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Sometimes the truth just has a way of coming to light. A public information officer with the Texas Department of Transportation this week wrote a column in the Herald-Press describing the financial woes facing TxDOT and how because of those problems the state’s transportation department doesn’t have the money to deal with many of the state’s transportation issues. Apparently, several of the state’s senators do not feel that is the case at all. David Dewhurst called out the state’s interim chairwoman of the Texas Transportation Commission, Hope Andrade, on this very issue, according to a story from the Associated Press....

Not one of the 11 East Texans who approached the podium at Wednesday's hearing on Interstate 69 voiced support for the planned highway. "This is highway robbery, and we should not pursue this project," said David Simpson, a Longview resident and fifth-generation Texan. "This process has bypassed the Constitution. It has bypassed the U.S. Congress, and I'm opposed to it because of the unconstitutional way that it has been pushed through." The public hearing, held at Maude Cobb Convention and Activity Center, was a chance for residents to comment and ask questions about Interstate 69/Trans-Texas Corridor. The corridor would extend...

Local residents who want to add their two cents about the proposed Interstate 69 construction won't have to fill their tanks to do it. TxDOT is coming to Longview. The Texas Department of Transportation is holding 46 public hearings this month in East and South Texas along the planned corridor, including Tuesday's meeting in Longview. The hearings will give Texans a chance to comment and ask questions about the proposed Interstate 69/Trans-Texas Corridor, a collection of passenger and freight roadways, utility and rail lines from Texarkana to the Rio Grande Valley. A draft environmental impact statement released in November suggests...

Marshall to run for U.S. Senate By LILLIAN KAFKA lkafka@manassasjm.com Tuesday, January 8, 2008 Robert "Bob" G. Marshall, a state delegate since 1992, officially tossed his hat into the ring to run for U.S. Senate, he announced on Monday. Marshall, a Republican representing the House of Delegate's 13th district, is a conservative politician on many issues -- including abortion - and his posture on those issues is critical for a Republican to win in Virginia, he said. In 2007 Marshall introduced a bill, although unsuccessful, that would have banned abortions in Virginia if the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Roe...

MARSHALL — The proposed construction of Interstate 69 has been placed on a short list of projects that could receive preferential treatment over other transportation projects for federal funding, officials said. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters said this week that a final decision should be made this summer on which projects will be given the funding priority. If I-69 is selected by the U.S. Department of Transportation as part of the Corridors of the Future program, the federal department will aggressively support the project to move it "from the drawing board to completion faster than ever before," Peters said in...

Republicans in Congress who do not want to be quoted tell me that the State Department under Condoleezza Rice is a mess. This comes at a time when the U.S. global position is precarious. While attention is focused on Iraq, American diplomacy is being tested worldwide -- in Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Korea and Sudan. The judgment by thoughtful Republicans is that Rice has failed to manage that endeavor.

Former congressman Mac Collins spent most of Wednesday saying, through his campaign staff, that he was still in a close race for the 8th Congressional District, and that he wanted to see every vote counted. U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall, D-Ga., held 50.5 percent of the vote and a 1,733 vote edge. He had declared victory. There were some votes still uncounted, but a Telegraph check of outstanding ballots didn't turn up enough uncounted votes to swing the race. Throughout the day, the Collins campaign had volunteers and attorneys in various counties, watching the process of cataloging provisional ballots and any...

Thoughts from my USO tour to IraqI've just returned from a trip to Iraq after an initial stop in Kuwait with actor Marshall Teague, who you know from films like ''The Rock,'' ''Armageddon,'' and TV programs like, ''Babylon 5,'' ''Sliders,'' and of course ''Walker, Texas Ranger.'' We went to visit and encourage service members as part of a United Service Organization (USO) tour. I'll share some of the inspiring moments in next Monday's article (and maybe a photo or two)! As in past years, I left the region more inspired by our troops than I believe they were by me....

Air Marshal Dress Code Changed Friday August 25, 2006 12:16 AM By LESLIE MILLER Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Air marshals were told Thursday they will be allowed to dress the way they want and choose their own hotels in order to protect their anonymity while on missions. Federal Air Marshal Service chief Dana Brown, who has been in the job for five months, said he was changing the rules, starting Sept. 1, after listening to air marshals' concerns. In a memo to the air marshals, Brown said the dress code was changed to ``allow you to blend in...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Three Mexican fishermen found drifting in the Pacific Ocean could have been lost for almost a year and two others were missing and presumed dead, the manager of a fishing company that rescued them said on Wednesday. Early reports suggested the fishermen had been lost at sea for about three months and drifted more than 8,000 km (5,000 miles) before they were found by a Taiwanese tuna fishing trawler in waters between the Marshall Islands and Kiribati on August 9. But Eugene Muller, manager of Koo's Fishing Co. Ltd in the Marshall Islands capital of Majuro, said...

Jim Marshall votes to use your taxpayer dollars for Spanish Ballots(Warner Robins, GA) For a person to become a naturalized American Citizen they are required to speak, understand and write Basic English according to American Red Cross Citizenship Project. Congressman Jim Marshall does not seem to understand that fact and has voted to spend our taxpayer funds to spend taxpayer money on bilingual ballots (Roll Call Vote 340, 06/28/2006). Mr. Marshall must therefore be asked why we need to spend our family's hard earned money when American citizens are required to understand English to vote. "After this vote and his...

Jim Marshall vote’s for it after he votes against itTakes the lesson out of John Kerry’s Election Playbook(Warner Robins, GA)- Jim Marshall was recently ranked the 407th least effective member of Congress by Knowlegis, a government relations information management company, which surveyed all U.S. Senators and Congressman and ranked them in accordance with how effective they are in advancing a particular agenda. Yesterday, Jim Marshall demonstrated why he deserves one of the lowest rankings in the House of Representatives. The Timeline:May 18th 2006 – Jim Marshall votes against the Poe of Texas Amendments which would have allowed for environmentally friendly...

More Proof that we shouldn't negotiate with Hamas(Warner Robins, GA) - On Thursday Israel recovered the body of Eliahu Asheri, an 18-year-old West Bank settler, who was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on his way to school. The militants had said they would kill Asheri if the raid on Gaza did not stop, but an Israeli military official said he was shot in the head shortly after he was abducted Sunday. Hamas terrorists are still holding Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit whose kidnapping resulted in the current Israeli rescue operation in Gaza. "The murder of kidnap victim Eliahu Asheri by the terrorist...

House Bill 4681 continues a long, sad history of peacemaking attemptsBy Congressman Jim Marshall (D-GA) [Barf Alert]The tangled politics of Middle Eastern peacemaking has a rich history of unintended consequences. Nearly a century ago, a perceptive British officer familiar with Palestine offered this bit of irony about the treaties ending World War I: "After the 'war to end war' they seem to have been pretty successful in Paris at making a 'peace to end peace." And now, in support of Israel, U.S. House members passed a bill that Israel's most senior military leader believes will only make matters worse -...

For a week, the killings of Richard “R.D.” and Jessie M. “Tiny” Shepard of Marshall have been described using words such as “violent,” “brutal” and “heinous.” But a probable cause statement filed in Saline County Associate Circuit Court over the weekend in conjunction with the arrests of three suspects takes the shocking nature of the crime to a new level - alleging the murders were planned in advance by a 16-year-old juvenile in cooperation with the two suspects named over the weekend, Spencer Tromont Anderson, 18, and Lyndale Devor Henderson, 17; that the trio, all from Marshall, planned who would...

"The Iranian nuclear program crisis is currently presenting the greatest challenge to the national security strategy of the Bush Administration. Strategists, diplomats and policy makers are all hard at work trying to craft a course of action and an international coalition that will dissuade and/or prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons... So absent military action and the West’s acquiescence to a nuclear armed Iran, can Iran be deterred from proliferating nuclear weapons and associated technology? Can we be assured they won’t pass one to a proxy? The answer is no, at least as current US strategies are crafted..."

Jim Marshall and Cynthia McKinney joined to vote against The Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006(Warner Robins, GA) – Jim Marshall and Cynthia McKinney joined today to vote against H.R. 4681 - The Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006. The Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 361 to 37. The Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act bans U.S. assistance to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, denies visas to its leaders and cuts off diplomatic contact with Hamas, which the U.S. has branded a terrorist organization. “I would question why anyone would vote against this bi-partisan stand against terrorism. Jim Marshall...

BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) BROWN ET AL. v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA ET AL. APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF KANSAS Argued December 9, 1952. Reargued December 8, 1953. Decided May 17, 1954. Segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race, pursuant to state laws permitting or requiring such segregation, denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment - even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors of white and...

The Thin Skinned CongressmanBy E. Goldstein(North Carolina) – It seems that Georgia Congressman Jim Marshall is a little peeved at me for publishing an excerpt from an editorial he wrote for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. When Robert Novak picked up on his quote he correctly reported that Marshall supports investigating the President at some time in the future. Novak made the mistake of reporting that Marshall had issued a statement to that effect, he had not. Marshall had just included the comments in a November editorial which can be read on his own congressional website. In his editorial Marshall wrote,...

Robert Novak Political ReportGeorgia-3/8: This seat, re-numbered after the mid-decade redistricting of last year, is now in greater peril for Democrats than before. Rep. Jim Marshall (D) is tempting fate with his announcement that he favors investigations of the Bush Administration. Although few voters anywhere are big fans of Bush nowadays, they will not welcome this, and it will become campaign ammo for his opponent, former Rep. Mac Collins (R), who will try to link him to the growing impeachment movement on the left. Leaning Democratic Retention.