We've known it to be true that Iowa is still more or less up for grabs for some time now, but new polls show that Obama is making progress — and may actually be pulling ahead.

Fran Townsend, President Bush's main advisor on terrorism and Homeland Security issues, has announced she is on her way out of the White House.

Not content to take it easy the weekend before Thanksgiving, politicians provided us with all sorts of news. Prime among them and today's first story: Rick Noriega has drawn a primary challenger in Ray McMurrey, a high school government teacher from the Corpus Christi area.

This week's mailbag has a lot of talk about infrastructure, a sad piece of news about textbook accuracy, and some musings about the unfortunate occasional liberal fascination with Ron Paul.

You're going to see a lot of commentary on this editorial by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, in which she recommends that everyone be as friendly to Big Oil as possible, as they are keepers of national security and defenders of economic stability. There's plenty to pick on and very little that makes sense, but I'd like to address something very specific, a single thing that invalidates what is basically a pro-business argument.

Yes, yes, I know there was a Democratic debate last night. I'll get to that in a second. First I want to talk about Chris Bell, and the small matter of some donors that Perry's campaign failed to disclose in the waning hours of the 2006 governor's race. The Mystery Miracle Million may end up costing Perry big.

If you needed any sort of indication that Alberto Gonzales broke new ground as Attorney General, your day has come: a legal defense fund has been placed in trust. You know, just in case it comes out that maybe he was doing things he shouldn't have been doing.

He's been running hard already for quite some time, but today Joe Jaworski officially kicks off his Texas State Senate Campaign down in Galveston.

President Bush vetoed a domestic spending bill today, wiping away some $150 billion in funding for healthcare, jobs programs, and education initiatives.

One of the arguments Republicans like to levy against the Democratic Party is that the Democratic Party likes regulation, which makes it so, so hard for businesses to operate. I would like to offer the following as evidence that self-regulation doesn't work: Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material, or NORM, is a highly toxic by-product of gas and oil drilling. The Texas Railroad Commission allows oil companies to deal with that waste and the decontamination process via self-regulation. You can guess how they usually choose to handle it.