The Midday Brief: July 14, 2010

Your afternoon reading:

"Gov. Rick Perry's perspective on Texas' ranking for the SAT test is detached from reality, his Democratic opponent says." — Perry's SAT scores not as good as advertised, Texas Politics

"In a sign of strength heading into the fall campaigns, business-friendly Texans for Lawsuit Reform will report this week that it had about $3.2 million on hand at the end of June." — TLR armed with more than $3 million, First Reading

"The state's higher education investment managers today vote to reverse a controversial policy that allowed them to co-invest with the state." — UTIMCO adopts stricter ethics policy, Texas Politics

"President Obama's new blueprint for human space exploration has Houston's Johnson Space Center employees worried about their jobs, given that the president wants to cancel the Constellation back-to-the-moon project. However, NASA's new chief technologist says there will be new job opportunities in his office." — Houston may be overly pessimistic about job loss, NASA official says, Texas on the Potomac

New in The Texas Tribune:

"Curbing the practice of barratry — 'ambulance chasing,' in the vernacular — has prompted an uneasy alliance between tort reformers and the Texas Trial Lawyers Association: They agree on reform ... just not on the form it should take." — Lawyers Call for Reform of Barratry Laws

"The chairman of the political science department at Rice University recently ranked Texas House members' partisanship based on their 2009 legislative votes. Our interactive chart highlights what he describes as Texas' increasingly polarized political environment." — Rice Professor Ranks House Members by Partisanship