Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

After a debate drawing national attention, the State Board of Education adopted new science curriculum standards for Texas schools Friday that protect the teaching of evolution championed by many scientists.

Though the governor's transfer of $50 million from one fund to another might have been legal, Pitts said this week, it was inappropriate. The fund was set up to help finance research and development of new technologies, not pay for university buildings, he said.

The Texas Senate already has passed a bill that would allow universities to cap admissions under the top 10 percent law to 60 percent of an incoming freshman class. The university would have discretion over the other 40 percent of admissions.

A woman who says her mentally disabled son was forced to fight in bouts staged by staff at the Corpus Christi State School has filed a civil lawsuit against the state. Inez Hernandez says her son, Armando Hernandez Jr., 21, was injured physically and emotionally after being forced to fight when he lived at the state school in 2007 and 2008.

Almost half of nonelderly Texans had no health coverage at some point in the past two years, and that emphasizes the need to make good on health care reform promises, an advocacy group and U.S. Rep. Charlie Gonzalez said Thursday.

Predatory lending, an industry that has long hurt entire communities near the border with Mexico and ethnic minorities living in large metropolitan areas like Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston, is thriving in other areas of the state, including some West Texas counties.

UT-El Paso is one of seven so-called emerging research universities that hope to ascend to a national plane. In Texas, only UT-Austin, Texas A&M University and the private Rice University are considered top-tier, or national, research institutions.

Artery-clogging oils used in restaurants in Texas could be a thing of the past if legislation an El Paso state lawmaker wrote makes it through the Legislature this session.

"In Texas, El Paso is literally the Sun City—we are best positioned to develop, market and lead in solar energy. For several years, we have asked El Paso Electric to take much more aggressive steps to lower costs, allow consumers to generate and sell solar power and put El Paso on the map. Changing EPEC from a 1950s power company to a 21st Century energy company must now be a top community priority.”

Senate Republican leaders keep saying the state has no money and can't launch big initiatives to help Texas families reeling from the recession – even with billions of dollars of federal economic stimulus money in a two-year budget that could total $177 billion.

Does the Texas Legislature really want to undermine significant medical research and hobble the work of the state's $3 billion cancer research institute by outlawing embryonic stem cell research? That almost certainly will result if a rider inserted into the budget bill by state Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, passes. It would prohibit any state funds from aiding research using embryonic stem cells. Ogden is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee considering the budget bill.

Practically speaking, most students who make the top 10 percent cut would still be able to get into a public Texas college — some college — for years. But the University of Texas at Austin, where more than 80 percent of the home-state freshman class are admitted under the rule, could start cutting back on such automatic admissions by the fall of 2010 if the changes are approved.

State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh told his colleagues Wednesday that in 1960 California made a decision to expand its university system, which proved to be visionary because it made the nine University of California campuses world class schools. The El Paso Democrat thinks that the Lone Star State finds itself in the same situation the Golden State found itself nearly 50 years ago.

Perry has staked his governorship on the Texas economy, often pointing out that the state has more Fortune 500 companies than any other and that it’s the country’s leading exporter. He’s also quick to say that the economy “didn’t happen by accident.”

Sens. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, Wendy Davis, D-Forth Worth and Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, said critical oversight is lacking over lending agencies who can legally charge triple-digit interest rates on emergency, car-title and paycheck-advance loans where the end result is usually an unbroken cycle of continuous debt.

The House Business and Industry Committee is trying to determine how to salvage the commission and turn it into an agency that can help consumers struggling with home construction problems. The Legislature's Sunset Commission staff – which reviews state agencies and recommends how to beef them up – determined last year that the agency is so toothless and such a hindrance to aggrieved homeowners that it should be abolished.

As the Obama administration scrambles to maintain support, in the face of record federal deficits, for a health care overhaul this year, a study to be released today says American workers are at significantly higher risk of being uninsured than they were in the 1990s, the last time lawmakers tried to revamp the system.

In 1999, Gramm co-sponsored a bill that repealed key aspects of the Glass-Steagall Act, smoothing the way for the creation of financial megafirms like Citigroup. The move did away with the built-in protections afforded by smaller banks. In the old days, a local banker knew the people whose loans were on his balance sheet: He wasn't going to give a million-dollar mortgage to a homeless meth addict, since he would have to keep that loan on his books. But a giant merged bank might write that loan and then sell it off to some fool in China, and who cared?

Yep. As they've done since 1996, when Texas' Top 10 percent rule became law, there is a drive in the Legislature to undermine the automatic admission to any public university for the top 10th of each high school graduating class.

Eighty-one percent of current UT freshmen who are from Texas got in under the top 10 percent law. That works out to 76 percent of the freshman class of about 7,000 students because out-of-state and international students are not eligible for automatic admission. UT says this leaves too little discretion to admit students not in the top 10 percent who have skills in art, music, math or leadership, as well as those who have overcome personal obstacles.