Jewish group says Huckabee trivializes the Holocaust

DallasNews Religion | Bruce Tomaso:

“In a speech at a summit of evangelical Christians, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher, referred to the 'holocaust of liberalized abortion.' This prompted angry criticism from the Anti-Defamation League.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

A politician needs to know the sensitivity of Jews to use of the H-word. It probably wasn't an issue in Arkansas gubernatorial elections, but Huckabee is playing on a bigger stage now. The unintentional gaffe is probably harmless, especially if he reacts quickly and positively to the criticism.

Texas Oilman Clayton Williams Endorses Giuliani

Dallasblog.com | Tom McGregor:

“Famed Texas oilman and failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Clayton Williams announced Friday that he supports GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Let's see. Rudy Giuliani is on the wrong side for conservatives on abortion rights, gay rights and gun control. But he's riding high in the polls and looks to win the Republican nomination for President anyway. So, what do conservatives like Governor Rick Perry, Rep Pete Sessions and now former candidate for Texas governor Clayton Williams do? Why they endorse Rudy Giuliani for President. I guess that "as long as it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it."

(OK, too easy. A cheap shot. And yet I wonder if there's more than a grain of truth to it.)

Don't let toll road ruin our defining parkland

Dallas Morning News | Victoria Loe Hicks:

“Proven fact: Great public spaces define great cities. ... That's why, if we need another highway downtown, it should be built along Industrial Boulevard in the Trinity Industrial District rather than inside the Trinity River levees – the one space that has the potential to lift Dallas' public realm from mediocrity to greatness.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Gallons of ink have been spilled debating the upcoming Trinity River referendum. Victoria Loe Hicks does a better job of distilling all that ink down to the essentials of the debate than any other writer. She understands the crux of the argument because she covered the subject for the Dallas Morning News for several years. I don't know the circumstances of her departure from the News, but the newspaper is a shadow of its former self, in part due to the departure of journalists like Victoria Loe Hicks. Just as the paper is smaller today, its vision for Dallas is constricted, too, as it lobbies mightily in favor of paving the Trinity and against that potential great public space.

Rather than repeat Hicks' arguments here, I recommend you read her piece in the News in its entirety. Don't laugh when she compares the reality of New York's Central Park with her vision for Dallas' Trinity River Park. From the dreams of such visionaries are great cities born.

Rules you never thought you'd have to make

Trail Blazers | Todd J Gillman:

“Plenty of lawmakers want to slam the door on undocumented immigrants. Sen. John Cornyn managed to do it literally when a trio of Dallas students arrived at the Capitol to prod Congress to allow a path to legalized residency for people like them: youngsters whose parents brought them to the United States without permission.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

The president of the Texas Eagle Forum applauds Senator Cornyn for not meeting with illegal aliens. She says legal residents and citizens “have had to scream for years to make their voices heard on the problem of illegal immigration.”

I applaud Senator Cornyn, too. He shows that he can ignore residents of Texas no matter what their viewpoint. Make everybody scream and then don't listen to anybody. That's a true Texan for you!

Rebecca Aguilar: Speaking out after a draining week "in limbo"

Uncle Barky's Bytes:

“For 13 years Rebecca Aguilar has hit the streets as an aggressive, scoop-generating Fox4 reporter. Now she's unceremoniously out on the street, indefinitely suspended by her station. ... Aguilar's Oct. 15th piece on 70-year-old property defender James Walton, who had just purchased a new shotgun outside a sporting goods store, prompted a flurry of bloggers and blog readers to brand her as bigoted, anti-gun, an ambusher and a 'bitch' among kinder assessments.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

I try not to watch Fox 4 or any other local newscast. They are all too sleazy for my tastes. Rebecca Aguilar revealing the text message from a rival station's news manager, "Good job", just confirms it. Maybe if she apologized, not just for her story on James Walton, but on behalf of all television news for a decade's worth of sleazy stories, I might be inclined to forgive her and start watching local news again.

P.S. Kudos to Uncle Barky for landing the interview. If you don't have an RSS subscription to Uncle Barky, get one now!

Is America building an empire?

DallasMorningViews | William McKenzie:

“Is America at risk of building an empire? Or is merely protecting its interests -- and the interest of its allies -- with its foreign policy choices, such as intervening in Iraq, taking on Iran and dealing with the Taliban?”

Ed Cognoski responds:

What do you mean "building"? It's already done. It's a long time in the works, from the Louisiana Purchase to Manifest Destiny to TR's Splendid Little War to Wilson's League of Nations to Truman's United Nations to Bush's policy of pre-emptive war.

Holy Land defendants' long wait ends as U.S. vows to retry case

Dallas Morning News | Jason Trahan:

“Counterterrorism expert Fred Burton ... said it's best to view the prosecution as part of a disruption strategy. The verdict didn't come out as hoped, but 'you have in essence tied this organization up in knots for a long time. Even though it may not be viewed as a success on the front page of the paper, behind the doors in Washington it will be.'”

Ed Cognoski responds:

In other words, Fred Burton believes that the government views legal harassment via criminal prosecutions against political enemies as an end in itself. The government has unlimited resources to tie people up in legal proceedings. The government wins regardless of the outcome of the trial. A conviction and the target goes to jail. An acquittal and their names are smeared, their fortunes are bankrupted, their lives are ruined. And the government can go after their target on some other trumped up charge. Endlessly. There's no downside for the government.

Many Americans may side with the government this time, sharing the government's prejudice that the defendants in this case are enemies of the United States. They'd better hope that the government is always led by people who share their own political views. The old notion that the United States is a nation of laws, not of men, is a little less believable if Fred Burton is right about the attitude in Washington.

Vote Yes on Proposition 3

Dallasblog.com | Tom Pauken:

“I encourage all Texans to vote yes in support of Proposition 3 on November 6. We need to protect our homeowners from the negative impact of skyrocketing appraisal values.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Vote No on Proposition 3.

Tom Pauken is upset that his property taxes are going up. Then, he ought to vote out of office the politicians responsible for setting tax rates. Instead, he wants to mess with free market forces by artificially capping property appraisals.

In a fair tax system, two houses with equal market values would be taxed the same amount. But not in Tom Pauken's world. He wants to cap appraisal increases at an arbitary 10%, no matter how much a property might be worth. Eventually, the homeowners of two houses of equal market value could be paying wildly different taxes because of this artificial interference with the free market.

I can't imagine Tom Pauken recommending that government adopt wage and price controls. Yet his recommendation to cap appraisals on house values amounts to that. The distortions caused won't be noticeable at first, but sooner or later someone else will have to clean up Tom Pauken's mess and restore market sanity to the appraisal process. Vote No on Proposition 3.

P.S. Tom Pauken continues to block me from posting comments on Dallas Blog.

Schutze vs Blow, Garrison vs Aguilar

This week, a great double bill.

Steve Blow of The Dallas Morning News challenged Jim Schutze of The Observer about his reporting on the Trinity River vote. It looks like the cat fight has pretty much settled down. From this vantage point, I'd call it a draw. Jim Schutze didn't dig deep enough to find out that TDMN did, in fact, report on Dr Robert Bea and his study of the New Orleans levee system. Schutze also exaggerated the land ownership of Hunt and Crow in a very specific warehouse district set to benefit from the Trinity project. On the other hand, Steve Blow showed shocking unprofessionalism by suggesting Schutze should have exploited his wife's employment at the newspaper to do his digging for him into the newspaper's own private archives. And, although Steve Blow is hardly responsible for it, the TDMN's sadly lacking search engine (both the public and private versions) makes all TDMN employees look bad.

The other fight on this week's card was no contest. It was a smackdown by FrontBurner's Trey Garrison of Fox 4's Rebecca Aguilar over her confrontation of a homeowner who shot and killed two burglars in three weeks. Her story was an irritating combination of ambush journalism and crime beat reporting, which now is a staple of local television news. In this case, it was the reporter who ended up down for the count. Good job, Trey, really. Now, if you can get the producer and station manager ashcanned, too, you'll deserve a Katie Award. On second thought, maybe the tarnished Katie Award is better suited for Rebecca Aguilar and Fox 4. Disgusting.

Parents have 'faith' that vaccines are bad

DallasNews Religion | Jeffrey Weiss:

“From the AP: ‘Sabrina Rahim doesn't practice any particular faith, but she had no problem signing a letter declaring that because of her deeply held religious beliefs, her 4-year-old son should be exempt from the vaccinations required to enter preschool.’ ”

Ed Cognoski responds:

The good news is that the number opting out is less than 1/10 of 1 percent, so only a tiny number of parents are making this fear-based decision. Nevertheless, if after parents are given the facts, they still want to opt out, they should have that choice and they shouldn't have to hide behind a religious excuse to do so. Atheists should be allowed to be just as irrational as believers in God.

Where's the outrage for Armenian genocide deniers?

DallasNews Religion | Sam Hodges:

“Inside Higher Education has an interesting story about scholars and others who deny that there was a genocide of Armenians in 1915. In the background of the story: Congress, the Bush administration, Turkey's government, and Holocaust deniers.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

99% of Americans have never heard of Armenia or the Armenian genocide, so don't expect outrage over Armenian genocide deniers.

What I'm struck by is the coincidence that this makes news the same week that President Bush meets with the Dalai Lama, a victim of another case of a government suppressing an ethnic minority, in this case China suppressing Tibetan independence. President Bush wants to overlook the Armenian genocide so as not to incite the Turks to attack the Kurds in Iraq. But President Bush meets with Dalai Lama, in spite of that inciting the Chinese, whose support he needs to pressure the Iranians not to develop nuclear weapons. Does no one in Washington know how to conduct foreign policy any more?

Sen. Craig presses on

DallasNews Religion | Bruce Tomaso:

“Craig, a former Senate liaison for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, told NBC's Matt Lauer that the Romney campaign treated him poorly once his arrest came to light. ... ‘He not only threw me under his campaign bus, he backed up and ran over me again.’ ”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Larry Craig is nothing if not loyal. He is still saying things guaranteed to make Mitt Romney look good.

We live in a vale of tears

DallasMorningViews | Rod Dreher:

“It about kills me that Diana Krall, who's only my favorite singer in the whole world, is coming to Dallas this weekend to play the Meyerson, and I can't go. ... If you don't know Diana Krall's work, oh my, my, my, just listen. Somebody else better buy my seats at the Meyerson, because it is an offense against proper theology and geometry that there should be any empty seats when La Dolce Diana plays and sings.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

In a letter to the Dallas Observer, Rod Dreher objects to being treated as a "flip-flopper experiencing sophomore-year epiphanies." Then, he goes and publicly blogs about his sophomoric crush on a pop singer.

I don't know Rod Dreher, but he strikes me as being emotionally fragile. He put his heart into Catholicism until the church disappointed him for some reason or other, whereupon he converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. He put his heart and soul into political conservatism, until the Republican neo-cons disappointed him in Iraq. Now he whines endlessly as if George Bush and Dick Cheney picked on him personally.

Let's hope Diana Krall continues to sing the smooth jazz love songs Rod Dreher is smitten with. I'd hate to see the mood swing that might be triggered if she ever put out a CD of, say, hip hop. His reaction wouldn't be pretty, I'm afraid. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned... or in this case, man.

Another Round in the Public-Private School Debate

Dallasblog.com | Caroline Walker:

“A study released today by the Center on Education Policy concludes that low income students who attend urban public high schools generally do just as well as private school students with similar backgrounds. ... The trouble with relying on conclusions from studies like this is that they have to torture the data to get there. Once you take raw statistics and feed them through the grinder of 'control functions,' 'weighted variables,' and other compensatory 'co-efficients,' you come out with an exercise in hypotheticals, if you ask me.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Caroline Walker might as well say, "I'm clueless about mathematics, I don't know apples from oranges, but if a study doesn't support school vouchers, I'm ag'in it."

In fact, any comparison between public and private school results needs to control for other differences, such as gender, race/ethnicity, prior achievement, and socio economic status, parental involvement, etc. Otherwise, what might look like an advantage for, say, private schools, might just be a case of parents of children abandoning public schools taking a more active role in their children's education than the parents of the children left behind. This is pretty basic stuff for anyone with an ounce of training in science and mathematics. Caroline Walker considers the data "tortured". In fact, it's her brain that's tortured.

She then concludes with this non sequiter: "Rest assured that you’ll be hearing a lot about this study by opponents of school choice, who will point to it as conclusive evidence that our public schools are serving at-risk students just fine, thank you." In fact, our public schools are not serving at-risk students just fine. It's just that Caroline Walker's solution, private school vouchers, has not been shown to be an effective solution. Let's focus on finding solutions that do work.

P.S. Dallas Blog continues to block me from posting comments on its site. I guess it wants to focus on its pre-conceived notions and not discuss their merits.

First artificial life form about to be announced?

The Guardian | Ed Pilkington:

“Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

You ain't seen nothin' yet. In a Salon interview, Freeman Dyson talks about what to expect. There's much to ponder there. Here's a sample:

Dyson: "[Biotech] is now regarded with great suspicion because it's in the hands of big corporations and they do things that people disapprove of, like putting poisonous genes into crop plants. It's become politically unpopular. But I think that it's going to become domesticated so that do-it-yourself kits will become more available to everyone. You will be able to read and write your own genomes and produce roses and orchids and lizards and snakes or any kinds of creatures, according to your own design."

And then this morning, I heard on NPR a story about scientists genetically modifying rice to make it more resistant to being submerged in water. Potentially, this could prevent starvation of millions of people in places like Bangladesh where monsoons routinely flood rice fields. Somewhere, God is smiling at the handiwork of scientists.

Plan C

DallasMorningViews | Tod Robberson:

“Amazing how people can look at the same set of factors, accept that the same set of requirements need to be met, and come up with entirely different conclusions about how to address it. The Council on Foreign Relations has issued a special report on disengagement from Iraq. The first half of it reads almost exactly like our Plan B, but the conclusion is that all U.S. troops must leave Iraq because even a dramatically reduced force, placed in outlying border areas, would still be viewed as an occupation force. ”

Ed Cognoski responds:

The Council on Foreign Relations probably has it right. The major grievance Osama bin Laden held against the United States in the 1990s was that we left behind military forces in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War. The United States believed it was there to keep the peace. Osama considered it a casus belli. Ironically, what the United States believed it was preventing became all the more certain exactly because of the United States' actions.

Today, the United States is even more deeply entrenched in Muslim lands. The United States seems to be blindly following the model it has used from Germany to Japan to Korea to Bosnia. Leave troops behind to keep the peace. But there is a huge difference between those cases and this one. In those historic examples, there was a continuing threat that the people in the occupied lands feared more than the United States. For Germany, it was Russia. For Japan, it was China. For South Korea, it was North Korea. For Bosnia, it was Serbia. Who do the Muslims in the Middle East fear? Infidels. Jews and Christians, mostly. The United States is not perceived as a welcome counterbalance to an external threat. The United States is the threat. Our presence is not a stabilizing force. It is destabilizing and always will be so. The sooner we realize that, the sooner we can craft a new, effective foreign policy to replace the disastrous Bush foreign policy.

Late night comics, rejoice -- Larry Craig isn't leaving after all

DallasNews Religion | Bruce Tomaso:

“Perhaps the government should put his face on a bad penny.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Which is worse?
That he solicited sex in a public rest room?
That he pleaded guilty to behavior that may not be illegal at all?
That he later denied soliciting sex in contradiction of all evidence?
That he tried to withdraw his guilty plea after the case was over and done with?
That he reneged on his pledge to resign?
That he did all of these things while pretending to uphold traditional values?

Supreme Court declines to hear religious separation cases

DallasNews Religion | Sam Hodges:

“One involved whether church affiliated employers can be required to provide birth control as part of medical insurance coverage, and the other dealt with a public library's refusal to host worship services.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. They are instituted to secure the rights all men are endowed with by their Creator. To that end, the US Constitution builds a wall of separation between church and state. The result is neither theocracy nor a state-run church. Thomas Jefferson, himself neither Christian nor atheist, was simply brilliant.

Now, back to the subject at hand. I'm not surprised the Court declined to hear the appeal regarding medical insurance coverage. In this case, New York state law exempts churches but courts ruled that businesses run by churches, even non-profit businesses, that serve the general public, are not entitled to a religious exemption. Fair enough, in my opinion.

In the second case, I am surprised the Court turned down the library church service appeal. I don't see how a library can rent out its community room to some groups but refuse to do so for religious worship services. I don't understand why the Court left that ruling stand.

Christian right looks to third party option

DallasNews Religion | Sam Hodges:

“Some leading Christian conservatives are unhappy enough with the prospect of Rudy Guiliani as GOP presidential candidate that they're thinking of backing a third party candidate.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

It's a calculated decision. What they do all depends on whether they decide the election is lost anyway. If they stick with Republicans in 2008 and lose, it might look like they've lost their clout in general elections. If, instead, they desert the Republican Party, they might succeed in making it look like Republicans lost because they abandoned their religious conservative base. They'd be sending a lesson for 2010 and 2012.