Nearly three months after wildfires devastated Bastrop County, more than 1,000 Bastrop children could be spending this Christmas without any new toys. The Bastrop Pink Santa Toy Drive is still in desperate...

Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell launched his re-election campaign Wednesday at Becker Elementary, his childhood school in South Austin. First elected in May 2009, Leffingwell elaborated on his role as a steady...

State governments nationwide have targeted arts programs for budget cuts in a cash-strapped era. As states and universities reallocate taxpayer money to core subjects such as English, math and science,...

As our nation remains mired in a chronic shortage of qualified science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) graduates, the United States will inevitably fall behind rising powers such as India and...

At a time when nationwide, youth-led protests have focused media attention on college graduates’ mounting student loan burdens, Republican presidential candidates have begun addressing this issue....

Austin City Council granted preliminary approval Thursday to a measure targeted against disabled parking violators. The council plans to allow members of the public to photograph and report cars illegally...

Four faith-based pregnancy centers filed a federal lawsuit against Austin on Oct. 6, charging that a city ordinance violates their free speech rights. The ordinance, passed unanimously by the City Council...

 More than 1,000 Austinites rallied in front of City Hall on Oct. 6 as part of the nationwide Occupy Wall Street movement. Chief among these protesters’ grievances is that Wall Street and corporations...

UT graduate student Omid Kokabee is scheduled to face espionage charges Tuesday in his native Iran. Kokabee, who had been studying optics as a first-year graduate student in the UT physics department,...

The U.S. Department of Justice asked Texas on Friday to provide more information on the state’s new voter ID law. The law, which passed in the Legislature this year and goes into effect Jan. 1, requires...

Seattle joined Washington D.C. and San Francisco on Sept. 12 in requiring most businesses to provide paid sick leave to employees. Sick leave is a hot political issue debated nationwide, and the blockbuster...

As the Republican presidential primary campaign season begins to generate buzz in the media, immigration has been conspicuously absent from public debates. Nevertheless, candidates such as Gov. Rick Perry...

Last week’s fires in Bastrop and other parts of Texas rank among the most destructive in our state’s history. The conflagration also laid bare the humiliating results of the Capitol’s...

Since the start of the Great Recession, conservative pundits in the mainstream media have compared our state’s economy favorably to California’s. Next month, a consortium of Austin tech companies...

Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa won unanimous approval from the UT System Board of Regents on Thursday for a framework expanding higher education. One of the framework’s goals, to “advance medical...

After a summer tussling over plastic bag bans and parking meter hours, the City Council seemed unwavering in its willingness to impose onerous restrictions on Austin businesses. Last week, however, the...

Gov. Rick Perry’s all-but-declared presidential bid garnered national attention recently when he characterized abortion and gay marriage as issues best left to states. After consternation from...

The State Board of Education unanimously voted on July 22 to approve supplemental school materials that upheld evolution in the middle school curriculum. To the dismay of creationists, the board rejected...

After voting in early March to impose metered parking rules after 5:30 p.m., the Austin City Council has recently decided to reconsider extending the parking hours. Deeply unpopular among Austin motorists,...

On July 20, Texas is scheduled to carry out the death penalty against Mark Stroman. One of his victims, Bangladeshi immigrant Rais Bhuiyan, has garnered international headlines by calling for Stroman’s...

Consigned to the role of loyal opposition, Texas Democrats are poised to hand another victory to Republicans in next year’s U.S. Senate election. The lackluster potential and declared Democratic...

Texas motorists may soon be able to sport a license plate with a Confederate flag logo if the Department of Motor Vehicles approves it this fall. The Sons of Confederate Veterans applied for such...

Last week, Gov. Rick Perry signed into law a bill that overrides a federal mandate phasing out incandescent lightbulbs. The legislation flies in the face of constitutional authority and judicial precedent....