Reforming public education, cutting property taxes, fixing adult and child protective services and funding our budget can all occur when Democrats and Republicans engage in consensus and cooperation - not cynicism and combat.

I do agree that the science is not settled on this. The idea we would put Americans' economy in jeopardy based on scientific theory that is not settled yet to me is nonsense. Just because you have a group of scientists who stood up and said this is the fact... Galileo got outvoted for a spell. To put Americans' economic future in jeopardy, asking us to cut back in areas that would have monstrous economic impact on this country is not good economics and I would suggest is not necessarily good science.

The Republican candidates are talking about ways to transition this program and it is a monstrous lie. It is a ponzi scheme to tell our kids that are 25 or 30 years old today, you're paying into a program that's going to be there. Anybody that's for the status quo with Social Security today is involved with a monstrous lie to our kids, and it's not right.

According to a study by Achieve Incorporated, Texas is the first state to make a college-prep curriculum the standard coursework in high school, starting with this year's ninth grade class.

I stand before you as the governor of Texas but also stand before you the son of two tenant farmers. Ray Perry who came home after 35 bombing missions over Europe to work his little corner of land out there and Amelia who made sure that my sister Milla and I had everything that we needed, included hand sewing my clothes until I went off to college.

We're at the end of an era of failed leadership. We have been led by a divider [Barack Obama] who has sliced and diced the electorate, pitting American against American for political purposes.

When you look around the world, every place that socialism has been implemented, it has failed miserably, destroying the economy, freedom and - in Germany, the Soviet Union and other nations - millions of lives.