For nearly a year Christine and Tim Ruggiero have battled the powerful Texas oil and gas industry and the inertia of regulators responsible for protecting air quality and public health. Aruba Petroleum Inc. started moving dirt on the horse pasture of the couple's 10-acre lot north of Fort Worth in September. The small company out of Plano, Texas, built a drilling pad 300 feet from… Read more »

**reprinted with permission of Texas Medicine and the Texas Medical Association Troy Creamean, DO, was so fed up with declining Medicare payments that he closed his practice and left town. Devastated by a 50-percent drop in revenue in the past five years and facing another 21.3-percent cut this year, the plastic surgeon who specialized in head and neck cancer surgery shut down his… Read more »

A Republican House member introduced a resolution this week seeking documents, records and communications from HHS related to any analysis conducted by the CMS chief actuary pertaining to the health reform bill, and specifically a report issued weeks after the March 23 passage of the bill in an effort to determine whether the Obama administration withheld releasing data on the bill days… Read more »

A senior House Republican has stepped up his call for HHS to turn over cost estimates it received from federal actuaries about the healthcare reform legislation before it became law. Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), a physician, late Tuesday introduced a resolution of inquiry requiring HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to hand over any documents, e-mails, records of telephone calls or… Read more »

Lewisville Rep. Michael Burgess raised questions Tuesday that the BP was paying the salary of the administrator of the $20 billion escrow fund for damage claims from the Gulf oil spill. In a hearing, Burgess asked Ken Feinberg if his salary from BP for administering the fund would create conflicts of interest. "Do you see any difficulty in maintaining the independence with them… Read more »

President Barack Obama's deployment of 250 National Guard troops to the 1,254-mile Texas-Mexico border has intensified a politically charged debate over border security just two weeks before Obama visits the state to raise money for Democratic candidates. Republican Gov. Rick Perry, one of Obama's harshest critics in Texas, has asked to meet with Obama during his Aug. 9 fundraising… Read more »

Eight Texas GOP members, including three from North Texas, have joined the House Tea Party Caucus, which made its Capitol Hill debut Wednesday. Reps. Joe Barton , R-Arlington; Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville ; and Pete Sessions , R-Dallas, are among the 35 Republican House members in the group, spearheaded by Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. "Democrats have tried to marginalize… Read more »

As Arizona gears up to begin enforcing its new, controversial immigration law, 81 Republican lawmakers have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reject the Obama administration's effort to block the law. The friend of the court brief was signed by five U.S. senators and 76 House members, including nine Texans in the House, led by Rep. Lamar Smith of San Antonio. Smith is the senior… Read more »

The Chinese government didn't pursue an investigation into contaminated heparin sent to the U.S. in 2007 and 2008, despite repeated requests from the U.S. for help, according to a congressional probe. Two House Republicans said Food and Drug Administration officials recently told them that the agency has been "severely hampered" by the lack of cooperation from China in finding those… Read more »

The Obama administration came under pressure Wednesday to disclose more information about its investigation of Toyota Motor Corp., with congressional Republicans questioning whether officials are withholding data that could favor Toyota in some crashes. Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the senior Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, sent a letter to the administration's top… Read more »