The Evening Brief: March 29, 2012

Culled:

• Tejano monument gets a rousing welcome at Capitol (Austin American-Statesman): "The Tejano Monument’s 12-year journey to a place on the Capitol grounds is complete. With a mariachi group greeting an enthusiastic crowd of hundreds, if not thousands, the monument, a massive 250-ton tribute to Texas’ early Spanish and Mexican explorers, settlers and their descendants, was dedicated this morning on the Capitol’s south lawn. The unveiling culminated a grassroots campaign begun in 2000 to make the monument a reality."

• The Ron Paul Roadies Had To Go Home (BuzzFeed): "The group of six diehard Ron Paul supporters who launched an Internet campaign to fund their quest across the nation, following a campaign that gave them less and less aid as time went on, have had to leave the trail. As of a couple weeks ago, the 'Ron Paul Roadies' were in low spirits and often unable to afford food, having quit their jobs before the primaries to follow the Paul campaign full-time (and having stopped receiving a stipend from the Youth for Paul initiative). Even the most committed Paulites of all have to bow to certain realities."

• CD 25 candidate Justin Hewlett offers "personal tour" of district to opponents (Fort Worth Star-Telegram): "Cleburne Mayor Justin Hewlett today offered to give a personal tour of Congressional District 25 — which he is seeking — to two of his fellow Republican challengers: Roger Williams and Michael Williams. … 'I would like to introduce them to the people, principles and values of my community,' Hewlett said in a press release Thursday. 'If Roger Williams and Michael Williams want to represent the friends and neighbors that our family has built our lives around, I think it's important they finally get to know them.'"

• Easy guide to education stats chopped by budget ax: "For the past 20 years, the education geeks of Texas have consulted a handy guide called the Pocket Edition for the quick and dirty details on school finance, enrollment, demographics and more. But no longer. The Texas Education Agency has stopped producing the annual pocket-sized pamphlet because the division responsible for it had to reduce staffing by 30 percent in the wake of last year’s budget cuts, said agency spokeswoman Debbie Graves Ratcliffe."

New in The Texas Tribune:

• Texplainer: How Can I Get a $10,000 Degree?: "The announcement earlier this month that a bachelor’s degree was available at Texas A&M University-San Antonio for less than $10,000 was met with understandable enthusiasm. But it may only be available for a very small group."

• Ethan Nadelmann: The TT Interview: "The executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance on how current drug policies are making Texas’ criminal justice system 'horrific,' why legalization would help curb but not completely quell the violence in Mexico and who has the most to gain and lose by amending current drug policies.