Enlarge photo by: Creative Commons/Daniel Foster

The tussle between Texas and federal environmental regulators is heating up in yet another arena — natural gas drilling — after the EPA ordered a gas company to act to come to the aid of two North Texas homes with contaminated wells. Texas Railroad Commissioners fired back, calling the EPA's move "premature" and "grandstanding."

Your afternoon reading: agencies asked to cut more, emergency appeal in death penalty case and a big day for Joe Barton

The legal wrangling between Texas and the federal government over the state's air-pollution permitting system for big industrial plants is intensifying, as Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a brief in a federal court yesterday defending the system.

As expected, state leaders are asking state agencies to cut their current budgets even more. This time, by 2.5 percent.

Though successful in covering the gruesome aspects of the cartel-related carnage in Mexico, the U.S. press falls short in exposing the muzzling of its Mexican counterparts at the hands of organized crime, says Ricardo Trotti, director of press freedom at the Inter American Press Association.

As the death penalty went on trial in Texas on Monday, one side of the courtroom fell silent.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission is set to vote later this month on a deal to buy a Southwest Texas ranch for $13 million — a change from an earlier, controversial land-swap proposal.

A new survey commissioned by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, finds that 80 percent of Texas voters believe that colleges and universities could be run more efficiently than they are now.

Your afternoon reading: death penalty hearing, truth about taxes, and bullying bills

Texas got its first taste of a Medicaid-less future on Friday. And the future doesn't look pretty.

For this week's installment of our nonscientific survey of political and policy insiders on issues of the moment, we asked whether the Texas Railroad Commission should live or die and whether the commissioners ought to be appointed or elected. And we asked for suggestions on what government is doing now that it ought to stop doing.

For the first time, President Barack Obama granted a slew of pardons today. He pardoned nine people convicted primarily of rather minor offenses.

Texas cannot walk away from Medicaid, and Gov. Rick Perry agrees, Health and Human Services Commissioner Tom Suehs said this afternoon, hours after releasing the agency’s long-awaited report on the feasibility of dropping out of the federal matching program.

Your afternoon reading: more conservative activists entering speaker's fray, Texas gains in the U.S. House, and a key Medicaid report

The effects of Texas dropping out of the federal Medicaid program would be sweeping and to some populations devastating. But that doesn’t mean the current system is workable for Texas, according to a long-awaited report released today by the state’s Health and Human Services Commission.