Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

St. Louis is joining a growing number of cities trying to curb (payday lender's) growth. City officials are worried that families deeply in debt could plunge further into trouble with high-interest loans that offer only brief repayment windows.

The best proof that you don’t need a White House pass to accomplish change comes from youthful social entrepreneurs around the country. Too naïve to realize that they are powerless, these kids are flexing remarkable muscle.

When President Bush told us to go shopping after 9/11, he was right. We needed to stimulate the economy then. The problem was that the Bush economic team never turned off the green light and told people to “go saving.”

Barack Obama should learn from F.D.R.’s failures as well as from his achievements: the truth is that the New Deal wasn’t as successful in the short run as it was in the long run. And the reason for F.D.R.’s limited short-run success, which almost undid his whole program, was the fact that his economic policies were too cautious.

Officials of Ysleta Independent School District and the county, which both hired Foresight TPA as their third-party health administrator this year, have initiated steps to replace the company.

The Legislative Budget Board, charged with setting the ceiling for spending in the 2010-2011 budget, adopted the lowest rate of growth since the spending cap was enacted by a constitutional amendment in 1978.

A mere ten days after receiving high praise from President Bush, Michael Brown resigned from FEMA on September 12, 2005. FEMA is now short hand for rank incompetence. Today in Texas, one agency in particular is the functional equivalent of FEMA—the Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC). Here’s some history.

In the Senate, filing clerks were frantically keeping up with a pace unrivaled in recent years: About 240 bills were submitted, compared with the 83 introduced on the first day two years ago.

On the morning after a black man won the White House, America’s tears of catharsis gave way to unadulterated joy. Our nation was still in the same ditch it had been the day before, but the atmosphere was giddy.

The state agency that imposed new rules barring illegal immigrants from obtaining driver's licenses is requesting authority to set up statewide driver's license checkpoints, part of what several lawmakers suspect is a plan to crack down on illegal immigrants.

Fear of the politician with the unusual name and look did not end with last Tuesday’s vote in this rural red swatch where buck heads and rifles hang on the wall. This corner of the Deep South still resonates with negative feelings about the race of President-elect Barack Obama.

Without waiting for President-elect Barack Obama, Senator Max Baucus, the chairman of the Finance Committee, will unveil a detailed blueprint on Wednesday to guarantee health insurance for all Americans by facilitating sales of private insurance, expanding Medicaid and Medicare, and requiring most employers to provide or pay for health benefits.

For programs providing community services for the disabled, more than 82,000 wait on interest lists. In some programs, more Texans wait for services on interest lists than are actually being served.

Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday, sweeping away the last racial barrier in American politics with ease as the country chose him as its first black chief executive.

Beyond Iraq, beyond the economy, beyond health care, there was something even more fundamental at stake in this U.S. election won by Barack Obama: the self-respect of the American people.

And so it came to pass that on Nov. 4, 2008, shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern time, the American Civil War ended, as a black man — Barack Hussein Obama — won enough electoral votes to become president of the United States.

Across the country, black men and women... who have long been disaffected, apolitical, discouraged or just plain bored with politics say they have snapped to attention this year, according to dozens of interviews conducted in the last several days in six states.

Striking new evidence has emerged of a widespread gap in the cost of health insurance, as women pay much more than men of the same age for individual insurance policies providing identical coverage, according to new data from insurance companies and online brokers.

In February, commissioners at the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality granted a permit that would allow the facility—one of the dirtiest in the state—to reopen.

A century of pollution has made Asarco one of the dirtiest companies in American history... In Texas alone, the state’s environmental commission says it will cost more than $52 million to sweep away decades of lead and arsenic contamination from Asarco’s smelting operations in El Paso.