TribWeek: In Case You Missed It

Hank Skinner was set to die Wednesday for the 1993 murders of his live-in girlfriend and her two mentally disabled adult sons — a crime he insists he did not commit. About an hour before he was to have poison pushed through his veins, the U.S. Supreme Court spared his life.

Despite all the handwringing about the influence of Texas on the textbook market nationally, it's just not so, publishing insiders say. The state's clout has been on the wane for years and will diminish more as technological advances and political shifts transform the industry.

“I was taught evolution, and it didn’t shake my /faith in the Almighty whatsoever,” says George Clayton, who pulled off a stunning upset of incumbent Geraldine "Tincy" Miller, R-Dallas, in the GOP primary to win a seat on the State Board of Education. “Should creationism be taught as a counter to evolution? ... No, I don’t think so. I think evolution is in the science book. It should be taught as a science.”

Behind the fiery health care rhetoric in Washington is a measure expected to dramatically expand Texas’ Medicaid program, adding up to 1 million adults to the state’s insurance roll — but at a steep cost. Under the historic bill that the U.S. House of Representatives passed Sunday night, citizens making less than $14,000 a year or families of four with household incomes under $29,000 would qualify for Medicaid coverage starting in 2014. In seven years, Texas will have to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue to foot its share of the bill.

The state says that if it has the power to ban alcohol in strip clubs, then it can levy a $5 "pole tax." But the clubs argued before the Texas Supreme Court on Thursday that nude dancing is a form of protected speech and that the tax violates the First Amendment.

In 2011, political mapmakers will take the latest census numbers (Texas is expected to have a population of more than 25 million) and use them to draw new congressional and legislative districts. The last time this was done, in 2003, Republican mappers took control of the U.S. House by peeling away seats from the Democrats. This time, Texas is poised to add up to four seats to its congressional delegation — and early numbers indicate bad news ahead for West Texas and other areas that haven't kept up with the state's phenomenal growth.

When high-ranking officials in the Obama administration travel to Mexico today to discuss that country's role in combating border violence, one key member of the team will be missing: the commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection division of the Department of Homeland Security, whose nomination has languished in the U.S. Senate since September.