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The article discusses Texans' opposition to the U.S. President Donald Trump's plan for the construction Mexican-American border wall due to concerns over their private property and land ownership near the border. An overview of Texan property owners' lawsuits against the U.S. government over the latter's attempt to build a border wall, including the government's winning of cases through eminent domain, is provided.

This article discusses prisoner abuse in United States prisons. The footage is not easy to watch: In one clip, a prisoner screams as an attack dog mauls his leg. Although protection from cruel and unusual punishment is enshrined in the Bill of Rights, for most of the nation's history, the advocates of fair treatment for prison inmates have fought a lonely and halting battle. In fact, as Harvard University historian Rebecca M. McLennan explains in a forthcoming book, The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, in 1865, it was the Thirteenth Amendment itself--which explicitly exempted prisoners from its prohibition on slavery--that effectively stripped convicted criminals of nearly all rights. Over the next two decades, Justice(Judge William Wayne Justice) would become the de facto chief administrator of Texas prisons, forcing the state to spend billions constructing new prisons and to end the practice of deputizing inmates to guard other inmates--a practice under which these" guards" routinely raped, beat, and tortured their fellow prisoners. The New York Times' Fox Butterfield reported this weekend that guards at one Arizona prison routinely make male prisoners wear pink women's underwear to humiliate them, while prisoners at a Virginia facility report they are regularly beaten and made to crawl.

Presents an editorial discussing the indictment of Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay by Texas District Attorney Ronnie Earle. Review of how DeLay, who resigned from his post as majority leader following the indictment, is charged with conspiring to direct corporate political contributions illegally to Texas state political candidates; Author's view that throughout his career, DeLay has transformed the House Republican majority into an arm of corporate special interests that benefit from unprecedented rewards for political donations; Need to root out corruption in Washington.

Focuses on the position of Texas Governor George W. Bush about the issue of capital punishment. Certainty of Bush that a convicted felon deserved death; Permission given by the governor for a 30-day reprieve to Ricky McGinn, a man charged with raping and murdering his twelve-year-old stepdaughter so that new DNA tests could be conducted; Question whether he was not troubled by innocence or guilt when he presided over the execution of James Beathard, a man convicted of double murder on testimony from his supposed accomplice despite the lack of any physical evidence linking him to the crime; Number of inmates on the state's death row.