In the Information Age, it still takes the major political parties in Texas three weeks to figure out who should be listed on their state ballots.

Some deep-pocketed trial lawyers didn't make the Twenty Who Gave Plenty list. Why not? 

Rick Perry's Blogger Summit featured big-name speakers, social media strategizing and a chance to shoot guns with the Governor. What it didn't feature: much talk about Texas.

What's it like to be a person who wages a no-win campaign but, by taking votes away, dooms the chances of one or more of the other candidates in the race? Mark White knows. Kinky Friedman knows. Debra Medina could soon find out.

It's not about Kip Averitt. It's about Chet Edwards.

You cannot win if you do not play: Poker players know it, and the Ds, if they mean to make this a two-party state again, need to know it too.

Monday was the filing deadline for the 2010 elections, and the parties published preliminary lists of the people who want to run the state next year. By our tentative count, 89 members of the House won't have major-party competition, while nine of the 16 senators on the ballot and four members of the state's congressional delegation all apparently drew byes. The full ballots, as they stand now, are in our Election 2010 database.

Former state Sen. Hector Uribe, D-Brownsville, filed for land commissioner today, setting up a primary battle with Bill Burton of Athens. The winner will face Republican incumbent Jerry Patterson in November.

How are San Antonio Democrats reacting to the party's embezzlement scandal?

Is retired Travis County D.A. Ronnie Earle — who talked about running for governor and then filed for lieutenant governor — a strong statewide candidate?

Humorist and author Kinky Friedman is setting his sights on a new prize: the agriculture commissioner post.

In the wake of Bill White’s entry into the Governor’s race, Texas Democrats are understandably — and dangerously — optimistic.

Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Farouk Shami is counting on your votes to put him in office, but records show his own voting history is inconsistent. There's no evidence that he's ever voted in a Democratic primary — but he did vote in the Republican primary in 2000.

Candidates from both sides of the spectrum are self-recruited and responsible for their own campaigns. So what's the value of a relationship with the state's political parties?

Well, now it's official: The mayor of San Antonio will save us all.

This holiday weekend, Democrats up and down the ballot are giving thanks for the prospect of a Bill White gubernatorial candidacy.

If we didn't think campaign finance law was confusing before this morning, well, we do now.

Multi-part stories from Ramshaw and Grissom and Stiles on mental health services for detained immigrants and on payday lenders who provide exorbitantly priced credit to people with nowhere else to turn... Twitter, word clouds and the race for governor — a Stiles joint... Farouk Shami is in and Hu was there to watch... Philpott went to Bastrop for a gather of Republican governors... Rapoport finds a State Board of Education that's trying to control itself... and we have the skinny on legislative races that are likely to be competitive (only about 5 percent of the races on the ballot). It's the best of The Texas Tribune from November 14 to 20, 2009.