Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Nowhere has the bloodletting been worse than in Ciudad Juarez, a sprawling border city that has registered more than 1,350 slayings in 2008, about a fourth of the country's total. The city's main drug-smuggling group, known as the Juarez cartel, is battling with rival traffickers from the northwestern state of Sinaloa for a piece of the lucrative drug trade into the U.S.

We've just elected a new president and Congress, and here in the Lone Star State, our lawmakers convene in just a few short weeks. The question looms: Will these state and federal leaders take action to address some of our nation's most serious ills? And what can we do as individuals to take personal responsibility for our health?

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Texas has the technological prowess and vast reserves of renewable energy from the sun, wind and crops that can revitalize our economy, power the nation, create thousands of high-paying manufacturing jobs and renew Texas' role as the energy capital of the world.

The race to replace Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who is expected to relinquish the seat to run for governor, is shaping up as a dynamic, unpredictable contest featuring a host of prominent elected officials from both parties, many who have long had their eyes on the post.

In signaling a possible challenge to Mr. Perry in the primary for governor, Ms. Hutchison, Texas' senior U.S. senator, says the state's Republican leadership is polarizing and unresponsive. She warns it must retool or risk losing political dominance.

With 50 community college systems and 35 public universities in Texas, tuition costs between colleges and universities will vary. At the Alamo Community Colleges, our board of trustees has been keenly aware of college affordability issues and has strived to maintain affordable college costs.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. . . We now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress can be made, no leadership becomes effective.

The disparity statewide is large: The spending cap for the 400-student Red Lick school district in Texarkana is $3,657, but for the even-smaller Westbrook district, midway between Midland and Abilene, it’s $12,725.

Any lingering doubt that some lawmakers remain furious over Gov. Rick Perry's push in recent years for private toll roads disappeared Tuesday when a state board voted to abolish the Texas Transportation Commission.

And the $10 billion Mr. Obama has pledged for early childhood education would amount to the largest new federal initiative for young children since Head Start began in 1965. Now, Head Start is a $7 billion federal program serving about 900,000 preschoolers.

Where is officialdom most crooked? Last week, many guessed it must be Illinois, after news that Gov. Rod Blagojevich was taped making brazen personal demands in exchange for his selection of a Senate successor to President-elect Barack Obama.

So far, state lawmakers have already filed nearly a dozen bills including the word "immigrant" and nearly a half-dozen including the words "immigration status;" it's bills like these that the county now says it's planning to officially weigh in on.

The border between El Paso (population: 600,000) and Juárez (population: 1.5 million) is the most menacing spot along America's southern underbelly. On one side is the second-safest city of its size in the United States (after Honolulu), with only 15 murders so far in 2008. On the other is a slaughterhouse ruled by drug lords where the death toll this year is more than 1,300 and counting. "I don't think the average American has any idea of what's going on immediately south of our border," says Kevin Kozak, acting special agent in charge of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's office of investigations in El Paso.

Juárez officials are taking steps to ensure that its police officers are not the targets of any more attacks after four officers were killed late Sunday night when gunmen targeted and ambushed police officers in four separate shootings.

The coalition, along with the private online social networking company BlueServo, obtained a $2 million grant from Gov. Rick Perry to operate the border camera program. Perry promised in 2006 to line the Texas-Mexico border with cameras and broadcast the footage online, and he has been struggling since then to get the program off the ground.

In China, 42 percent of college undergraduates earn science or engineering degrees, but in the United States, only 5 percent do. China and India supply 31 percent of global research and development staff. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. science and engineering employment will increase 70 percent faster than the rate for all occupations.

The three-year program was supposed to help 400,000 borrowers avoid foreclosure. But it has attracted only 312 applications since its October launch because it is too expensive and onerous for lenders and borrowers alike, Preston said in an interview.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll also found that a rapidly increasing share of Americans -- 66 percent, up from just over half a year ago -- are worried about maintaining their standard of living. Nearly two in 10 said they or someone living in their household had lost a job in the past few months, and more than a quarter said they had their pay or hours reduced. And 15 percent said that at some point in the past year they fell behind on their rent or mortgage.

In creating a committee Thursday to explore a run for governor, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison sent her strongest signal yet that she's ready for a showdown against Gov. Rick Perry that would cost millions and sharply divide the Texas GOP.