The Midday Brief: Nov. 19, 2010

Your afternoon reading:

• "Texas employers expanded payrolls by 47,900 jobs in October, the most since May, but the state jobless rate remained unchanged at 8.1 percent, the Texas Workforce Commission said Friday." — Texas adds almost 48,000 jobs in October, but jobless rate stays at 8.1 percent, The Dallas Morning News

• "In a new decision, Attorney General Greg Abbott has ordered Texas prison officials to make public previously secret details about the drugs they use in lethal executions." — AG: Make public info about execution drugs, Postcards

• "Rep.-elect Cindy Burkett, R-Mesquite, just endorsed the speakership candidacy of Collin County lawmaker Ken Paxton, R-McKinney." — Burkett for Paxton for speaker, Trail Blazers

• "The amount of money spent to educate children in the Houston Independent School District is severely inconsistent from school to school, a Texas Watchdog review of HISD data has found." — Rich school, poor school: How much Houston ISD spends to educate each child varies greatly between schools, Texas Watchdog

New in The Texas Tribune:

• "The bomb-throwing president of Empower Texas and Texans for Fiscal Responsibility on why Joe Straus hasn't proved himself as a conservative, why the entry of outside groups like his own into the insiders' race for speaker is proper and what he'd like to see out of a Texas House with 99 GOP members in it." — Michael Quinn Sullivan: The TT Interview