DMN INVESTIGATES

East Texas church arson suspect Jason Robert Bourque (right) calls himself "Mr. Brightside" on his MySpace page, lists his religion as "Christian -- other" and prominently displays this quote from the 19th century anti-Christian philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche:

"Never give way to remorse, but immediately say to yourself: that would merely mean adding a second stupidity to the first. -- If you have done harm, see how you can do good. -- If you are punished for your actions, bear the punishment with the feeling that you ARE doing good -- by deterring others from falling prey to the same folly. Every evildoer who is punished may feel that he is a benefactor of humanity."

On his Facebook page, Bourque says he's a fan of bonfires. A couple of clicks takes you to hundreds of photos of blazes.

Bourque was arrested Sunday with Daniel George McAllister (lower right). The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives blames the two for a string of 10 recent church fires in East Texas.

The two men used to attend a Baptist church in the East Texas town of Ben Wheeler that was not torched, says Dallas Morning News reporter Richard Abshire.

The New York Times has a fascinating background piece today on the tax law that software engineer Andrew Joseph Stack III (right) blasted in his suicide note.

The 1986 legislation started as a favor to IBM and "made it extremely difficult for information technology professionals to work as self-employed individuals, forcing most to become company employees," The Times reported. "Many software engineers and other such professionals say that the law denies them the opportunity to become wealthy entrepreneurs and that it makes it harder to increase and refine their skills, eventually diminishing their income."

Joe Stack, in the note he posted online before flying a plane into IRS offices in Austin yesterday, said those who wrote the law "could only have been more blunt if they would have came out and directly declared me a criminal and non-citizen slave."

Not a rant -- a tip.

Send me an e-mail or join the conversation by commenting below.

What we have so far: A small plane crashed this morning into the Echelon office complex in northwest Austin. Austin TV station KVUE says the building that was hit is at 9430 Research Blvd.

The IRS has offices there, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

And the FBI has a field office elsewhere in the complex, at 9420 Research Blvd.

CNN, citing an unnamed official, says: "The pilot of the plane had set his house on fire beforehand, stole the plane and crashed it intentionally."

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A little over a week ago, I was blogging about safety issues at Dallas-based Southwest Airlines.

Now my investigative reporting colleague in Washington, Dave Michaels, is breaking a story about similar problems at Fort Worth-based American.

"Federal regulators have failed to correct mounting and long-standing maintenance deficiencies at American Airlines despite receiving detailed complaints about the carrier's problems," Dave writes, citing a report due to be released today by the U.S. Department of Transportation's inspector general.

The Federal Aviation Administration responded by saying it has been working with American to "elevate its maintenance practices" and was strengthening its oversight of other carriers.

FAA officials proposed a $2.9 million fine Wednesday against American Eagle for flying inadequately repaired planes, The Dallas Morning News' Eric Torbenson reported.

AA and Southwest say they're proud of their safety records.

Some readers noted that I mentioned an average monthly temperature for the Dallas area in a previous column and wondered where to get that information.

The easiest place to go is the National Weather Service.

To find the average for each month, the information is located in the notes. To do a month-to-month comparison, you'll have to pull the information out yourself, though.

To look into things on a daily basis, I go to the University of Dayton's website where they keep average daily temperatures for the Dallas area. They also use the official weather service numbers and it's really easy to read.

Texas nursing-home investigators usually miss deadlines for responding to complaints with a "high potential of harm," the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports.

Chris Traylor, the new commissioner of the Department of Aging and Disability Services, vows to improve response times soon.

The agency says it "expects to complete 1,550 nursing home investigations during a two-week, statewide blitz later this month" and will start hiring 35 new investigators next month.

Do you have a tip about a nursing home? Regulators? Send me an e-mail or join the conversation by commenting below.

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Now that my power's back on and the igloo in the front yard is melting, I'm catching up on some news from late last week. One item near the top of the pile: Federal authorities released sketches of three men they want to identify and question about the East Texas church fires.

Click on the link and see if you recognize them. Use the magnifying glass icon to blow up the images and check out the tattoos -- one (at right) appears to be an upside-down cross, and the other looks like flames.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case. Around-the-clock tip lines include: 1 (888) ATF-FIRE (888-283-3473); (903) 675-0061 and (903) 675-0062.

Also, you can send me an e-mail or join the conversation by commenting below.

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WIth the heavy snow it's likely there is going to be a long line of people waiting for their various utilities to be up and running.

Remember that if you have someone disabled, newborn, elderly or ill in your home to tell that to the customer service people who answer your call.

I wrote about a woman who needed help getting AT&T to fix her services in last Sunday's column.

That column points out two things everyone should do when calling in a repair problem: Ask if there could be a reduction in the wait time and a credit for the days service was down.

Dallas lawyer Ralph Janvey is the court-appointed receiver assigned to recover money that disgraced Texas banker Allen Stanford (at right) allegedly obtained by defrauding investors. Among those Janvey is seeking funds from are the many politicians who benefited from Stanford's generosity -- members of Congress and fundraising committees for both major political parties.

Janvey started asking them to pay up a year ago. Many have not done so, reports Dave Michaels of the The Dallas Morning News' Washington bureau.

Click here for Janvey's list of who has paid and who owes what.

College presidents quit in mid-semester all the time, right? Two weeks' notice is standard, right?

So there's no need for the University of North Texas and its president, Gretchen Bataille (pictured here), to explain why she is suddenly resigning, right?

The taxpayer-funded school's Wednesday press release and Bataille's "message to the UNT community" total 755 words and explain nothing.

The stonewalling continues today at the UNT Board of Regents meeting, as the Denton Record-Chronicle is now reporting: "When approached at the meeting for comment as to why she is resigning mid-year, with only a few weeks' notice, Bataille only shook her head, making it clear she did not want to discuss her reasons for leaving."

Can somebody please shed some light on this situation?

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Some blame Muslims for the East Texas church fires. Some blame Palin-hating liberals. Some blame the devil.

The online speculation was enough to make me call Tom Crowley, spokesman for the Dallas office of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Here's a quick summary of what we talked about:

Q: Does any evidence point to Muslims, liberals or Satan?
A: No.

Q: Any sense of what's motivating the arsonist(s)?
A: "We just don't know ... I wouldn't rule anything out."

Q: What do you see as the possible motives?
A: "It doesn't have to be a hate crime." Thrill-seeking vandals might be responsible. The fires might be set to cover up other crime.

Q: What sort of other crime?
A: Non-religious items have been stolen from some of the churches.

Q: Where on church property were the fires set?
A: Various indoor locations; most cases involved forced entry.

Q: What types of churches have been targeted?
A: A wide variety of Protestant ones, including Baptist, United Methodist, Christian Scientist (pictured above, from a Jan. 17 fire in Tyler) and nondenominational. Most, but not all, have predominantly white congregations.

Q: What accelerants, if any, have been used?
A: No comment.

Q: Any advice for churches and their neighbors?
A: "Be aware of any activity around the church." Keep the place well lit. Keep vegetation trimmed.

Two more East Texas churches burned down Monday night.

Authorities aren't saying yet whether the fires are part of the string of several arsons plaguing Tyler and surrounding areas. But don't be surprised if they're connected -- these last two blazes broke out within 45 minutes of each other, just a few miles apart.

The first was reported about 8:45 p.m. at Dover Baptist Church (right). The second was reported about 9:20 p.m. at Clear Spring Missionary Baptist Church.

Last week, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said it was activating a national response team after Russell Memorial United Methodist Church in Wills Point was torched.

Tips? Send me an e-mail.

Let's add this up and see how safe we feel about a certain Dallas-based airline -- and the government employees who are supposed to oversee it.

The latest: Federal regulators suspect Southwest Airlines, for several years, flew dozens of jets whose fuselage repairs didn't follow approved procedures.

Previously:
1) A football-sized hole (right) opened up the fuselage of a Southwest plane last summer, forcing an emergency landing.
2) Also last year, the Federal Aviation Administration found that a Southwest maintenance contractor used unapproved parts.
3) Southwest was fined in 2008 for flying six jets with fuselage cracks.
4) A cozy relationship between regulators and the airline repeatedly let Southwest avoid punishment for safety violations, a 2008 federal watchdog investigation found.

I'll stop for now. If you need more scary stories right away, go to dallasnews.com and type these terms into the search box: Dave Michaels (investigative reporter in our Washington bureau) and Southwest Airlines.

Southwest says safety is its top priority.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan wasn't the only guy with extremist ties counseling soldiers at Fort Hood last year, as my story in Sunday's Dallas Morning News shows.

There was at least one more: Louay Safi (shown at right). A month after the worst military-base massacre in U.S. history, he taught Islam to officers who were deploying to Afghanistan. He'd been doing this work on bases around the country, as a military subcontractor, since 2005.

That same year, federal prosecutors named Safi an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism-support trial of his old buddy Sami al-Arian. The reason: a wiretapped phone call in which the two men mocked a U.S. order banning dealings with foreign terrorist groups and agreed that Jews controlled the White House.

Al-Arian has since been convicted. But he still faces criminal contempt charges for refusing to testify before a grand jury about the International Institute of Islamic Thought -- a northern Virginia think tank that counterterrorism agents raided in 2002, when Safi was its research director.

Safi now faces a criminal inquiry by the military but has never been criminally charged. He denies wrongdoing. He also has described post-9/11 counterterrorism crackdowns as a "campaign against Islam."

I've found there is very little help out there for people who owe money on old bills.

There are a number of churches and charities which help when a current utility bill is beyond a person's resources. That helps keep the lights and water on.

But in the case of Todd and Shirley Ritrovato of Greenville, the utility debt was 14 years old. and created when their daughter was undergoing chemotherapy for cancer.

The Ritrovatos have known they owe the money for the past two years, but have not had much extra money to pay it. The couple lives on less than $700 a month, along with food stamps and housing assistance.

I've had some readers interested in helping out. If that's you, Hunt County Shared Ministries is willing to handle any donations for the couple. The address is 3724 Oneal St
Greenville, TX, 75401. Make sure you mark it for the Ritrovatos.

Many people write to me because they're unhappy with the bill they've received, but occassionally I'll hear from someone who can't get a statement.

That was the case for John Bigony. He tried to get the electric bill on his rental house for months. He knew that if he ignored the situation, he'd wind up with a whopper of a bill someday down the road.

TXU Energy got him a statement soon after I called. They also charged him less than the original quote since the meter was changed out during that period.

As I read the court records today from State Rep. Terri Hodge's guilty plea on tax fraud, one sentence contained a detail that seemed new and intriguing.

Federal prosecutors noted that some of the $73,000 that went unreported on her tax returns was "campaign contributions made by various donors to Hodge, which she used for her own personal benefit ... ." But that's where they left it.

I re-read the 2007 indictment against Hodge, as well as a 2008 filing citing supplemental evidence that authorities had gathered. I didn't see anywhere allegations of her using campaign contributions for personal use.

Prosecutors say in today's plea agreement that they will present later a routine supplement. Perhaps that's the time and place when they will elaborate on the contributions. For now, they remained focused on the rent payments Hodge received -- and failed to report to the IRS -- from Dallas developers Brian and Cheryl Potashnik, whose low-income housing projects needed her support for millions in public subsidies.

Until we hear more from the prosecution, I'm left wondering who made these campaign contributions, were there any strings attached, and how did Hodge use them for her personal benefit?

Over the weekend, fire departments in two of Texas' biggest cities were in the news again over allegations of employee misconduct.

The News' Selwyn Crawford told us about the lawsuit headed to court accusing some inside Dallas Fire-Rescue (Chief Eddie Burns shown at right) of "rampant sexual and gender harassment." One female worker claims she was touched and sent a photo of a naked woman. Another was "repeatedly propositioned," according to the lawsuit.

The Houston Chronicle followed with a story that summed up the issues there in the first sentence: "Racist graffiti, threats, profanity and a noose hanging in a locker; claims of harassment and a culture of accepted sexism, evidenced in part by a topless female firefighter posing in panties on a widely distributed calendar."

Fire officials in Houston and Dallas say these allegations are not indicative of their departments. Dallas, in addition, disputes the lawsuit allegations and cites an internal review that found some to be uncorroborated.

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Different types of concerns are on residents' minds in two different suburbs:

1. Arlington's mayor and council members have reaped free tickets and food at the city's luxury suite at publicly subsidized Cowboys Stadium, the Star-Telegram reports. The market value of the "perk of the office," as one leader called it, is around $400,000. Some observers fear this creates a conflict of interest.

2. In Frisco, residents living near a battery-recycling plant continue to worry that their health is at risk. The News' Valerie Wigglesworth and Matthew Haag cite study results from 15 years ago that found 45 children had "lead levels that today are linked to myriad health issues, from learning disabilities to behavior problems to brain damage."

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Steve Thompson, The News' ace Dallas Police Department writer, explains a few important caveats to yesterday's positive news that the city's crime rate dropped 6.4 percent in 2009.

1. This, of course, factors only reported crime.

2. Of those reported crimes, the total didn't reflect some that "appear to be undercounted according to federal guidelines," Steve wrote. As you may recall, he and Tanya Eiserer have found questions in DPD's reporting methods, such as omitting some car burglaries and classifying assaults and break-ins as lesser offenses. Their stories prompted Mayor Pro-Tem Dwaine Caraway to call for a review.

3. Even including the possible undercount of some crimes, the city's decrease missed the goal of a 10 percent drop, which had seemed attainable earlier in 2009.

Do you have thoughts or tips to share? Leave a comment or e-mail me.

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