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Voter ID proponents looking for ammo may have just gotten a whole crossbelt full of examples of registration irregularities in Texas' largest county -- about 5,000 examples, it seems.
Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Leo Vasquez called a press conference Aug. 24 highlighting thousands of examples of duplicate signatures, false addresses, and incomplete data on voter registration forms -- all stemming from a Houston-based voter registration group "conspiring in a pattern of falsification," he said.
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William Murchison
08/20/2010
A century and more ago, President James A. Garfield’s definition of a university was “Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other.” Which was to say, a great teacher (Hopkins being the renowned president of Williams College) needed only the opportunity to sit down, unencumbered, and teach. You know, without special assistants, plain old assistants, assistants to assistants, vice presidents for this that and th’other, directors, panjandrums, viziers, proconsuls, and so on to oversee and remunerate.
But, then, it was a long time ago, as Prof. Jay P. Greene reminds us, inferentially, in his thumping this week of the modern collegiate infrastructure, “Administrative Bloat at American Universities – The Real Reason for High Costs in Higher Education.”
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An influential committee chairman has told reporters he expects the next Legislature to act to curtail illegal immigration.
Rep. Burt Solomons (R-Carrollton) called it “naive to think that both senators and House members are not going to react to the fact that there are a lot of folks in the State of Texas who think that we need to do something that actually helps reduce the level of undocumented immigrants in the State of Texas.”
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Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, and Speaker Joe Straus have all condemned it. Texas Congressional Democrats have argued it’s easy to comply with.
What is this so-called Doggett amendment anyway, and what is all the fuss about?
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In every election cycle key events can change the game. Here we note a few key events to watch for in Texas legislative elections as polling day approaches:
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Imagine a test on which students don’t have to get a single question right to pass.
It’s no hypothetical situation.
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Admittedly, picking which Texas House races will be the most competitive in the fall is more art than science. But based on our review of the semi-annual fundraising reports and discussions with political insiders, here’s our list of the ten races in Texas most likely to be competitive.
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Congressional Democrats passed July 1 an emergency war appropriations bill (HR 4899) that contains language requiring collective bargaining for state and local law enforcement. The provision in HR 4899 would set up a federal collective bargaining mechanism for states that do not currently have it.
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Pro-gambling forces turned a House committee meeting on gambling expansion into a rally for legislative support.
A July 8 meeting of the House Committee on Licensing and Administrative Procedures filled up two committee rooms of the Capitol Extension with representatives of many gaming interests. Many wore lapel stickers with phrases such as “Got Bingo?”
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A road block for a third party’s ballot access – if upheld on appeal – could possibly translate into a few losses for the Republican Party in particularly close races.
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