For decades, residents of impoverished Mexican border towns have toiled in the cotton and alfalfa fields or in the giant factories of Juárez. Those seeking more than paupers’ wages worked for the cartels. Yet their communities remained peaceful until the horror of the drug war bled into the farmland. As the violence worsens, law enforcement has rushed to both sides of the Rio Grande — but greater security brings little comfort and little hope.

The University of Texas once admired Ku Klux Klan organizer and law professor William Stewart Simkins. Today the UT System's regents meet to consider whether the tree-shaded all-male residence on San Jacinto Boulevard that bears his name still should.

In new web videos released today, both gubernatorial campaigns are accusing the other of failing to bring anything to the table that benefits Texas.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has shuffled the chairs in the Texas Senate.

The senator says Kagan has not made clear she would "protect the fundamental rights written in our constitution."

Your afternoon reading.

Don't look now, but things just got substantive in the governor's race.

As the savage drug war rages on in Juárez, both the fun and the business have fled, bringing to El Paso, its sleepy sister city, a vibrant new culture and an economic boost. In a tragic irony, a measure of El Paso’s recent fortune results directly from the suffering of Juárez. But experts warn that El Paso leaders rely on Juárez’s decline at their own risk. Ultimately, as Juárez goes, so goes El Paso, they say.

The chairman of the political science department at Rice University recently ranked Texas House members' partisanship based on their 2009 legislative votes. Our interactive chart highlights what he describes as Texas' increasingly polarized political environment.

Curbing the practice of barratry — "ambulance chasing," in the vernacular — has prompted an uneasy alliance between tort reformers and the Texas Trial Lawyers Association: They agree on reform ... just not on the form it should take.

After the exodus of at least half a dozen employees and swirling questions about its lack of enforcement against unscrupulous doctors, the Division of Workers' Compensation has put a new man in charge of the investigations. The former executive director of the Texas Medical Board, Dr. Donald Patrick, started Monday.

Texans overwhelmingly reject the way the State Board of Education sets requirements for textbooks and curriculum, which ignited a nationwide controversy earlier this year, according to a statewide survey the Texas Freedom Network released today.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will visit Texas’ border with Mexico on Thursday when she meets with customs officials and local law enforcement in Laredo.

What do college students and preschoolers have in common?

Your afternoon reading.

The Texas heat is proving too much for anything chicken-suit-related at the moment.

Politicians, candidates and other state officers are required to disclose their personal finances, to discourage conflicts of interest and, according to the law, "strengthen the faith and confidence of the people of this state in state government." Yet getting these documents isn’t easy, so we've put all 3,070 available online.

The majority of students who enroll in community colleges never make it out with a credential. Some Texas schools are turning to Achieving the Dream, a national initiative that requires them to own up to their problems and improve those success rates.