State news in Texas

For several years, Texas has been a model of limited government—at least compared to other states. A new trend is taking us in a disturbing direction: unelected, unaccountable commissions usurping power, undermining constitutional authority and growing government....

House Speaker Joe Straus used a Friday press release to bury the news about his appointments to a joint interim committee that will review state campaign finance (so-called “ethics”) laws. The laws, and the body that oversees them, the Texas Ethics Commission, are...

Although countless members of the legislature have appropriately defended Gov. Perry’s exercising of his constitutional authority to veto funding for a discredited agency, few have been willing to defend embattled UT Regent, Wallace Hall, for fulfilling his fiduciary...

Today the Texas Racing Commission will take testimony from citizens concerned with the agency’s impending constitutional overreach. The Commission is considering enacting a rule that would allow Texas horse and dog tracks to implement devices called “instant racing”...

When Empower Texans President Michael Quinn Sullivan went before the Texas Ethics Commission last month on charges that he had failed to register as a lobbyist, much of the testimony hinged on whether Sullivan qualified for the media exception to the lobby law as an...

The cavalcade of objections coming from those who have close relations with Bill Powers has grown increasingly weak and silent as the embattled UT President’s impending termination draws near. The protests peaked yesterday with House Select Committee Chairmen Dan...

Over the holiday weekend, Breitbart Texas broke news that University of Texas System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa had offered embattled University of Texas President Bill Powers an opportunity to resign or else be fired at the upcoming meeting of the UT Board of...