The Midday Brief: April 15, 2010

Your afternoon reading:

• “About 200 people gathered at the Capitol today for a tax day protest — a far cry from the estimated 1,500 people who gathered a year ago at the statehouse for a tea party rally.” — Tea Party rally off to a slow start amid Perry warnings of liberal infiltration — Postcards

• “Hypothetical presidential matchups for 2012 are highly premature. But they can be highly interesting, too. Example: A new Rasmussen Reports poll found President Obama locked in a dead heat with none other than Texas Rep. Ron Paul.” — New poll: Ron Paul runs even with Obama in 2012 matchup — Texas on the Potomac

• “Hinojosa spoke Tuesday with Tom Mesenbourg, deputy director of the U.S. Census Bureau about what must be done to ensure a proper 2010 Census count in the Valley.” — There Will Be Enough Census Workers in Valley Colonias, Hinojosa Told — Rio Grande Guardian

• “One of the easiest dismissals of the sort of people who meet to talk about things like seceding from the union is that they're a bunch of uneducated hillbillies who don't know what they're talking about. So naturally we were surprised to pull into the parking lot of the New Baden Community Center and find the parking lot full of as many Lexuses as pickup trucks.” — Texas Secessionists Teach Us About the Presidents Before George Washington — Asylum.com

New in the Texas Tribune:

• “Prior to heading HHSC, Hawkins was a senior White House aide to President George W. Bush for two years. From 1995 to 2000, he was the budget director for the governor's office.” — TribBlog: Straus Hires Hawkins

• “Late last night, Rick Green took to his Facebook page to dispute comments attributed to Debra Lehrmann claiming he had pledged to have his supporters back her in the general election campaign.”  — 2010: Hey, Wait a Minute

• “Norma Chávez never claimed to care much about whether fellow politicians liked her. A consummate campaign organizer who fought first and compromised later — if ever — she time again won over voters in her central El Paso district, who first sent her to the Texas House in 1996.” — Anatomy of a Meltdown