Howdy folks! While Josh and George keep you up-to-date on the goings on in Austin, I'm writing to you today from Lawrence, Kansas. While I am here for decidedly unpolitical reasons, I don't think that someone who is fascinated with Texas politics can avoid being fascinated with Kansas politics. While Kansas is thought of as a deeply red state, it has a female Democratic Governor (Kathleen Sebelius) and two of Kansas' four seats in the House of Representatives are held by Democrats Nancy Boyda and Dennis Moore.

Last Friday, the State Board of Education met to discuss something that had become a much more controversial topic than many imagined: English and reading standards. What made the topic and the meeting particularly controversial is that the standards that were adopted in a 9-6 vote were only seen by most SBOE members little more than an hour before the meeting!

Senator John McCain continued his Spring cleaning of his campaign last night by rejecting the endorsement of John Hagee after some of Hagee's millennialist fundamentalist ideas about Israel became a news topic. Hot on the heels of throwing Hagee overboard, McCain has now dumped the endorsement of Ohio fundamentalist Rod Parsley.

T. Boone Pickens has made billions of dollars in the oil industry, first working for Phillips, then as owner of Mesa and finally through a series of mergers and aquisitions. While black gold has been mighty good to his pocketbook, Pickens has been making a lot of noise the last few years in something that is popularly seen as decidedly un-Texan: Wind power.

9:55am Central Time 5/21/08: The numbers are still sitting at Clinton 42% - Obama 58%.

12:46am Central Time: 68% of Oregon's precincts have reported and Senator Barack Obama has a 16% lead on Senator Hillary Clinton. Since Oregon is my home away from home, let's head over to CNN to have a look at their county-by-county map.

Is McCain going to have a campaign staff left by this time next month? The latest member of Team McCain to leave is chief strategist and media adviser Mark McKinnon. McKinnon, a former Democrat and a key part of George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, said he is "transitioning, shifting position from linebacker to head cheerleader." Of even more interest is this nugget:

Via Talking Points Memo, Republican Representative Vito Fossella is expected to announce Tuesday that he will not seek re-election. My only peeve with this story is that it has a subtitle stating:

Sources: NY Rep. Fossella won't seek re-election after scandal over affair, child, DWI

This is kind of like saying the Bush administration had a scandal over prewar intelligence, Hurrican Katrina, the treatment of veterans and taking a pair of scissors to the Fourth Amendment.

The border fence, that Republican idea that decreases in popularity the closer you get to the actual border, runs up against another barrier:

A group of Texas border mayors and business leaders says the federal government did not properly negotiate with landowners or inform them of their rights when surveying property for the U.S.-Mexico border fence.

Earlier today in a campaign stop in Columbus, Ohio, Senator John McCain stated that he would like to take a page from the British tradition of having the Prime Minister hold question and answer sessions in the House of Commons and hold Q & A sessions with both houses of Congress.

Per Think Progress, apparently the Bush administration has called it quits with shady neocon favorite Ahmed Chalabi. The reason? Unauthorized contacts with the government of Iran.