Rick Perry is at war with the University of Texas at Austin and, indeed, the State Constitution of Texas, at least if you believe the thoroughly bipartisan and rapidly growing cast of critics.

What began in 2008 as a seemingly innocuous enough—although, frankly, not very well thought out set of reform proposals for the manner in which Texas’ public universities conducted business—has turned into an all out political brawl between Rick Perry (and his groupies on the Board of Regents) and University of Texas alumni.

A bipartisan group of very powerful Longhorns is rising up against Perry’s attempts to turn their University into his own ideological toy.

Six months after Florida became the butt of late-night jokes for a chaotic voting process that bedeviled the 2012 presidential election, the State Legislature passed a bill on Friday to remedy many of those problems.

The Legislature’s inability to agree means that more than a million low-income Floridians will remain without insurance, at least in the short term. Florida has one of the nation’s highest rates of uninsured people. Public hospitals also will suffer because they will continue to have to care for those one million uninsured who seek treatment in their emergency rooms.

A psychiatrist would have a field day if the state of South Carolina were to get on a couch for a diagnosis.

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford must appear in court two days after running for a vacant congressional seat to answer a complaint that he trespassed at his ex-wife’s home, according to court documents acquired by The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The complaint says Jenny Sanford confronted Sanford leaving her Sullivans Island home on Feb. 3 by a rear door, using his cell phone for a flashlight. Her attorney filed the complaint the next day and Jenny Sanford confirmed Tuesday the documents are authentic.

If Georgia Republican Rep. Jack Kingston had had his way, the National Guard wouldn’t have been at Tuesday’s Boston Marathon when two bombs exploded, killing three and wounding more than 170. A year ago,

“The Georgia Republican pleaded with the guard’s leaders to skip participation at the annual race because state-based troops were stressed by the oncoming sequester budget cuts and the need to be in global hotspots like Afghanistan and Bosnia. ‘The Boston Marathon, we got to take a pass,’ Kingston said last March during a House Appropriations Committee hearing on the National Guard’s budget.”

Awkward! As it was, at the time of that hearing, National Guard officials explained to Kingston that state, not federal, money was used when National Guard troops were deployed at things like the Boston Marathon.

The South was once the great voting bastion of the New Deal - so long as it remained a New Deal for whites only, that is. In the American Prospect, Richard Yeselson reviews a new history by Ira Katznelson of how the South’s racial politics put an end to its support for New Deal economics.