State Representative Sylvester Turner has been making noise lately, and it isn't the kind of noise the House Leadership likes. This Chron article rightly describes Turner as one of "Tom Craddick's Lieutenants" but then illustrates the source of his current frustration. He feels as if he has been "suckered and hoodwinked." He is mad as hell, and apparently may not take it anymore.

Right here, today, I'm gonna make this claim: Obama is not ready for this. He will be President someday, but not before he's Vice President first. He's raised an incredible amount of money, but an aggregate of polls seems to indicate that a great deal of that was front-loaded. He is headed the wrong direction to win the nomination, and he is likely to weaken the once invincible Hillary Clinton on his way down. The result will be an open door in Iowa for John Edwards, who starts out with a huge organizational advantage, and then the wheels, as they say, will come off the wagon.

With the late release of Barack Obama’s reports, everyone expected his numbers to be high, but not this high. As you probably already know, he has raised $25 million for the first quarter. $25 million is insanely close to Hillary Clinton’s $26 million, which was still seen as mind-blowing. Considering Howard Dean didn’t reach those types of numbers until September of ’03, the fact that not one, but two, candidates have reached those sort of numbers in the first quarter, shows that this election cycle is going to be more than expensive.

For this installment of On The Record, I spoke with Cecelia Crossley, Vice-Chair of the Texas Environmental Democrats.

Dan Patrick kept true to his roots and his peeps by leaving the floor of the Senate when Imam Yusuf Kavakci gave Wednesday morning's invocation. The imam is the leader of the Islamic Association of North Texas, and was invited by Senator Florence Shapiro, a Republican senator from Plano who also happens to be Jewish. If anyone thinks it is kind of silly for a radio host to act that way in the face of interfaith cooperation, you're right.

Our Presidential hopefuls have been busy. Raising $25 million dollars in a few months at $2,300 clips is quite difficult. By comparison, Texas political hopefuls do not have any limitations on how much they can raise from one particular individual.

This has been the week of finance reports from the first quarter so far, and there's been numbers to marvel at. However, I would like, for a minute, to talk about what it all means.

In biblical news, State Representative Warren Chisum has proposed legislation which would require classes based on the Bible to be offered as electives in Texas high schools.

For this morning's Roundup, a little bit of breaking news: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad just announced Iran will release the 15 British troops it has held for two weeks. This is obviously good news, and the geopolitical implications are pretty big. The assumption here is that this is part of a strategy by Ahmadinejad rather than a reaction tactic, but I guess the next month or so will show if there's any truth to that theory.

Wichita, Archer, and Clay counties are three of the last places one would guess President Bush is losing significant support and approval. A poll recently conducted by Midwestern State University indicates almost one-half of residents located in the heart of North Texas do not approve of President Bush’s handling of the economy or of his performance as chief executive.