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All Coverage

  • A Conversation With Michael Williams

    By Evan Smith

    For our latest TribLive conversation, I sat down with the soon-to-be-ex railroad commissioner and declared 2012 U.S. Senate candidate to talk about why he's running, what he thinks of his potential primary opponents and how his campaign will or won't be impacted by his race. Full Story 

    Education Commissioner Michael Williams, a former railroad commissioner, is shown at a TribLive event on Jan. 27, 2011.

  • Inside Intelligence: A Real Legislative Emergency is...

    By Ross Ramsey

    For the latest installment of our nonscientific survey of political and policy insiders on issues of the moment, we asked whether voter fraud is a policy issue or a political one, what should and shouldn't be on the governor's list of emergency items for the Legislature, how those designations should be used and whether the Legislature ought to be allowed to set its own early priorities. Full Story 

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  • Health Reform Roulette

    By Emily Ramshaw

    Even as Texas pursues a lawsuit attacking federal health care reform, some state officials are reluctantly laying the groundwork to implement parts of the law. Full Story 

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    Credit: Illustration by Todd Wiseman

  • Red Meat, Fast Track

    By Ross Ramsey

    Abortion politics is back on center stage, with Gov. Rick Perry putting it, voter photo ID, state support for a balanced federal budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution, eminent domain and a ban on sanctuary cities at the top of his list of priorities. Why? Full Story 

    Gov. Rick Perry as the keynote speaker at The Annual Texas Rally for Life at the Capitol on January 22, 2011.
    Credit: Caleb Bryant Miller

  • Counting Noses

    By Ross Ramsey

    When San Antonio Sen. Gregory Luna, a Democrat, was dying in 1999, he got the lieutenant governor at the time — Rick Perry — to agree to give him 24 hours notice before any Senate vote on a public school voucher bill Luna opposed. He would get to Austin, he said then, to be the deciding vote against that legislation. Full Story 

  • Artistic Development

    By Reeve Hamilton

    Creative industries — from advertising to dance companies to book publishing — generate $4.5 billion per year in economic activity for Texas, according to a new report released by the Texas Cultural Trust in association with the Texas Commission on the Arts. The report features projects in communities like Amarillo, El Paso, Rockport, Texarkana and the tiny, north central Texas town of Clifton, population 3,795. “It’s more than fluff,” says Amy Barbee, the Trust's executive director. “We want to tell the story that the arts truly are economic development.” Full Story 

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    Credit: Todd Wiseman

  • TribWeek: In Case You Missed It

    By Ross Ramsey

    Grissom on what happens — and doesn't — when police don't analyze evidence taken from rape victims, Dehn with video highlights of the Senate debate over photo voter ID, Aguilar on the more than three dozen immigration-related bills waiting for attention in the Legislature, M. Smith on what to do with empty school buildings, Ramshaw on what will happen to hospitals if Medicaid managed care is expanded, C. Smith on how the state's budget cuts could affect churches and other faith-based organizations, Philpott's report for the Trib and KUT News on how the tight state budget could affect mental health care, yours truly on why the initial budget proposal isn't really a plan for state spending, Stiles with a searchable database of the latest campaign finance reports, and Galbraith on the rising use of coal and wind to generate electricity in Texas: The best of our best from January 24 to 28, 2011. Full Story 

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  • The Constant Gardeners

    By Kate Galbraith

    From the highways of Texas to the San Jacinto Battleground, state agencies now aim to maximize the use of native grasses rather than opting for whatever was cheapest or fastest-growing, as they did decades ago. Full Story 

    Bill Neiman, owner of Native American Seed, at his seed-cleaning facility in Junction, TX, Jan. 18, 2011.
    Credit: Callie Richmond

  • Texplainer: What is UTIMCO?

    By Reeve Hamilton

    The simple answer: It's the acronym for University of Texas Investment Management Company, a nonprofit company with a single client, the University of Texas System (and, to a lesser extent, the Texas A&M University System). With the universities it serves under pressure not to hike tuition rates even though fewer state dollars are flowing their way, the company's performance will be under intense scrutiny this session — and UTIMCO officials are still recovering from last session's showdown over their generous bonuses. To explain all this for us, we called in an expert: CEO Bruce Zimmerman. Full Story 

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  • Testing the Evidence

    By Brandi Grissom

    In police departments across Texas, tens of thousands of rape kits have been sitting on the shelves of property storage rooms for years — thanks to strained budgets, overworked crime labs and a law enforcement philosophy that such kits are primarily useful as evidence if a stranger committed the assault. Victims’ rights advocates and some lawmakers say they'll work to pass legislation this year to take that evidence out of storage and create a DNA database that would help track rapists and perhaps even identify those who have been wrongly convicted. "I think we owe it to every person who has been raped," says state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth. Full Story 

    A sexual assault evidence collection kit
    Credit: Todd Wiseman