Your State

Overheating in Texas prisons is a deadly issue, according to a new report (PDF) from the University of Texas School of Law’s Human Rights Clinic reported by the Texas Tribune. Since 2007 at least 14 inmates in Texas state facilities have died as a result of overheating. The report’s authors call the conditions a violation of inmates’ constitutional rights.

Bob and Lisa Parr sued Aruba Petroleum for damaging their health and devaluing their home with their nearby fracking operation. And they won. A judge awarded them nearly $3 million. Now comes the hard part – to see if that ruling can withstand what is sure to become appeal after appeal.

The arc of history is long, but it does not always bend towards justice. In Texas, it usually veers off and gets lost. A year ago, 15 people died in the fertilizer plant explosion in West, forcing the Texas legislature to pass regulations, but these new laws had jack squat to do with fertilizer plants. Instead, the legislature passed a bill regulating women's uteruses.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has spent a record 14 years in office vanquishing nearly all who dared confront him: political rivals, moms against mandatory vaccines for sixth graders, a coyote in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The CEO of Exxon Mobil Corp. received compensation worth $28.1 million last year, a 3 percent increase over the previous year, according to an Associated Press analysis of a company regulatory filing. Most of Rex W. Tillerson's compensation was in the form of stock awards, which the largest U.S. oil company valued at $21.3 million when they were granted.

When he was running for office two years ago, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas insisted that rather than expanding Medicaid, Texas should just let the uninsured get all their health care from emergency rooms. The argument that emergency rooms are an acceptable backup for the uninsured has also been used by Mitt Romney, Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint and many other prominent Republicans.

The Coast Guard aimed to reopen one of the nation's busiest seaports Monday, two days after a collision between a barge and a ship caused nearly 170,000 gallons of tar-like oil to spill into the waters south of Houston. Authorities are still trying to determine how much oil spilled Saturday, when a barge carrying about 900,000 gallons collided with a ship. By Sunday, oil had been detected 12 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ted Cruz’s dad and top political surrogate Rafael Cruz recently addressed the National Religious Broadcasters convention, where he took part in a February 25 panel discussion with Religious Right activists Jay Sekulow, Todd Starnes and Craig and Janet Parshall.

Texas is holding the nation's first primary election Tuesday with a political free-for-all in Republican races that could push the state further right, though Democrats are calling it the next big electoral battleground. Republican Gov. Rick Perry has decided this would be his last of a record 14 years in office, and his looming exit has set off a scramble resulting in the most open races in Texas in more than a decade.

The Denton Drilling Awareness Group (Denton DAG) today announced they are collecting signatures for a ballot initiative to ban hydraulic fracturing within city limits. If approved by voters, Denton would become the first major Texas city to ban fracking, and the first city in the country to ban fracking after permits had been previously granted.

Sandy Kress, the controversial testing lobbyist, is leading a new raid on school taxes. This month he registered to lobby for Amplify, the company that wants to replace textbooks with tablet computers, positioning him to grab some of the hundreds of millions of dollars Education Sec. Arne Duncan is offering to create pre-K tests.

One thing Wendy Davis and her rival in the Texas gubernatorial race, Greg Abbot, can agree on: they'd like to see six-shooters back on Texans' hips. Both have voiced support for 'open-carry' gun laws that allow those with concealed weapons permits to wear handguns in holsters in plain view.