The Midday Brief: May 25, 2011

Your afternoon reading:

• "Gov. Rick Perry today said state lawmakers should be the ones to draw new congressional districts, not judges. 'I do think that the responsibility is with the members of the Legislature,' Perry said this morning. 'To allow the courts to do that is not in the best interest of the people.'" — Perry says lawmakers should draw congressional districts, even though they clearly don’t want to, Postcards

• "Rep. David Simpson … a Longview Republican with a penchant for surprising his colleagues, today effectively killed a bill to ban salvia (or to the botanist: Salvia divinorum). Simpson said from the House floor that he was ready to use the parliamentary procedure of talking for 10 minutes during debate on Senate Bill 348, reducing the measure to legislative ashes." — Simpson smokes salvia bill, Postcards

• "Democrats … are insisting the upset win bodes well for 2012, when they hope to retake the House. But Dallas Rep. Pete Sessions, head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, called it 'naïve and risky... to predict the future based on the results of this unusual race.'" — NRCC's Pete Sessions shrugs off costly loss in upstate NY contest, Trail Blazers

• "The hallways and teachers’ lounges at IDEA Public Schools have been buzzing with talk of the leaking of dozens of emails from the district account of CEO and Founder Tom Torkelson over the weekend." — Leaked IDEA Public Schools emails reveal private conversations, The Monitor

New in The Texas Tribune:

• "Could a brown, beady-eyed, two-and-a-half-inch lizard really threaten millions of barrels of Texas oil? West Texas lawmakers are worried that adding the sagebrush lizard to the Endangered Species List would do just that." — The Latest Texas vs. Feds Dispute? A Tiny Lizard

• "We've added 27 new entities to our government employee salaries database and updated 30 others, bringing the total number to 129, with salaries for 660,000 public employees. The database now includes every campus in the Texas A&M, Texas State, and University of North Texas systems, the Bexar and Travis county appraisal districts and more school districts and transit authorities." — Data App: 27 New Entities, 30 Updated in Public Salaries Database