TX Debt Consolidation in Texas

Jim Mattox, the sometimes bare-knuckled campaigner who billed himself as the people's lawyer while Texas attorney general, died Thursday in his sleep at his home in Dripping Springs, Texas.

Mr. Mattox, 65, had served as a Dallas County assistant district attorney, state legislator, three-time U.S. congressman and two-time Texas attorney general. He ended a successful string of political campaigns by losing the 1990 Democratic gubernatorial primary in a vicious race against Ann Richards.

Mr. Mattox was a tenacious advocate for the people of Texas, said Texas Democratic Chairman Boyd Richie.

"A tough public servant, Jim's life was spent working for the interests of all Texans," Mr. Richie said. "His legacy of service and dedication to our great state will endure, and he will be dearly missed."

Gov. Rick Perry said Texans mourned the loss of a genuine leader.

"His leadership, passion for and service to the state of Texas have left a lasting legacy," Mr. Perry said. The governor directed that in Mr. Mattox's memory, flags be flown at half-staff through Friday and on Tuesday, the day of his funeral.

Services will be at 10 a.m. Tuesday at First Baptist Church in downtown Austin. He will be buried in the State Cemetery.

An outside law firm has been hired to look into the Dallas school district's practice of issuing false Social Security numbers to foreign citizens hired to teach in the district.

The Dallas Independent School District announced Wednesday that it has asked former U.S. Attorney Paul Coggins of Fish & Richardson, P.C., to look at "everything" concerning the practice, including how it got started and if any federal statutes were violated.

DISD had been issuing the fake numbers - some of which had already been assigned to people elsewhere - for several years before ending the practice this summer. The false numbers were issued to get the foreign citizens - mostly teachers brought in on visas to teach bilingual classes - on the payroll quickly.

"There has been understandable concern raised by the community over the issue of using temporary numbers that looked like Social Security numbers while these individuals waited for their permanent numbers," Superintendent Michael Hinojosa said in a news release.

"Paul Coggins is a strong, independent authority on these issues. Obviously, there was a problem with the process and I want it corrected so it will never happen again."

Mr. Coggins is expected to complete his work before the end of December. The Social Security Administration also is looking into the district's practice of issuing the fake numbers.

Dr. Hinojosa has said that he wasn't aware of the practice until he received a report from DISD's investigative unit in September. The district has said that it has stopped giving out false numbers and has put in new processes to ensure it doesn't happen again. Those new processes include checking Social Security numbers of district employees against a Social Security Administration database.

The Dallas Morning News has heard from several people around the country who were concerned that DISD possibly issued their Social Security number to someone. Their Social Security numbers begin with "200" - the same prefix that DISD began its false numbers with.

A 26-year-old teacher in the Dallas school district has been arrested after a 14-year-old female student told police that they had sex in a school, authorities said.

Calvin J. Beckton, who teaches at Boude Storey Middle School, was arrested Wednesday on a charge of sexual assault after the teenager said they had sex in the school's band hall on Oct. 28, police said.

Dallas police declined to release any further details about the case.

Mr. Beckton has been placed on leave and removed from campus pending the outcome of the investigation, said Jon Dahlander, a Dallas school district spokesman.

Mr. Beckton was being held in the Dallas County jail Wednesday in lieu of a $25,000 bond.

KEMAH, Texas - Authorities in Texas say a teenage boy fatally shot his father during an argument over a fast food order, then killed himself.

Galveston County sheriff's officials say the violence occurred Sunday at the family home southeast of Houston.

Sixteen-year-old Robert Lee Mueller Jr. had returned home with the wrong food order for his father, 59-year-old Robert Lee Mueller.

Both died late Tuesday after nearly two days in a Houston hospital. The father was shot once in the head. The boy shot himself after police arrived.

SPRING BRANCH, Texas -- The Texas Department of Public Safety and Comal County Sheriff's Department has issued an Amber Alert for a 6-year-old girl missing from Spring Branch, Texas.

Jewel Noel Klein is described as a white female, 4 feet tall, weighing about 60 pounds with blond hair and blue eyes. She was last seen wearing a red plaid sundress. Police are also looking for 41-year-old Tonya Renee Martin, described as standing 5-foot-2, weighing 107 pounds with blond hair and blue eyes.

Klein was last seen with Martin in a blue 2005 Hyundai Sonata with Texas license plates reading 404-ZNM. The pair were last seen in Spring Branch, according to the alert.

Klein is Martin's daughter, according to a Comal County Sheriff's Office press release. Klein was with her grandmother, 68-year-old Melba Balantac, when Martin allegedly assaulted her mother Tuesday evening. Klein was picked up Tuesday afternoon from Rebecca Creek Elementary by an unknown person, but investigators said Klein and Martin were seen Tuesday evening in Balantac's Sonata.

Neighbor Ana Medrano said she found the injured Balantac in the road following the attack.

"I didn't know it was her because she was all bloody," Medrano said. "Her hair was all full of blood."

Medrano and other neighbors said Klein is a sweet girl who loved playing with other neighborhood children.

"She was polite," neighor Lily Torrez said. "Just a little lady. Perfect."

Spring Branch is located about 15 miles north of San Antonio.

Anybody with information about the pair's whereabouts is asked to contact the Comal County Sheriff's Office at 830-620-3400.

A 67-year-old man who was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease wandered into Mexico twice before he was found about 400 miles from the Texas border on Sunday.

While state agencies are being told to rein in their spending, Texas House members have ordered at least $140,000 in renovations for their members-only lounge, including antique chandeliers, granite countertops ...

The NCAA says the men's basketball Final Four will be played at the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington in 2014.

A grand jury has indicted polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs on a second sexual assault charge in connection with a probe of his Texas compound, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Federal regulators on Monday charged Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban with insider trading for allegedly using confidential information on a stock sale to avoid more than $750,000 in losses.

Cuban disputed the Securities and Exchange Commission's allegations and said he would contest them.

In a civil lawsuit filed in federal court in Dallas, the SEC alleged that in June 2004, Cuban was invited to get in on the coming stock offering by Mamma.com Inc. after he agreed to keep the information private.

Cuban owned 6.3 percent of Mamma.com's stock at that time and was the largest known shareholder in the search engine company, according to the SEC. The agency said Cuban knew the shares would be sold below the current market price, and a few hours after receiving the information, he told his broker to sell all 600,000 shares before the public announcement of the offering.

By selling when he did, Cuban avoided losses exceeding $750,000, the SEC said in its lawsuit.

Cuban, 50 and a multibillionaire, is a tech entrepreneur who sold his Broadcast.com to Yahoo Inc. in 1999 at the height of the dot-com boom. He bought the Mavericks in 2000 and spent heavily to improve the roster.

He is the best known figure to be accused by the SEC of illegal insider trading since its case against Martha Stewart in 2002 for allegedly using advance knowledge of negative news for a company to sell her shares and avoid $45,673 in losses. The homemaking diva paid about $195,000 and agreed not to serve as the director of a public company for five years under a 2006 settlement with the SEC.

Federal immigration officials let thousands of inmates in the nation's third-most populous county walk out of jail despite the suspects admitting they were in the U.S. illegally, a newspaper investigation found.

More than 3,500 inmates told Harris County jailers they were in the country illegally over an eight-month period starting in June 2007, but records show Immigration and Customs Enforcement filed paperwork to detain only about a quarter of them.

In a story published Sunday, The Houston Chronicle found that most illegal immigrants released from jail were accused of minor crimes. But others included convicted child molesters, rapists and those ordered to be deported decades ago.

ICE officials said they are doing the best they can with their resources.

"No agency has enough law enforcement officers to do the job the way they'd like," Kenneth Landgrebe, ICE's field office director for detention and removal in Houston, told the Chronicle.

The Houston ICE office set a record by removing 8,226 illegal immigrants with criminal records from southeast Texas last year, an increase of about 7.5 percent from fiscal year 2007.

ICE officials said between 300,000 and 450,000 inmates incarcerated in the U.S. are eligible for deportation each year. The agency estimates it screens inmates in only about 10 percent of the nation's jails.

The U.S. House and Senate elect new leaders this week, including the chairmanships of committees responsible for helping Republicans get elected to Congress.

Texas House Republicans are playing up their two-seat majority for all it's worth.

Eric Dewayne Cathey acknowledges that he dealt illegal drugs. But the 37-year-old death row inmate insists he's no killer.

A state senator whose district is along Texas' leading human trafficking highway is pushing for new legislation to crack down on the illegal practice that she calls modern-day slavery.

About 1,200 people gathered outside Dallas City Hall on Saturday to protest passage of California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in that state.

By Beth Foley and Paul Stone Palestine Herald-Press A burglary suspect from Athens was killed and a Frankston police officer injured during a Thursday afternoon incident in a neighborhood just west of Texas 155 ...

Authorities broke up Friday what they called one of the largest dogfighting rings in the country, arresting eight people -- including a school teacher -- filing charges against four dozen more and seizing at ...

Leaders from Texas-Mexico border communities asked state legislators Thursday to help them take a stand against a federal border fence that they say harms business, culture and wildlife habitat.