First step finally taken toward abolishing horse slaughter in U.S.

Dallas Morning News | Kevin B. Blackistone:

"Among the amendments in the [2006 Agriculture Appropriations bill HR2744] was one that could shut down in the United States the absolutely sickening business of slaughtering horses – including some that once were raced for our entertainment – for human consumption."

Kevin Blackistone does not object to breeding, training and using horses for human entertainment, only for human consumption. Others might object to using rodeo bulls for human entertainment, but don't mind eating hamburger. Hindus object to eating beef. Jews and Muslims object to eating pork. Christians don't have a strong taboo against eating horse meat. Most Americans are just squeamish about the practice. I wish Kevin Blackistone had tried to lay out a logical argument why his particular taste in meat should be enshrined in law, but not others. He apparently sees it as self evident, but it isn't. Blackistone offers no reasons why readers should share his revulsion.

Under the gun, she was in control

Dallas Morning News | Jacquielynn Floyd:

"I don't know whether I'm ready to endorse Susan Buxton's firm belief that women should arm themselves, that they should be prepared to defend themselves, their families and their homes with deadly force. It's a personal decision that cannot be made lightly. But she makes a compelling argument. Her experience is hard to contradict."

Not hard to contradict at all. Go out and find a story about a 66 year old grandmother whose 7 year old grandson finds the gun granny keeps in her nightstand and accidentally shoots his 5 year old brother. Grandma says she's had that gun since before the boys were born and never had to use it. She almost forgot it was there. I made up the details, but stories like this are not hard to find. That's the trouble with anecdotes. There's a good story to support almost any argument. The complete picture is a lot more complicated.

A good case in favor of responsible gun ownership can be made. So can a good case against irresponsible gun ownership. The two cases do not have to contradict each other. Why does the argument have to come down to a choice between the gun nuts who want no limits on gun ownership and the anti-gun nuts who want to do away with all guns everywhere? Can't the moderate center in this country take back the middle ground in this debate?

Raised Stakes of Terror: U.S. must sway people, not just their leaders

Dallas Morning News | Editorials:

"In the midst of this political and religious ferment, America faces the difficult but urgent task of communicating to the people themselves, not just the rulers, that our nation and our democratic ideals offer them a path to a better life. That is a message they seldom hear today. Instead, they are bombarded, often with their governments' implicit or explicit approval, with rhetoric that paints America as a militaristic bully, a greedy exploiter and would-be destroyer of their culture and faith. Winning hearts and minds is a notoriously dicey proposition. Yet leaders in Washington, Amman, Cairo and Riyadh alike ultimately will discover that, in a battle of ideologies, nothing less will suffice."

Maybe there's some truth on both sides. America's democratic ideals do offer a path to a better life. But America also can be a bully, an exploiter, and a destroyer of culture. America needs to promote the former and temper the latter to have a chance at "winning hearts and minds." So long as the "War on Terror" is viewed primarily as a military operation, America may be doomed to fight a long twilight struggle. Worse, if we fight using the Cold War strategy of propping up whichever local military strongman whose loyalty we can buy, our ultimate defeat is assured. "Winning hearts and minds" is no longer just a tactic in a larger battle against an Evil Empire. "Winning hearts and minds" over to the American ideals of liberty and democracy is now the goal itself.

Elsewhere in the country, it was a good night for Democrats

Dallas Morning News | Carl P. Leubsdorf:

"And Democrats could do a lot worse than pick a moderate former Southern governor as a New York senator's running mate."

Governor Mark Warner of Virginia? Clinton/Warner? Another northeast liberal/southern moderate ticket for the Democrats in 2008? I don't think so. Senator John Edwards of North Carolina did nothing to help Massachusetts Senator John Kerry carry any southern states, even his own. Hillary Clinton is going to have to moderate her views to win over independents. Her views. Putting a moderate southerner on the ticket to showcase his moderate views won't do it. She may be tempted to go the other way and put a northern, liberal, African-American on the ticket to contrast with her own newly moderate views. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, maybe? (And Obama may be needed anyway to counteract a Republican move to put Condoleezza Rice on their ticket.)

As for Mark Warner, either he is going to have to win the top spot on the ticket for himself, or Democrats are better off leaving him off the ticket altogether. If Warner doesn't fall flat on the national stage, his background indicates he could be a formidable nominee. He provides a safe harbor for independents and Republicans disaffected by the incompetence shown by the Bush administration, but still solidly moderate at heart. If he can hold on to the blue states carried by Kerry and take two or three of the newly "purple" swing states like Virginia, Democrats might be inaugurating one of their own in January, 2009.

In Texas, Prop 2 scare tactics lost

Dallas Morning News | Mark Davis:

"As for the priorities listed by Prop 2 opponents, issues of hospital visitation, survivorship and property rights are taken care of with a combination of basic decency and a good estate attorney."

There is plenty of evidence that gays and lesbians are too often the victims of a lack of "basic decency" on the part of heterosexual society. Asking them to depend on the basic decency of others is denying them benefits and privileges that heterosexual couples enjoy, not only through the basic decency of others, but through codified law.

Prop 2 gives heterosexual couples no new rights, no new benefits, no new privileges. It is purely a negative law, denying such benefits to others based solely on sexual orientation. How do you sell such a proposition to voting Texans, the majority of whom are fair and not discriminatory? With scare tactics. You convince voters that unless this proposition is passed, all sorts of terrible things will happen. Polygamy. Group marriage. Incest. And, yes, gay marriage. See the recent column by Tina Benkiser (chair of the Republican Party of Texas) for a classic example of such scare tactics. Despite Mark Davis' headline to the contrary, scare tactics clearly carried this election.

After the Vote: The road ahead

Dallas Morning News | Editorials:

"Legislators who supported Proposition 2 assured Texans that it would not make life harder for gay and lesbian citizens. Now comes the test. The editorial board respects the religious sensibilities of those who believe that the sacrament of marriage should be reserved for heterosexuals. But this amendment, with its nebulous prohibition against 'any legal status identical or similar to marriage,' encompasses far more. Those who apply the law must read it in the way legislators say it was intended -- and not as a license or a mandate to discriminate."

I don't recall any such assurance by the proponents of Proposition 2. How could there be any? The sweep of the amendment is far reaching. Now passed, it's a Constitutionally enshrined mandate to discriminate. What was the point of getting it on the ballot and passing it if the intent wasn't to enforce it? Wake up, DMN. Your opposition to the amendment was commendable. But pretending the amendment was just some harmless expression of conservative morality is silly. Although perhaps many who voted for it might have thought that's all they were saying, expect the conservative activists who spearheaded this proposition to now use it to deny gay and lesbian citizens of the State of Texas the privileges and benefits that heterosexual couples enjoy. That was the point of the amendment in the first place.

Katrina's Aftermath: Two ways Congress can pick up the pieces

Dallas Morning News | Editorials:

"Texas Sen. Kay Hutchison persuaded the Senate in September to give FEMA the authority to reimburse states for Katrina add-ons like extra textbooks and more teachers. The House, unfortunately, has yet to pass a similar bill. In fact, the House's education committee chairman, John Boehner (R-Ohio), appears more interested in a school voucher fight. This newspaper supports vouchers, but the House doesn't need to get bogged down in an irreconcilable debate over them."

DMN stands behind the State of Texas as it lines up for federal money. Principles like school vouchers take a back seat when there's money being handed out. It's understandable and I don't even disagree. DMN's readers are mostly Texans. Take hurricane relief money while the memory of Katrina is still fresh in the nation's mind. But I can't help thinking that the DMN position might be different if it were, say, Ohio schools that were asking for reimbursement. Maybe the DMN would be more willing to promote school vouchers if it were some other state's money at risk of being tied up in a political hot potato. And Rep. John Boehner might be less enthusiastic about pushing vouchers if it were his state's reimbursement money that was at risk. Or am I just being cynical?

Global Scam: Lots of blame to go around on oil-for-food

Dallas Morning News | Editorials:

"About half of the nearly 4,500 companies in the ill-fated U.N. program paid illegal surcharges and kickbacks to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein that helped perpetuate his regime."

The breadth of the corruption is stunning. DaimlerChrysler, Daewoo, Siemens, Volvo, and on and on. If such abuse occurred in a high profile case like the Iraq Oil-for-Food program, can anyone doubt the amount of corruption in daily operations in countries around the world run by dictators, one party governments, and immature democracies? Cleaning up business corruption needs to be a priority among the developed democracies. The cost of stricter regulation of business may be high. But the cost of letting businesses repeat what happened in Iraq can potentially be disastrous.

Playing bad word games with Prop 2

Dallas Morning News | Mark Davis:

"But what of a large group of people who seek to preserve state recognition solely for heterosexual marriage, but who have no quarrel with some ancillary status – call it civil unions, domestic partnerships, whatever – that would allow committed gay couples some of the basic decencies afforded their straight counterparts on issues like property rights, hospital courtesies and survivorship status? Does the language in Proposition 2 prevent that because it would be 'similar to marriage'? Good question."

And that's the last Mark Davis has to say about that "good question." Instead he spends the rest of his column criticizing some fringe Web site called savetexasmarriage.com for using misleading scare tactics to encourage a "no" vote on Prop 2. Why doesn't Mark Davis similarly condemn the scare tactics employed in DMN by Tina Benkiser (chair of the Republican Party of Texas) to encourage a "yes" vote? Perhaps because he himself is more interested in achieving a certain result at the polls than in a fair intellectual discussion of an important public policy question. A "good question" that Mark Davis doesn't talk about, once again wasting the valuable space DMN has given him on a "bad word game" of his own.

Chertoff at the Border

Dallas Morning News | Editorials:

"But there are not enough guns, planes and agents in the world to safeguard the long stretch from Brownsville to El Paso. Washington needs to create a program where workers from foreign countries, including illegal immigrants already here, can qualify for a legal work visa and apply for citizenship."

True, but there are powerful constituencies in the President's base firmly opposed to such a work program. The conservative base demonstrated how quickly they could turn on President Bush when he nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. He is still licking his wounds. So, it's unlikely that he will stand up to his base on a matter like immigration reform.

It took a Lyndon Johnson to get a Civil Rights bill past southern Democrats. It took a Richard Nixon to get an opening to China past anti-Communist Republicans. It would take a compassionate conservative like George W Bush to get immigration reform past xenophobic Republicans. But now it looks like Bush is a premature lame duck, unable to lead his party and his country to a solution to our immigration challenges.