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  • Farmers in Fatigues: The Texas Guard in Afghanistan

    By Douglas Wissing

    The Texas National Guard is on a five-year mission in Afghanistan to help farmers build sustainable agriculture. In part one of this four-part series for KUT Radio, Douglas Wissing reports on the team's mission in this complicated war zone. Full Story 

    The ADT assists on agricultural development projects in Ghazni such as this warehouse. Here the contractor and a supervisor wait while the ADT does the final inspection. ADT security soldiers stand guard at the rear.
    Credit: Doug Wissing

  • "Big Government Conservatism"

    By Tom Pauken

    Sound economic policy was sacrificed on the altar of short-term political gain in the George W. Bush administration. This buying of political support with taxpayers’ money brings to mind the words of Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America: “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” Full Story 

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  • Starving for Reform

    By Julián Aguilar

    For two months, inmates in a South Texas immigrant detention facility have been on a staggered hunger strike — what the government calls “voluntary fasting" — to protest alleged abuse, lack of medical care and near-nil access to legal resources. Full Story 

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    Credit: Caleb Bryant Miller

  • Data App: Homeland $ecurity

    By Matt Stiles

    Loving County, in far West Texas, spent about $1,100 per resident in U.S. Department of Homeland Security grant funds from 2003 to 2008. Compare that with Harris County, which spent less than $6 per resident. Contemplate the disparity — and search for individual purchases with DHS grant money — using our latest data application. Full Story 

  • DNA Destruction

    By Emily Ramshaw

    In the weeks before state health officials incinerated more than 5 million baby blood samples that they stored without consent, privacy advocates, parents and legislators reached a last-ditch accord to save them but couldn’t convince the Department of State Health Services to sign on. A Texas Tribune investigation found that the agency had turned hundreds of such samples over to a federal Armed Forces lab to build a DNA database — and hadn’t been upfront about it with lawmakers or the public. Full Story 

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  • The Brief: March 8, 2010

    By Abby Rapoport

    Counting, apparently, is not quite as easy as it seemed in school. With the primaries over, cities and counties are turning their attention to the upcoming U.S. Census. Full Story 

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    Credit: Caleb Bryant Miller

  • George W. Bush Was No Ronald Reagan

    By Tom Pauken

    When the George W. Bush administration turned out to be a failure, “conservatism” got the blame — even though Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney (like so many others who served alongside them) had been part of the anti-Reagan wing of the Republican Party. Full Story 

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  • Potties, Pickups and Preparedness

    By Brandi Grissom

    Local governments, Native American tribes and nonprofit groups in Texas hauled in more than $298 million in federal homeland security grants from 2003 through 2008 and made more than 30,000 purchases, according to a Texas Tribune analysis of a Texas Department of Public Safety database. Much of the money has gone to improve local emergency response and to beef up police and fire departments — critical safety measures that taxpayers might not have been able to afford without assistance from Washington. But it's unclear how some of the expenditures have made the state, or the nation, more resistant to terror attacks. Full Story 

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  • Sorting It All Out

    By Ross Ramsey

    The governor's race is just what you expected: Republican Rick Perry and Democrat Bill White. Perry starts with the power of incumbency and the state's 16-year-old preference for Republicans over Democrats in statewide office. White starts with the advantage of non-incumbency — don't snort at that — and the ability to run a more serious and well-financed campaign than anyone in his party has run in some time. Five independents have signed up, and the Libertarians will choose their candidate in June. Full Story 

  • TribWeek: In Case You Missed It

    By Evan Smith

    Our obsessive-compulsive election day and next day coverage: frenetically updated county-by-county maps and up-to-the-minute returns in every race on the ballot, Hu's awesome crowdsourced liveblog, Ramshaw on the twenty surprise outcomes, Aguilar on recount possibilities and dead incumbents, M. Smith on how judicial races turned out, Rapoport on changes at the SBOE and who was elected before the first vote was cast, Thevenot on whether the GOP has a problem with Hispanics, Hamilton on how the Tea Party fared, Grissom and Ramshaw on the legislative and congressional mop-up, Ramsey on what happens now, Stiles on how much candidates spent per vote; and my post-primary debrief with Rick Perry's pollster and George W. Bush's former strategist. The best of our best from March 1 to 5, 2010. Full Story 

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