Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

The sleek racing machine that was the U.S. economy is unlikely to return any time soon despite the huge repair efforts now underway. Instead, it probably will continue to sputter and threaten to stall for years to come.

Lawmakers have a long way to go before the budget becomes final, but if it looks like the version filed in the state Senate on Tuesday, lawmakers will either have to borrow $2.3 billion from the so-called rainy-day fund or cut state services by that amount.

Former employees of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality who now work as lobbyists for industries say the career changes result from the pay disparity between the public and private sector. And they point to state ethics rules that bar high-level former employees from communicating with the agency for two years and from working on particular matters they worked on at the agency.

Young Texans are the state’s future workers, taxpayers and leaders. They need every opportunity to lead healthy, productive lives, and one of the surest guarantees that a child will successfully grow to adulthood is good medical care. In opposing SCHIP expansion, lawmakers are putting their ideology above the interests of their constituents.

"I think it casts serious doubt on the integrity of the entire TCEQ process," said McGarity, the author of three textbooks on administrative and environmental law. "It certainly doesn't speak well of Texas justice. ... It goes to the whole notion of fair play and justice – the whole notion of due process."

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality still caps penalties on polluters at $10,000 for each violation per day, regardless of its severity. And it still hasn't decided whether a history of violations should warrant harsher penalties.

Only the sixth in Texas, the county’s new court will be in the capable hands of state District Judge Jan Krocker. On the bench since 1995, she initiated a pilot project to put mental health professionals in courtrooms to make assessments and suggest treatment options. It worked so well that mental health professionals are now included in all 22 of the county’s felony courts.

Scientists, educators and advocacy groups say creationists are trying to water down science education by calling for students to study the "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theories such as evolution.

Once the program is fully implemented, it will provide loan repayments for up to 1,200 physicians and dentists a year. Each doctor will be eligible for up to $140,000 in loan repayments over four years if they meet targets for services provided to children on Medicaid.

Democrats are determined to act quickly to prevent the estate tax's scheduled repeal. Elimination of the levy on big inheritances was approved by Congress under President George W. Bush in 2001, with rollbacks phased in slowly and its full elimination slated to take effect next year.

Nelson’s bill would prohibit mandatory overtime policies for nurses and extend whistle-blower protection to publicly employed nurses who report patient-care concerns involving public hospitals, state schools or prisons.

The bill includes $3.75 billion for Defense Department medical facilities, Reyes said, which could provide money to build the new Beaumont Army Medical Center planned for East El Paso. An additional $224 million is directed at "repairing flood-control systems along the whole international boundary of the Rio Grande," he said. He added the money could help fix a levee in Juárez that threatened to overflow during the 2006 floods.

The company's latest payment was $116,000 to the University of Texas at El Paso. The payment, made during a ceremony Thursday, was given to UTEP for replacing two 30-year-old chillers with more-energy-efficient ones for its cooling system at a cost to UTEP of $2.3 million.

A coalition of 14 public interest and civil rights organizations denounced voter identification requirements Friday in response to a rules change the Texas Senate approved earlier this week that will allow a vote on such a bill.

As of Friday evening, no deaths had been linked to the previously unheard of organization, which stated in an e-mail news release on Thursday that it would issue a manifesto in a few days with its goals for restoring order in Juárez.

The announcement of the supposed group was the first known case of possible organized vigilantism in Juárez as police and the military have been apparently unable to stop a plague of killings and other crimes.

He doesn't plan to be too much of a help nor too much of a hindrance to House members' legislative wishes. And he doesn't plan to push his own agenda, a big difference from his predecessory. "My agenda isn't really the House's agenda."

In Texas and other states, some Republicans hope voter ID bills help suppress Democratic voting. However, Senate Democrats in Texas have used the Senate's two-thirds rule to block voter ID legislation in previous sessions, including a dramatic and angry showdown in 2007.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) is reconsidering a plan to resign from the Senate this year, a huge relief to Republicans who fear that a special election — even in deeply red Texas — could give Democrats a 60-seat, filibuster-resistant majority in the Senate.

The federal legislation passed Wednesday by the U.S. House makes it clear that states can expand their programs to 300 percent of the poverty level, or $63,600 for a family of four, said Anne Dunkelberg, associate director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, an advocacy group for low- and middle-income Texans.