Texas Headlines: Secession, Shariah, college graduation

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Sprouting from that friendship are at least two cooperation agreements between the state of Texas and Ismaili institutions, including a far-reaching program to educate Texas schoolchildren about Islam. That’s a partnership that has already prompted a bit of grumbling in far-right corners of the blogosphere and could conceivably become a primary issue if, as expected, Perry enters the presidential race.

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Even though Perry won’t be on stage at the presidential debate Thursday in Iowa, Santorum will be eagerly looking for any opportunity to tweak the Texas governor and soon-to-be new candidate on same-sex marriage, campaign insiders say. Santorum’s camp sees Perry’s comments as creating a unique opportunity for him to get some traction by directly challenging a candidate who’s taking up more and more oxygen in the race.

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“Sometimes you’re better off being lucky than good,” one Santorum adviser told POLITICO. “Perry saying what he did opened the window of opportunity. That was a fastball, one [Santorum] couldn’t resist the opportunity to hit.”

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In a discussion with tech bloggers in his Capitol office, Perry did not advocate secession but did say Texans are “thinking about that again.” Perry didn’t go quite that far when he was talking to reporters after the now-famous Tea Party rally in Austin a few weeks later. At that event he said that if Washington “continues to thumb their nose at the American people … who knows what might come out of that.”

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Perry spokesman Mark Miner said Tuesday that the newly circulated interview changes nothing: Perry has never advocated secession and never will, he said.