Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

"I'm sure John McCain loves his country," says Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar under Bush. "But loving your country and lying to the American people are apparently not inconsistent in his view."

About 12,000 additional jobs at Wilford Hall Medical Center, Brooke Army Medical Center and the faculty and staff at the University of Texas Health Science Center were not included in the study. Those jobs come with a payroll of about $775 million.

Nearly a million Texans have refused to pay state surcharges for driving violations, prompting the Texas Department of Public Safety and a private collection agency to launch a massive telephone campaign to get those drivers to pay up.

Over the past six years, Texas workers have lost employer-sponsored health insurance coverage at a rate greater than the national average, according to a new report.

Senators from the education and finance committees were told that the school finance deal that resolved a legal challenge in 2006 after three special legislative sessions has created constitutional problems of its own.

More than 1,100 people have been killed this year in Juarez, population 1.5 million, in a drug-related bloodbath so staggering that the city has been declared off-limits to U.S. soldiers looking to go bar-hopping; El Paso's public hospital is seeing a spillover of the wounded; and residents on the American side are afraid to cross over to visit family, shop or conduct business.

With clashes between rival drug gangs leaving dead bodies on the streets of the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez almost daily, hundreds of middle class Mexicans are selling up and moving to El Paso, just over the Rio Grande.

Some three in 10 El Pasoans younger than 65 are uninsured. It's even worse in the 18-64 age range where 36.6 percent lack health coverage. That's according to figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau through 2005.

County elections administrators reject the conclusions of a report alleging that up to 333,000 noncitizens may be registered to vote in Texas, saying there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the Lone Star State

The current economic crisis that sent investments, pensions and savings plummeting has also put a dent in college-tuition funds. The extent of the damage depends on the types of investments, financiers say, but parents face tough questions.

An innovative state program started this year aims to get at the poverty root by providing some financial assistance for specific purposes. But the program, being tested in Harris, Bexar and 13 other counties, is struggling to succeed because of staffing and training problems and may not be expanded.

Debate about last week's stealth introduction of a new Texas driver's license has focused on the impact of requiring applicants to prove they are citizens or legal residents of the state.

What would health care look like under Governor Grover Norquist? In Texas, we already know. In 2003, Governor Rick Perry intentionally kicked 200,000 Texas children out of the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Then, he went to the Bahamas with Grover Norquist to brag about it.

To those who know the history of the word "Maverick," applying it to Mr. McCain is a bit of a stretch — and to one Texas family in particular it is even a bit offensive. “I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick,” said Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s.

Any recovery package will have to ensure that taxpayers and families will get most of the benefits of such a rescue effort. But make no mistake: A rescue package is necessary to protect most Americans from the fallout of eight years of Bush administration economic and financial mismanagement.

In campaign seasons such as this, when victory may turn on a handful of votes, none of those claims is more important to Republican activists than overhyped allegations of voter fraud.

There are a large number of advocacy groups and other programs that work to ensure that minorities, the disabled and students are able to cast ballots. Because the foreclosure crisis is so recent, not much work has been done to ensure that people who lose their homes do not also lose their chance to vote.

Why is Texas' environmental commission putting our land and our lungs at risk? Why is TCEQ a lapdog for the nation's largest polluters—and why does Texas have the nation's worst environmental record? Here are the facts when it comes to Texas air.

In the gale force winds of a full-fledged economic hurricane, it’s fair to ask Senator McCain whether he still considers himself a conservative, small government, anti-regulation, free-market zealot. Or whether he’s seen the light.

Public-school preschoolers should be in full-day programs, and children in private childcare or informal settings need more attention from the city, according to advocacy groups that met Friday to discuss child welfare issues.