This week's installment of Who's Blue features Barbara Ann Radnofsky, the Texas Democratic candidate for US Senate in 2006. We discuss her campaign, her future plans, and her book, "The Dancer's Dead," available from lulu.com. You can listen to the interview by clicking here.

I am a little late in running this, but it is definitely worth reporting: The Texas Democratic Party has been raising money at a rate which exceeds past efforts, culminating in their Legislative salute last night. Two years ago, they had 28 sponsors for the salute and raised just under $45,000. For this year's event, they more than doubled the number of sponsors to 64 and raised $130,000. That sponsors list includes some heavy hitters, like AT&T.

There's been a lot of news about roads in the last 24 hours or so. Last Friday, state auditors questioned a thing or two about the Trans-Texas Corridor and the state's approach to that project. Representative Lois Kolkhorst has now filed a bill which would kill the TTC altogether, and arguments in favor of the TTC are getting increasingly harder to come by.

I come from a union family, so it has been a source of disappointment for me to observe the decline in union membership that's been underway for some time. There's a new bill up for consideration in the House which makes it easier for workers to unionize, and it is meeting expected resistance from business interests.

Vice President Dick Cheney is currently on a diplomatic tour of the Middle East, and earlier today, at the Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, a suicide bomber made it through one security gate before detonating. The attack happened far from Cheney and he wasn't harmed, but a number of NATO soldiers were hurt or killed along with some Afghani truck drivers. The Taliban claimed responsibility.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has proposed free vaccinations for girls aged 9-18 against HPV. The difference between his plan and Perry's is that Patrick's vaccination isn't mandatory.

There is a ton of news this morning; seemingly everyone was waiting for the next cycle to begin before they started making announcements about big, important things — important things like TXU's sale to a group of private equity firms, for example. The deal promises to cut rates and coal plants, while increasing access to alternative energy sources. It is hard to believe that such a quick change was possible, but perhaps the coal plants deal was proving to be more trouble that it was worth.

There's a deal being hashed out for some private firms to buy TXU, the current bad guys on the Texas environmental scene who would really, really like to build eleven coal plants and do it fast. If the $45 billion buyout happens, the new private equity firms that would take over TXU would do away with plans for eight of those eleven plants and undertake some serious environmental policy revision.

If you're headed out to the Denton County Democratic Party's annual Chili Supper tonight, I'll see you there. I'll be speaking briefly about The Texas Blue.

The main attraction will be Lisa Turner, from the excellent Texas Values In Action Coalition, who will be discussing the recent Democratic advances in Dallas and Tarrant counties. Feel free to say "Hello" if you get the chance.

From campaign sources: Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack will drop his bid for the Democratic nomination. The overwhelming reason and factor seems to be money — everyone else has a ton, but Vilsack may have had difficulty in getting enough together stay in, or maintain his industrious campaign schedule. Bayh's out, Vilsack is out. Any ideas on who will be next?