New York property taxes

The Nightly Build...

---

Senior Jobs Program in Westchester County

Tom Pauken is at it again, digging up a horror story to drum up support for his anti-tax politics. This time, Pauken goes as far away as Greenburgh, New York, to find one Audrey Davison, who lives on Social Security, suffers from arthritis and sciatica, and uses a walker to get around. She finds her $12,000 per year property tax bill hard to pay. To help seniors like Ms Davison, Greenburgh employs seniors and gives them a tax break in exchange.

Pauken doesn't tell readers how much Ms Davison's house is worth or how long a reverse mortgage could keep Ms Davison alone and happy in her big house. He doesn't tell readers that Greenburgh, New York is one of the wealthiest parts of the country, with a median home price of $592,000. He doesn't tell readers that Greenburgh's property taxes support outstanding schools, libraries, police and fire service, etc. He doesn't tell readers that the work program in New York is primarily aimed at keeping seniors involved in work and volunteering, with a side benefit of giving them a break in their property taxes. In other circumstances, this is exactly the kind of program you could expect a conservative like Tom Pauken to champion. Similar programs in other states have been judged successful and popular.

But Pauken is on a crusade in Texas to cut property taxes. Pauken doesn't suggest offering means-tested property tax credits to ensure that property tax relief is limited to those who truly need it. Pauken doesn't suggest replacing property tax with an income tax to ensure that Texans earning the most pay the most. No, he spins a story from New York to drum up support for his own failed plans to shift the property tax burden in Texas from wealthy landowners to low and middle income working people. If he's really interested in helping seniors like Ms. Davison, there are ways to do it. But he's not interested in Ms Davison, except for using her to promote his own anti-tax agenda.

Science and faith; Newspapers vs Internet

The Nightly Build...

---

Creationism in Texas Schools

The Dallas Morning News sides with science in its editorial advising "a long, hard look" before the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board approves an online master's degree program by the Institute for Creation Research.

The News is right to be concerned. Creationists have made many attempts to get the Biblical account of creation taught in schools. When straightforward religion lessons were ruled unconstitutional, creationists disguised their Biblical beliefs as science, calling it intelligent design. Courts saw through that charade. Now, creationists seek to undermine public education by indoctrinating teachers with creationism in their own higher education and teacher training. The strategy is that no matter what the textbook says, no matter what the law says, it's what the teacher in the classroom says that has the most impact on schoolchildren. Train the teachers in creationism and some of it will seep into the public school curriculum.

The Institute for Creation Research may promise to include enough "real" science to argue that its graduate program should pass academic muster. But including some "real" science shouldn't be enough. Teaching creationism as science should disqualify any program, no matter how much "real" science they grudgingly agree to teach as well.

---

Words: Mostly in the Star-Telegram?

Don Erler, in one of his too frequent columns in Fort Worth Star-Telegram, plugs newspapers as the best source of information. He quantifies his analysis. Who can argue with numbers? By his count, the Star-Telegram contained "93 unduplicated stories or reports in last Wednesday's edition. ... In contrast, my online connection gives me five or six stories to look at whenever I log on."

Erler is quick to say, "I'm not knocking my Internet provider." Well, I won't be so polite. If Erler can find only five or six news stories on the Internet, he ought to fire his Internet service provider. Google News alone claims to aggregate stories from over 4500 news sources updated continuously. That's 4500 news sources, not 4500 stories. Each news source has who knows how many stories. But Erler wants us to be impressed with the Star-Telegram's 93 stories. Erler is identified as being "president of General Building Maintenance." I suspect he has more experience with fixing plumbing than using the Internet. But I don't know what excuse the professional editors at the Star-Telegram have for giving one of their 93 slots to Don Erler.

Iraq success

The Nightly Build...

---

Delight in Handing Dems a Lump of Coal

Mark Davis is ready to proclaim success in Iraq. It's a sign of how bad things are when a largely completed ethnic cleansing and a continuing bitter sectarian divide can be judged success. Whatever. About Vietnam, Vermont Senator George Aiken famously said that we should "declare victory and go home." Mark Davis is showing that that strategy is still a valid choice today. If Mark Davis thinking we've won in Iraq brings us closer to ending this disastrous war, let him crow.

But what's happening in Iraq is almost incidental to Mark Davis' column. His real focus is domestic politics:

"Those of us who believe in what America is trying to do in Iraq have been given a great gift this Christmas season. I would hope our nation could unify in the new year and show our gratitude by letting them enjoy further success unfettered by the ill will and sharp tongues of those who have not yet seen fit to support them."

For Mark Davis, the real gift is not a reduction in the killing in Iraq. It's that the reduction gives Mark Davis a club to hit Democrats over the head with. Davis shows more joy in Democrats' supposed political misfortune than he does in our troops' declining casualty rates.

PC journalism

The Nightly Build...

---

A Suspect's Race

Mike Hashimoto is on a crusade to get news media to publish the suspect's race in every crime story. He doesn't put it like that. Instead, he's been pointing out inconsistencies in stories. This one mentions race. That one doesn't. You can imagine him scanning the papers for crime stories just to see if the reporter tells us the perpetrator was black or Hispanic or white. Hashimoto would have us believe that any story that doesn't include race is that way because of "PC journalism".

In fact, there are many inconsistencies. One story mentions the suspect's red, white and blue flannel shirt. That one doesn't say a thing about the suspect's shirt. Is every included detail relevant? Always? Hashimoto assumes it is, and when relevant details are omitted, he assumes it's a deliberate, PC cover-up.

Hashimoto possibly has a higher opinion of journalists' abilities than I do. I've learned that the more familiar I personally am with the facts of a story, the less recognizable the story is that appears in the paper. I subscribe to the old adage, never assume malevolence (or political correctness) when incompetence will do. There is a seeming randomness to facts included and excluded from stories. Whether or not a suspect's race is relevant to the story is almost incidental.

And, if reporters and editors are sometimes sensitive to racial issues, good for them. Race continues to be a lightning rod in America, like it or not. Hashimoto's own obsession with race in criminal stories is evidence of that. When commenters show outrage that this story or that failed to comment on the suspect's flannel shirt instead of the color of his skin, then the day will be here when race is no longer something that deserves special sensitivity. As long as people like Hashimoto get space in the News to comment, we'll know that day isn't here.

Presidential primary recommendations

The Nightly Build...

---

Huckabee and Obama

Who would have guessed a year ago that Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama would be the recommendations of The Dallas Morning News for the presidential nominees of the Republican and Democratic parties in 2008?

The Dallas Morning News compared the policy positions of each candidate against the paper's own editorial positions. Then, they considered intangibles like character. Finally, they ignored all that and picked the candidates who best offer a "clean break" from the past (Huckabee) and a "refreshingly new approach" (Obama).

OK, that may be harsh, but that was my impression reading their recommendations. More and more, presidential elections are decided, not on issues, but on personalities. Not who would you rather run the country, but who would you rather share a beer with at a barbeque. Not who advocates what's best for America, but who are you going to be comfortable watching on television for the next four years. The Dallas Morning News wants a pastor-in-chief or a conciliator-in-chief as an antidote for the "divisive, hard-edged politics" of recent years. Good luck with that.

Evacuee background checks; DART stonewall

The Nightly Build...

---

This Bus for Sex Offenders Only

Tod Robberson advises The Dallas Morning News' editors not to act hastily in ridiculing the notion that the governor's office wants to weed out sex offenders and other dangerous individuals during mass evacuations due to hurricanes and other disasters.

Steve McCraw, the state's director of homeland security, says the state plans to use a portable magnetic card-swiping system to do background checks and print wristbands for all evacuees.

I'm sorry, I don't know how to be diplomatic about it. Steve McCraw is a fool. The problem during Katrina wasn't a lack of portable magnetic card-swiping readers. It was a lack of buses, a lack of drivers, a lack of National Guardsman, a lack of EMTs, and, not least, a total lack of leadership that failed to implement the disaster planning that the city/state/federal agencies had all practiced for just a year earlier. Dig into this some more and I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't someone planning to make a lot of money selling the state a bunch of portable magnetic card-swiping readers that'll get lost in a warehouse somewhere.

---

DART Working Hard to Hide A Billion Dollars

Jim Schutze is still digging into the billion dollars that DART discovered is missing. Yesterday, he told us that DART scrambled to sweep planned tunnels and downtown lines under the rug to make the books look good again. Today, he's filed a request under the Public Information Act for the contracts DART has with its primary contractor, Archer Western. The scrambling at DART continues, with DART appealing to Texas Attorney General for an exemption to fulfilling that request. Jim Schutze is calling for a public audit. Stay tuned.

DART delays; Christmas in Iraq; RLUIPA

The Nightly Build...

---

Slow Train Coming

As usual, Dallas Observer's Jim Schutze digs up more useful information in two weeks than a government agency, this time the DART board, does in two years. Two weeks ago, DART announced that they underestimated costs for building suburban lines to Rowlett and Irving by a billion dollars. DART board member Faye Wilkins is quoted as reacting to the news by suspecting "dishonesty and incompetence." DART planners knew the numbers didn't add up a year ago, but didn't tell the DART board, the public, or the suburbs until two weeks ago. Now, to balance the books, DART will whack off a subway here, a second downtown line there, and say everything is fine again. It takes good investigative journalists like Jim Schutze to inform us that no, things are not fine inside DART.

---

Not-So-Merry Christmas for Iraqi Christians

Rod Dreher reveals a division inside the The Dallas Morning News editorial board about the suitability of a topic for a Christmas Day editorial. Dreher wants to write about the plight of Iraqi Christians, a small minority suffering at the hands of the much larger Sunni and Shiite factions in this civil war. Tod Robberson objected on the grounds that the subject was overly heavy for the one day when people do not want to read it.

Rod Dreher should get his editorial. What more appropriate day than Christmas to highlight the chaos and cruelty still inflicting Iraq? And then, after Christmas, The Dallas Morning News should editorialize about the ongoing Sunni-Shiite violence in Iraq and about other injustices like the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, genocide in Darfur, war of all kinds in Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, and terrorism inside Israel. You see, the plight of Iraqi Christians is real, but it's a drop in the ocean of inhumanity that America needs reminding of. I figure an editorial a day wouldn't begin to cover all the horrors that need attention. I have a few suggestions for changing the front page, too. A start there would be giving the killing in the Middle East at least as much coverage as the Cowboys.

---

Animal House or Protected Church?

The Chi Alpha fraternity of UNT is suing the city of Denton because the city zoning laws restricting multi-family occupancy prevent Chi Alpha from converting a house they own into a fraternity house.

What are the grounds of the lawsuit? Religious discrimination. Chi Alpha is a Christian student ministry.

Are religious institutions exempt from zoning laws? Apparently so. Or at least Chi Alpha lawyers are claiming that the "Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000" ( RLUIPA) exempts them. RLUIPA prohibits zoning laws that treat churches on less than equal terms with secular institutions. RLUIPA prohibits zoning laws that substantially burden religious institutions absent a compelling government interest.

When I first read this story, I was ready to toss out Chi Alpha's lawsuit. Many cities have zoning laws restricting multi-family housing. Denton does too. Religious institutions ought to be held to the same zoning laws as everyone else, and they are in Denton. Case dismissed, right?

Then I learned of RLUIPA, which gives religious landowners special rights. I still think the city of Denton has a compelling governmental interest in enforcing zoning laws against multi-family housing, so I'm still tossing out Chi Alpha's lawsuit. On the other hand, Chi Alpha's lawyers claim that the city doesn't have a leg to stand on. IANAL, so I'll be watching the courts sort this one out.

Party web sites; Primary handicap sheet; Taxes and rhetorical tricks

The Nightly Build...

---

Mrs. Republican Kicks Ass

Trail Blazer's Karen Brooks has been perusing the new and improved web sites of the national political parties. She's jealous that the Democrats feel free to name their blog "Kicking Ass." And she's irritated that in order to register on the Republican web site, you have to choose between "Mr." and "Mrs." when providing your name. No "Miss" or "Ms." allowed. It appears that the Republicans are escalating their defense of marriage to include a war on the unwed.

I find it fitting that the Democrats chose democrats.org for their domain name, while the Republicans chose gop.com. The .org domain is usually reserved for non-profit organizations, while .com domains are reserved for commercial enterprises. Fitting, don't you think?

---

Mark Davis Answers Some Election Questions

Mark Davis surprised me by providing a fair and balanced look at the upcoming Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary election. He handicaps the races, telling readers what to expect and what to look for. He doesn't try to persuade us who to vote for. For once, a Mark Davis column worth reading. Check it out.

---

Pick a Side: Taxpayers or Will Lutz

Will Lutz, in Dallas Blog, accuses supporters of higher taxes of using rhetorical tricks. Lutz then performs a few tricks himself. He asks elected officials, "Whose side are you on, the taxpayers' or the tax-and-spenders?"

Implicit in his question is the assumption that taxpayers receive no benefit from taxes. That taxpayers don't want Social Security, veterans' benefits, Medicare, national defense, environmental protection, agricultural subsidies, and all the other services that government provides. In fact, taxpayers do want these. Elected officials who work to ensure that government provides these services are on the side of taxpayers. It's people like Will Lutz who are not.

Lutz makes a big deal about inflation. He says businesses can't raise prices faster than inflation and neither should government. Lutz's rhetorical trick here is comparing apples to oranges. Taxes increase when the government provides additional services, not just because of inflation on existing services. Health care spending goes up because the government added a prescription drug benefit. Military spending is skyrocketing, not because of inflation, but because the government is waging a new war that it wasn't waging before. These programs are popular with the voters (well, maybe not the war so much anymore - maybe Lutz will campaign to bring the troops home).

It's true that free market forces don't work on government as well as private businesses to increase productivity and reduce prices. Taxpayers must be ever vigilant that government is providing value for money. Conservatives confuse that common sense approach to government with their own desire to eliminate all the services that taxpayers have demonstrated over and over again that they really do want. That drives people like Will Lutz to use rhetorical tricks.

Huckabee's surge; Bush and 'roids

The Nightly Build...

---

Mike Huckabee (R-Dogpatch)

Rod Dreher (The Dallas Morning News) and Tom Pauken (Dallas Blog) are gleeful over Mike Huckabee's surge in opinion polls. Dreher is a "disaffected conservative" upset by Bush's handling of the war, his lack of fiscal discipline and his failure to push the religious conservative agenda. Dreher suggests that Huckabee's rise is due to "cultural and religious conservatives [being] fed up with being treated like useful idiots by the Republican establishment." (If the shoe fits, wear it, I always say.)

Pauken uses three separate posts to take potshots at George W Bush and Karl Rove. He praises Texas Gov. Rick Perry for saying George W Bush was never a fiscal conservative, then goes Perry one better by calling Bush a "big spender". (Bush's rise in Texas coincided with Pauken's fall.) Pauken attributes Huckabee's rise to not following the Republican game plan as developed by Karl Rove. (Rove helped Bush climb over Pauken in Texas.) Finally, Pauken attempts to drape the mantle of Ronald Reagan over Mike Huckabee. Huckabee says, "Before I look parents in the eye to explain why I put their son’s or daughter’s life at risk, I want to do everything possible to avoid conflict." Pauken thinks that sounds a lot like something Ronald Reagan would say. The editors at National Review Online remember a different Reagan. They remember the Reagan who "lived and breathed the global fight with the Soviet Union for decades." They liken Huckabee's foreign policy pronouncements to Jimmy Carter naivete.

The Republican Party is fighting like children over Reagan's inheritance. Those who feel used by Bush and Rove are seeking sweet revenge. So far, damage has been contained because each faction has reason to hope that its man might still emerge victorious from the primaries. By February, we'll know who actually does. Then, the show will shift to watching whether the GOP patches up its rifts or breaks aparts altogether.

---

Is Bush Caught Up in Baseball's Drug Scandals?

Slate's Bruce Reed digs deeper than George Mitchell did into baseball's scandals involving players using performance enhancing drugs. Specifically, into the 1992 trade that brought Jose Canseco from the Oakland A's to Texas and George Bush's Texas Rangers. The A's suspected Canseco of using performance enhancing drugs, so much so that they considered testing him. Instead they unloaded him to the Texas Rangers, where owner George Bush welcomed him, hoping Canseco would get the Rangers, finally, into the playoffs.

Other players on the Rangers' roster that year also show up in the Mitchell report, but not George Bush himself. That leaves the big question hanging. What did George Bush know and when did he know it? Don't count on baseball's owners showing any interest in getting to the bottom of that question.

Mormonism; King Craddick

The Nightly Build...

---

Rod Dreher's Eleven Theses

The Dallas Morning News' Rod Dreher nails his eleven theses to the door, giving the word on religion and politics in 2008. His points are a mishmash of self-serving, bad logic.

Dreher says Mormons aren't Christian, then defines the term as followers of traditional Christian orthodoxy. (How convenient for Dreher, a late convert to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, to reserve the term Christian for believers like himself.)

Dreher asks how Mormons can get mad when other Christian churches teach that Mormonism is apostasy when Mormons themselves teach that all other Christian churches are apostate? (See point one for the answer. Dreher himself rejects Mormonism as Christian. For Mormons, that's apostasy.)

Dreher says this is no big deal politically because Mormons side with Dreher on his social conservative issues. So-called cafeteria Catholics and progressive Protestants don't. (In other words, who cares why someone believes the way they do? The enemy of my enemy is my friend. That sounds less principled than practical and worldly.)

Dreher asks, if conservative Christians reject Romney for his Mormonism, on what grounds would they condemn secularists for rejecting conservative Christian candidates? (Indeed. Dreher thinks this is an argument in favor of Romney. Others might take it as a good argument to reject everyone who believes in ancient myths, thus like the electorate would be wise to question candidates who believe in, say, UFOs or astrology.)

Dreher goes on to say that Christians believe in some pretty outlandish things themselves -- seven day creation, a God-made-man, the Resurrection, Transubstantiation. Dreher says the content of a religion's doctrinal teaching is not a reliable guide to the overall judgment of one of its adherents. (Oh, and why not? In this day of science, anyone who still believes in the truth of these doctrines should have their judgment questioned. Many of the Founding Fathers understood the absurdity of some of these doctrines. It's inexcusable for 21st Century candidates not to be as enlightened as 18th Century Thomas Jefferson.)

After thesis upon thesis saying that politically, one's religious doctrines are no big deal, Dreher goes on to exclude Islam from any of this. He draws the line to include Mormonism but exclude Islam. He can not accept any good American voting for a Muslim. (In other words, please ignore theses 1-5.)

To save time, just extend that last point to the rest of Dreher's theses. Ignore them all. They are a mishmash of self-serving, bad logic.

---

Atty Gen Abbott says Speaker Craddick is King

Karen Brooks covers Austin for The Dallas Morning News, and reminds us of what a great state newspaper ought to be. She stayed late Friday night to be there for the release of the Texas Attorney's General's opinion on Speaker Tom Craddick's usurping dicatorial powers over the House in the closing days of the last session. (Who releases anything late Friday night other than a politician wanting the story to be buried?)

Not surprisingly, Atty Gen. Greg Abbott affirmed Speaker Craddick's position that he cannot be removed short of impeachment. Whether House rules give Craddick dictatorial powers is something Abbott prefers to leave to the House itself.

Brooks reports that "House members are expected to go ahead with plans to deal with the issue of his "absolute authority" when they write the rules early next session." That's the story to watch. Contact your legislators and urge them to show some backbone and strip Craddick of his self-assumed dicatorial powers to run the House as he see fits.

DMN Web traffic; Property taxes; Do-Nothing Republicans

The Nightly Build...

---

Yes, It's All Those Pop-Up Ads

Unfair Park's Robert Wilonsky passes on a story from Editor & Publisher that Web traffic has dropped 18% for The Dallas Morning News's Web site. Not good for a business that desperately needs to reinvent itself -- away from dead tree publisher to online content provider.

Wilonsky suggests, only half-jokingly, that the exodus is caused by pop-up ads. That's part of it, I'm sure. The News' home page is cluttered with ads; filled with redundant, confusing, navigation aids; littered with links to stories; but there's precious little to actually read on the home page.

After clicking and surfing for a while, you realize that the journalists at The Dallas Morning News have been gradually disappearing over the years, replaced by more and more wire service stories that you can get anywhere. There's no there, there.

Journalists who are left are trying to reinvent themselves as bloggers. The News has gone to blogs in a big way. The layout of the blogs had been a little cleaner than the home page, but they too have recently been made over to have all the clutter of the home page. And the blogs have been plagued by little bugs. Try to file a comment, click the preview button, then find that you cannot post from the preview screen. Reader comments are being automatically filtered into the moderators' spam folders. Sometimes the moderator just deletes them without notice. When they do show up, you have to really want to read them to find them. Reading the blogs becomes an endless chore of clicking on a blog to see the comments, clicking on your browser's "back" button to go back to the blog, clicking on another story to see its comment thread, and on and on. Blogs that have dozens of posts per day become too tiresome to read.

It seems that more and more, the only time I find myself reading something on the News Web site is when another local blog links to it. Not a good sign for the future of Dallas' only daily newspaper.

---

Who's To Blame For High Property Taxes?

Tom Pauken is whining again about property taxes. He led the governor's Task Force on Appraisal Reform last year, whose recommendations were largely ignored by the legislature for all sorts of reasons, mainly because they had nothing to do with appraisal reform and everything to do with messing with the free market and hamstringing local government in an effort to cut taxes. In fact, the one proposal aimed at ensuring accurate appraisals (sales disclosure) was sponsored by the legislator that Pauken attacks for obstructionism. Middle class houses tend to be fairly appraised already. It's the upper class homes that are typically undervalued. Yet Tom Pauken shows little interest in fair appraisals and a lot of interest in keeping appraisals of those upper class homes from being fairly appraised. For more information on this subject, search this blog for past stories on the subject.

Coincidentally, Dallas Business Journal reported today that Texas collected 9.5% more sales tax this November than it did a year ago. Do you see Tom Pauken complaining about this windfall for state and local governments? Do you see Tom Pauken lobbying for a cut in the state sales tax? No and no.

Why? Sales taxes tend to be regressive. The poor spend more of their income; the rich tend to save more. Sales taxes hit expenditures, not saving. Property taxes, on the other hand, tend to be progressive. The rich pay more because they tend to own more property and their houses tend to be bigger and more lavish. Tom Pauken's lobbying campaign for capping appraisal increases would have the effect of shifting more of the tax burden from the rich to the poor and middle class. He doesn't say that's his goal, but one has to believe that he's well aware of this result and would be happy with it. So, as long as Tom Pauken is whining, the average Texan has reason to be happy.

---

Sen. Coburn Threatens to Throw Himself into Traffic

Tom McGregor, of Dallas Blog, reports that Oklahoma's Republican Senator Tom Coburn "has threatened to throw himself into traffic to slow down the rush of legislative bills that are going through Capitol Hill right now."

First, voters should have no doubt about which party is to blame for this Congress not getting done what voters sent them to Washington to do. The Republicans are going to have to defend their obstruction of the people's will in November, 2008. Senator Tom Coburn is the poster child for the do-nothing Republicans.

Second, would Sen. Coburn throwing himself into traffic be such a bad thing?

Evolution; Televangelist taxes; Candidates for judge

The Nightly Build...

---

Evolution? Not at the TEA

Karen Ayres Smith reports that the state of Texas will review the state's science curriculum standards in 2008, the first such revision in a decade. That means evolution will again be under attack by conservatives. The first shot in this battle was fired last month when the Texas Education Agency (TEA) fired science director Chris Comer for forwarding an email announcing a speech by a prominent scholar on evolution. Even though the current science curriculum standards mandate the teaching of evolution, the TEA science director is not supposed to talk about it. And you wonder why our kids lag the world in science?

Any revisions to the science curriculum must be approved by the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE). Last year, Governor Rick Parry appointed Don McLeroy chairman of the SBOE. McLeroy is quoted as saying:

"I'm a Christian, and I think about how this impacts everything. Religion is not just something you put on the side. It's everything. I see us all created in the image of God. I don't believe nature is all there is."

This is the guy the governor put in charge of science standards for public schools in Texas. Again, you wonder why our kids lag the world in science?

---

Televangelist Taxes

The last item about creationism forcing its way into science classes makes a good segue into the next story. What is religion doing when it's not trying to get into science class? It's living lavishly, of course.

An editorial in The Dallas Morning News endorses a request by Iowa senator Charles Grassley for financial records of televangelist ministries. He wants to assure the televangelists are not abusing the law or their donors. Kenneth Copeland is one target of the request. Copeland was the subject of a Channel 8 story examining his use of a "fancy jet." Copeland's son wonders why Congress is looking into this if the IRS itself hasn't made any complaints. Would that the IRS would do its job. But the IRS is part of the executive branch of government, which is in the hands of George Bush, who gained power through the support of evangelicals. Don't expect any bite from the IRS watchdog as long as that situation holds. Thank Charles Grassley for showing that there's at least one Republican who holds the nation's laws above the self interest of his party's conservative base.

---

Pauken Conspiracy Theories

Tom Pauken is spreading conspiracy theories on Dallas Blog. Dallas Republicans gathered to collect signatures to get on next year's ballot and some Democratic judges had the gumption to watch! It's not as if the Republicans were meeting in secret. It's not as if running for office in secret is even possible. The Republicans already know the incumbents they will face. Likely, the Democrats want to know who they might be facing themselves. Pauken is trying to flame this into a scandal. Lame.

Most readers know Pauken is a life-long Republican. But he doesn't publicly admit that Dallas Blog as a Republican Party organ. Hint to Pauken: don't misspell the Democratic Party's name in your headlines unless you really want to telegraph the partisan bias in the article itself.

Waterboarding; Suing MySpace; Cuban's taxes

The Nightly Build...

---

Who to believe: Mark Davis or John McCain?

Mark Davis is certain. He weighs in on the scandal over CIA destruction of videotapes of agents waterboarding a detainee. He is certain that John McCain, who has personal experience of being tortured, is wrong when he says torture doesn't work. He is equally certain former CIA agent John Kiriakou is right when he says torture does work. Mark Davis has the remarkable skill of being able to tell, with certainty, from his comfortable radio studio on Dallas, Texas, what works and what doesn't work in North Vietnamese prisons and in CIA prisons in Pakistan.

For Mark Davis, "saving American lives is the principle that matters above all others." National laws and principles, international laws and moral outrage over torture, none of these carry any weight with Davis. He's certain that torture is just fine. But why stop at torture? Why not flatten every city, town and village where we even suspect terrorists seek shelter? Why not threaten nuclear annihilation of any country who doesn't surrender to our will? Is there no limit to the evil Americans can and should do in the name of saving Mark Davis' life? Apparently not.

Davis speaks like someone far from the front line, telling others how to put their own lives on the line to keep himself safe and secure. I'll take Senator John McCain's counsel any time over that of a radio rabble rouser. John Kiriakou also speaks with more authority than Mark Davis ever will. But somehow, The Dallas Morning News continues to give Davis a forum. Demagogy sells, I guess.

---

Suing MySpace can be Good Parenting

Trey Garrison, on Frontburner, dismisses a lawsuit filed by parents whose 14 year old daughter committed suicide after being sexually assaulted by a Celina man she met online. Garrison says the parents are suing "because [MySpace] failed to do their parenting for them."

Uh, ... no. Jack Ikin, the family's attorney, says that "the main goal of the lawsuit is to get MySpace to stand up and put in meaningful protections that will make more difficult to search out and find young girls."

Parents should protect their children. Sometimes that means being with them, where parents can watch and shield them from danger. Sometimes that means making the child's environment safe, where the child can explore and gain independence without needing constant parental supervision. These parents, by suing MySpace, are doing the latter, making the environment safe. It is too late to save their child, but it may not be too late for others.

Now, I wouldn't mind discussing what is reasonable and isn't reasonable to expect a social-networking site to do to protect children from online predators. Garrison's implication that such sites should bear no responsibility is a non-starter.

Just because parents carry much responsibility doesn't mean that others like MySpace carry no responsibility whatsoever. And just because Trey Garrison's parents didn't instill in him a sense of responsibility not to recklessly endanger others doesn't excuse the rest of us. If that offends Garrison's caveat emptor philosophy, so be it.

---

Mark Cuban Wants to Pay More Taxes

Glenn Hunter and Trey Garrison are working each other into a lather over recent comments by Mark Cuban that the rich, including Cuban himself, don't pay enough taxes. Hunter cites a Cato Institute (!) study to prove the rich are already taxed enough, thank you very much. Garrison goes him one better and says the poor don't pay their fair share of taxes. Soak the poor is his answer to Cuban.

Maybe Hunter and Garrison consider themselves among the poor and are matching Cuban by volunteering to pay more in taxes themselves. Or maybe their arguments are simply self-serving. You decide. I have a simple rule-of-thumb. When two kids in trouble tell two different stories, with the first kid's story being in his own self interest and the second kid's not, the chances are it's the second kid's story that is closer to the truth. Cuban is that second kid.

A well-regulated militia; Austin and Albany

The Nightly Build...

---

The Second Obsolete?

James W. Dark, executive director of the Texas State Rifle Association, in a Fort Worth Star-Telegram column, does his best to sell the relevancy of the Second Amendment, an eighteenth century law still the law of the land in twenty-first century America. He's right that the Founding Fathers distrusted a standing army and put their trust in a militia to defend our country. But the intent of having a militia was defense against, not bears and wildcats, not house burglars, not a standing American army, but against invading foreign armies. He doesn't tell you that the history of the militia in America wasn't a great success. It was our oceans that protected our freedom, not our militia.

If Dark wants to put his trust back in a militia, then he ought to be lobbying for us to quit ignoring the first part of the Second Amendment, the part that says, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the defense of a free state, ..." The Texas State Rifle Association ought to be lobbying to have active militia, consisting of all able-bodied men, like they envisioned in the eighteenth century. Everyone should be required to attend regular drills, to make sure the arms they bear are in good working condition and everyone is well trained in their use and safety.

But Dark is really interested in only the last part of the Second Amendment, the part that guarantees his right to bear arms. He has no interest in the responsibility that goes along with it, the responsibility for the state to maintain a well-regulated militia. You see, he alos thinks the Second Amendment is obsolete, all except for the parts he likes, that is.

---

Will Austin Eclipse Albany?

Robert T Garrett, on Trail Blazers, points out that the New York governorship has launched the careers of four presidents, six vice presidents, two Supreme Court chief justices and three Secretaries of State. He wonders if Austin will ever be in that company.

Probably not. Texas has a limited form of state government, with a part-time legislature and a weak governor. You don't earn the experience and prestige needed for the national stage in such a setting. George W Bush won the presidency less on his performance in Austin than on his promises to cut taxes and restore dignity to the White House. Voters would have done better if they had listened to the promises less and dug into that Austin stay more.

Party at Perot's

The Nightly Build...

---

Mayor to Media: You're Not Invited

A party thrown by the Mayor of Dallas in the penthouse of Ross Perot Jr. atop the W Hotel does raise eyebrows about the too-cozy relationship between developers and politicians. Especially when it's an unpublicized private party, with media excluded, and whole City Council is there. James Ragland, in a column in The Dallas Morning News, raised his eyebrows at the secrecy and the exclusion of the public's watchdog, the press. Then, Michael Davis of Dallas Progress, and a bit of a watchdog himself, in a letter to the editor, barked, who cares, as long as the mayor shows his face in Oak Cliff, too. Then, James Ragland, in a Sunday blog posting, retorted, why should anyone care what Michael Davis thinks? Then, Trey Garrison, in his own blog post on Frontburner, pops some corn and watches the fight, doing a little heckling himself, but only a little for Garrison.

That's where I come in, to try to get this mud wrestling back in the ring at least. Ragland is asking some good questions. We all should care, not just about whether the mayor pays attention to this neighborhood or that, but about the openness of the process. That's why Texas has an open meetings law. The mayor should live up to the spirit of the law, not just the letter. Because the voters are welcome to toss the whole too-cozy bunch out if he doesn't.

Boy Scouts; Religion and Freedom

The Nightly Build...

---

Philadelphia Evicts Boy Scouts

Tom Pauken has identified what he perceives as a case of political correctness in Philadelphia. City officials are evicting the Boy Scouts from their city-owned building because of the organization's "prohibiting membership by anyone who is openly homosexual." Jeff Jubelirer, a spokesman for the Boy Scouts, was quoted as saying:

"With an epidemic of gun violence taking the lives of children almost daily in this city, it’s ironic that this administration chose to destroy programming that services thousands of children in the city."

Jubelier didn't specify whether he was talking about the administration of the city or the administration of the Boy Scouts, since both groups are choosing to destroy programming rather than compromise their principles.

You can either stand with bigotry, discrimination and Tom Pauken, or you can stand with justice, equal rights and political correctness. Congratulations to Philadelphia for making the right choice.

---

Is Religion Necessary for Freedom?

The journalists at DallasMorningViews were debating that topic today. Rod Dreher had this to say:

"Clearly being religious is not a sufficient condition to guarantee public morality. But is it a necessary one? I think so, at least in the long term. When religion is sincerely held, it raises a particular moral code to the level of metaphysical truth. We can, and do, argue over right and wrong all the time, but in a religious country, the idea that there is such a thing as "right" and "wrong," and that it's objectively true for everyone, is really important. If God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted. Which, in less starkly pious terms, is only to say that absent appeal to religion, there is no final determination of right and wrong, and life then becomes about doing whatever you want to, provided you can avoid prosecution and live with your guilt."

Dreher apparently derives his morality from his belief in God. He imagines that if one grows out of a belief in God, one leaves behind morality as well. This is wrong. It's a fallacy believed by many religious people, even intelligent and educated people. Saying atheists believe life is only "about doing whatever you want" reveals a profound ignorance on Dreher's part.

In fact, atheists are capable of believing in "right" and "wrong", even in absolute right and wrong. For Dreher, these ideas emanate from a supreme being. Believers can't say where God came from. Atheists can't say where absolute right and wrong come from. They just are.

Atheists with a scientific bent can do a pretty good job of defining right and wrong as something innate. Principles hardwired through millions of years of evolution. Principles that lead to altruism, charity, and sacrifice for the good of self, family, community, humanity. Principles that humans are no more free to change or discard than their breathing and sleeping.

Contrast that to the religious view of right and wrong, which is the arbitrary whim of a supreme being. Why is something right? Because God says so. Why is something wrong? Because God says so. God may have good reasons, his believers may be able to defend God's choices, but, in the end, if God had said the opposite, we'd all have to become murderers and adulterers to enter heaven. Why? Because God said so.

Personally, I'm more inclined to trust the judgment of a moral atheist than a pious religious person. For you know the atheist is doing right because it's right. The religious person is doing it to please an authority figure, or worse, out of fear of offending that authority figure. (Or perhaps to win an election, but that's another story altogether.)

Appraisal reform; National sales tax; Strip clubs

The Nightly Build...

---

Conflicts of Interest?

Tom Pauken couldn't get what he wanted in the last Texas legislative session so now he's attacking the legislators personally.

Tom Pauken wanted to handcuff local governments in the name of "appraisal reform". Property taxes are based on property value. When property values go up, so do property taxes, unless the taxing authorities cut rates. Pauken doesn't like the fact that elected representatives aren't cutting rates fast enough to suit him, so he wants to restrict their powers. Why doesn't he just ask voter to turn them out of office? Why, indeed? Maybe because he knows that local voters like their local representatives.

If Pauken can't get local voters to elect people who'll do what Pauken wants, and he can't get state legislators to force local government to do what Pauken wants, what's his next tactic? It's to personally attack the state legislators, which he does in a Dallas Blog column accusing two of Pauken's leading opponents of conflicts of interest. Sensing the charge might be too subtle for voters to get worked up about, Pauken also accuses one, Mike Villareal, of being "rude" to the point of "obnoxiousness". (Oh my!) He says Villareal was uncooperative with Pauken's traveling marketing campaign last year. (Double oh my!)

Pauken conveniently neglects to mention that Mike Villareal strongly supported mandatory sales disclosure. If you want "appraisal reform", the nominal subject of Pauken's failed task force, then you have to start with accurate appraisals. And nothing will advance that goal better than mandatory sales disclosure. This reform was not pushed by Pauken. Pauken doesn't attack legislators who fought against this reform. No, he attacks a legislator who fought for it.

Pauken has his own agenda here that he's not revealing and it's not appraisal reform.

---

Scott Burns' Picks: Gravel and Paul

The wisdom of The Dallas Morning News' personal finance columnist Scott Burns is at its best when advising individuals about credit card use, but the quality tails off when advising the country about national politics. His advice about the 2008 Presidential election should be approached with great caution. He asks voters to consider Sen. Mike Gravel and Rep. Ron Paul. Really.

First, he advises voting for a candidate who wants to replace our current income tax with a national sales tax. The intended effect is to encourage saving over consumption. That would be good. But an unintended side effect would be to increase inequality. That would be bad.

Assuming any such plan is revenue neutral, if someone ends up paying less tax, someone else has to pay more. With a sales tax, people who save more would pay less taxes. People who save less, would pay more. In today's world, who saves more - the rich or the poor? So, even though a national sales tax would encourage everyone, rich or poor, to save more, the result of this proposal will be to favor the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class. Not such a good idea. Talk of compensating for this by making cash grants to the poor is simply an admission that the plan is highly regressive in nature. No thanks.

Second, Burns recommends voting out of office anyone who voted for Social Security reform in 1983, for making decades of overspending and lies possible. Instead, how about targeting the politicians who did the actual overspending and lying? Remember the Clinton Presidency, where the budget deficits of Reagan and Bush senior gradually gave way to budget surpluses? Remember the 2000 campaign, when Al Gore proposed using the coming budget surpluses to pay down the national debt and George Bush proposed leaving the debt in place and returning the annual surpluses in the form of tax cuts? Remember the years since when a Republican President and a Republican Congress oversaw a ballooning of federal debt? The sins we are paying for now weren't committed in 1983.

---

Strip Clubs: If you can't close 'em, tax 'em

Frontburner's Trey Garrison doesn't think much of a proposed state-mandated $5 cover charge at strip clubs to pay for sexual assault prevention programs. He says that the director of Texas Association Against Sexual Assault (TAASA), which is behind the proposal, "believes in her cause so much that she's unhesitant to dig deep into other people's pockets to pay for it."

Well, that libertarian viewpoint is one way to look at it, I suppose. I don't have that same knee-jerk reaction against communities trying to uphold a certain quality of life by means like this. TAASA probably thinks that strip clubs directly contribute to sexual assaults, so taxing strip club patrons is a way of making them pay to clean up the harm that results from them being in business. Or perhaps TAASA believes that the tax will discourage attendance, thus reducing the number of sexual assaults that occur. This community strategy could be justified, similar to the strategy of taxing cigarettes and alcohol, provided there's some evidence that the underlying assumption is true -- that strip clubs lead to sexual assaults. I haven't seen any such evidence and I doubt TAASA has any.

Anti-Mormonism; National Security and Human Rights; Open borders, Open Hearts

The Nightly Build...

---

Romney's Mission Impossible

Mark Davis, in The Dallas Morning News, offers unsolicited advice to Mitt Romney about what he should say in the speech on religion that Romney plans to give at the George HW Bush Presidential Library.

Mark Davis first declares his own religious beliefs off limits for discussion. Davis believes Jesus actually rose from the dead, admits that his belief is illogical, but says there's no use trying to reason with him. On the other hand, Davis declares open season on Mitt Romney's Mormon beliefs, which he dismisses because objective historians can find no evidence to support. Quite a double standard, that. What it amounts to is this. My religion is immune from reasoned argument. Your religion is nutty. Don't argue.

Davis warns Romney not to even try justifying his beliefs. It'll only reinforce the opinion of conservative Christians who'll wonder: if Romney can believe that, what else will he believe?

Davis also pre-emptively shoots down any appeal for tolerance, dismissing that as mere platitude. Davis doesn't say it, but tolerance is a dirty word to movement conservatives.

Pretty much the only thing left for Romney to say is that he shares the movement conservative agenda against abortion, gay rights, etc. Which is what Romney has based his campaign on all along, and which isn't working.

Bottom line? Mark Davis is telling Romney he's screwed. Movement conservatives like Mark Davis have their minds made up and there's nothing Romney can say to change them.

---

Defending America's Constitution

Tara Ross, in Dallas Blog, rants against a University of Texas Law School program, the "National Security and Human Rights" clinic. She is disheartened that UT would "defend America's enemies", as she puts it. She draws a line between criminals, who have Constitutional rights, and terrorists, who have no such rights. She would deny detainees access to the courts even to contest their classification as terrorists.

Ross uses over the top alarmist argument, claiming that admitting that detainees have any rights at all will result in soldiers having to read Miranda rights to enemy combatants on the battlefield.

Ross says she is not suggesting there is no room for rule of law in war, when, in fact, that's just what she is doing. She says we must always behave honorably, but then dishonorably cedes to one man, the President, the power to imprison whoever he wants, without charge, indefinitely, and torture them. She dishonorably surrenders any checks or balances on this power, any questioning of the limits of such powers, at least any questioning by the UT Law School. So much for the rule of law.

There's no reason not to be proud of the UT Law School, whose principled actions in this instance make Ross' shame equivalent to being ashamed of America. However, having just learned that Ross herself is a graduate, my respect for the law school did drop a notch.

---

Open-border open-heart-ism

DallasMorningView's Rod Dreher has an astonishing new take on the problem of millions of Americans not having health insurance. He quotes extensively from a reader who faced financial ruin after having a serious car accident and no insurance. The country doesn't have universal health insurance. Those rich enough to afford insurance can buy it privately. Those fortunate to have jobs with employers who cover health insurance get it with their jobs. The poor can fall back on Medicaid. Dreher's correspondent didn't fit any of those categories. And so he was faced with financial ruin.

Who does Dreher's correspondent blame for his impending financial ruin? Bush and Cheney and the Republicans in Congress who for decades have fought tooth and nail against guaranteed health insurance for people in situations like Dreher's correspondent? No. Democrats for letting Republicans outmaneuver them at every turn in the political battles over universal health insurance? No.

No, he blames... wait for it... illegal immigrants. Specifically, some Mexican family's brother from Hidalgo who was treated for complications from diabetes at Parkland Hospital.

Somewhere, a Republican is smiling. He has a new argument to turn back the next attempt at achieving universal health insurance in this country. Blame the illegal immigrants.

Global warming; Celebrity worship

The Nightly Build...

---

An Inconvenient Blindness

Carlene Ness, community columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, demonstrates a lack of understanding of the science surrounding climate change. In fact, she doesn't take on the scientists or the findings of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Instead, she ridicules pop culture icons like Christine Aguilera, Sheryl Crow and Madonna.

Implying we have plenty of time, Ness asserts that "climate change isn't measured in a century or two but over millennia." Yes, natural change in the past was measured that slowly. But the problem humans face today is human-caused change, not natural change. That will be measurable in decades. It already is.

Ness confuses weather forecasts with climate change. Any Texan knows all too well that the weather can change in a hurry. Flip a coin once and you can only guess whether you'll get heads or tails. That's weather. But flip it a thousand times and scientists can tell you with great confidence what range of heads and tails to expect. That's climate. Now, scientists are observing that one side of our metaphorical coin is getting heavier. That doesn't help them much in guessing the outcome of the next coin flip, but it helps a lot in changing their prediction for the outcome of the next thousand coin flips. They are still working out how much heavier our coin is getting and how fast, so there's still plenty of room for study, but the overall trend is clear.

Ness uses the history of horses in New York City to reassure us that something will come along, like the automobile did, and save us all from being buried in horse manure. We already know what that something is. It's conservation, alternative fuels, a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, global population control, etc. Carlene Ness can continue to bury her head in the sand, pretending that there is no problem or, if there is, that someone else will solve it for us, or she can begin to offer constructive alternatives for reducing humanity's ever-growing impact on the globe's climate.

---

Celebrity Worship in Evangelicalism

Uh oh... William McKenzie, editorial columnist for The Dallas Morning News, might have stepped in it today. He quotes, approvingly, Frank Schaeffer, author of Crazy for God:

"Big-time American Christianity is incompatible with the Gospel. It is part of the entertainment business. No matter what you think you are doing, you are really just another celebrity in a celebrity-obsessed culture."

I've always found it ironic how Protestantism, founded on a rejection of priests, bishops and popes as intermediaries to God, has come to embrace celebrity worship of preachers like Pat Robertson, James Dobson, James Robison, Jerry Falwell, Rick Warren, and Joel Osteen. For a religion that preaches that the Bible contains all you need to know, there sure is a lot of personality cult involved.

What's surprising about all this is not that someone is pointing it out, but that someone is an editorial columnist for The Dallas Morning News. The News versus Evangelicalism. That's a fight that I never thought I'd see. And, despite William McKenzie's opening jab, it's a fight that I don't expect to see the News pursue.

Murchison and Dreher, fuddy-duddies

The Nightly Build...

---

William Murchison Is Scared of the World

Frontburner's Tim Rogers skewers William Murchison for his op-ed piece in The Dallas Morning News reacting to the attack on a woman on the Katy Trail.

Murchison warns that civilization's "circle of sunlight" is shrinking. Murchison sees no churches, priests, pastors, youth leaders setting a moral example anymore. He bemoans that "the iPod generation" rejects "the old guy in the sky" - God.

Tim Rogers wonders whether Murchison is putting us on, whether his piece is really a "satirical send-up of something that an out-of-touch, scared old fuddy-duddy would write," something that might have been written for The Onion. A commenter suggests that Murchison's time has come and gone, unless he wants to cross the picket line and work for Colbert.

Murchison doesn't appear in the pages of the News much anymore ( the News does get some things right, after all), but you can enjoy him regularly in Dallas' own right wing tabloid, Dallas Blog. If you enjoy unintentional satire, that is.

---

Rod Dreher is Afraid of Malls

Even though Murchison is gone from the pages of the News, his place has been taken by a younger disciple of the philosophy that the country is going to hell in a handbasket, that life was better in an earlier era. It's Rod Dreher and he calls his philosophy Crunchy Conservatism, but it's mostly tired old William Murchison dressed up in modern language. Take today's lament, "Shopocalypse Now" (clever, no?). Dreher has just discovered that Christmas decorations go up in stores before Thanksgiving. He points out the real enemy of Christmas, ... no, not atheists, but the shopping mall. He plaintively preaches to his readers that "it really is possible to enjoy the season without giving oneself over to the frenzy and anxiety of the shopping ritual." Other than a reference to relieving himself in the mall bathroom, which Murchison is too old fashioned and decorous to ever write, Dreher's essay contains all the trite pet peeves one can imagine bothering Murchison, too. Murchison's decline and Dreher's rise at the News proves them both wrong. Contrary to their belief in the decline of civilization, in truth, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Mitt and Mormonism; Dead Men Don't Vote

The Nightly Build...

---

Time to Channel JFK

The Dallas Morning News editorializes that it's time for Mitt Romney to give a JFK-like speech about his religion and how it shouldn't disqualify him from the Presidency. The News recognizes the catch here. JFK ran in a time when there was a broad consensus on the separation of church and state. He had to convince voters, even conservative Christians, that he believed that, too. Today, conservative Christians positively want religion to direct public policy, just not Romney's religion.

The other catch, not mentioned by the News, is that Catholicism was generally well known in JFK's time. Today, most Americans still don't have a clue what Mormonism is all about. Even though Romney's Mormonism may be holding him back in the polls, the religion is not being discussed openly in the campaign. If Romney makes the speech the News urges, that changes. If the press starts airing all the silly beliefs that Mormons believe, will that really help Mitt Romney? His silence on the subject tells us what he thinks the answer is.

---

Stop the Presses: Dead Man Didn't Vote!

Surprise! Auditors found 49,000 dead people, felons and duplicates on state voter rolls. So says Christine DeLoma on Dallas Blog. She warns us that these dead people are "potential ineligible voters." She leaves the impression that we should purge the voter rolls and do it now.

Buried deep within her story, she tells us that this makes up a miniscule 0.4% of all eligible voters. More telling, she admits that "there were no instances of ineligible voters casting a ballot during the May 12, 2007 special election." None.

She details all the usual bookkeeping errors that led to outdated public records, but isn't in the least concerned that these same bookkeeping errors might erase eligible voters from the rolls as well. Overzealous purges almost guarantee it. The bookkeeping errors in those cases won't always be so innocent.

Texas ought to be more concerned about increasing the pitifully low turnouts our elections now draw. And not let conservatives like Christine DeLoma, who has worked for Republican politicians and anti-abortion groups, use scare stories about dead people on the rolls to serve as cover for our politically motivated Republican Secretary of State to disenfranchise the poor and African-Americans and Hispanics, who happen to be the groups that tend to vote Democratic.

Immigrant study; Trinity tollway

The Nightly Build...

---

Welcome to America. Now go home.

Mike Hashimoto cites an "interesting new study" about immigration statistics. He implies some kind of conspiracy of silence over the study among mainstream media, even though he says the story was in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today. His own newspaper, The Dallas Morning News, didn't cover it, but it's usually safer to assume incompetence rather than bias to explain anything going on in that paper.

None of the statistics Hashimoto cites from the study is new. The percentage of the immigrant population is now about the same as it was in the 1920s. There are about 12 million illegal immigrants. Texas has a larger percentage of illegal immigrants than the nation as a whole. Immigration keeps America's population growing. Yada, yada, yada. Does anyone see any news here? I'm not surprised the study received little press. Or maybe that's due to the bias of the organization itself.

Hashimoto quotes from the "mission" of the organization behind the study, something called the Center for Immigration Studies. They have a "low immigration vision". They say they want to provide a "warmer welcome" for immigrants. Apparently, they want to start by kicking most of them out. Interesting, indeed.

---

Hide the Ball. Show the Ball. Re-hide the Ball.

The big Trinity River tollway election may be come and gone, but the toll road isn't built yet, and Jim Schutze won't let The Dallas Morning News forget that it's not all paid for yet, either. He tells us that during the election campaign, Mayor Tom Leppart told voters that "he had looked them in the eye at the North Texas Tollway Authority and that he was very comfortable that they were never going to ask the city for more money no matter what the road costs." It turned out that NTTA never made such a promise. In fact, NTTA reserved the right to come back for more money if tolls didn't cover the cost of building the road.

The Dallas Morning News knew this, but didn't say anything until the day after the election and, then, only buried in a long story. Jim Schutze caught it. But did other The Dallas Morning News reporters? Schutze points out another hidden reference to the costs, this time in a Bruce Tomaso story about the mayor's interest in speeding up the project, in part to keep costs from ballooning. Tomaso says, without elaboration, "The city is committed to pay $84 million in bond money, regardless of the final cost." He doesn't point out that NTTA is not committed to building the tollway unless the city helps pick up the cost overruns.

Good job, Schutze. Keep showing us why why media conglomeration is a bad thing. Readers, support independent local media like Unfair Park to keep the dinosaurs honest.

Baptism in the womb; Peace conference

The Nightly Build...

---

Religion has Nothing to Say about Abortion

Or so says historian Garry Wills anyway. DallasNews Religion blog has an energetic discussion about a recent commentary by Wills about abortion. Wills claims that abortion is not a religious issue, that there is no theological basis for defending or condemning abortion. He says the issue hinges on whether the fetus is a person and that religion has not always been consistent on that question.

"The Catholic Church [did not] treat abortion as murder in the past. If it had, late-term abortions and miscarriages would have called for treatment of the well-formed fetus as a person, which would require baptism and a Christian burial."

This led to a heated debate on the religion blog over whether Wills was suggesting the church should baptize dead bodies or if he was instead suggesting that if the church believed fetuses to be persons, then baptism of (living) fetuses in the womb would have been the practice.

The debate over what Garry Wills meant reminds me of the endless arguments over what this or that line of Scripture really means. If we can't agree what a contemporary English speaker like Wills meant, we'll never agree on what a bunch of ancients meant. Heck, we can't even agree on who wrote what, when.

No matter what Wills may have meant, his commentary prompts a very good question. Why in the world would God create a fetal development system that leaves the fetus in the womb for nine months, out of reach of saving baptismal waters? Especially since a huge number of pregnancies result in spontaneous abortions before the mother even knows she's pregnant. You'd think God would have arranged for his church to create a baptismal sacrament around the sex act itself, just in case it was going to result in a pregnancy. If he did, think of all the millions and millions of zygotes who would be freed from limbo.

P.S. The above observations were submitted as a comment to the religion blog, but were not accepted by the moderator. As always, if you want to read the uncensored Ed Cognoski, you can only get that here!

---

Recasting the War against Terrorism

William McKenzie is excited about the renewal of the Mideast peace process. Why? Because it gets the focus back on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, which has a lot more to do with terrorism than the war in Iraq does. McKenzie thinks that's where the US focus should have been after Afghanistan instead of invading Iraq. Better late than never for the Bush administration.

Now just because the Israelis and Palestinians are talking again doesn't mean peace is at hand. That conflict is too deep rooted for quick solutions. But I agree with McKenzie that at least the US is now looking in the right place. Terrorism springs from the conflict in Jerusalem, not Baghdad. The War in Iraq didn't change the dynamics of the region for the better. The war was a distraction. The war just made things worse. Maybe, just maybe, this week's peace conference marks a turning point in America's five years of foreign policy disaster.

Brothels and space aliens; Taking marriage private

The Nightly Build...

---

Dallas Tabloid

In today's installment of "I Read Dallas Blog So You Don't Have To", I bring you two stories published in our city's own trashy tabloid. The first is Tom McGregor's campaign coverage titled "BunnyRanch Brothel Owner Endorses Ron Paul." Dallas Blog seems to have missed the fact that MSNBC television personality Tucker Carlson arranged for the endorsement without the knowledge or consent of the Ron Paul campaign. Tabloids do know how to pick out the juicy parts of a manufactured non-story, don't they?

The second story is also by Tom McGregor, this time a tabloid staple about New Mexico and a tourism ad campaign featuring "hideous looking aliens" and "drooling, grotesque office workers from outer space." Yawn. Dallas Blog might be slipping. Please give us more Boy-George-chains-man-to-wall and African-immigrants-eat-monkey-meat stories, please.

---

Privatize Marriage

Referring to a New York Times op-ed advocating taking marriage private, Nicole Stockdale asks "Is it feasible -- or desirable -- for states to get out of the marriage business?." Michael Landauer answers:

"The government should get out of the 'marriage' business altogether and only focus on the 'civil union' contracts that are essential tools in managing people's estates. We have blurred the seperation of church and state on marriage out of a romantic notion of tradition. Truth is, marriage is seen as a legal contract by the government and by a holy covenant by most churches. They are two separate transactions already, and we should make that more clear in the labels we use."

Hooray. I said much the same thing three months ago when an Iowa's judge's ruling in favor of gay marriage set off a mini-storm among the religious right.

"Differentiate between marriage and civil unions. The former is a religious bond. The latter a legal contract. The state shouldn't be setting the rules for religion and the church shouldn't be enforcing legal contracts. Quit mixing the two up."

Do you think anyone will listen now that the idea is being talked about in The New York Times and The Dallas Morning News?

Gas Guzzlin' Texans; PTA podcasts

The Nightly Build...

---

Gas Guzzlin' Texans

Unfair Park's Rob Wilonsky explains why he doesn't listen to NPR anymore -- it's for their stereotyping Texans in a story that quotes a Texan on the subject of big cars: "Here, it's the bigger the truck, the better off you are; the bigger the gas guzzler you are, the better off you are." Wilonsky doesn't think the stereotype is fair. As evidence, he cites the "brawl over the coal-burning plants" that north Texas had earlier this year. One might argue that the fact it took a "brawl" to stop the coal-burning plants is evidence that the gas-guzzlin' stereotype fits a lot of Texans. In contrast, Massachusetts' brawls are over wind farms. No one there would even try putting coal-burning power plants in Martha's Vineyard.

Ironically, Wilonsky himself provides evidence of the truth behind the stereotype. In the post just before the one berating NPR, Wilonsky told his Texas readers all about a Farmers Branch car dealer who manufactured knock-offs of the 1967 Shelby GT500E, a car that got, what, 8.4 MPG? Apparently, there is demand for gas guzzlers in Texas and journalists who cater to those stereotypical Texans. But I'll still read Wilonsky anyway.

---

PTA Podcasts

The Dallas Morning News shows just how trendy it can be when it recommends podcasts for PTA as a way of increasing parental involvement in their children's schools. A Highland Park middle school just spent $1280 setting up podcasts of PTA meetings. I suspect some geek parent or geek administrator just managed to get the PTA and HPISD to fund that geek's latest toy. If parents are too busy to attend long, boring PTA meetings, they'll be too busy to sit through equally long, boring PTA podcasts. PTAs typically schedule student plays and concerts the night of PTA meetings to get busy parents to attend. There's no substitute for parents actually being there in the audience where their child can see them beaming with pride. Listening to a podcast later won't cut it.

This isn't to say there aren't better ways to document and communicate what the PTA is up to. PTAs regularly publish minutes of meetings. A sixty minute meeting can be condensed into a five minute read. Historically these take the form of printed minutes that are passed out at the next meeting. In other words, stale news available only to the people who were probably at the last meeting and know what happened anyway. Making PTA meeting minutes immediately available on the Web for parents who missed the meeting is good. But putting a sixty minute meeting into a podcast is a waste of time.

Flag pins; DUI; Dictator Watch; Thanksgiving

The Nightly Build...

---

Of Flags and Patriotism

In The Dallas Morning News, Mark Davis is still trashing Barack Obama for not wearing a flag lapel pin and not always putting his hand over his heart during the playing of the national anthem. Davis disingenuously says he isn't suggesting Obama is "some closet radical", when, of course, that's exactly what he is doing, going on to say that Obama "snubs the flag" and is "unfit for the presidency."

Conservatives have been using the flag to divide Americans since at least the McCarthy and Nixon eras. George H. W. Bush famously used an American flag factory itself as a photo op to wrap himself in the American flag. Conservatives do no honor to the American flag by using it to cudgel political opponents. I'll take Barack Obama's patriotism over Mark Davis' any day. Samuel Johnson said, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." He might have been reading Mark Davis when he said it.

---

Complacent about DUI?

Betsy Simnacher of The Dallas Morning News asks, "Where is the outrage about drunken driving?" She says Americans are way too accepting of drivers who drink and drive.

Perhaps so. Personally, I thought that DUI penalties had been tightened, that education campaigns for designated drivers and against drinking and driving were largely effective, and incidents of DUI were down.

So, I did a little digging. According to a 2001 survey by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, nearly all Americans reported that they perceived drinking and driving to threaten their personal safety. According to the 1995 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) 16 percent of drivers reported that they had driven while under the influence of alcohol in the past year. So, it appears that the message is getting out, but not everybody is doing what they know is good for them.

Given the obvious fact that alcohol impairs judgment, there may be a natural limit to how much further we can reduce rates of DUI without drafting the support of bar and restaurant owners, friends, family, etc. If society as a whole no longer wants to tolerate drunken driving, then society as a whole is going to have to take a more active enforcement role. It's time to assign more legal responsibility to those who don't put up any resistance when someone around them drinks and drives ... and kills.

---

Dictator Watch

When our city's very own tabloid Dallas Blog isn't telling us what sex scandal Boy George is up to, or where to find Florida prostitutes, or what human body parts you might find on your next amusement park ride, it is keeping up with the comings and goings of the world's dictators. Tom Pauken makes sure we don't miss any of the evildoers' doings.

Today, he tells us that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is having a hard time keeping his thugs in line, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe is getting picked on by the British, Mexico's Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has some followers who can't sit still in church, and America's Rudy Giuliani (Rudy, too?!?!) isn't best friends with the real heroes of 9/11, the New York firefighters.

How much does Tom Pauken care for all these fellows? Not so much, is my guess. But he is sure obsessed with them.

---

Thanksgiving, Our Great National Myth

Bruce Tomaso of DallasNews Religion finds Steve Gushee's musings about Thanksgiving worthy of note. Gushee says there's little historical accuracy in our national legend of the first Thanksgiving, but nevertheless, the legend serves to draw all Americans into a common heritage.

Well, I suppose, as long as we all know exactly what that heritage really is. National myths describe who we as a nation want to be, not who we are in practice. Learning the historical truth, learning where we failed to live up to the myths, striving to change our ways, to do better, to earn the pride that comes with the myths, that's the real value of national myths. Thanksgiving is a great opportunity for learning.

Income gap; Scott McClellan

The Nightly Build...

---

The Return of the Gilded Age

Is the economy good or bad? Don Erler, in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, tells us that it's good and getting better all the time. He dismisses the growing income gap between rich and poor by pointing out that "80 percent of poor American households have air conditioning, up from 66 percent a decade earlier?" So, quit complaining, you've got air conditioning, don't you?

In fact, growing income inequality is something to worry about, even if we are all living with more amenities than our grandparents did. If you value the America of the late 1940s and 1950s, it's probably because of the rise of the middle class. If you remember a time when we all shared the same values, it's probably middle class values you think of. The reason those values ruled America in those years was because the size of the middle class had grown to dominate the American scene. The income gap that characterized the Gilded Age (think tenements, child labor, wretched working conditions, contrasted with estates and mansions, dinner parties and servants) gave way to a vast middle class (think home ownership and automobiles and education and health care). Unfortunately, the shrinking of the income gap lasted only from about 1940 to about 1980. Just as quickly as the income gap disappeared, it reappeared. And as the gap grows again, the middle class is shrinking. Expect the benefits that a middle class brings society to disappear as well. This should concern us. When history looks back on our age, the disappearance of the middle class will be more important than whether another 14 percent of American homes got air conditioning or not.

---

Scott McClellan Passes the Buck

Is there a reason why political insiders won't tell the truth until it's too late to matter? Back in the days of Watergate, special prosecutor Archibald Cox, Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus all resigned on principle rather than participate in Richard Nixon's illegal coverup of White House crimes. In the current White House, Scott McClellan, former press secretary to President Bush, loyally does his president's bidding, only setting the record straight long after he's out of office. According to Trail Blazers, McClellan is writing a book in which he tells us something everyone in the country knew in 2004:

"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true. I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the President himself."

Global warming; Drivers' licenses; Belief in God

The Nightly Build...

---

The Three Stages of Denial

Denial of global warming often goes through three stages. First, denial that global warming is real. Next, denial that humans play a role. Last, denial that anything can be done about it. Only after that last stage of denial is overcome can progress begin. Rod Dreher of The Dallas Morning News has reached that third stage of denial. He smugly relates how quickly he can kill a conversation about global warming just by pointing out the flaws in proposed solutions. As if no one has ever considered that slowing global warming and ameliorating its negative environmental impact won't come cheaply. As if his own status quo strategy (dare I call it "stay the course"?) itself isn't impractical for various political, economic and scientific reasons.

I'm reminded of the scene in the movie "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" where Butch and Sundance find themselves on the edge of a cliff, caught between certain capture and hanging at the hands of a pursuing posse and a death-risking leap off the cliff into a river far below. Sundance won't jump, finally admitting that he doesn't know how to swim. Butch laughs out loud, saying "The fall alone is enough to kill you!"

When the status quo is untenable and you have no good choices available, then the least bad choice is what you choose to do. Rod Dreher will eventually join Butch and Sundance in that leap from the cliff. Not because it's easy or because it guarantees success, but because it offers the only hope for success, however slim. The status quo leads to disaster.

---

Driving Illegals Underground

Bob Ray Sanders of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram dares to take an unpopular stand. He comes right out and says "New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was right the first time when he proposed issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants." Asked if she agreed, Hillary Clinton waffled a bit in her support of Gov. Spitzer. After a barrage of criticism and Gov. Spitzer's own retreat on the issue, she changed her answer in the next debate to a flat "No". Only Gov. Bill Richardson dared to stand firm, defending signing a similar bill in New Mexico as a matter of public safety, a tool for identifying residents of New Mexico and decreasing the number of uninsured motorists.

This incident foretells the future of immigration reform in this country. Reformers will be unable to muster a majority to get comprehensive reform through Congress. Conservatives will exploit cultural backlash against piecemeal reform. Poor, unskilled immigrants will still be needed and wanted and hired for low-wage jobs, but roadblocks against filling those jobs legally will remain high. What meager rights and privileges and benefits illegal aliens possess will be repealed. More and more punitive measures will be passed. Illegal immigrants in this country will be driven more and more into the shadows, not allowed to sleep inside our city limits or send their children to our schools. We will become two Americas: one of affluence and rights and privileges and one of poverty and exploitation and living outside the law. Bob Ray Sanders points out that encouraging this state of affairs actually wins elections for many politicians. As long as that's so, expect things to get much worse before they get better.

---

God is Like the Wind

God is like the wind: "You can't see it, you can't touch it, you can't catch it, you can't pin it down, but you can see what it does. And you know that it's there." At least, according to a Jesuit author, the Rev James Martin, in an essay cited by DallasNews Religion blogger Bruce Tomaso.

Besides the obvious falsehood about our inability to catch the wind (windmills? sailboats? vacuums and bellows?), Martin misrepresents the position of skeptics. He says, "Most atheists conclude that if there isn't a logical proof for God, then God doesn't exist."

Most atheists don't make that mistake. Atheists simply find the evidence for the existence of God to be unconvincing, just like the evidence for the existence a celestial teapot or a flying spaghetti monster is unconvincing. Most atheists know that doesn't prove celestial teapots don't exist, only that there's no compelling reason to believe in them.

Atheists don't demand "proof", or even evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. Just a preponderance of evidence would lead a host of scientists into the field of God research. But believers can't provide enough evidence to make it even a close call. The Rev. Martin admits as much, saying that belief in God "transcends rationality." Defies rationality would be more like it.

The Rev. Martin rhapsodizes about love and longing and joy. That isn't evidence of God's existence, unless he wants us to believe that God's reality is nothing more than the reality of Santa Claus. I think most atheists would go along with Francis P. Church of The New York Sun, who famously wrote in 1897:

"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy."

The Duomo it ain't

DallasNews Religion | Bruce Tomaso:

“Sarah More McCann of Religion News Service writes of an odd preservation fight over a Washington, D.C., church, Third Church of Christ, Scientist. The church's members think it's plug-ugly, and they want to tear it down. But preservationists say it's a great example of the 'brutalist' architectural style from the 1970s and ought to be saved.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

There's another example of the 'brutalist' architectural style that's been targeted for the wrecking ball. It's a college campus building, not a church. This one's in Madison, Wisconsin. It's the Humanities Building on the University of Wisconsin campus (unaffectionately called the Inhumanities Building for its appearance). So far, there's no organized opposition to demolishing it, but I won't be surprised if organized opposition springs up, given newspaper stories like this one:

"It's apt that the Humanities Building is both complex and a struggle to fathom. Designed by Chicago's Harry Weese, it was built between 1966 and 1969 during the Vietnam War-era turbulence. Sick of broken windows, tear gas and unruly protesters, university administrators were determined to erect a riot-proof building. Weese certainly gave them that."

Something is lost when we tear down old buildings without really understanding the architecture or the times that produced them.

Fox News Porn

Related to the last item, commenting on how blogs like Dallas Blog are providing us an alternative to the biased liberal mainstream media, I can't help passing along this link to some of the wholesome fare aired by Fox News, the family values network. I guess we can be thankful that Dallas Blog, which recently gave us the "Boy George Chained Male Escort to Wall" story, hasn't sunk this low ... yet.

Update 11/17/2007: Just one day after I posted the above, Dallas Blog has a story, "Orlando Newspaper Sales Reps Busted for Promoting Prostitution", that seems to be mainly an excuse to post a photo of a sexy woman and talk about "sultry coeds, naughty nurses and girls with come-hither names like 'Rush' and 'Roxie.'". It looks like Dallas Blog has now officially sunk as low as Fox News Porn. ;-)

Red light cameras; Deleting emails; Alberto Gonzales; School prayer

The Nightly Build...

---

Red Means Stop

This was so predictable. Cities wanted to stop red light runners. They installed automatic cameras at problem intersections. The state said the cities were greedy, they were just after the money. The state's response? Take the money for itself. The state promised to fund emergency rooms and trauma centers. Now, as it turns out, the state never followed through. The Dallas Morning News is right to complain. The greed in this story is in Austin, far away from the accidents, injuries and deaths caused by red light runners on our city streets.

---

Disk Space is Free

It seems that state agencies in Austin have been automatically deleting emails from their systems in as little as seven days. The Dallas Morning News thinks that might be just a little too quick, but otherwise supports the practice, saying "Public officials can't be expected to save every digitized sentence ('Honey, Quizno's at 6?') lest they overstuff the people's servers."

Earth to The Dallas Morning News. That Quizno's message is not going to overstuff the people's servers. Saving email is not going to break the treasury. Disk space is cheap and getting cheaper all the time. Google is getting rich because they understand the economics of technology. Maybe the state of Texas should check out Google's free email service:

Gmail: A Google approach to email.
Lots of space: Over 4975.492087 megabytes (and counting) of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message.

The Dallas Morning News says "The public deserves reassurance that state regulations are keeping up with technology where the people's business is concerned." The News itself is behind the times if it thinks cost is the reason why emails are being deleted after 7, 14, or even 30 days. Today, there's only one reason to delete emails, and that's to cover up embarrassment, malfeasance, corruption, or just plain incompetence.

---

Mistakes Happen

The Dallas Blog's Tom Pauken has spotted former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales back in Texas. Gonzales gave a speech to the Corpus Christi Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Could you invent a friendlier-sounding group to welcome Gonzales?

In the speech, Gonzales still fails to find anything specific anyone specific in the Bush administration did wrong. "Mistakes are going to happen, but the American people don't expect perfection," he said, passively. What they expect, according to Gonzales, is good faith. Apparently, he wants history to judge him, not as evil, only as incompetent.

In Tom Pauken's revision of history, Gonzales was not as much evil or incompetent as he was the fall guy. Pauken excuses Gonzales by taking a swing at Dick Cheney and David Addington and Karl Rove, crediting unnamed Washington insiders as saying Gonzales was only carrying out policies designed by others. Watching Tom Pauken get his revenge on his fellow conservatives is a guilty pleasure. Pop some corn.

By the way, Pauken's man in the 2008 Republican race looks more and more to be Mike Huckabee. Pauken praises Huckabee's anti-abortion and anti-gay rights social positions and sees a little daylight between Huckabee and the Bush administration's rush to war in Iran.

---

Just the Facts

Are you tired of how the mainstream media lets its liberal bias color its news stories and slants the news to the left? Are you happy that Dallas now has a news source like Dallas Blog to give us the straight news? Are you happy with today's report in Dallas Blog about Illinois' recently passed law mandating a moment of silence in public schools? Here's how Tom Pauken reports that news:

"Federal Judge Robert Getterman declared unconstitutional Thursday an Illinois state law which provided for a moment of silence in the public schools of that state."

The first reader comment on Dallas Blog amplified the outrage. "That's a bunch of Bull ____.!" writes john k, lending more evidence to the truth of Winston Churchill's truism that "a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

What is the truth? First, the judge's name is Gettleman, not Getterman. No big deal, but if Pauken can't get even something as simple as the judge's name right, how much of the rest of the story should we trust?

Next, the law did not "provide" for a moment of silence. That's what the old law did. The new law mandates it.

Finally, the judge did not declare the law unconstitutional. He issued an injunction forbidding the state from enforcing the new law until a court case filed by a parent can be heard. In other words, teachers are still allowed to have a moment of silence. But, for now, the state can't lock them up if they choose not to.

Listen, Tom, if you ever want Dallas Blog to be taken seriously as a news source, you have to get the facts straight. Even if you only care about promoting right-wing propaganda, if you want a hope of persuading anyone with half a brain, get the facts straight.