Rick Perry, Kay Bailey Hutchison and Carole Keeton Strayhorn: one is the governor and the other two might like his job. We cover their early maneuvering and how it might affect the Legislature this year.
What kind of a job do Texas journalists do in covering what the legislature does and what the issue choices are? Who's listening and who's reading? A film on the 50th anniversary of the Texas Observer kicks off a discussion.
What is the role and influence of the lobby in this year's session? We revisit a classic Texas sequence from the 1994 film Vote for Me: Politics in America, and then discuss what's changed in the last 10 years.
Karl Rove, the architect of President Bush's two presidential campaign victories, talks about the rise of the Texas Republican Party in an exclusive interview with Host Paul Stekler - with commentary by Rove biographer Wayne Slater.
What's the latest news in the legislature? And how's Travis County DA Ronnie Earle's prosecution of corporate money in political campaigns trial going?
Texas was once a one-party Democratic state, but there's not a single Democrat in statewide office today. Can the party of LBJ and Ann Richards rise from the dead?
School finance is on everybody's mind in Austin. Everyone has ideas about how to fix public education. It's unclear who wants to pay for it. We'll explore this issue, starting with a day-in-the-life of public schools in Comfort, Texas.
More than two months into the session, it's time to see where things are going. Plus excerpts from an interview with the late George Christian, longtime political wise man at the Capitol, about LBJ and Texas politics.
If Hispanic voters are becoming the key to the future of state politics, which way are they liable to go? The discussion starts with a documentary look at a "Day in the Life of the Julian Castro Campaign for Mayor of San Antonio."
When the state legislature made billions of dollars in cuts to balance the last budget, there were consequences in human services. What's liable to happen to human services this time around?
Featuring a short documentary focused on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Waco, Texas, we'll look at both the providers and patients inside and the opponents outside, to frame the issue the Legislature faces.
Bloggers. Who are they and what is their role in covering Texas politics? What does it require to be a political blogger: originality, whit, immediacy? Find out how these bloggers stay one step ahead of the pack.
This week we re-cap with three former guests: Harvey Kronberg, Wayne Slater, and Ross Ramsey. Together, we'll take a look at some of our previous packages and discuss how the Legislature has ruled on these important issues.