Rep. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, recently sent letters to Texas senators and congressmen urging them to oppose the Blair Holt's Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act 2009. To Creighton, the bill, which calls for licensing requirements for possession of firearms and a federal record and tracking system of firearm sales, infringes on Americans' Second Amendment rights to bear arms.

In an op-ed published in the Houston Chronicle, members of the Texas Conservative Coalition state, "the food stamp program is in need of systemic reform. The problems we face in Texas point to a larger issue for the Obama administration. Let states innovate, and let's modernize an antiquated program to deliver for the taxpayers who pay for it and the Texans who rely on it."

Climategate concerns some of the world's leading climate scientists working in tandem to block freedom of information requests, blackball dissenting scientists, manipulate the peer-review process, and obscure, destroy or massage inconvenient temperature data-facts. The question is why the scientists behaved this way to begin with, especially since the science behind man-made global warming is said to be firmly settled.

Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction.

On Wednesday, December 2, Senator Dan Patrick (R-Houston) will host a Town Hall meeting with the Texas Conservative Coalition.  Click for more information, including a map, directions, and an online registration option. 

Democrats' health bills depend on forcing individuals to buy insurance or face severe fines or imprisonment. In 1994, the Congressional Budget Office said forcing individuals to buy insurance would be "an unprecedented form of federal action," adding: "The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States." 

The source of pessimism about having a strong economic recovery appears to be a growing fear that the federal government is retreating from the free-market economic principles of the last half-century, and in particular the strong growth policies that began under Ronald Reagan. A review of the economic policies instituted by President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress lends credibility to this concern.

While the economy has finally started to grow, the disturbingly high unemployment rate is increasing pressure from the left to double down on this year's poorly designed fiscal stimulus bill. Since the stimulus bill was signed, the ranks of the unemployed have grown by over three million. The unemployment rate, which the Obama administration projected the stimulus would contain at 8%, is now 10.2%.

As usual, the most dangerous parts of ObamaCare aren't receiving the scrutiny they deserve-and one of the least examined is a new commission to tell Congress how to control health spending. Democrats are quietly attempting to impose a "global budget" on Medicare, with radical implications for U.S. medicine.

The government paid more than $47 billion in questionable Medicare claims including medical treatment showing little relation to a patient's condition, wasting taxpayer dollars at a rate nearly three times the previous year.