Demographics

Roll your own political videos ... interactive travel maps of your federal and state legislators ... scary movies, to keep the kids out of the border's scary drug wars ... puttting dropouts back in class ... rates squeezing families out of home health care ... how many lobby and trade associations do teachers in Texas need? ... enjoying the silence before an expected two-month siege of political advertising ... the dean of Texas political writers gets shut out of the gubernatorial debates ... and we have an interactive database of the state's best and worst public schools. The best of our best for a short news week, from December 19 to 26, 2009.

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Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster might have to change his tune about his idyllic border home after this week. Foster was having lunch Tuesday with Mexican officials across the border in Piedras Negras when a gunmen started spraying the place with bullets.

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We added more people this year than any other state — more than Florida, Arizona, California, Nevada and Colorado combined.

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The El Paso Brut Sun Bowl has sold out more quickly than ever in its 76-year history, officials said today. The sellout comes less than a week after the Oklahoma City daily The Oklahoman, ran a story about how the raging violence in Juarez was keeping many Sooner fans from buying tickets

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U.S. Border Patrol agents launched Operation Detour to shock kids away from Mexican drug cartel recruiters. Now they're expanding the program across the entire southwest border.

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Latinos are expected to become the majority demographic group in Texas by 2015, according to some estimates. But they're still not voting in big numbers at the ballot box. Full Story 

Border Patrol agents are combatting cartel recruitment with a graphic film designed to scare high school students straight. But some experts say the program misses the mark.

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Stiles and Thevenot collaborate on the salaries paid to superintendents, and even compare them on price per student… Ramsey’s look at redistricting and next year’s elections… Aguilar’s report on jails, brought to you by the federal agency that’s in the ag business… Rapoport’s peek at the power behind Texas pre-kindergarten programs… Smith’s conversation with Dan Patrick, in three parts… Grissom’s narrative on a circular immigration and deportation route financed by two governments… Ramshaw finds doctors agreeing on public policy and split on strategy and tactics… Hu’s latest Stump Interrupted puts the camera on Farouk Shami… Hamilton’s story on two retired cops who are taking on cargo theft in Texas… And Kreighbaum and Stiles pop open the itineraries of your folks in Congress. The best of our best from December 12 to 18, 2009.

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El Paso is in the national news today, and — for the first time in recent memory — it has nothing to do with its proximity to drug war-torn Juarez. Forbes actually has some good news about the border city: Incomes for college graduates in El Paso are rising faster than any other major metropolitan area of the nation.

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On the eve of a noisy election year, the former lieutenant governor of Texas takes us on a tour through voting and demographic statistics.

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Border communities struggle to keep younger, educated residents when larger cities dangle economic and quality-of-life opportunities. They're afflicted with the reputation of being black holes of talent — where escape is necessary in order to prosper.

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On both sides of the border, there are calls to end the U.S. Border Patrol's Alien Transfer and Exit Program. But Border Patrol officials say their plan to break the connection between smugglers and immigrants is working.

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The U.S. Border Patrol says its illegal immigration repatriation program is working to break the crossing cycle in Arizona, but officials in Texas and Mexico worry the program creates more problems than it solves.

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Ramsey and others on Bill White and the changing state of the race for governor; Thevenot's two-parter on what Dallas churches are doing to combat social ills and racial division; Ramshaw on the use of force by school district police departments (and why parents don't know about it); Grissom's two-parter, abetted by Stiles, on unregulated payday lenders; Aguilar on Mexican immigrants who play against type; and Rapoport on those missing extra checks for retired public employees. The best of the best from November 21 to 25, 2009.

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The number of Mexican-born professionals living in the United States has more than doubled since 1995. They're not the undocumented workers you see in evening-news mug shots or aerial photographs of a littered and barren desert. They're college graduates — some with multiple degrees — who join their blue-collar counterparts in their journeys north.

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The Dallas church community has vowed to forge 25 partnerships with high-poverty public schools and push for 700 units of housing for the homeless — a down payment on a larger effort to heal wounds left by racism and injustice.

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Multi-part stories from Ramshaw and Grissom and Stiles on mental health services for detained immigrants and on payday lenders who provide exorbitantly priced credit to people with nowhere else to turn... Twitter, word clouds and the race for governor — a Stiles joint... Farouk Shami is in and Hu was there to watch... Philpott went to Bastrop for a gather of Republican governors... Rapoport finds a State Board of Education that's trying to control itself... and we have the skinny on legislative races that are likely to be competitive (only about 5 percent of the races on the ballot). It's the best of The Texas Tribune from November 14 to 20, 2009.

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Andre Osborne was so over-medicated in the Willacy Immigration Detention Center that he fell off of the top bunk of his bed, badly injuring his face and eyes.

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