Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

The current executive director of the agency, Glenn Shankle, announced earlier this month that he would step down to spend more time with his family as soon as the three commissioners find a replacement. Commissioners may not succeed until the end of summer, but agency observers are already placing bets on Shankle's replacement.

The public interest law firm Earthjustice filed a lawsuit today representing groups in Illinois, New Mexico, Nevada, and Idaho working to keep their communities and natural resources safe from sites contaminated by mining and other polluting industries.

The debate over how to protect consumers from E. coli and other potentially deadly microbes has intensified since the fall of 2006, when at least 200 people across the nation became ill and three died after eating tainted spinach grown in San Benito County.

Last week, I was privileged to attend a hearing in San Antonio for the Senate Veterans Affairs & Military Installations Committee. During the hearing, we toured Brooke Army Medical Center, ate lunch with wounded warriors, and saw firsthand some of the amazing things the military is doing to help our injured veterans.

In a comment last week, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality chairman Buddy Garcia told Texans, "When the [EPA] announced its new ozone standard, critics across the state jumped to the conclusion that the air we breathe is unhealthful. Nothing could be further from the truth"

An estimated seven working-age Texans die each day because they don't have health insurance, according to a report released Tuesday by a national consumer-advocacy group.

Craddick, the Midland Republican who became House speaker in 2003, has become a central character in the primary election contests in El Paso between state Rep. Pat Haggerty and GOP challenger Dee Margo and between state Rep. Paul Moreno and Democratic challenger Marisa Marquez.

Our state is obscenely behind on its highway needs — $23 billion behind over the next 11 years just to maintain what it has.

Private lending also can come with risks. Big risks. As Holly Hacker reported in this newspaper Sunday, some loans carry interest rates as high as 20 percent. The terms also vary, leaving some students with big payments years after they graduate. And if they default, many of them will stay on the hook – Washington doesn't back up all private loans.

The teaching of our kids is becoming rote, controlled and dull. And right about now, in schools across North Texas, kids are being groomed to take the test – the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.

Nearly half of the charter schools in Texas have incorrectly reported student attendance, resulting in $26 million in undeserved payments that the state is trying to recover, according to state records.

The Teacher Retirement System of Texas is expected to approve a plan today that will give as much as $1 billion each to four Wall Street firms to invest in public markets across the globe.

It's entirely feasible, officials said, that a Texas student could graduate from high school without being taught about birth control options.

Facing a critical shortage of halfway houses and community protests that have killed new sites by the dozens, legislative leaders Wednesday proposed a new tack: Build them on prison land in urban areas.

A state district judge has dismissed a campaign finance lawsuit against a statewide business group, its contributors and a high-powered lobbyist over the use of corporate money in a handful of legislative races.

Paperwork for applicants has been lost. Needy Texans have received little help from state workers when they've complained of mistakes. And all too often, Texans who should qualify for state-paid health care and other benefits have been refused because of such errors.

Texans could buy lottery tickets at the checkout lines in supermarkets and big-box department stores, at coffee shops and cabarets. They could pay with credit cards or personal checks and play online or the old-fashioned way with a ticket that's also a tiny ad for anything from soft drinks to sporting events.

Texas charter schools have reaped $26 million in undeserved state money by filing incorrect student attendance reports, according to state financial records.

Last week's headlines about the tragic outcomes of two teen pregnancies have left us saddened and disillusioned, searching for explanations and too often looking for someone or something to blame. How could this happen? What were they thinking? How could these girls not know they were pregnant? Why didn't their parents know? But the questions I'm most concerned about are: Where is the male partner? And, what can we do to prevent this from happening again?

The University of Texas is violating the Constitution and civil rights laws by considering race and ethnicity in deciding whether to admit undergraduates, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court Monday by a white student whose application was rejected.