Why do Texas colleges hire former lawmakers to run the show? It's because the key trait for a new chancellor is the ability to attract money, both from donors and from the Legislature.

Rick Perry’s in-state-tuition troubles have a lot to do with the difference between politics in Texas and politics everywhere else.

At this morning's TribLive conversation, Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp defended the state law allowing college-bound children of undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition.

At this morning's TribLive conversation, Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp defended his efforts to implement the so-called margins tax in 2006.

Aaronson analyzes TWIA claims and lawyer fees, Aguilar talks border security and voter ID with Chuy Hinojosa, Grissom on the latest inmate exonerated via DNA evidence, Hamilton interviews John Sharp on higher ed and the SEC, Murphy interactively maps the changes wrought by redistricting, Philpott on who's running Texas while Rick Perry is out campaigning for president, Ramsey on Perry's history of off-the-cuff remarks, Ramshaw on Perry's childhood years in Paint Creek, Root on Perry's extraordinary first week on the trail and Tan on even more ways Texas will change on Sept. 1: The best of our best content from Aug. 15-19, 2011.

Who knew, when the 1998 race for lieutenant governor was raging, that the combatants would end up like this: Rick Perry is picking his way across Iowa and New Hampshire with his sights set on the White House, and John Sharp is the chancellor-apparent at the Texas A&M University System.

Whodathunkit?

On this week's TribCast, Evan, Ross, Reeve and Ben discuss Perry coverage by the national media, John Sharp's move to the Texas A&M University System and coming changes to public education. 

Former Comptroller John Sharp was named the sole finalist to be the next chancellor of the Texas A&M University System by the Board of Regents this afternoon. He won't officially have the job until after a state-mandated 21-day waiting period.

At Texas A&M University in the late 1960s, a campus culture shift pitted Rick Perry, then a traditionalist cadet, against several other future Texas politicians who were reform-minded civilians.

Rick Perry has forged a coalition of economic, religious and social conservatives that helped him become the state's longest-serving governor, poised to run a national race.

The 2006 tax swap — lowering local school property taxes and creating a new business tax to make up the difference — is at the center of Texas' current budget troubles. The architects are still pointing fingers over what and whom to blame for the state's “structural deficit.”

There’s a widely held belief around the Capitol that lawmakers balanced a troublesome budget in 2003 with a convenient underestimation of how many people would need to be served. So why not do that on purpose, and out in the open?

Texas Democrats have become a political version of the Baltimore Orioles. If Ann Richards were alive, she and Earl Weaver would be comparing notes — in salty language — on what went wrong with their old teams.

For lower-ranking Republicans who would like to be higher-ranking and Democrats who barely remember ever having a shot at winning a statewide office, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's inscrutability about her future plans is getting to be a bit much.

It's an impulse most of us learn to suppress in the seventh grade — the need give your enemies wedgies, to tape "kick me" signs to their backs, to put lizards in their lunchboxes. Political people don't suppress it — they channel it into goofy stunts to attract attention, ridicule opponents and blow off steam.

If history is any guide, the Legislature will turn to accounting illusions to mask large portions of a budget shortfall of at least $11 billion. Trouble is, such trickery is a bet on the economy roaring back to life — and that's no sure thing. 

She said she would limit her time in the U.S. Senate to two terms and is currently serving a third. She said she would resign her federal office to run for governor and didn't. She said she would quit after the primary and hasn't. So who's to say she won't reconsider in two years and run for a fourth term? And what of all those would-be successors?