Courts

A Supreme Court appeal has breathed new life into a two-decade-old scandal — this one with details a little less banal than a judge’s strict adherence to closing time.

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The Texas Attorney General's office is throwing its own punches at the attorney who sued the state over its storage of infant blood samples, saying all he wanted was the headlines.

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Did it just get easier for governmental agencies in Texas to delay releasing public information?

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Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, who has been taking his gun to Big Bend National Park anyway, says he is glad he can now carry without violating the rules.

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More than 120 federally subsidized day care centers had their licenses denied or revoked by the state for violations of regulations and minimum standards in the last two years. Map their locations and drill down into the records by the provider name or action taken by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

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Shami takes another hit, Keller back in the spotlight and the state of Texas' health.

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The trial judge who initially decided Hank Skinner would die Feb. 24 — one week from today — has pushed the execution date back to March 24, says Skinner attorney Rob Owen, co-director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Capital Punishment Clinic.

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... you aren't among the 40 percent of Texans who don't use the Internet, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Only Mississippi and West Virginia have a lower percentage of residents using the Web.

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Find the salaries of more than 340,000 public employees with our enhanced data application, including those working at the largest state agencies as well as individual public schools, cities and mass-transit operators. And universities: Did you know, for instance, that of the 10 highest-paid professors at the state's two largest universities, nine are Aggies?

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Texans are more worried about the economy and the direction of the country than anything else, according to the new University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll. Other notable findings: Nearly two-thirds support either gay marriage or civil unions, nearly half prefer private health insurance to a government-run plan, and more than a third think the Legislature meets every year.

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The Texas Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of a $5 tax on admission to the state's strip clubs — a measure lawmakers implemented in 2007 to raise money for sexual assault prevention and low-income health insurance.

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Getting a look at correspondence, documents, reports, etc. related to death row inmate Hank Skinner's case is proving more difficult than I imagined.

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The Texas Ethics Commission and the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts are opening up more of their data to the public at no charge.

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The federal push for accountability at "persistently low-achieving" schools across Texas is running smack into the hard, slow work of improvement at the local level.

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Two former Texas Supreme Court justices and a Goliath of state judicial politics are trying to oust the 10th Court of Appeals judge from the courthouse that he once cleaned as a janitor.

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Thevenot on the abysmally low community college graduation rate and higher ed's coming budgetary winter. Ramshaw on Terri Hodge's guilty plea and hasty exit. Grissom on the Department of Public Safety's use of dreaded federal stimulus funds to plug a hole in the state's border security budget. Hu on the first of the intraparty face-offs in our Primary Color series. Ramsey and Stiles on the congressional candidates with the most money on hand. Ramsey on whether Farouk Shami's accent and name are an obstacle to his election. Aguilar on the fever-tick epidemic overwhelming South Texas. Rapoport on TxDOT's hard road and the State Board of Education's lack of finance expertise. Philpott on how Barack Obama's budget will impact Texas. M. Smith on whether lawyers giving to judges is a good thing. Hamilton on the latest transportation innovations on the drawing board. The best of our best from February 1 to 5, 2010.

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Her office is studying efforts to release raw data in New York and San Francisco for ideas.

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The latest campaign finance reports show that both candidates raised more than $700,000 in January. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison spent more than any other candidate: $3.3 million.

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Even if 84 percent of Americans believe judges should not hear cases from major campaign contributors, the big Texas law firms that have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to them over the last ten years see nothing wrong with business as usual.

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Attorney General Greg Abbott has a message for young, hormonal Texans: Sending your BF or GF naughty pics over the phone could be criminal.

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