AUSTIN - Gov. Rick Perry said Tuesday he'll continue traveling the country to promote the fiscal and state-sovereignty issues he highlighted in his presidential campaign, rejecting calls to reimburse Texas taxpayers for the cost of the state security detail that accompanies him. Perry - who declared his job as governor is "24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year" - also said he'd favor doing away with the state constitutional provision that the lieutenant governor assume his duties when he's outside Texas. Amending the constitution would require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature and Texans' approval on a statewide ballot. Perry's direct travel costs are generally paid by his campaign, but the security detail is state-funded. A poll conducted by Blum & Weprin Associates right after he left the presidential race found a combined 48 percent of registered voters said Perry's presidential run had made Texas' image either a little worse or a lot worse. Since leaving the race, he's endorsed Newt Gingrich.

Former Houston city councilman and talk show host Michael Berry for the first time on Tuesday publicly commented about an investigation into hit-and-run allegations against him, angrily insisting he was the target of a smear campaign. Berry has not been charged over the Jan. 31 accident, but a Houston Police Department crash report identified a car registered to him as the vehicle suspected of backing into another vehicle outside a well-known gay bar in Montrose. Berry said during his radio program on KTRH that critics assumed as a conservative radio host he is biased against gay people but stressed he never disparaged them on his program or elsewhere. [...] I bash people who bash gays,'' said Berry, referring to denunciations he said he made over anti-homosexual statements by former presidential adviser Karl Rove and televangelist Pat Robertson. Prosecutors said they turned away an HPD accident investigator who asked to get charges filed but brought only the license plate number of Berry's vehicle and no other evidence, not even an offense report.

DALLAS (AP) — Michael Rorrer said his great aunt once mentioned having comic books she would one day give him and his brother, but it was a passing remark made when they were boys and still into superheroes. Rorrer, 31, of Oxnard, Calif., said he thought his great uncle Billy Wright's comics were cool, but he didn't realize how valuable they were for months after finding them neatly stacked in a basement closet while helping clear out his great aunt's Martinsville, Va., home a few months after her death. Rorrer, who works at a plant where oil is separated from water, said he was telling a co-worker about Captain America No. 2, a 1941 issue in which the hero bursts in on Adolf Hitler, when the co-worker mused that it would be something if he had Action Comics No. 1, in which Superman makes his first appearance. Hernandez, who works as an operator in a chemical plant, said it really hit her how valuable the comics were when she saw the look on Allen's face after he came to her house in League City, Texas, to look through the comics she had there. Rorrer said he only remembers his aunt making the fleeting reference to the comics when she learned that he and his brother, Jonathan Rorrer, now 29, liked comic books. "There were some really hard to find books that were in really, really great condition," said Paul Litch, the primary grader at Certified Guaranty Company, an independent certification service for comic books.

Liberty County prosecutors announced Tuesday they plan a criminal investigation into what happened inside a small brick house that once housed 11 children whom investigators say were often confined inside a tiny room and tied to their beds. [...] he said proof needed for an emergency CPS removal does not always equal the criminal standard for child abuse, which requires evidence of serious bodily injury or mental impairment. On Jan. 24, CPS found 11 children, ages five months to 11 years, believed to be Tanda Smith's grandchildren, living in the three-bedroom home with 10 adults. O'Quinn said his officers met with adults at the home on everything from loud arguments, borrowed cars, slashed tires and stolen copper wiring. Wayne Hardin, 57, who lives next door, said he never saw children frolicking outside or piling into cars for an outing or trip to the store in the eight years that they'd lived there. CPS and police investigators last month acted on a tip that children were being tied up at the home. CPS spokeswoman Gwen Carter said the agency is still sorting out how long the children had been living in such cramped quarters.