Texas. It's a whole other country.

It may be well on the way toward making that statement true.

Did you know more than half the members of the Texas House are supporting a measure directing universities to allow concealed handguns? The Senate is expected to chime in and Governor Rick Perry is definitely on board.

With more than a half million students in Texas's 38 public universities, I am grateful I don't have a college-aged student attending one of them.

Of course this all stems from the Virginia Tech incident in 2007, the inordinate rationale that students need to defend themselves, and the culture of Texas, in general. Apparently this bullet is out of the barrel and appears there's no stopping it.

"Things do look bleak," said Colin Goddard, who was in Austin recently to lobby against the bill. And by the way, Colin Goddard was a student at Virginia Tech and was shot four times on that day in 2007. He rejects the idea that another student with a gun could have stopped the killer.

Another recent article in the New York Times cited an opinion piece by former first lady Barbara Bush regarding budget cuts in the Texas education system. As you may know, Texas ranks near the bottom of all 50 states in literacy and math scores. They're not at the bottom, but close.

So you'd think the obvious solution would not be cutting the proposed $4.8 billion over the next two years from the school system. But where's the money to come from?

Well, how about new taxes? Governor Perry says no. What about $830 million offered in federal aid to education? Governor Perry says no thanks. There are strings attached. Apparently because he used the previous $3.2 billion he got in education stimulus dollars for other purposes so the now $830 million offered for education has actually got to be used for education. Oh that pesky purpose-specific language.

Before moving to Belgium, we resided in Texas and still own our home in Texas. Our daughter, son-in-law, and grandson live in Texas so we have a stake in the future of the nation's biggest state (not counting Alaska, of course).

Did you know that Texas has the highest birth rate in the country? Third in teen pregnancies? First in repeat teen pregnancies? (There's a statistic for that?) Heavens.

Anyway, Texas is educating a $#*!load of our future population. So what to do.

In his infinite wisdom, Governor Perry is a big fan of abstinence-only sex education and it's nearly impossible for young adults to obtain contraception without parental consent.

In an interview with The Texas Tribune:

Perry: "Abstinence works".

Interviewer: "But we have the third highest teen pregnancy rate among all states in the country".

Perry: "It works".

Interviewer: "Can you give me a statistic suggesting it works?"

Perry: "I'm just going to tell you from my own personal life. Abstinence works."

Me: "Ohhh, as Bill O'Reilly would say 'Can't explain that'. Well, that's all I need to know. Thanks."

As you may know, Europe is having some struggles as a European Union and not all countries are pulling their weight. Several countries have had to be bailed out by the rest of the Union and often times it's because they've mismanaged their government in the first place. Sound familiar?

Given the size of Texas, it's likely the rest of the nation may agree with the New York Times writer . . .

Perry used to be famous for his flirtation with talk of secession. Maybe we should encourage him to revisit it.