This week's featured article is an examination by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of ExxonMobil's PR efforts and the lengths to which they go to combat the idea, rather than the actual problem, of global warming.

A couple of firms have put forward some proposals for what they would do with the lottery if they bought it, and those proposals include such unsavory things as video slots and keno. Outside of the fact that keno has always seemed sort of silly, increasing the breadth of the lottery to include the aforementioned additions as well as online gaming is going to make the sale even tougher for Governor Perry.

This is probably the last thing you'll ever need to read about the Edwards bloggers and the resultant teacup tempest: every party involved, in one way or another, was wrong.

If I were in the business of writing campaign commercials like Republicans do, I would have thrown this together:

How much money have you saved in the Texas Tomorrow Fund for Junior and Sally to go to college? Really? I have some bad news for you: it's running at least a billion in the red, and could be as much as three billion short. This doesn't mean that your money is gone, specifically, it just means that the program, which launched in the mid-90's, couldn't keep up realistically with tuition rates when they started to rise after deregulation. The program has been closed to new participants for four years, and they aren't sure how to pay for the 154,000 or so enrolled when the time comes.

Rick Perry's hilarity has made it all the way to the Colbert Nation. Last night's Word: Bad Medicine.

Should anyone ever imply that government is not serious business, consider that the current world stage is set for conflict that stretches to a future horizon none of us can see. That's a heavy way to open a "post" on a "blog" on the "internet," but the decisions people at many levels of government make matter in a very real, visceral way. Reports circulate now that war with Iran could have become a diplomatic impossibility in 2003; that is no longer the case, never mind that it may be logistically impossible.

Joining us for this week's episode of Who's Blue? &8212; Richard Raymond, State Representative from District 42. Have a listen.

The questions concerning Governor Rick Perry's plan to privatize the Texas Lottery continue to creep up, and they seem to be centered on UBS, a financial firm consulting on the deal. Phil Gramm and Mike Toomey have popped up in the coverage, and now Griffin Perry has been hired by UBS. Griffin Perry is Rick Perry's son.

It has been reported by numerous outlets that Phil Gramm of UBS and Texas Senate fame is in on Perry's idea to sell the lottery, and was part of the team that conceived of the sale in the first place.