OPINION

Re: "Deficit panel may stress toll to come -- Obama's commission will discuss unpopular solutions to crisis," Friday news story.
This article reports on the new National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform which President Barack Obama created with much fanfare.
The purported goal of the commission is to find ways to reduce our national debt. At the same time I had CNN on the television and was watching Obama make a campaign speech in Las Vegas on behalf of Harry Reid, in which he announced an additional $1.5 billion in federal spending from the financial industry bailout program to support people with troubled mortgages.
He actually made the announcement with a straight face and was rewarded with applause from the audience.
With leaders like this, is there any hope left for our country?

Re: "Legitimate grievances," by Bret McCormick, Monday Letters.
According to McCormick, when people resort to so-called terrorist acts, they have legitimate grievances that have not been addressed in a just manner.
This is a frightening concept, as it is exactly what Osama bin Laden, Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski used as their cowardly excuses to murder innocent people.
Who among us makes the decision as to which grievance is legitimate enough to kill others over? McCormick's letter sent a shiver up my spine.
We are a nation of laws. Please don't let the terrorists win.

Every day in The Dallas Morning News, we are fed a steady diet of Rick Perry vs. Kay Bailey Hutchison vs. Debra Medina.
Can't The News give just a little coverage to the Democratic gubernatorial candidates, Bill White and Farouk Shami? This is how the media get a bad name.
White will give any of the three Republicans a good fight, and I hope he wins. We have had enough of the "perfection" of Republicans, including their perfect lies and distortions used to make people think all is well with the state. It isn't. Gov. Rick Perry has been a scam.
Be fair. Give equal coverage to the Democrats.

Re: "Trains as part of the equation," by Dian and Don Malouf, Thursday Letters.
I do agree that we need a good national and regional rail network but to force-fit it is not the way. The freight railroads own the tracks they run on, and that makes them private property. Amtrak is more of a guest than a renter on those tracks.
Be careful, my friends, any thing you do to clear the way for Amtrak over the railroads' property also opens doors for them to clear the way for anything across yours.

Re: "Losing power helped me plug in to simpler life -- Just think back to how people used to live, says Kathleen Krumnow," Saturday Viewpoints.
Sorry, but I'm perfectly capable of turning off the TV or computer and reading a book, working a crossword puzzle or taking a nap without the electricity being out.
Pioneer women may have had it tough, but they also had fireplaces, wood or coal-burning stoves and kerosene lanterns. I don't. It's hard for me to find anything to be happy about doing when it is 46 degrees and dark in the house for two days.

Re: "Calls still urging votes for Hodge -- Disgraced incumbent has exited race, but Ragsdale says public needs choices," Saturday news story.
I thought and hoped that Diane Ragsdale had left town. But I was wrong. This story reports that she is urging people in Terri Hodge's district to vote for her. Hodge is an admitted felon.
We have enough crooks in office now. I know she cannot be elected, but why would you want to vote for a cheat? Ragsdale needs to keep her opinions to herself.

Flaws in climate story
Re: "Inconvenient untruths -- A series of missteps by scientists threatens the entire body of work on climate change," Sunday news story.
It's strange how "scientists" like Roger Pielke Jr. keep using words like "belief" and "infallible" when they talk about how worried they are about the "denialists" converting, uh, I mean "convincing" the public.
Denialists? Pielke is a political scientist and environmental studies professor. I normally wouldn't have laughed out loud, but I was still turning those two phrases over in my mind when I hit the part where they are studying glaciers at the University of Arizona. Found any?

Decline in fact-based debate ...
Re: "A change of climate for 'science' -- Questionable global warming industry is justifiably under fire, says George Will," and "Remove your fact filters -- We've got a problem when proof has no meaning or weight, says Leonard Pitts," Monday Viewpoints.
I can't stop laughing. Side by side, I found Will's mishmash of bad information and irrelevant information to support his conclusion that global warming is a hoax and Pitt's discussion of the sad decline of the relevance of facts to the conclusions people draw.
I miss the time when facts and data were considered part of any reasonable debate, and when people could be persuaded by new information.

... proves to be widespread
I was glad that Leonard Pitts used the pronoun "we" when he stated, "we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth. We admit no ideas that do not confirm us, hear no voices that do not echo us, sift out all information that does not validate what we wish to believe."
When skeptics who "sift" through all of the information that calls into question the claims of the effects of anthropogenic-caused warming, including willful manipulation of data, are simply dismissed with the phrase: "the science is settled," one is forced to agree with Pitts that "we are a people estranged from critical thinking."

For years, I have followed efforts to build a shared arts hall in Collin County. I was disappointed when the McKinney bond election years ago failed at the polls. That left only three cities to participate. Really, the effort never seemed to get on track, though not anyone's fault. It just always seemed that the cities needed a fourth major partner.

Well, they got one last week. The Recession officially became the fourth "owner" of this arts hall, at least Phase 1. It seems that the $19 million, McKinney-shaped hole in the budget has been filled by lower estimates courtesy of a terrible economic downturn. Who'd a thunk it?

That leaves the Arts of Collin County just a few million dollars short of its target to begin building. Arts hall in the midst of a terrible economy, you say? Doesn't that seem wasteful?

No! A thousand times, no. More kids participate in fine arts programs than athletics in Collin County, and building now -- or soon -- will create a legacy that will last through dozens of economic downturns in the future.

Read the whole press release below:

I don't know if readers feel this way, but I often have the sense of playing catchup in terms of what's going on in Washington. The Big Story is replaced by the next Big Story replaced by the next Big Story.

Last week, the Big Story (interesting that the initials for that would be the BS) was the stimulus package's one-year anniversary. Now everyone's rushed on to create -- and report -- sound bites leading up to the health care summit.

But before I move on, I hope to engage my colleagues on what the stimulus did and didn't do.

Amid all the "stimulus didn't create a single job" criticism last week, a number of reports did note that most economic analysts continue to agree that the stimulus preserved or created 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs and is expected, ultimately, to add a total of roughly 2.5 million (some sources say 3.5 million) by the time the spending ultimately plays out. But, grimly, unemployment is still a crisis and, the NYT reported today on some reasons why that stubborn number likely will remain high and what that means for our country:

We're working on editorials now for tomorrow's page having to do with how Texas can best deal with its looming budget deficit and what seem to be the Obama administration's stepped up emphasis on the virtues of nuclear energy.

(As an aside, a key essay in yesterday's Points section provides a great back drop for our editorial regarding nuclear energy. I'd link to it here, but Foreign Policy magazine doesn't allow us to do so. Check out the essay in the pulp product, back of the Points section: It's worth the effort.)

Read on in the extended section for more detail about these two editorials and which Editorial Board member is crafting each. And please use the comments section to share your thoughts.....

Quite a flurry of print activity this weekend on our Dallas County constables, boosted by the confluence of the Danny Defenbaugh's report release early in the week and early voting beginning the next day.

Kevin Krause and Ed Timms had the Page One lead Sunday with a look at County Judge Jim Foster's quest to oust Constable Jaime Cortes through a fairly rare civil removal process. The same day, Gromer Jeffers had the Metro cover lead with a look at how the constable saga is affecting two Democratic primaries, county judge (with Foster running for re-election) and county commissioner Precinct 4 (with Elba Garcia, ironically the wife of Cortes' lawyer, the front-runner).

We followed with an editorial in today's paper taking District Attorney Craig Watkins to task for, in effect, dragging his feet on a criminal investigation that forced the Foster-led commissioners' civil investigation, which led to the Defenbaugh report, which can yield no criminal charges before voters determine Cortes' fate in the primary, which is the real election since the Republicans have no candidate.

That's a lot of words to plow through, but taken collectively, they give you a fairly complete picture of the political mess this has become.

I'm still sorting, but here's a snapshot of today's e-mail:

Lots of election letters, both for and against the candidates recommended on our Sunday pages. Look for these on our editorial and community opinions pages. And yes, there are two separate elections, to answer one writer, and you have to choose to vote.

Health care -- a few, both for and against.

Several letters on the pilot who crashed into the IRS offices in Austin. Most of them decried the act. Several criticized the linkage of the Austin case with the Tea Party movement.

Stephanie Mueller's column on the property tax drew letters on both sides.

The candidates for governor have been less than forthcoming about how they would correct Texas' budget shortfall next year. Perhaps they are lacking in details because the state can't get out of its $10 billion to $15 billion budget hole without real pain. As the list of cuts that rolled out of state agencies last week showed, we can't get there without reducing spending on colleges, hospitals, prisons and schools.

I don't dispute the need for those cuts, which total about $2.1 billion. Maybe some items on that list don't belong there, but by and large those reductions are the type we must endure. The Legislative Budget Board, which consists of the governor, lieutenant governor, speaker and other members, would be right to approve those they can constitutionally before the 2011 session begins. That way, we can get on with reducing the deficit.

But those cuts aren't nearly enough to balance the budget. We must find savings elsewhere. As interim committees work on this problem, they should pursue this strategy: