Man. We remember a time, long ago last legislative session, when all your state lawmakers wanted to do was talk about abortion and how much they hated it. They were super-duper against it, as they could not seem to stop talking about, so much so that they cheerily decimated the Texas Women's Health Program, which didn't provide abortions, pushing out the program's largest provider, Planned Parenthood, and forcing a bunch of poor ladies to either find a new doctor or just do without health care. Meanwhile, Texas lawmakers also passed that forced sonogram bill, to make sure that every woman having an abortion would get to feel just as violated as possible.

It was a magical time for Texas Republicans. But it seems to have slipped away. This legislative session, not a single anti-abortion bill has actually made it to the House or Senate floor.

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Today is a key moment in the battle for school reform in Dallas, as a list of school principals to be fired goes before the school board. (Check back tonight for the body count.) The main opposition to the reform effort has come from southern Dallas black leadership allied with the district employees who may be about to lose their jobs.

Last week, the Dallas Citizens Council joined the Dallas Regional Chamber (of commerce) in an open letter to Dallas school board trustees, urging them to stick with the program of school reform designed and executed by school superintendent Mike Miles. So, blah-blah-blah, right? Local business persons want better schools. How is that news? Oh, man, you have to know how crazy this town is before you can even get the answer.

See also:
"Mike Miles versus the World," this week's cover story by Jim Schutze

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Yesterday when my wife, son and I were driving back from Lubbock, the news on my tablet told me that Phyllis Schlafly, president of the Eagle Forum, Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, and Tea Party leaders in 25 states had released an open letter urging congress to dump its immigration reform effort. The story couldn't have been more ironic, given what we had just witnessed at Texas Tech University.

The main force driving an ultimate Republican/Democratic compromise in the Senate Judiciary Committee was America's need for highly skilled immigrants. A few years ago, when I did a long piece on immigration reform, people told me America was getting toasted in the international competition for skilled immigrants.

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Carona

John Carona, our Republican state senator from Dallas, learned some hard lessons this session about how his fellow lawmakers' business interests tend to dominate the doings in the legislature. Last month, Carona's bill to try to reform the incredibly predatory payday loan industry was picked down to its skeletal bones by other state senators, several of whom were on the phone with loan industry lobbyists as Carona spoke on the Senate floor.

But as Texas Tribune's Jay Root reports today, in a particularly excellent installment of their "Bidness as Usual" series, Carona has also benefited spectacularly from the uncomfortably close relationship between business and politics that flourishes in the Legislature.

See also:
- John Carona's Payday Lending Reform Crashed into a Wall of Lobbyists Today
- State Senator John Carona is Walking Back His Support for Craft Brewers

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Judge John Roach Jr.

A while back, before his father retired as district attorney against a backdrop of small-town political intrigue, Collin County District Judge John Roach Jr. described his philosophy on family law in a less-than-hard-hitting interview with Dallas Child.

His "obvious passion spill[ing] over in precise speech honed by years in the courtroom," he spoke of the importance of ensuring that children in custody cases wind up in a strong family environment with loving, involved parents.

"I often tell people I would not want them to make decisions about my kids -- why would you want me to make decisions about yours?" he said. "It is certainly my job to make these decisions; I make the decisions when I have to. However, parents going through divorce need to agree to disagree as to why, how or whose fault it is and focus on the kids. Your spouse may make a sorry husband or wife, but it does not mean you have to be sorry parents."

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Patrick Michels

Washington is still reeling from the revelation on Friday that the IRS has been singling out Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny. The news immediately drew howls of bipartisan protest, and pretty much everyone agrees that using the tax system to target political enemies is not what happens in a healthy democracy.

The optics are incredibly bad for President Obama, who has apologized, but it's useful to put things in perspective. For starters, the IRS has a legitimate reason for looking into Tea Party and similar groups. The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin explains:

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If there's one thing everyone in America can agree on this morning, it's that Kermit Gosnell is disgusting and belongs in an especially dank and fetid section of some sort of subterranean prison.

In a case that millions of talking heads have been shouting at you about from your TV, the Philadelphia doctor was convicted yesterday of first degree murder of three infants and involuntary manslaughter in the death of an adult patient.

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There was a City Council election on Saturday and, if you're like the vast majority of Dallas, you didn't notice. But whether you were paying attention or not, some important things were decided and some interesting trends emerged.

Here's what you need to know:

Angela Hunt's legacy: Saturday's most interesting race was the District 14 contest to replace Angela Hunt, who is term limited. The vacant seat drew a crowded field of seven challengers, but the race soon turned into a referendum of sorts on Hunt's term in office.

Hunt threw her weight behind attorney Philip Kingston. Her name and face were featured prominently in his mailings, on his website, and at his campaign appearances. His main challenger was Bobby Abtahi, a 31-year-old former community prosecutor and City Plan Commission member who has the backing of Hunt's opponents in the Dallas establishment.

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Lon Burnam

You wouldn't have expected a bill to rename a stretch of Central Expressway for George W. Bush to inspire a rare bipartisan kumbaya moment in the Texas legislature. His presidency is too recent and remains a source of bitterness for too many Democrats. But when the House vote was posted, there it was: 147 yeas, 0 nays.

Representative Lon Burnam, a Fort Worth Democrat, would like everyone to know that tally is wrong. "He most definitely voted against the bill," chief of staff Conor Kenney said in an email yesterday. Burnam's opposition hasn't yet shown up on the still-unofficial tally posted to the House website, but that's because "the clerk is running behind because we're moving so fast right now," Kenney wrote. "I think they're just marking most local and consent bills as unanimous."

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Washington Post

We were pretty sure that Pulitzer Prize-winner Thomas Ricks' recent suggestion in the Washington Post that America exile Texas in pursuit of a more perfect union was a joke. Blaming the state for the JFK assassination (without Texas, "John F. Kennedy might still be alive") and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan looked at first glance like a low blow, but otherwise the piece seemed to strive for satire.

Ricks' piece inspired some very serious tut-tutting from the Morning News' editorial board. First, it was Sharon Grigsby:

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