Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Washington campaign theme, but early scoring showed Texas in bottom quartile in competition

Gov. Rick Perry is expected to walk away from the pursuit of the federal Race to the Top money today, a sign that some consider political posturing in the Governor’s Race but which may also indicate Texas’ completed application ranked the state too weak to be competitive for federal grants.

When doctors call Elva Torres about the opening at the remote Presidio County Medical Clinic, the first thing she does is send them a map. She rarely hears back.

“Somebody once told me, ‘Just don’t tell them how much you pay first,’” said Torres, the clinic administrator. “I told them, ‘I never even get that far!’”

So what should El Paso do with Asarco?

Among the many proposed uses for hundreds of acres that make up the now-shuttered facility is one that would move a rail yard from Downtown to the smelter site on El Paso’s Westside.

The new leadership at the McCall Neighborhood Center sees an opportunity -- an opportunity to once again make the site the premier gathering place for the city's African-American community.

Texas officials called it blackmail and coercion and resented "the federal government pointing a loaded gun at the Legislature."

Twelve years. Eight years. That’s how long 39-year old Ricky Broussard and 19-year old Joel Johnson waited to receive independent living services and community living assistance and support services from the state.

Gov. Rick Perry announced Wednesday that Texas will not compete in the U.S. Department of Education's much-touted Race to the Top program, leaving as much as $700 million on the table that could've been spent in Texas classrooms.

For years, Lori Downs lived by the values her father taught her — self-reliance, independence. A 29-year-old Clear Lake mother of two small children, Downs had worked full-time since she was 18 years old. She was the main breadwinner in her household and took pride in her work ethic, earning two promotions in six months at her most recent job.

County Clerk Dianne Florez noticed it first. Plumes of smoke were rising outside the small West Texas town of Pecos. “The prison is burning again,” she announced.

On March 3, 1986, four of China’s top weapons scientists—each a veteran of the missile and space programs—sent a private letter to Deng Xiaoping, the leader of the country. Their letter was a warning: Decades of relentless focus on militarization had crippled the country’s civilian scientific establishment; China must join the world’s xin jishu geming, the “new technological revolution,” they said, or it would be left behind. They called for an élite project devoted to technology ranging from biotech to space research. Deng agreed, and scribbled on the letter, “Action must be taken on this now.” This was China’s “Sputnik moment,” and the project was code-named the 863 Program, for the year and month of its birth.

"Why Texas Needs Health Reform More than Any State in the U.S."

Unless our community supports President Obama now, reform will not happen in our lifetimes. Over the last decade, Texas leaders have failed our state. Governor Rick Perry and U.S. Senators Kay Bailey Hutchinson and John Cornyn have all had a decade to fix Texas' broken health care system. During the last ten years, Perry’s approach has been to kick over 230,000 kids out of the Children's Health Insurance Program, 500,000 out of Medicaid, call it victory, then vacation with Grover Norquist.

THE choice of John Pérez to take over as the new speaker of California’s state assembly later this month has been hailed as something of a breakthrough—but only because Mr Pérez is openly gay. That he is also Latino is not considered newsworthy.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday proposed a stricter standard for smog-causing pollutants that would bring substantial health benefits to millions of Americans while imposing large costs on industry and local governments.

Texas needs more money – hundreds of billions of dollars more – to maintain its roads and bridges and build the new ones needed to serve the state's growing population, the Texas Department of Transportation's executive director said Thursday.

Right after World War II, with 12 million men and women home from war and looking for work, President Franklin Roosevelt appointed a National Highway Committee to develop plans for a national system of expressways. Congress designated the 40,000-mile National System of Interstate Highways in 1944, but it was not funded until President Dwight Eisenhower made it a cornerstone of his domestic agenda in 1956.

After a new law imposing stricter regulations on the payday lending industry takes effect today, Ken Weaver is not optimistic his two check-cashing stores in eastern Washington will remain open.

Thankfully, 2009 ended better than it began. Economists talk about green shoots of recovery taking hold. Consumer confidence has improved. Equity markets have soared. But for all the progress, the American economy remains extremely vulnerable.

The 562-foot smokestack still casts a long shadow.

For nearly a century, it emitted a plume of arsenic, lead and other heavy metals from Asarco’s copper smelter in Ruston, blanketing 1,000 square miles of South Puget Sound, where half a million people now live. At some places, regulators found arsenic levels 25 times higher than Washington state considers safe.

A three-judge panel has ruled that Dallas County election officials violated federal law when they did not inform the Department of Justice about changes in the way straight-party votes are counted on electronic voting machines.

"It's simply political fiction that stimulus dollars were necessary to balance our budget." - Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, October 21, 2009.

"In order to balance the budget this biennium, which is $182 billion, we used $14 billion in federal stimulus money to balance it." - Senate Finance Committee Chairman, Senator Steve Ogden, October 19, 2009.