Free Republic

Texas Democrat MJ Hegar's bid to unseat Republican incumbent senator John Cornyn will be without the support of her own mother-in-law, who says she would "never vote" for Hegar because "she is not a good person." Patricia Heiman, the mother of Hegar's husband Stephen Hegar, took to Facebook in the race's final weeks to warn voters against supporting the Democratic Senate candidate, specifically pointing to Hegar's failure to lend a helping hand to her three step-children after their home was burned down in a fire earlier this year. "I know her personally and she is not a good person," Heiman...

As Texas lawmakers convene in January for the next legislative session, their chief task will be to write a two-year budget. And the state's next comptroller will be charged with estimating how much revenue lawmakers can expect to work with. The responsibility has become a political minefield, particularly after Comptroller Susan Combs’ estimate ahead of the 2011 session drew criticism for underestimating tax revenue by several billion dollars. Combs’ office recently researched the accuracy of revenue estimates going back 40 years and found that, by one measure, other comptrollers’ estimates have landed farther from the actual number. Since 1942, the...