The 82nd Texas Legislature’s regular session ends as it started, with lawmakers arguing about a shrunken state budget and redistricting.

Eliminating funds for family planning services is not a responsible or compassionate choice. It will shift the burden of care to our already overloaded local hospitals and leave the women who depend on these services with few options.

The Women's Health Program — long believed to require legislative renewal — lives on, at least for now, in the form of a budget rider.

The most important problems facing the country are economic, while immigration and border security are the most important problems facing the state, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.

The state's family planning budget is getting increasingly thin. Budget conferees appear poised to go with the cheapest possible option for offering minimal family planning services, and a Medicaid program that provides screenings and contraception is circling the drain.

The House tentatively passed a health care bill that intends to increase efficiency and cost savings in Texas' expensive Medicaid and other health programs today — but not before adding a far-ranging variety of amendments. 

At last Thursday's TribLive conversation, I interviewed Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples about the Senate's two-thirds rule, the Rainy Day Fund, abortion sonograms and other issues that he'd confront as lieutenant governor.

Texas' Women's Health Program may be circling the drain. Sen. Bob Deuell says he doesn’t have the votes in the Senate to bring up a bill to renew the family planning and preventative care program — and Rep. Garnet Coleman says his House bill is stuck.

House lawmakers have sent the controversial abortion sonogram bill to the governor's desk — after a last-ditch effort by disability rights advocates to change language they called highly offensive.

Rep. Sid Miller, R-Stephenville, and Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston joined forces this morning to ask the House to accept all of the Senate's amendments to the abortion sonogram bill, virtually ensuring it's headed to Gov. Rick Perry's desk.

Senate lawmakers tentatively passed a controversial measure to require women seeking abortions to receive sonograms — and have the details of the fetus described to them — prior to the procedure. 

With fewer than five weeks left in the regular session, none of Gov. Rick Perry's emergency items — voter ID, sanctuary cities, sonograms for women getting abortions, a federal balanced budget amendment, and eminent domain protection — have made it to his desk. 

Sen. John Cornyn will not be “taking the nickel tour” of any Planned Parenthood branch, his office said Wednesday, in response to an offer by one of the organization’s Texas branches to arrange an informational visit. 

At this morning's TribLive conversation, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, was unwilling to distance himself from controversial remarks about Planned Parenthood by his colleague, U.S. Jon Kyl, R-Arizona.

A panel of senators today discussed an abortion sonogram carve-out that would allow women in remote communities to wait just two hours after a sonogram to have an abortion, instead of 24 hours.

Tan on the budget standoff between the House and Senate, Ramsey on budget cuts that cost us money, Philpott on Hispanics and redistricting,  Stiles visualizes speed limits by state, Grissom on a liberal social justice organizer who became a conservative hero, M. Smith on even more student social security numbers at risk, Ramshaw on whether family planning equals abortion, Aguilar on what circumcision has to do with citizenship, Murphy on how much Texas university adminstrators are paid, Hamilton on the latest in the higher ed reform saga and Galbraith on Texas energy lessons from the 1970s: The best of our best content from April 4 to 8, 2011.

Is "family planning" a euphemism for abortion? For many House Republicans, yes. It's not that they don't understand the difference — it's that they don't trust family planning clinics not to steer women toward abortions.

Grissom on threats to re-entry programs for criminals, Hamilton on the tempest over the direction of UT, E. Smith's interview with Joe Straus, Stiles and Chang's new lobbying app, M. Smith and Weber on where state officeholders send their children to school, Aaronson on allowing new nuclear power plants, Aguilar on how Hispanic Republicans are handling immigration issues, Ramshaw talks abortion with Planned Parennthood's Cecile Richards, Tan and Dehn on tapping the Rainy Day Fund and Galbraith on San Antonio and its water: The best of our best content from March 14 to 18, 2011.