John Kanelis

The plaque pictured below offers an important civics lesson. It tells of the late Sam Rayburn's role as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and also as a rank-and-file member of the legislative branch of the federal government.

Princeton City Hall is a non-descript structure on U.S. 380. The City Council meets there. The city administrative offices are located inside the structure the city leases from the building owner.

School is about to begin in Texas, which means that football season also is nearly upon us. I don’t know about you, but I might be looking with just a little bit more interest than usual at Mount Vernon High School, waiting to see how the team performs in its first season under the coaching leadership of a guy who – although he is a brilliant coach – shouldn’t have this job.

Sam Rayburn might well have been the greatest Texas politician of the 20th century. Greater than Lyndon Johnson, or John Connally, or Ma Ferguson, or Ralph Yarbrough, or Ann Richards.

The media and the University of Texas-Austin might have gotten a bit ahead of themselves in praising the flagship UT System campus officials’ decision to waive college tuition for students who come from families that fall under a certain income level.

H. Ross Perot was your garden-variety self-made business tycoon … more or less.

He came from humble beginnings in Northeast Texas. Born in Texarkana, the young man enrolled at the U.S. Naval Academy, where he graduated and earned his commission as an officer. He served his country, then came home and got to work.

When you are an educator in a rapidly growing school district, you resort at times to relying on your best guess for what the future holds. It’s difficult, for example, to predict how many students will be under your care when you ring the school bell for the first time at the start of a new academic year.

City governments make rules and regulations that have the most immediate impact on the lives of those who reside within a city’s corporate limits. Thus, it usually is imperative that they be able to exert maximum local influence and control.

Whether the president of the United States is impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives is going to rely solely on a grim political calculation.

Somewhere an iconic figure in East Texas sports history is spinning in his grave.

Or . . . he might be high-fiving someone over the decision by the Mount Vernon Independent School District to hire a disgraced college football coach as the head coach of a high school football team.

I actually have wrestled with this issue on occasion, but I cannot shake my belief in my original thought about it.

This isn’t the biggest bill ever to die a quiet death in the Texas Legislature, but it might be one of the more talked-about once lawmakers decide to pack it in for this session and head home to their respective districts.

Who knew that German soldiers who fought against our guys during World War II would play a part in building a North Texas community?

The Texas Legislature is inching toward undoing what I consider to be one of the more worthwhile decisions it made in recent years.

You’ve probably heard the news: We’re having a presidential election next year. It’s been in all the papers.

We live in a town that I am having trouble defining.

Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke has done what political pundits from coast to coast to coast have speculated he would do. He has declared he is a candidate for president of the United States of America.

Texas is a big state, covering more than 268,000 square miles. It has 28 million residents and that number is skyrocketing.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has established himself as a tepid supporter of public education.