• Rep. Nathan Macias, R-Bulverde, lost a round in his attempt to flip the results of the GOP primary that choked his reelection bid (Macias lost to Doug Miller by 17 votes). He asked the visiting judge in that election contest to step aside so another judge could be appointed. That judge, James Clawson, said the request wasn’t proper in an election case. The state’s 3rd Court of Appeals agrees. Macias can take it to the Texas Supreme Court, or let it rest. The trial on the election results is set for May 19. Macias’ lawyers say they’ll focus on Box 5 from Gillespie County, which came in hours after the rest of the votes were counted.

• John McCain is comfortably ahead of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in Texas, according to a survey done by students at the Earl Survey Research Lab at Texas Tech University. They talked to 507 voting age Texans (including 483 registered voters) on the phone between March 25 and April 14. And the sample included almost twice as many Republicans as Democrats (45 percent to 24 percent). With that group, McCain outpolled Obama 58 percent to 29 percent, and outpolled Clinton 59 percent to 30 percent. President George W. Bush had a rough time: 42 percent approve of the way he’s handling his job, while 46.5 percent disapprove.

• Clamping down on lawsuits has boosted the state economy by $112.5 billion annually, according to an economic study done for Texans for Lawsuit Reform. That group hired Waco economist Ray Perryman to quantify their work. His assessment [1]: Tort reform is responsible for 499,000 jobs, a $2.6 billion increase in state revenue, and a 21.3 percent drop in medical liability insurance costs.

• Texas could halve the number [2] of uninsured children in the state by making it easier to sign them up for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. A group of legislators and health care advocates say half of the state’s 1.5 million uninsured children are already eligible for the two programs. They’re not insured, according to those folks, because the eligibility and enrollment system isn’t working, because the state requires them to re-enroll more than once a year, and because the state doesn’t do enough to advertise the programs.

• We don’t generally do sports here, but sports folks don’t generally hold fundraisers for the LBJ School of Public Affairs, either. That school has a Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Global Affairs, started with $500,000 from the UT Athletic Department. The UT football coach is the honoree at a May 16 dinner headlined by Penn State coach Joe Paterno and former NFL star and Republican Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann.