OPINION

Re: "A Mystery in Denton -- Taxpayers deserve to know why Bataille quit at UNT," Thursday editorials.
If there was a reason to discharge Gretchen Bataille, the taxpayers, students, faculty and the state's leaders are entitled to know.
It is unfair to expect the taxpayers and students to underwrite the ever spiraling cost of higher education and be kept completely in the dark about such major decisions and their associated expense.

Rage is understandable
By no means am I endorsing what happened in Austin on Thursday. But how many of us have a certain amount of rage built up over dealing with the IRS? Our tax system is just wrong, and unfortunately a nut in an airplane was the one to make the latest statement against it. Maybe now, Washington will see that our system doesn't work.
We elect people who promise tax reform and never hear about it again. The only solution, vote 'em all out

IRS not to blame
The latest incident involving an "enraged engineer" is just one more example of something that is wrong in our society: The Blame Game carried to the extreme.
Whatever happened to people taking the blame for their own problems? It's always somebody else's fault, or the government's fault. That's not the America I grew up in or proudly served in the military for.

Legitimate grievances
The desperate attack by Joe Stack on the IRS facility in Austin is an indication that government in the U.S. has gotten too heavy-handed and repressive.
When people resort to so-called terrorist acts, it is almost certainly because they have legitimate grievances that have not been addressed in a just manner.
Given the current economic and political climate in the U.S. and the tendency of extremists on the far right and far left to whip people into a frenzy, I think we can expect more terrorist attacks from people like Joe Stack.
Freedom of speech is essential to the American experiment. And in the words of Pope Paul VI, "If you want peace, work for justice."

Patriots must condemn attack
Call the Austin IRS attack what it is: a terrorist attack, no different from 9/11 or the Oklahoma City bombing. How can any patriotic citizen do anything but condemn this attack on the U.S. just because you don't like paying taxes? Wow.

Re: "Activists criticize search for new superintendent -- Hispanics are among top 6 candidates, trustees say in defending their process," Wednesday news story.
Manuel Benavidez is critical of the Irving ISD's search for a new superintendent. My question is whether he has ever volunteered in a bilingual classroom in the Irving school district? I taught for 25 years in the IISD, along with being a substitute teacher for the past seven years.
Whenever possible, I choose a bilingual class to teach so I can take part in the superior education that the Hispanic students are receiving in this district.
Another way to see these children in action is to volunteer, as I do, at the Destination Imagination Tournament and see the many achievements that Hispanic students have acquired from the district's bilingual programs.
Please join me in volunteering in the Irving ISD. You will be pleased at how well our system serves the Hispanic community.

Re: "With the Olympics, less is more -- We need the shared experience of the Games, but what do we share if everything's on-demand? asks Michael Landauer," last Saturday Viewpoints.
Thanks to Landauer for sharing his sentiments regarding the Olympics coverage and especially his own golden moments. I got chills reading his recollection of the Dan Jansen story and was equally moved by his life-affirming experiences. I agree that we don't need the network manipulating the emotional impact of every event, but I, too, absolutely love the Olympics and relish every moment of every event, every clang of every cowbell.
I like to think the Games bring out the best in all of us and that our hearts are a little bit bigger during this time when spirits soar. In 1994, my husband and I had a particularly weak moment, as our viewing of Bonnie Blair's big night was interrupted by a crying tortoiseshell kitten outside.
We found her surrounded by a gang of marauding raccoons. At these Olympic Games, we're celebrating 16 years of life with Bonnie, the wonderful cat.

Re: "Feds to hail DFW Connector as largest stimulus (highway) project in U.S.," transportationblog.dallasnews.com.
For years, people have been asking why we still have toll lanes on roads that have been paid for. The excuse that the Texas Department of Transportation has given us is that our tax dollars aren't enough to create new roads.
Today, we have been given a new excuse -- toll lanes allow managed traffic flow. The more traffic there is, the more money you will pay not to sit in it.
So the next time you are sitting in traffic on the State Highway 121 north service roads and glance over your shoulder to see six lanes of road barely being used, think about where your tax dollars are going.

Re: "Medicaid fees may be reduced -- $304 million in proposed cuts could undo progress, advocates for needy say," Feb. 11 news story.
The Texas Health and Human Services Commissions unveiled their draft plan to cut 5 percent of their budget. While many of the cuts come from reducing administrative costs and hiring freezes, the state is proposing to finance many of these cuts on the backs of kids with disabilities, people with mental illness, seniors and Texas families.
State leaders should heed the advice of HHSC Executive Commissioner Tom Suehs, who voiced his reluctance to cutting cost-effective community services. Community services cost considerably less than institutional care, yet Texas maintains a hugely expensive network of state-supported living centers, formerly state schools, for individuals with disabilities. These centers have been protected since the '90s, although far fewer residents are served, and the entire system is being monitoring by the U.S. Department of Justice for abuse, neglect and exploitation of its residents.
The Texas of 2010 has no room for sacred cows, and the time has come to rebalance our system. Texas should consolidate institutions and redirect funds into delivering less costly community services so that taxpayer dollars can be saved without denying necessary care to Texans with disabilities.

Re: "Evolution, design: both right?" by Chris Hill, Wednesday Letters.
Hill's statement that "there is significantly more science to bolster the theory of creationism than the theory of evolution" doesn't belong in any Texas newspaper considering the State Board of Education's current mission to water down evolution as it pushes for "creative design" in our children's textbooks. It's one thing to have diversity of opinion; it's another thing to print falsehoods that highlight the backwardness of our state.

Re: "School's president pick is raising alarms, hopes -- Non-Baptist's outsider status, political role questioned by some," Wednesday news story.
Kenneth Starr earned the admiration and respect of many of us when he kept his cool during the interview when Diane Sawyer tried hard to embarrass and humiliate him. No doubt he is an excellent choice to be president of Baylor University. The only question is -- is he too conservative for Baylor?

I won't be voting for Rick Perry because of the consistently horrid service his administration provides.
Last year at a driver's license office in Dallas, I received a ticket that estimated the wait at 15 minutes. I spent an hour and forty-five minutes there. In Colorado, I renewed my driver's license at a kiosk in a shopping mall and left in about 10 minutes with an actual license rather the temporary paper license that Texas issues.
When I applied for unemployment after getting laid off, I received a Chase Bank debit card this past January. I was unable to access the Chase Web site to track my debit card.
After speaking to nine Chase representatives and four Texas Workforce Commission representatives and complaining to my state senator, the problem was resolved five weeks later. Two of the TWC agents told me that I would just have to deal with Chase myself.

State lawmakers have been scrambling for ways to protect the buying power of the fuel tax even as cars get more efficient and require less gas. The concept under discussion in Austin has been to index the tax so it would automatically rise with inflation or the cost of construction.

But that's looking to be old school even before Austin gets seriously close to acting.

In Virginia, lawmakers are already looking at a newer idea of indexing the gas to the average fuel efficiency of the cars on the road. That's yet another way to make sure that car owners produce a steady amount of revenue and keep up their per-mile tax support for roadways.

What gas tax is the best gas tax? The one we have or something new? Read more and comment on the Dallas Transportation blog.

First and most important among our weekend lineup -- Sunday inside the Points section you will find an expanded Editorial Page that wraps up every single race we've made a recommendation in for the March 2 primaries.

Tomorrow we're writing off what must have been terrifying for people working in that Austin IRS building -- the suicide pilot. We write: Some times crazy people do crazy things. Those isolated, unexpected outbursts of violence are the ones that are the most difficult to stop and difficult to fathom. We're all just left searching for answers that just aren't there. But here's one message we can take away from the suicide pilot in Austin: please don't let anyone make him a hero. Tod writing on behalf of the board.

Monday we comment on the aftermath of the recent report about Constable Cortes: If nothing else, Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins now has a 92-page bound document that could provide fascinating bedtime reading. Nominally, it's the first report from Danny Defenbaugh, a former FBI special agent, on transgressions by Precinct 5 Constable Jaime Cortes.In reality, it's a road map. As Watkins is quick to point out, if anyone is going to investigate allegations that county constables broke the law, it's going to be him and his office. By statute, that's his call, and he won't be pushed into anything by any county commissioners or outside critics. No special prosecutors or Attorney General's Office busybodies need apply. So get to work, Mr. DA. Mike writing on behalf of the board.

Also Monday we revisit Gov. Perry's decision to sue the EPA and explain why this may be good politics but bad policy -- and bad in many, many ways for Texas. There's no head room here, folks. This tactic has been tried and found not to be true. There are climate change issues at play here and Texas is the leading producer....don't fall for the false choice.... It's not a question of clean air and no jobs. Clean air brings different jobs. Jim writing on behalf of the board.

Just got an e-mail with this as a headline. It was just so good. I had to pass it along.

I have a partial answer to the question in the language of golf: He's no longer behind a tree, but he is still in difficult high grass. But let's face, this appearance is the first public phase of a media/image re-building strategy. Tiger apologized to his wife, sponsors, charities and then set some real boundaries for tabloid intrusion into the day-to-day activities. It's smart and also very appropriate. It's a step on the road back assuming that there aren't other secrets, such as performance enhancing drugs, which he directly denied using.

In the end, the sponsors and charities will want proof that they're not tied to a person who has no hope of regaining credibility. The immediate public reaction to Tiger's appearance, which I expect will be slightly more positive than negative, will be an early gauge of the public's temperature and capacity to move on. Iif he stays away for a few more months passing up the opportunity to appear in a his cherished "majors," and the returns as someone who is sincerely making progress, I think Tiger will rehab enough of his public image to at least be relevant off of the golf course.

We probably won't know for years whether Tiger's rehab work will pay off, but I was impressed with his statement today. He doesn't strike me as a guy who does humility or self-revelation well, so it wouldn't be natural for him to get up in public and acknowledge his mistakes. Cynics will say he's just doing it to get his money back from sponsors. Maybe so, but he came across as a guy who's trying to own his misdeeds. I see nothing wrong with that.

I love that the Golf Writers Association of America is boycotting the Tiger Woods show that is coming up in just a few minutes. I am willing to root for Tiger again. So that's not my issue. But I like that this group is sending him a message that he doesn't get to dictate how his return to the spotlight will go.

The basid issue here is hubris. Tiger thought he could do anything he wanted, and judging from the way this press conference is being handled, that major character trait of his seems completely unchanged. Do I expect him to always be cocky and arrogant, aloof and robotic? Sure. But he can't expect his fans and the press to simply play by his rules anymore. His actions ended the portion of his life where he was given a free pass. The loss of his marriage and a strained relationship with his children for life is his biggest punishment, but this is part of the package, too.