Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Gov. Rick Perry today named his former chief of staff and a North Texas tollway official to the state Transportation Commission, filling the vacancy left by Ric Williamson's death and replacing San Antonio member Hope Andrade.

Attorney General Greg Abbott tried but came up short, despite months of investigating. As detailed recently by Dallas Morning News senior political writer Wayne Slater, Mr. Abbott documented scattered cases of familiar methods of ballot fraud – schemes involving mail-in ballots, false registrations and manipulation of elderly voters.

The Texas Department of Public Safety is ill-prepared to respond to terrorism and faces a critical shortage of officers, according to a scathing report released Friday.

A federal judge Wednesday struck down a Farmers Branch ordinance designed to block apartment rentals to most illegal immigrants. And he refused to rule on the constitutionality of a later ordinance, which the city's attorneys designed to overcome legal issues related to the first.

A three-year effort to rewrite English language arts and reading standards for the state's public schools came down to a last-minute cut-and-paste job Friday.

The Texas Department of Transportation, long viewed as hyperpartisan and arrogant by some members of the state's congressional delegation, has been trying to soften its image by reaching out to lawmakers of both parties in the nation's capital.

The State Board of Education's debate on new English and reading standards took another rowdy turn Friday as members approved a never-before-seen version of the lengthy document which materialized less than an hour before the board was to take a final vote.

Perry attended state events on 37 days, had none listed on 31 weekdays at start of year, his calendar suggests, but governor wasn't slacking, aide says; he led national GOP group and pitched his book.

Early this year, an experienced veteran let me know that the best things in a solder's life are a hot meal and a letter from home. So, this week, we delivered 1,700 letters from El Paso school children to Texas soldiers through the Texas National Guard "Letters from Home" project.

The next president will have to manage these new rising states and these new rising individuals and networks, while wearing the straightjacket left in the Oval Office by Mr. Bush. Call it the triple deficit. A fiscal deficit that will soon have us choosing between health care, education, infrastructure and defense, a trade deficit that has us borrowing from our rivals to the point of real vulnerability, and a geopolitical deficit that is a legacy of Iraq, which may result in hesitancy to take strong stands where we must.

Mayor Bill White said Wednesday that he is preparing to take aim at a new target in his fight over Houston's air quality — the state agency that regulates plants emitting toxic chemicals.

People in the Rio Grande Valley were rattled last week by reports that the federal government was planning to do something very, very stupid the next time a hurricane came bearing down. The word was out that the Border Patrol would be checking citizenship at evacuation centers, screening out illegal immigrants before evacuees boarded buses.

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 describes a society that lacks critical thinking and accepts whatever the media tell them as truth. Mr. Bradbury's book was fiction, and we need to keep it that way by creating lifelong learners and thinkers, not sheep who blindly follow a guy with a "shtick."

A state commission, citing the fact that four out of five insured Texans now receive health care through preferred provider organizations, urged the Legislature on Wednesday to protect consumers by placing all PPOs under state regulation for the first time.

A congressional investigation is trying to determine whether ties between the chemical industry and the Environmental Protection Agency put children' health at risk. The House Energy and Commerce Committee is examining whether chemical companies influence EPA panels that review chemicals for safety.

CSOs don't lend you the money directly. Instead, they act as a middleman, simply arranging a loan with an anonymous third-party. Then, they charge you whatever fee they want to "arrange" the loan.

The number of uninsured people nationwide rose to 15.7 percent in 2004 from 15.4 percent in 1995. Yet in that period, the proportion of uninsured people using emergency rooms declined.

Experts say the data reflect not just worsening public health but better medicines for chronic conditions and more aggressive treatment by doctors. For example, more people are now taking blood pressure and cholesterol-lowering medicines because they need them, said Dr. Daniel W. Jones, president of the American Heart Association.

Currently, more than 80 percent of Americans who have health insurance coverage must contend with an unhealthy crisis of epidemic proportions: chronic disease. Chronic diseases are becoming a greater problem in terms of lives and costs.

My own totally unscientific polling has left me feeling that if there is one overwhelming hunger in our country today it’s this: People want to do nation-building. They really do. But they want to do nation-building in America.