• Texas Voter ID Law Threatened by U.S. Department of Justice – State Rep. Ken Paxton, Texas Insider
• Federal judges redraw Texas redistricting maps – State Sen. Jeff Wentworth, San Antonio Express-News
• Texans for Lawsuit Reform has Wentworth in its sights – Jason Embry, Austin American-Statesman
• Using public information, Daily Toreador follows the money on a Texas Tech parking garage, arrangement with well-connected alum – Steve Miller, Texas Watchdog
• Texas sales tax collections hit monthly record – Kate Alexander, Austin American-Statesman
• In new ad, Perry says Obama has launched 'war on religion' – Jason Embry, Postcards
  

  In the supporting material released with the ad, the Perry campaign did not provide any proof that kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas.

  That’s weak. There are plenty of news reports about schools censoring Christmas.

• Jon Wellinghoff: The TT Interview – Elizabeth Titus, Texas Tribune
  

  I’m nothing but impressed with the transmission project that the Texas PUC put together for moving that west wind into the central and eastern parts of Texas. It seemed anyway to me an extremely efficient process as far as how the different developers were selected, and a very efficient process with respect to the siting and the entire development of it. [It was done] in a very expeditious manner and a manner that is probably unprecedented with respect to a transmission project of that size anywhere in the country.

  Is he impressed with the cost?

• Documents Shows Fast and Furious WAS About Promoting Gun Control – Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

Top Stories: “Outrageous!” edition

• Texas’ multibillion-dollar cost to build wind energy lines raises doubts – Elizabeth Souder, Dallas Morning News
  

  Seven billion dollars would pay the electricity bills for every household in Texas for about seven months.

  Seven billion dollars would build about 7,000 megawatts of natural gas-fired power plant generation. That’s enough to keep the lights on even during another extreme-heat, blast-the-air-conditioning emergency.

  Seven billion dollars would replace 175 million fluorescent light bulbs with LED lights and could save enough electricity to shut down 10 coal plants.

  So why are Texans spending $7 billion to build a half dozen transmission lines to bring wind power to the masses?

• Austin's Formula One Race Gets Green Light – Ross Ramsey, Texas Tribune
  

  This puts the State of Texas on the hook for $25 million per year for ten years — a $250 million commitment of taxpayer money that has brought some political heat on Comptroller Susan Combs. She pushed the state’s involvement, saying that money would help make the races possible and contending that the races will bring in more money in tax revenue for the state than the state is spending.

• Texas Attorney General cuts off e-mail for public records filings – Steve Miller, Texas Watchdog
  

  [F]or a private citizen or smaller news operation, the convenience, speed and low cost of email correspondence has been eliminated. Those homebound or with limited mobility will be forced to pay the fee. And to ensure receipt of responses to open records appeals, certified mail appears to be among the cheapest way to ensure delivery, with a rate that starts at $2.85.

• Texas Workforce Commission official who coached businesses on avoiding workers' benefits gets promotion – Steve Miller, Texas Watchdog

Recommended

• Cost of Occupy Austin begins to take a toll – Michele Samuelson, Empower Texans
• Shale linked to 10,000 S.A. jobs – Vicki Vaughan, San Antonio Express-News
  If and when unelected bureaucrats in the Obama Administration make regulatory rules targeting these jobs, let’s keep in mind that some folks just want job-seeking Texans to be quiet and follow “the law.”
• Challenge from the left exposes dissatisfaction with Doggett – Tim Eaton, Austin American-Statesman
• Texas state parks struggling with fewer visitors – Houston Chronicle
  As Matt Bramanti pointed out to us, when you’re trying to trim budgets, you hear the predictable hollering: “People want to go to parks! The parks need more money!” Now, it’s “People don’t want to go to parks! The parks need more money!”
• The Brains Behind the Curtain – Forrest Wilder & Abby Rapoport, Texas Observer
  The Texas Public Policy Foundation is “little known?” Certainly not to Texans interested in public policy (the sorts of people who might read Texas Observer). What really upsets lefties is that it is such a formidable intellectual foil to their own big-government advocacy organizations like the Center for Public Policy Priorities.
• Beyond parody – Unca Darrell