The Midday Brief: Jan. 4, 2011

Your afternoon reading:

• "The injection of religious arguments into the Texas House speaker’s contest continues, as a Dallas rabbi and Corpus Christi bishop weighed in against incumbent Speaker Joe Straus (R-San Antonio) via conservative websites." — More religious arguments in Texas House speaker contest, The Texas Independent

• "Texans representing the greater Houston-area are heading back to Capitol Hill for the new Congress with widely different priorities for their official office spending." — Special Report: Houston-area House members' office spending, Texas on the Potomac

• "They say everything is bigger in Texas, but is the state's clout in Congress actually getting smaller?" — Texas slips in House leadership clout, The Washington Post

• "Prosecutors declared a Texas man innocent Monday of a rape and robbery that had put him in prison for 30 years." — DNA clears Texan wrongly jailed for 30 years, The Associated Press

• "More than 130 tenured professors at Texas' two flagship universities have accepted buyouts that are expected to save their financially constrained departments nearly $18 million a year." — At 2 Texas Campuses, Faculty Buyouts Create Staffing Headaches, Chronicle of Higher Education

New in The Texas Tribune:

• The jail conditions expert and professor at the University of Texas' LBJ School of Public Affairs on why maintaining treatment programs that keep offenders in their communities and reducing some of the harsh, long-term jail sentences often doled out in Texas' notoriously tough criminal justice system could be more cost-efficient and allow Texas to close prisons. — Michele Deitch: The TT Interview