago, Grover Norquist, Republican strategist, famously said, "Our goal is to shrink government so small that we can drown it in a bathtub.” After ten years in Austin and DC we know. Tax cuts for the rich, program cuts for us. What Grover never told us is that it is our children in his tub.

Our state budget is a moral document. It reflects our moral choices. Do we really want to tell our children that luxuries for those of extreme wealth outweigh our responsibility to the young? How will we teach them responsibility when state leaders so clearly demonstrate irresponsible and callous disregard for our community and future generations?

Recent tests show that the arsenic plume under East Helena is wider and extends farther than it did last year; that concentrations in a few wells are the highest ever recorded; and that groundwater also is contaminated with high levels of selenium. The underground arsenic plume now stretches from the Asarco lead smelter to monitoring wells installed in 2005.

The University of Phoenix's reputation is fraying as prominent educators, students and some of its own former administrators say the relentless pressure for higher profits, at a university that gets more federal student financial aid than any other, has eroded academic quality.

The president is far more committed to cutting taxes for Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson's old Wall Street pals than to getting health coverage to kids with low-wage working parents. It's to Paulson's credit that, judging by his words at least, he appeared to be embarrassed. Clearly Bush isn't.

In January, on the floor of the Texas Senate, amid a debate on changing the application renewal requirement for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, Dewhurst — perhaps affected by the cold outside — proclaimed, "I don't think most people in Texas have a lot of sympathy for someone that can't fill out a two-page application every six months."

In the absence of federal action, governors and state legislators around the country are transforming the nation’s health care system, putting affordable health insurance within reach of millions of Americans in hopes of reversing the steady rise in the number of uninsured, now close to 47 million.

A leader of the Texas House of Representatives apologized Friday for circulating an appeal to ban the teaching of evolution as derived from “Rabbinic writings” and other Jewish texts.

Two key Republicans are signaling concerns about a flurry of immigration bills filed in the Texas Legislature and how far the state can go in getting tough on illegal immigrants.

UBS, one of two large financial firms consulting with the governor's office over the possible sale of the Texas lottery, hired Gov. Rick Perry's son to work in its Dallas office about two weeks ago.