A border-area lawmaker in Texas wants state troopers to help the federal government stop southbound weapons and funds that are boosting Mexican drug cartels. Hernán Rozemberg of public radio's Fronteras Desk reports.

Gubernatorial candidate Bill White unveiled a border security plan today and chided Gov. Rick Perry over border cameras and his "unauthorized" spending of security money.

E. Smith interviews Gov. Rick Perry for the Trib and Newsweek, Philpott dissects the state's budget mess in a weeklong series, Hamilton looks at whether Bill White is or was a trial lawyer, M. Smith finds experts all over the state anxiously watching a court case over who owns the water under our feet, Aguilar reports on the battle between Fort Stockton and Clayton Williams Jr. over water in West Texas, Ramshaw finds a population too disabled to get on by itself but not disabled enough to get state help and Miller spends a day with a young man and his mother coping with that situation, Ramsey peeks in on software that lets the government know whether its e-mail messages are getting read and who's reading what, a highway commissioner reveals just how big a hole Texas has in its road budget, Grissom does the math on the state's border cameras and learns they cost Texans about $153,800 per arrest, and E. Smith interviews Karen Hughes on the difference between corporate and political P.R. — and whether there's such a thing as "Obama Derangement Syndrome." The best of our best from April 19 to April 23, 2010.

Gov. Rick Perry has invested $4 million in the Texas Border Watch Program over two years. Twenty-nine cameras have been installed on the 1,200-mile Texas-Mexico border, or one camera for every 41 miles of border. Internet viewers have helped police make a total of 26 arrests — that’s about $153,800 per arrest.

For many who call the border home, all the guns, all the money, all the technology, and all the police badges have done little to address the problems that make their lives insecure.

The Texas Public Information Act allows agencies to redact information for security and privacy reasons. The Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition decided redact just about everything they possibly could on the invoices they sent me.

Gov. Rick Perry is expanding Operation Border Star, a multi-agency border security effort he launched in 2007, sending teams of Texas Rangers and National Guard troops to curb border crime and prevent spillover violence from Mexico.

Gov. Rick Perry gave Texas border sheriffs another $2 million for a virtual border wall of web cameras that in its first full year failed to meet nearly every law enforcement goal his office originally set.