Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Over the past decade, whenever I went to China and engaged Chinese on their pollution and energy problems, inevitably some young Chinese would say: “Hey, you Americans got to grow dirty for 150 years, using cheap coal and oil. Now it is our turn.”

Gov. Rick Perry may get a failing grade from the state's retired educators after vetoing a bill that would have made possible one of the Texas Retired Teachers Association's priorities -- adding another retiree to the Teacher Retirement System Board of Trustees.

It may be a move that will haunt him at election time.

THE judge condemned Bernie Madoff’s crimes as “extraordinarily evil.” The New York Daily News, whose publisher was a Madoff victim, chose “The Pariah” as its front-page headline and promised that the dastardly villain would suffer “everlasting consumption in the jaws of the devil.” The Times declared that the Madoff case, by attaching a human face to a financial meltdown that produced fear, panic and loss, had “put an entire era on trial.”

Health class will no longer be a state requirement for high school students this fall, making Texas one of the few states in the country with no required health education, officials said.

As President Obama and Congress try to overhaul health care, almost every American has a stake. Will you get the care you need? Can you avoid financial ruin?

2009 is a bust for those looking to top leadership in Austin to find solutions to transportation problems. After 142 days of lawmaking – including last week's special session of spectacularly low expectations – Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Joe Straus left the state treading water on transportation funding and getting deeper in debt.

Texas needs more work on public education and less focus on narrow party goals, a former U.S. ambassador for the Bush administration and democratic gubernatorial candidate said Wednesday.

All sides of the current health care debate acknowledge that American health care is in crisis and that changes must be made.

We've been saying very consistently for two years now that we'll only be happy with school accountability ratings when the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills is dead and buried and educators have a better test to work with.

We concede that it’s way too soon to start thinking too hard about the next Texas gubernatorial race — the primaries are still eight months away, and the election won’t be until Nov. 2, 2010. But then, it will be hard for Texans who enjoy political strategy and gamesmanship to wait for a starter’s pistol to go off when such interesting contests loom on the near horizon.

Some of us breathed a sigh of relief when the divisive, creationist ideologue Don McLeroy was ousted by the Texas Senate in May as chair of the State Board of Education.

How naïve we were.

When Texas legislators gather in Austin, no matter how much or how little they accomplish, they always pat themselves on the back afterward.

Texas high school students are getting a break on course requirements this fall, courtesy of the state's education chief and the Legislature.

State Education Commissioner Robert Scott has decided that all high school students – not just incoming freshmen – will take more electives and fewer required courses under a bill that lawmakers approved in May.

So how will your kids spend this summer? Building sand castles at the beach? Swimming at summer camp? Shedding I.Q. points?

Texas officials will know soon whether an application they submitted this week for $4 billion in federal stimulus funds passes muster with the Education Department, despite nervousness from school districts on how the money is to be spent.

Even if President Barack Obama is successful in revamping the health care system to cover the nation's 46 million uninsured, Texas and the rest of the nation still face a shortage of primary-care doctors to treat them.

After less than 30 hours of fast lawmaking, the Texas Legislature adjourned Thursday having resolved two of the three problems Gov. Rick Perry wanted them to fix.

When the state announces school ratings this month, hundreds of schools are expected to claim higher marks – and part of the credit goes to new state rules that count some students as passing the TAKS test when they actually failed.

More than a year after the Texas Department of Transportation was labeled an out-of-control agency in need of reining in, lawmakers made their decision: No TxDOT reforms were put into state law.

Organizers of the Independence Day Tea Party at Southfork Ranch said Sunday that it and other rallies have helped energize their grass-roots anti-tax movement.