For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few": Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and — at first — even the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff."

Read more on this incredible story at The Politico

Rene Martinez To Get New, Hand-crafted Job? (Updated)
Claudia Rodriguez May Replace Olson?
Academic Success Program's Budget May Get Upped to $2.1M?
Arnold Viramontes Wants an "Un-Pay Cut"

Rene Martinez' New Job

Rene Martinez will supposedly be getting a big promotion this week.

The following is the new job description which, Rene Martinez has confirmed, he crafted:

(This is an article I wrote for the the Republican Leadership Council.)

Texas’s 2010 gubernatorial primary is a key battle for the Republican Party's future.

Social and hard-line neoconservatives control the Texas GOP: its platform contains extreme views, including banning birth control pills, withdrawing from the United Nations, and even stopping abortions that save the life of mothers.

Senators John Cornyn and Chuck Schumer each spent more than $140,000 in taxpayer money on travel in the first half of the fiscal year — roughly 10 times as much as some of their thriftier colleagues.

Cornyn, a Republican, racked up the highest travel bill in the Senate by spending more than $38,000 on a St. Michaels, Md., retreat for 59 staffers and by taking expensive, multicity charter flights throughout his home state of Texas.

Read the story at The Politico

10 year old Reagan Green was arrested over the weekend by the Flower Mound Police Department after a neighbor called police when Reagan was fighting with her sister.

No word on how many officers it took to subdue the 10 year old girl.

Watch this incredible story at KDFW.Com

by Lt. Calvin Howard, DISD Police

As the Lieutenant over security at Dallas ISD Board Meetings I have been questioned on occassion by some in attendance as to why we do not respond immediately when there are outbursts.

For your information and that of your readers I am enclosing excerpts of our Board Meetings Operation Plan so everyone will know our role. All I ask is that my officers are respected for what we have to do and to comply when we gesture to the audience to refrain from outburst.

The last thing we want to do is to remove someone from the meeting as everyone is entitled to express themselves, but, they should respect others speaking as they want to be respected when they speak.

At the May, 2009 Board meeting, speaker Juanita Wallace claimed to have read several inflammatory statements from a diary belonging to outgoing Board president Jack Lowe. The audience responded with surprise.

A short time later, Lowe spoke to the matter noting that he didn't keep a diary--calling Wallace's statements "a total lie."

Last week's DISD Board meeting was accented by the comments of several of the District's brightest and most talented students.

This is what the District stands to lose if, by its actions, it damages any of the magnet schools.

Here are some of their comments. Witty! Passionate.