When Gov. George W. Bush took office in 1995, he was half-surrounded by Democrats in statewide offices and could reasonably expect to fight some skirmishes now and then. Now that he's surrounded by Republicans, you might think those days are all in the past. But from the governor's standpoint, the education task force announced by Comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander rivals at least some of what the Democrats did in his first four years in the Mansion. Full Story
Sen. J.E. "Buster" Brown, R-Lake Jackson, isn't up for reelection next year, so his admission that he groped a 20-year-old employee who worked in his district office won't get an immediate look from voters -- at least not the voters in his district. Full Story
If this was a television drama, Gov. George W. Bush might have been ordered to give a deposition to tell what he knew about the Texas Funeral Commission's efforts to fine the nation's biggest funeral home operator. But it ain't TV and he wasn't so ordered. The state's attorneys argued that he didn't have any special knowledge that would shed light on the whistle-blower case, and that was that. Full Story
If you've ever tried to peel a kid away from a computer game or a Saturday morning cartoon, you understand something about the hold population data has on the average state or federal legislator. We're heading into that twilight zone known as a redistricting year. That explains, in part, why there are so few open seats in the Legislature right now. It explains why rural lawmakers are fidgety and why suburban Republicans are smirking, and it explains why some of the money people on both sides are probably going to stay out of campaign fights as much as possible next year. Full Story
A common explanation of cancer treatment is that they hit you for months with large doses of something fatal, and if it kills the cancer before it kills you, you're cured. That serves as a nice metaphor for presidential politics: If you survive the examination and treatment by your opponents, the media and the public, you get to live in the White House. Full Story
Forget all that stuff about the race for lieutenant governor being quiet, secretive, and completely underwater. Sen. David Sibley, R-Waco, has moved upstage with a whirlwind set of meetings with senators to tell them he'd like the job and to begin to try to build support. Full Story
Republicans in Texas have relied for years on a rating system called ORVS, or Optimum Republican Voting Strength, that combines results of recent elections to show which parts of the state are friendly to the GOP. The latest numbers are out, and while there are few surprises, the charts do provide something of a road map to the GOP's targets in the next election cycle. Full Story
Some retailers will tell you the state's new sales tax holiday, patterned on similar promotions in New York and Florida, is a pain in the caboose. They have to reprogram cash registers, train staff and make other changes so that their customers can buy clothing under $100 and get a waiver on sales taxes for one weekend. Full Story
It'll take months to know which part of the headline is correct, but however it goes, you have to say that Carole Keeton Rylander took over the Texas School Performance Review with a bang. She returned -- uninvited -- to the room where she taught high school history years ago to say that she was going to send her staff and a team of consultants over to find out what ails the Austin school district. Full Story
With the notable exception of a certain campaign for president, the fundraising season is off to a slow start. You don't have to believe us -- the evidence can be found in the stacks on the tenth floor of the Sam Houston Building, where the Texas Ethics Commission keeps candidate reports on contributions and expenditures, and increasingly, on candidate borrowing. Full Story
George W. Bush, who for fundraising purposes can be referred to as Godzilla, ended June with contributions of $37 million for the first half of the year, about $700,000 more than his campaign had estimated a couple of weeks ago. That means, among other things, that he'll give up federal matching funds and with them, the limits on how much he can spend during the primaries. Full Story
Call it irony, call it blowback, call it what you'd like: George W. Bush takes a shot for hauling his state-paid protective detail all over the country during his presidential bid. That story, in the Austin American-Statesman, came within two days of stories about First Lady Hillary Clinton flying between Washington, DC, and New York state, where she has an exploratory committee for a U.S. Senate bid. Full Story
If you've ever been in line behind someone who loaded up their plate with hors d'oeuvres and left nothing for you, you know how the Republican candidates for president feel about Gov. George W. Bush. Aside from the pure astonishment at the Texan's fundraising prowess, they have to reassess their own situations. He's raised so much money they have a hard time explaining their place in the Republican primary for president. It's probably no coincidence that several of the Republicans began talking in the last two weeks about running as Reform Party candidates or as independents. Full Story
In our last episode, an unforeseen problem in the massive school finance bill was threatening several bond issues from Texas school districts and prompting several others to calculate how much they'd have to raise their taxes to pay for facilities they previously thought would be paid for with state money. If this was the "Perils of Pauline," we're to the part where the good guys show up and pull her off the tracks before the train can run her down. Full Story
When they were cobbling together the $3.8 billion education bill in the last days and hours of the legislative session, lawmakers bollixed up state funding for new and old school district debt, jeopardizing some future construction and possibly forcing some districts to raise property taxes to cover the costs of construction that has already been completed or that is underway. Full Story
Gov. George W. Bush is not running for president, at least not until the exploration is complete. Full Story
Someone asked this week whether we had been able to find a defining moment of the legislative session. Our candidate: It happened on March 2, Texas Independence Day, on the lawn of the Governor's Mansion, when Gov. George W. Bush said officially that he's pondering a presidential run. Full Story
At the end of the last legislative session, people were complaining about the ability of the most conservative House members to disrupt that chamber's business. This session, the liberals have been in charge of the grenades, and they have found their own place as a spoiler in a system that historically likes to run on compromise and negotiation. As the Republicans have improved their ability to hold together a bloc of votes, the Democrats have slipped. Full Story
Democrats of both the native and national varieties (and Republicans with presidential ambitions) have been chipping away at Gov. George W. Bush for what they see as his failure to stake out a leadership position on the hate crime bill that got spiked by the Texas Senate. And their next line of argument is that Bush isn't tuned into anything at all, at least not to anything that's of concern to the Texas Legislature. That ain't necessarily so. Full Story
If Carole Keeton Rylander had never said anything about money back at the beginning of the session, the state would be about where it is today in terms of the amount of money available for government spending and tax cuts. Full Story