Of the hundreds of bills that were approved by both the House and the Senate in the 83rd legislative session, more than two dozen were vetoed by Gov. Rick Perry. Use our interactive to see which measures did not survive Sunday's veto deadline. 

Barry Smitherman, the chairman of the Railroad Commission and former chairman of the Public Utility Commission, has earned praise as a smart and competent regulator. But he is also ambitious, and speculation is rife that he will make a bid for attorney general.

District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg's story was primarily about a public fall from grace. When Gov. Rick Perry stripped funding from the public integrity unit she runs, it also became a story about a political power grab.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz starts as the Texas favorite in a fantasy 2016 Republican primary for president, well ahead of Gov. Rick Perry and a number of other big-name candidates in the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.

Ten years after he was sent to prison for sex crimes he didn't commit, Steven Phillips and his wife divorced. In 2009, he was exonerated and awarded nearly $6 million in compensation. His ex-wife says she's entitled to some of it. 

In his prepared remarks at the Faith & Freedom Coalition 2013 conference on Saturday, Gov. Rick Perry had another "oops" moment when he mistakenly said last year's deadly attack on the American consulate in Benghazi happened in Lebanon, not Libya.

As Gov. Rick Perry puts an end to the so-called Kumbaya Session, we begin our weekly news-inspired playlist with Alice Cooper's "No More Mr. Nice Guy." 

This week in the Texas Weekly Newsreel: It's week three of the special session, and Gov. Rick Perry has added a few more items to the agenda, including abortion restrictions, transportation and criminal sentencing for teenagers.

Root says goodbye to the "Kumbaya Session," Hamilton with the latest on UT regents and records requests, Luthra on another loss for smoking ban proponents, Ramsey on a dearth of statewide Democratic candidates in 2014, Batheja on budget writers taking issue with a critique, Aguilar on a request for a study on the fiscal impact of undocumented immigrants, Grissom and M. Smith examine a truancy court complaint, E. Smith talks with Texas Monthly editors about their list of the best and worst legislators, Aaronson on experimental health projects and a lack of local revenue and Galbraith on the challenges facing Texas rivers. The best of our best for the week of June 10-14, 2013.

Your evening reading: Davis says Perry vetoed equal pay bill; Senate backs court-drawn redistricting maps; committee approves omnibus abortion bill

Gov. Rick Perry issued more than two dozen vetoes Friday, including a line-item veto that wipes out funding for the Travis County prosecutors who investigate government fraud and public corruption. He also vetoed a bill that would have had Texas law mirror gender wage protections in the federal Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.

UPDATED: After hearing impassioned testimony, a Senate committee has given tentative approval to an omnibus abortion regulation bill. The legislation now goes to the full Senate.

Though Senate Democrats argued that their objections and the testimony from public hearings were being ignored, the Texas Senate approved redistricting maps Friday.

The Senate on Friday approved a measure that would require judges and juries to sentence 17-year-olds convicted of capital murder to life in prison with the chance of parole after 40 years.

Gov. Rick Perry has signed into law Senate Bill 21, a measure that will subject Texans applying for unemployment benefits to a drug test if their responses to a screening questionnaire indicate possible drug use.

Special sessions are for emergencies — for finding solutions to problems that can't wait for the next regular session. Sometimes, the emergencies are beyond anyone's control. Sometimes, like now, they're manufactured in Austin.

Texas plans to launch 1,100 experimental projects using a transformational Medicaid waiver. The goal: to change the way health care is delivered to the state’s poor and uninsured. This interactive shows how $3.2 billion for those projects will be spent.

As the drought continues to blanket most of the state, demands for water are increasing from a growing population and industrial base. These pressures are squeezing Texas waterways, whose average streamflow remains well below normal.

The federal government has approved 1,100 experimental projects that could transform health care delivery to the state’s poor and uninsured. But the plan has a big catch: Local health care entities have to pony up to get the federal dollars.

Lawmakers' special session to-do list grew fourfold this week, but according to Gov. Rick Perry, it's not getting any bigger.