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  • TribBlog: State Suspends Daystar Placements

    By Emily Ramshaw

    The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services has suspended all new placements of foster children at the Daystar Residential Treatment Center outside of Houston, following a Texas Tribune/Houston Chronicle investigation that revealed workers forced young girls to fight each other in return for snacks. Full Story 

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    Credit: Nick de la Torre / The Houston Chronicle

  • 2010: Carville Protege Joins Team White

    By Elise Hu

    Chad Clanton, a Waco-born Democratic consultant and well-known protege of James Carville, has joined the Bill White gubernatorial campaign to "work on a variety of projects ... on multiple media channels," says White spokeswoman Katy Bacon. Full Story 

    Chad Clanton in 2005.
    Credit: NY Times

  • Boyd Richie: The TT Interview

    By Reeve Hamilton

    The chair of the Texas Democratic Party on why he should keep his job, whether Matt Angle is really running things, why zero out of 29 statewide offices held by Democrats isn't his fault, why he's optimistic about 2010 and what he thinks of Barack Obama. Full Story 

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    Credit: Reeve Hamilton

  • The Chair Yields

    By Morgan Smith

    The ouster of Cathie Adams as the titular head of the Republican Party of Texas was the biggest news at its biennial convention this weekend. There was also open hostility toward Speaker Joe Straus, predictable fretting about a rift between moderates and conservatives and, of course, a laser-like focus on the state GOP's common enemy: Washington. Full Story 

    Gov. Rick Perry being endorsed by his former GOP primary rival, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, at the 2010 Republican Party of Texas Convention.
    Credit: Bob Daemmrich

  • Far From Home

    By Emily Ramshaw

    Alaska officials sent 16-year-old Richard DeMaar 4,000 miles away from his parents to a psychiatric facility in San Antonio because his home state wasn’t equipped to handle his severe depression. Within six weeks, he had tied a makeshift noose around his neck, strangling himself to death. He's one of roughly 900 out-of-state kids sent to residential treatment centers in Texas in the last five years, part of a national compact that allows states that don't have adequate psychiatric services to send kids to states that do. But the practice has come under fire from children’s health advocates, who say it takes kids away from their families and their communities — two things they need to make a full-fledged recovery. Full Story 

    Richard DeMaar in his Fairbanks, Alaska home.
    Credit: Elizabeth DeMaar

  • TribWeek: In Case You Missed It

    By Evan Smith

    Ramshaw and the Houston Chronicle's Terri Langford on incidents of abuse and mistreatment at residential treatment centers, M. Smith on the state Republican Party platform and 10th Amendment embracers, Galbraith on a pipeline project raising crude concerns and the most important word in water law, Ramsey on former officeholders who are now lobbyists and the possibility of a speaker's race, Grissom on a fight over solar power in Marfa, Hamilton and Aguilar on the TxDOT audit, Philpott on budget cuts affecting school districts and my conversation with Dallas County D.A. Craig Watkins: The best of our best from June 7-11, 2010. Full Story 

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    Credit: Graphic by Jacob Villanueva

  • 2010: Together Again

    By Ross Ramsey

    Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison are together again, politically speaking. Hutchison told a crowd of Republican women in a packed ballroom at the downtown Dallas Hyatt that she's backing Perry for governor and that they should, too. Full Story 

    Kay Bailey Hutchison endorsing Rick Perry for governor at a Texas Federation of Republican Women breakfast.
    Credit: Bob Daemmrich

  • A Conversation with Craig Watkins

    By Evan Smith

    For the 11th event in our TribLive series, I interviewed the Dallas County district attorney about why and how he's worked to exonerate the wrongfully imprisoned and whether he's dragging his feet on a controversial corruption case involving county constables. Full Story 

  • Crude Concerns

    By Kate Galbraith

    In the wake of the Gulf spill, anxiety is building about a proposed pipeline that would run through East Texas, ferrying Canadian oil to Port Arthur and Houston for refining. Full Story 

    Pipe sections in Illinois await crews to weld and bury them during construction in 2009. This segment of the $12 billion Keystone pipeline project has already been built; a proposed pipeline through Texas still awaits government permits.
    Credit: Keystone Pipeline System

  • The Party Line

    By Morgan Smith

    This weekend, some 14,000 true believers will congregate in Dallas for the state Republican convention, the largest such gathering in the nation. Other than electing a chairman, the main event will be developing a platform — a manifesto meant to be the ideal vision for the future of the Texas GOP. Just don't ask them all to agree to it. If they did, “it'd be a very dull convention and a very short document,” says Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson. Full Story 

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    Credit: Graphic by Jacob Villanueva

  • TribBlog: Waiting on the Water War

    By Julián Aguilar

    The city of Fort Stockton and Fort Stockton Holdings, the company owned by Clayton Williams Jr. and family, have agreed to postpone a hearing on the company's permit to pump trillions of gallons of water from the Edwards-Trinity Aquifer. Full Story 

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