Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

El Paso native Teresa Gándara has made the transition from teacher and assistant principal to successful entrepreneur. Gándara is now chief executive officer and president of office supply and furniture retailer and distributor Pencil Cup Office Products Inc., which she started with her husband, Carlos Gándara, in June 2001.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s office is developing a contingency plan aimed at taking action in border communities should the escalating violence in Northern Mexico find its way into Texas.

North Texas officials have been saying for years that residents here would willingly pay more taxes if only they could get better roads and expanded rail service. If a bill introduced Monday becomes law, they may finally get to test their theory.

About 40 El Pasoans are expected to join "Team El Paso" at the Capitol for the two-day event that includes recognition from the House and Senate floors, meetings with the governor, lieutenant governor, House speaker and a slew of state agencies, tribal dance performances from the Tiguas and even margarita soiree.

State Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, the Senate's transportation committee chief, unveiled the bill and a companion constitutional amendment proposal backed by eight legislators from both parties and a phalanx of Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex officials. Calls Monday did not turn up any staunch opposition to the concept from the governor or business groups often resistant to tax proposals.

City representatives on Monday voted 7-0 to add funding for the construction of a third building at the Paul L. Foster School of Medicine at the Texas Tech University Health Center at El Paso to its legislative agenda.

More than $2 billion will be allocated toward federal rebates for the first generation of plug-in hybrid buyers, according to the final version of the stimulus package. Now, Texas lawmakers want to join the short list of states proposing additional rebates in an effort to make the Lone Star State a leader in new-age electric transportation.

Although there are many kinks to be worked out, said Devon M. Herrick, senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas, "I assume that over the course of the next few years, with or without the government's prodding, that we will begin to integrate this more and more, because it is a good idea, but I think there will be some growing pains about which system and how and whether it talks to neighboring hospitals and so on."

The Texas Legislature should act swiftly to pass a bill to allow families earning $42,400 to $63,600 a year (between 200 and 300 percent of the federal poverty level) to purchase SCHIP for their children. The proposed sliding-scale fee structure would pay about half the cost of this much-needed, highly effective insurance. A minimal investment of just $20 per month per child could extend SCHIP coverage to tens of thousands of uninsured Texas children through the important "buy-in" program.

Families have long scrimped and saved for college. The sour economy has merely added a new wrinkle. To help smooth it out, local colleges and high schools are offering extra financial advice, and sometimes more scholarship dollars.

KIPP grew out of Teach For America, a nonprofit organization that takes recent college grads and places them in underserved classrooms for two years. Dave Levin and I started KIPP as your typical TFA corps members who were frustrated with the limited impact we were making on our students after the year they had in our classrooms. Jay Mathews tells the story in vivid detail in his recent book, "Work Hard. Be Nice."

Of El Paso's 230,000 children, 120,000 are enrolled in either CHIP or Medicaid according to the Paso del Norte Health Foundation, meaning many patients for El Paso doctors come from those low-paying state programs.

But allowing expanded research is only one part of U.S. leadership in this important area of biomedical research. President Obama should also act to develop a broader, comprehensive federal stem cell policy that ensures stem cell research is conducted in a responsible, thoughtful and ethical manner that restores the federal government’s essential role in oversight of this critical subject.

The state has said $52 million will be needed and that the company will fund a trust to pay for remediation of the 100-acre site. Others, including Texas Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, say the cleanup may cost up to $250 million and taxpayers may wind up paying the bill.

Last May, protesters took over James E. Rogers’s front lawn in Charlotte, N.C., unfurling banners declaring “No new coal” and erecting a makeshift “green power plant” — which, they said in a press release, was fueled by “the previously unexplored energy source known as hot air, which has been found in large concentrations” at his home.

An earlier trial of the model by UnitedHealth, in Florida, never got off the ground because doctors refused to participate. This time, however, the insurer is teaming up with seven doctors’ groups to make another attempt, in Arizona, at the prodding of one of the state’s big employers, I.B.M.

5.83 million Texans do not have health insurance—one in four—making Texas the least insured state in the nation. Not a single Texas city even reaches the national average in citizens with health insurance. From 2000 to 2007, Texas families saw their health insurance premiums soar 86.8 percent—nearly six times more than their median earnings increased. Twenty-nine cents of every private pay health dollar now goes for denial management and administration—in other words, Texans are paying more for less health care.

Before the dust had settled over reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, some Republicans in Congress were grousing about messiness in its passage. But surely providing healthcare coverage to millions more uninsured children constitutes progress worth making.

"Our troopers are constantly being pulled away from their primary responsibility, which is to maintain public safety and security at the Capitol," Sgt. Adam Kinslow, assigned to the Capitol, said in a May 29 memo, 10 days before the June 8 Governor's Mansion fire.

Hutchison's spokesman says she honored a previous commitment to speak to the Richardson Chamber of Commerce. According to Politico.com, Cornyn was in New York City speaking to a group "of prominent media conservatives and Wall Street Republicans" that assemble under the name "the Monday Meeting."