HB 364 would grant the right for municipalities to hold "closed" meetings regarding personnel matters. The county government already has the right to these "closed" meetings.

For this installment of On The Record, I spoke with Chuck Wiggins, Brazos County Democratic Party Chair.

If you're like me (and since we're on the internets, I'll assume that you are), you had a nice, tidy little laugh when you heard the GOP kicking around Fred Thompson's name as a possible candidate for President. Surely, I thought to myself, Thompson would never be seriously considered against a McCain or a Giuliani, and no one would take him seriously over the southern gravitas and candor of a Huckabee or even someone silly (and yet formidable!) like Romney.

So imagine my surprise to see, on CNN, that Thompson is running third in a recent USA Today / Gallup poll.

Just when you begin looking back to all of the progress achieved in civil rights for the past 40 years, someone perpetrates an act reminding you the struggle continues today in some parts of the country.

After what seemed like eons, Rick Perry agreed yesterday to not only place TYC in a conservatorship (under perennial pal Jay Kimbrough) but also to change the structure of the agency so that it will have a commissioner. Jay Kimbrough is going to fire all the felons and no one's job is safe.

I'm sure many of you following national Congressional politics caught the procedural wrangling House Republicans pulled to kill discussion of HR 1433, giving the District of Columbia a voting representative in the House and adding another Utah representative to balance that out. Well, it seems that some folks in D.C. were paying pretty close attention to what was being said in floor discussion of that bill. I received an email this morning from a D.C. resident with an interesting take on that discussion:

If you filed one of the 40 or so immigration bills this session, State Representative David Swinford has some bad news for you: your bill is going nowhere. It seems that state government is not "in the immigration business."

Sen. Dan Patrick (R-Houston) should look into purchasing sanity rather than babies. Sen. Patrick’s SB 1567 provides $500 to women choosing adoption over abortion. He claims the bill provides pregnant women “incentive” that can influence their decision away from abortion.

you can't get a home loan?

The Washington Post reports today on businesses using a suspected terrorists list from the Treasury Department as a criterion for denying "home and car loans, apartments and even exercise equipment" in response to an executive order issued by President Bush after 9/11.

SB 86 would require each school district to adopt and implement a policy to address dating violence. The bill dictates that a definition of dating violence must be included in the policy.