Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Trains lumbering through and stopping up San Antonio and Austin can be sped up and rerouted to the countryside for $3.8 billion, say two long-awaited studies just released — but there's no money to do it.

The Texas Youth Commission, still recovering from a massive sexual abuse scandal, will soon lose its sixth top-ranking official in less than two years.

Only a few years ago, on the night of Bush’s victory in 2004, the conservative movement seemed indomitable. In fact, it was rapidly falling apart. Conservatives knew how to win elections; however, they turned out not to be very interested in governing. Throughout the decades since Nixon, conservatism has retained the essentially negative character of an insurgent movement.

For some, Texas remains a throwback to the Depression, when running water and indoor plumbing were scarcities in rural communities. Hard as it is to imagine, modern-day settlements known as colonias still sometimes lack those basics.

In agency after agency, irresponsible under-funding, repeated firing of career public servants, and consistent appointing of incompetent leadership have left entire departments fundamentally unprepared to govern and succeed against the challenges of a 21st century Texas. That's the real story behind Texas' tier-ones.

If you did not already believe that our current health care financing system is rigged to benefit insurance companies over patients, then President Bush's recent veto of legislation to halt Medicare cuts to physicians should have changed your mind.

The state institutions for people with disabilities are failing to find community-based homes for many patients who want them, and have hired several state school employees who should've been ineligible because of previous abuse and neglect records, according to a state audit released Monday.

The state's higher education commissioner swears he doesn't want to squeeze out low-income students participating in TEXAS Grant, a program that focuses on helping families with annual incomes of $40,000 or less afford college for their children.

Building a 145-mile-long freight rail bypass around Austin and San Antonio at a cost of $2.4 billion, making commuter rail possible between the cities, would generate about $1.4 billion in public benefits over 20 years, a study to be released today says.

Texas has left the decision about whether to insure to each state agency, and those that don't must absorb in their budget the cost of repairs to uninsured and damaged properties or seek additional money from the Legislature.

A key member of Gov. Rick Perry's protection detail didn't do enough to protect the historic Governor's Mansion from an arsonist, including failing to tell supervisors about broken security cameras and not properly training guards, according to a report released Monday.

Texas will probably appeal a court ruling mandating a new language program for an estimated 140,000 junior high and high school students who don't have command of the English language, state officials said Monday.

Fixing the worst schools in Texas is about to get harder

California, a national trendsetter in all matters edible, became the first state to ban trans fats in restaurants when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill Friday to phase out their use.

A federal judge's ruling that Texas has failed its students with limited English skills is suddenly the most eagerly awaited document in educational circles.

Texas is failing to follow the wishes of many mentally disabled residents who say they want to leave large state institutions for smaller, community-based homes, an audit issued Monday found.

Members of a legislative panel on Monday sharply criticized a plan to nearly triple the number of Medicaid and food stamp cases handled by a troubled computer enrollment system.

"Suicide is certainly a response to hard economic times," noted Dr. Harold Koenig, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. "Consider what happened when the stock market fell in 1929. There was a rash of suicides."

A dream of post-war collectivism, the universal, tax-funded NHS was launched on July 5th, 1948. In the 60 years since then it has intermittently seemed inadequate, hopelessly antiquated and plain doomed. But it is now looking oddly contemporary—partly because it has survived long enough for its principles to be relevant once more.

Religious-right activists are no longer the only evangelical leaders speaking out. Since 2004, influential pastors and the heads of many large faith organizations have set a new national-policy agenda, one founded on their understanding of the life of Jesus and his ministry to the poor, the outcast, and the peacemakers.