METRO COLUMNISTS

Call Andissu Andabo what you please. Good Samaritan? Absolutely. Hero? In my book, yes.
Read the story for yourself.

But if a guy is driving by, sees a car on fire and rushes toward it, unconcerned about the potential danger of running across LBJ Freeway (near Abrams Road) or approaching a possible explosion, then that guy has earned my eternal respect.

"He made me proud to do what I do," said Fire Capt. Todd Wilson, who noted that he hand't seen heroism of that sort in the 23 years he's been a Big D fireman.

The 39-year-old woman who was in the burning car, by the way, reportedly is OK and apparently didn't sustain any life-threatening injuries.

Intriguing read offered today by my colleague, Diane Jennings, who delved into the issue of whether inmates who've been exonerated should pay federal income taxes on their wrongful-incarceration compensation.

I say no. Texas lawmakers who pushed for compensation packages in the Lone Star state say they never intended for Uncle Sam to put his big paws on the dough.

Money quote: "We want them to get the maximum recovery that's possible for being wrongfully imprisoned," said Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas. "Just a a practical matter and a moral one, a moral basis, I don't think they should be taxed."

Apparently, the only way around paying taxes is for the feds to regard the compensation as "pain and suffering" payouts, much like with insurance settlements. Well, if spending years of your life behind bars isn't pain and suffering, then I've got a false impression of our what prison life is all about. Perhaps Congress can spend a few months behind bars deliberating the matter, and that might just clarify their thinking on the matter.

Seriously, Congress, do the right thing here and take your hands out of the pockets of exonerees who've already been shortchanged.

The snow's real nice and all, but we're on the verge of exhausting our treasure trove of "arctic blast" and "winter wonderland" cliches, feature ledes about the ringing laughter of children celebrating an unscheduled holiday, and slide shows capturing the whimsical joy buliding a snowman in the front yard and trooping inside for a steaming cup of cocoa dotted with an archipelago of marshmallows. I'm just sayin'.

I'm still plowing through the e-mail in reaction to Sunday's column about illegal immigrants and whether they should be deported or given the opportunity for legal status here.

Personally, I believe that those who have worked hard and stayed out of trouble should be allowed to stay.

Opponents of that view have provided most of the reaction to the column. But I'm gratified to see that a majority of Texans agree with me.

According to the poll I mentioned in the column, 38 percent of Texans favor deportation, but 29 percent favor a path to citizenship and 23 percent want them to stay with work visas.

Put those last two groups together and you have 52 percent of
Texans saying the immigrants should stay and get the opportunity to achieve legal status here.

That other 38 percent sure drowns out the majority in this debate.

Avatar (now in theaters)

Cinema as thrill ride. See in 3-D, if at all.

Awhile back I confessed my fascination with Pastor Melissa Scott, the widow and successor of one-of-a-kind TV preacher Gene Scott.

A half-page ad in today's newspaper says she's coming to town March 2 and 3. Oddly, the ad doesn't say where. I called the phone number in the ad (800-452-0735) and got a recording saying she will be at the Family Cathedral of Praise in Mesquite.

Apparently in the time since I last wrote about Pastor Scott and her sexy sermonizing, it has been reported that she is former porn star Barbie Bridges.

Show time... er, I mean service time is 7 p.m. both nights.

Phantom of the Opera (now on stage at Fair Park Music Hall)

Still gorgeous. But time to branch out, Dallas Summer Musicals.

Tiger Woods' 14-minute mea culpa has detractors due to its logistics: the hand-picked audience, the no-questions-allowed, the upstaging of an ongoing tournament.

But as 'sorry' speeches go, it was excellent, one of which political handlers coping with similar scandals should take note.

--Tiger did not drag his wife up there with him. He had to stand in front of the cameras alone, thus sparing her not only the spotlight, but protecting her from obnoxious speculation that "she made her deal" and will put up with anything to save her own swanky lifestyle.

--He didn't use formulaic, self-absolving cheatin' athlete patter about "poor judgment," "bad decisions" and "moving on with my life." He pretty much owned up to being an arrogant, satyritic creep who thought he was too special to observe fundamental rules of decent behavior.

--He seemed genuingly embarrassed, coming across as a person who has come to view his excesses not as fruits of his success, but as vulgar and humiliating.

--Finally, he acknowledged that nothing he says and no amount of sincerity in saying it changes or proves anything. He seemed to have accepted that it will be a long time, if ever, before his good name is restored.

Obviously, some people aren't buying it; some sponsors may never come back into the fold; Woods' marriage may not endure. But if he has genuinely decided to become a grownup - and he's sure not the first person who enjoyed a prolonged adolescence just because it was available to him - he made a pretty good beginning.

Tiger Woods is delivering a well written statement, and he's doing a good job with it.

You may not have known Bishop Larry McGriff, who died suddenly this week after suffering an aneurysm.

But you might remember his wedding in December -- the one that hundreds had to be turned away from.

Such a sorrow.

Joseph Stack may have believed he was making a fiery and awful political statement, but he wasn't. All he proved in slamming his plane into an IRS office building in Austin was that he was a self-absorbed creep, a nut who willfully marinated in his own anger. Let's quit trying to turn this screwup into some kind of a Nathan Hale.

I keep reading hints of "yeah, but..." from commenters who seem to believe the IRS, or Wall Street fat cats, or the church, or whatever the hell else this crank was on about are enough to drive anybody crazy.

Reading Stack's lengthy farewell screed is dismaying in that it's so familiar - and so boring. There's an unoriginal sameness to the writings of these homicidal megalomaniacs: I've been persecuted, I've been cheated, none of it is my fault, I'm obsessed with my own rage, and I'm going to show the world how mad I am. It's a parallel to the wife-abuser who insists he had to do it because she pushed his buttons.

The Joe Stacks of this world are, mercifully, statistically rare. But they're not particularly special.

Not sure how else to explain this rant in which he calls President Barack Obama "intellectually shallow" and "the most incompetent president perhaps in our lifetime."

Armey must've been living in a cave for much of his existence if he really believes either of those statements.

Seriously, this sort of over-the-top rhetoric is precisely why nothing that people really care about can ever get done in Washington -- and why folks get so disillusioned with our political "system."

The caustic campaigning just never stops. Tea, anyone?

I was driving behind a red pickup yesterday with an intriguing sign across the back window:

In Memory of 'The Best Human Ever'

Wow, what a compliment! But to whom?

It seemed strange that you would memorialize someone in such a public and vaunted way. And yet in such an anonymous way.

It's an intriguing idea -- best human ever. Any nominations?

Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle isn't the only one defending the validity of his dropping crime statistics.

Former New York Police Commissioner William Bratton is doing the same in the New York Times today.

This news is a month old, but I just stumbled across it. And as a proud son of Smith County, I can't tell you how my chest swells to see the headline:

TABC Agents and Smith County Sheriff's Deputies Catch Moonshiner

It may be 2010 in most places, but not in every corner of East Texas.

Pass the rot gut.

I'm sorry. I know this is an old argument. And I know people just cannot get enough of the aw-gee canine cuteness that is the venerable American Kennel Club's Westminster Dog Show.

But, seriously, which part is the sport? The part where people try to breed their dogs to exact specifications? That's a contest. The part where they parade them in front of the judges? That's a pageant.

I will admit to being a little bent out of shape on the topic because, in the show's 100 year history, the big prize has never gone to a lab or a golden, the most superior dog varieties on the planet (although I did like that sweet beagle that won a couple of years back). The fix is always in for some kind of terrier or spaniel or a poodle with a humiliating haircut.

For sport I want to see some dogs chasing frisbees, or dock jumping, or rolling over with their feet in the air in order to get their stomachs scratched.

And I suppose that anyone interested in buying this church-turned-house for $2.4 million can pass the collection plate around at family dinners and parties.

Won't work for me. I was looking for something with a dozen bedrooms -- you know, just a good round number. This one only has 11, although, as I get older, I could certainly get accustomed to the 11.5 bathrooms this place boasts. Then again, I'd need a metal detector to find my keys.

Business columnist Cheryl Hall has an interesting tale this morning on one retailer's undercover search for decent sales people.

I wasn't surprised that most of the clerks he encountered were indifferent. I was shocked, however, to read that he spent $40 for a single pair of socks.

Mr. Frugal briefly lost consciousness.

If you have a few minutes to spare, take time to read our story today about The Toy Man of Grapevine.

It is wonderfully written by my talented colleague Avi Selk.

Moving? Need boxes?

Well, there's a sizable pile of them at the moment in the middle of Lamar Street at Wood Street downtown.

They're nicely flattened and still mostly stacked together.

And someone is arriving at his or her destination right now, looking in the back of the truck and saying "D'oh!"

I mean, seriously, did they ever think that something other than "human error" was at fault. Did anyone question the Nubian Ibex? Or the Meerkats? I've long been suspicious of the Okapi, too.

Needless to say, given what happened to the last escaped gorilla (RIP, Jabari, RIP), I think it's fair to say that the Lappet-Faced Vulture had a motive that at least needs to be checked out.

I trust that this, indeed, was a human error. But if I'm a human working at the zoo, the first thing I'm going to do when I open a gorilla's cage is make sure I know where the gorilla is. I would consider that extremely valuable information. And there would definitely be no gorillas just "wandering" around. IJS.

I'm just afraid this character is going to give terrorists a bad name.

This story of the two coyotes chasing boys in Richardson makes me wonder if the snow has driven them loco.

We live amid lots of open land, so glimpses of coyotes are pretty common. But Friday morning, when we had all that snow on the ground, a coyote was brazenly parading around right behind our house.

Even when I stepped out the back door to take pictures of all the snow, the coyote didn't skedaddle as I had expected him to.

Maybe I should have said "beep-beep" like the Roadrunner.

My husband, usually a person of fairly straightforward tastes, has developed a sudden fondness for Big Red cream soda (the diet kind), the alarmingly red beverage I usually associate with Moon Pies, Peanut Patties, and other delicacies popular in rural areas.

I can't stand the stuff myself - it tastes like cream soda with a shot of cough syrup - but it has a loyal following. And it was invented in Waco, home to the more celebrated Dr Pepper.

According to company info, Big Red was created in 1937 by a couple of chemists for a barber-supply company. They called their product Sun Tang Red Cream Soda, a name it retained until 1959, when it became "Sun Tang Big Red Soda" and later the more familiar "Big Red." For decades, it was a strictly regional product, available only in central and south Texas.

Why it has suddenly become popular at our house, I cannot say. But we're in good company - they say the late Doug Sahm couldn't get enough of the stuff.

On ABC World News last evening, George Stephanopoulos was talking about Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh's surprise announcement that he wouldn't run again.

Stephanopoulos said he talked with Bayh after the press conference and the senator said public disgust with both parties is so great right now that the next presidential election might provide an opening for "a sane Ross Perot."

Poor, H. Ross. Still a punching bag.

Perhaps a nicer way to say that would be that there's an opening for an independent candidate with fewer eccentricities.