OPINION

Well, it's here, my last day at the News. I so appreciate all the kind e-mails I've received from readers thanking me for my work over the past six years. It is an honor to receive your gratitude, and a privilege to have written for you. People have been asking me where I'm going. I'm headed to Philadelphia to become director of publications for the John Templeton Foundation. My chief task will be to create and to edit a non-partisan, non-sectarian online magazine of ideas, focusing on the foundation's four areas of interest: science, religion, the free market and morals. It'll be a terrific challenge, and I'm looking forward to it. We expect to launch in mid-2010.

But I will miss this city, and the people in this office more than I care to think about on this day. I spent six of the best years of my life here (except for certain editorial board meetings, and I think my colleagues know which ones I'm talking about, heh heh), and I'll never forget it. What will I miss most about Dallas, besides the people here? My parish church. Excellent Mexican food. Central Market (oh, how I'll miss Central Market). The Old Monk. Eno's. My old house, especially the big new fireplace and hearth. The Chipotle in West End, and the wonderful staff there. Sushi from Sushi on McKinney. The cuatros leches cake from La Duni. Fadi's. Coal Vines white pizza. Texas Supernatural Meats.

Basically, I'll miss religion, food and drink -- the things that mean most to me in life.

What won't I miss? Summer in Texas.

Y'all send me some tortillas from Central Market every now and then, will you?

Jim Schutze drives me crazy, but when he's on, nobody can touch him. This week he writes a terrific piece -- one, frankly, I wish I had written -- about how Dallas City Hall is trying to smother the burgeoning farmers' market movement under a pile of red tape. Excerpt:

That means that Detroit--a city 70 percent our size with about 5,000 percent more going against it--has a farmers market that draws two and a half times what ours does on a weekend. From surrounding states and another nation.

And what is the most notable difference in terms of City Hall governance here and in Detroit? They don't have any. And why do I care?

This is where we get to the ironies about Dallas as a place believing in free enterprise and the private sector. Last week at the same briefing where the city council was told the farmers market draws 2 million visitors a year (three times the annual attendance at the zoo), the council also was told another great truth about farmers markets in Dallas:

The thing farmers markets need most, according to assistant city manager Ireland, is more City Hall control. Ireland told the council that all of the fledgling neighborhood farmers markets cropping up in the city in the last two years need to be placed firmly under his boot.

Read Schutze to hear Mary Suhm say that it's all about socialism. No, that's not exactly what she says, but she does tell him that the city wants to stifle competition with the relatively lame downtown farmers market. A couple of years ago, I went to a farmer's market in south Austin that was tiny compared to ours here downtown, but about 10,000 times better. How does that happen? How does Dallas miss out on one of the most exciting trends in cities nationally? Never mind. The New York Times will write nice things about a World-Class Arts District, but who cares, really, about creating farmers markets that will help revitalize neighborhoods and provide something interesting and helpful for ordinary people to do.

Yes, I'm bitter. Schutze is right: it's just insane that Dallas is getting its butt kicked in the farmers market sweepstakes by De-freaking-troit! There's so much good stuff going on here among neighborhood gardeners and foodies. It's absurd that City Hall is not for them, but against them.

Here's a photograph of the Christmas tree at his place. And please see this snapshot of him in this morning's editorial board meeting, opening my gift to him: a copy of "Listen to my Heart," by Kathie Lee and Cody Gifford. I had hoped for a dramatic reading of the passages involving Cody's bowel movements (Actual Cody line: "Monsieur, I am Grey Poupon. I poop on this, I poop on that, I poop on everything!"). But Hash was too overcome by emotion to perform.

"Daddy, I thought you said Charlie Brown Christmas was coming on?" said the littlest Who in my house. Well, Daddy thought so, but there was Gordon Keith on the tee-vee instead. Daddy apologized to the kids for getting it wrong. Kids sad because no Charlie Brown Christmas.

Turns out stupid Channel 8 cancelled Charlie Brown to show a Good Morning Texas Christmas special that Ed Bark describes as sucktastic. I'm with Tim Rogers: why on earth would a TV station pre-empt "A Charlie Brown Christmas" for that? If Jesus returned, OK, I get it; but Gordon Keith?

Totally agree with Jim Schutze that it's way past time for Dallas to call John Wiley Price on his obnoxious, childish, mau-mau'ing crap. This guy ought to have been in jail ages ago, and it is to be hoped that his bullying ways will finally catch up with him (go, FBI, go!). Still, Schutze's column today challenging JWP to a fight is weird, even though Schutze is joking. I do wonder, though: is it wrong to hope they both lose?

(BTW, Schutze prevails in our ongoing dispute; I'm leaving his neighborhood and his town for good! Let this be a lesson to you young punks about messing with aging liberal hippies on their own turf. Heh.)

Like a number of my colleagues, and people at other media outlets in town, I've gotten more than a few e-mails like this in the past couple of days:

As a local Dallas dweller and fellow newspaper reader, I would like to recommend a story you might be interested in covering! This Thursday night (December 10th) from 7- 9 p.m. at Aloft Hotel Downtown Dallas, a non-profit called Greater Works is hosting a Friends and Family gathering to raise awareness and gather support. Greater Works is a nonprofit committed to bringing "literal-salvation" to developing countries. Their primary focus this year is on Sustainable Clean Water solutions in three countries- Rwanda, Uganda and India. One in 6 people in these regions die from water related disease annually and these young people are banding together to save lives this new year!

There are many organizations that help people, but this nonprofit has a great story (please see the attached article)!! Two of the founders met in seventh grade and ten years later decided that it was about time that they take care of their neighbors. Together with Charity, a young female professional dedicated to empowering women in third world countries, these small town kids, now entrepreneurs, have rallied their connections and peers to make a big difference! I love to read pieces about our folks, especially young professionals giving back and making a difference!!

You can check out the website at [website]. This is a private event, but I would love for you to cover it in any way possible.

Thanks for your time and for making our newspaper exceptional!

Sincerely,

Speaking only for myself, this is one way to make it more likely that your event will not be covered. This is a variation of what we journalists call "Astroturf," or "turf." It's the term we use to describe an organized campaign meant to look like a grassroots effort. When you get five or six e-mails from "local Dallas dwellers" that have exactly the same wording, urging you to cover a particular event, you know you're being played. This sounds like a worthy event, but the turf factor here ticks me off so much that I wouldn't go out of my way to cover it. But that's just me. This kind of thing is an object lesson in how not to do effective public relations.

The cover story of The Atlantic Monthly asks a provocative question: "Did Christianity cause the crash?" Writer Hanna Rosin's piece explores the role that the "prosperity gospel" -- roughly, the belief that God wants His people to think and grow rich, and that one's wealth is tied to the purity of one's faith -- played in convincing people poor in financial resources but rich in faith to take out home loans they couldn't afford. In one case she focuses on, a greedy bank partnered with a prosperity preacher, who used his authority to sell his congregants on loans they couldn't afford.

Her story examines in particular the popularity of prosperity preaching in African-American and Latino communities, and how the foreclosure rate among those minorities is disproportionate. Ignoramus that I am, I hadn't realized that Bishop T.D. Jakes is one of the most popular prosperity preachers in the country (I mean, I know how popular he is, but I didn't realize he was a prosperity gospeller -- a fact that dramatically diminishes my respect for him, I must say). This story, and learning from it that Jakes is a prosperity man, brought to mind something a Dallas real estate agent told me back in 2004 or 2005. She said she was selling lots of McMansions in DeSoto and elsewhere to African-Americans who were one paycheck away from default, but who had no trouble getting loan approval. I remember her telling me that she would try to steer these clients into houses that were more affordable, but they would not be dissuaded from buying the biggest house they possibly could, even if it was unaffordable. She said this to me in context of a conversation in which she said we were living in a housing bubble, and when it crashed, the damage would be devastating. I would love to know what role Jakes and other North Texas prosperity preachers (white, Latino, black, whatever) played in pushing their congregants into financially irresponsible behavior, based on their bankrupt reading of the Gospel.

Paul Burka lays out a brief case for why Houston Democrat Bill White could pull suburban Republican votes from Rick Perry in a gubernatorial contest. Makes sense to me. I'm a Republican who would absolutely consider voting for White.

The director of the Congressional Budget Office writes:

I concluded the talk by emphasizing that fiscal policy is on an unsustainable path to an extent that cannot be solved by minor tinkering. The country faces a fundamental disconnect between the services the people expect the government to provide, particularly in the form of benefits for older Americans, and the tax revenues that people are willing to send to the government to finance those services. That fundamental disconnect will have to be addressed in some way if the budget is to be placed on a sustainable course.

As economist Herb Stein famously said, when something can't go on any longer, it won't. We are in for a world of hurt. I say we all move into McKenzie's garage.

This week I spoke with a private counterterrorism official in Washington about the Fort Hood incident. At one point, he expressed concern that federal officials, both military and civilian, were getting bad advice about the domestic threat from radical Islam, because many of their Muslim advisers were members of groups that aren't on the right side of the war on terror, or at least see things through a dangerously misleading lens.

I thought about that conversation this afternoon when an e-mail to the Texas Faith list came in from contributor Mohamed Elibiary, a local Muslim activist and sometime contributor to the Texas Faith site. Elibiary sent along a report from the Congressional Research Service, one prepared for Congress by Mark A. Randol, identified as a specialist in domestic intelligence and counterterrorism. The document outlines strategic initiatives for identifying domestic terror threats, and cites at one point Elibiary's Freedom & Justice Foundation as advisers to the project. Elibiary is understandably proud that he and his group are helping top levels of the U.S. government identify extremist threats; as he tells the Texas Faith list, F&J has for years helped law enforcement plug up security holes.

Below the jump, I explain why it bothers me that the government is relying on Elibiary for counterterrorism advice.

Barry Rubin satirizes the commentary and coverage of Hasan's (um, alleged) murders for the greater glory of Allah, by imagining how they would have covered other historical acts of violence. Excerpt:

When John Wilkes Booth opened fire on President Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theatre in April 1865, the media was puzzled. "True, the actor was outspoken in his Confederate sympathies and viewed himself as a Southerner," said someone who knew him, "but that was no reason he might want Lincoln to be dead." The day before he went on his shooting spree, Booth hoisted a big Confederate flag outside his hotel room. After he leaped onto the stage he shouted, "Thus ever to tyrants!" the motto of the rebel state of Virginia.

The New York Times reported that Booth was psychologically unstable and was frightened of the Civil War coming to an end and having to face a peacetime actors' surplus. "His political views had nothing to do with the motives for this tragic act," it said, quoting experts.

Obviously Rubin believes, and he's correct, that the MSM has been going out of its way not to see what's right in front of its nose with this Hasan case. As Rubin goes on to say:

The media can often be stupid but when it censors reporting for political or social engineering reasons, freedom is jeopardized. The correct phrase is: The public's right to know. It is not: The public has to be guided into drawing the proper conclusions by slanting and limiting information even if the conclusions being pressed on them are lies and nonsense.

Managing the story is not the same thing as reporting it.

DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander said the other day he would look into the allegation a DISD school staffer made to me that Dr. Hinojosa's staff members had come to their school to do advance work prior to the superintendent's visit, and had made the school a kind of Potemkin village for him. I posted on that the other day. Dahlander e-mails today:

It's the principal's discretion as to who is asked to attend. The only thing that parents are requested not to ask are personal questions that involve their individual child, since he obviously can't address those.

Everything else is fair game.

So now you know.

Click here to read it.

This is crazy:

Should taxpayer-funded health insurance pay for city employees' sex-change operations?

The proposal was one of 20 recommendations presented by a city-sponsored diversity task force formed more than three months ago after local and state police improperly raided a downtown gay bar. ...

City officials greeted the diversity task force proposals warmly during Tuesday's presentation.

Stephanie Klick, chairwoman of the Tarrant County Republican Party, said Wednesday that the sex-change policy is evidence of liberal politics run amok.

"I am unaware of any other city in the country considering something like this," she said. "I'd like to know how paying for sex-change operations is going to fix what happened at the Rainbow Lounge."

I sometimes wonder if gay activists understand how bizarre some of what they push for sounds to ordinary people. This taxpayer-funded sex change proposal would be absurd in normal times, but to insist on it during a period of severe economic distress is just bizarre. Stephanie Klick is right. She'll probably be called a bigot for her common sense. That's par for the course these days.

You know the story of Potemkin villages, right? Well, the other day I was talking to a friend who's on staff at a DISD school. She said that a week or so before Superintendent Michael Hinojosa was scheduled to make an official visit to their school, the administration got busy fixing the place up. No surprise there. What was appalling to her, though, was how Hinojosa's advance staff allegedly arranged for there to be hand-picked parents to have a meeting with the superintendent when he arrived. According to my friend, Hinojosa's advance team wanted to give the impression that the superintendent was having a normal meeting with parents of students in the school, but in truth the parents were chosen to make sure the meeting went smoothly. Worse, they were allegedly told which topics were out of bounds for discussion.

I asked my friend if it was her impression that the superintendent was aware of the Potemkin quality of all this, or if it was the work of staffers trying to keep Dr. Hinojosa in the dark. She said she had no idea, but boy, was she ever hot about it.

UPDATE: DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander writes:

I'll check into this but it sounds like a rumor.

So you know, each Wednesday morning, Dr. Hinojosa visits several campuses. All of the visits are unannounced except for the first one of the morning, when he likes to meet with some of the more involved parents at the school for a small, roundtable discussion about issues they are facing. My understanding has been that there are no topics off limits.

I was having drinks with a friend yesterday, and telling him about how fascinating I found "Tinsel," Hank Stuever's portrait of Christmas in Frisco. As I told my friend, it's a compulsively readable account of how compulsive materialism has come to distort our lives. My friend talked about a woman in Collin County he knows, who moved here a year or two ago from another region (I'm deliberately fogging up the details to protect her privacy). She's deeply depressed, despite the massive McMansion she and her family live in, because she doesn't relate to the values around her. For example, the women who surround her keep telling her that she ought to get a boob job and work done on her face. She feels worthless, and is desperate to escape, reports my friend. So much money, so little humanity, is her verdict. FWIW...

UPDATE: Obviously, there are good people in Collin County, and bad people elsewhere. Settle down. This was just a slice of life into one part of CC culture, one that resonated with me after having read "Tinsel." If you're going to be offended by "Tinsel," at least have the integrity to read it first.

On the basis of these lyrics and this performance, I don't think these Columbia Journalism School students should count on busking to pay the bills once they graduate and join the unemployment line:

Can I just ask: Why am I supposed to think Southern Dallas can be helped? I'm not trying to be a bad guy here. I've seen up close the incredible work my colleagues have done to draw attention to the plight of the city's Southern sector, and to encourage the entire city to pull together to make life better for our fellow citizens south of the Trinity. Well and good. How can anybody oppose that?

But then I see the Don Hill trial, and what it revealed about how business gets done in Southern Dallas. And in the wake of that, I see that even the most minimal ethics reform can't seem to get through the City Council because -- surprise! -- many council members from Southern Dallas have been blocking it.

You'd be foolish to claim that the political culture north of the Trinity is the Lone Star version of Pericles' Athens. But honestly, the corruption and dysfunction south of the Trinity seems so bad that one can't help wondering how far one is obliged to go to help people who don't want to change. You can talk about racism and the ugly history of Dallas all you want, and you'll be right, but that doesn't change the here and now, and the depressing reality of the quality of Southern Dallas's leadership -- and (because in a democracy, you get the kind of government you deserve), their followership.

Did you know that there are 12 troops (US, international, and Afghan) in Afghanistan for every one Taliban guerrilla? And that the Taliban are still winning? We know how this story ends, because we've already seen it in the original Russian:

THE highly decorated general sat opposite his commander in chief and explained the problems his army faced fighting in the hills around Kabul: "There is no piece of land in Afghanistan that has not been occupied by one of our soldiers at some time or another," he said. "Nevertheless much of the territory stays in the hands of the terrorists. We control the provincial centers, but we cannot maintain political control over the territory we seize.

"Our soldiers are not to blame. They've fought incredibly bravely in adverse conditions. But to occupy towns and villages temporarily has little value in such a vast land where the insurgents can just disappear into the hills." He went on to request extra troops and equipment. "Without them, without a lot more men, this war will continue for a very, very long time," he said.

These sound as if they could be the words of Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, to President Obama in recent days or weeks. In fact, they were spoken by Sergei Akhromeyev, the commander of the Soviet armed forces, to the Soviet Union's Politburo on Nov. 13, 1986.

The Financial Times' architecture reviewer weighs in on the new Arts District. He likes the buildings, but says they do nothing to create the urban community Dallas claims to want. Excerpt:

Both the new Dallas buildings function well; they do what was asked of them and provide genuinely world-class facilities by star architects. The problem lies more with the conception of the Arts District. Within minutes of the end of each inaugural performance, the only public animation of the surrounding spaces was a mass of shivering patrons waiting for their cars to be returned. And then nothing. It was all over.

If these buildings are supposed to be part of an effort to "regenerate" or "reconnect" the city centre, they have failed. Dallas is indeed special because it is so generic. Both buildings reflect on this. Koolhaas's is critical and consequently compelling, Foster's is didactic in its attempts to Europeanise the cultural quarter through an architectural style that is itself massively influenced by US corporate modernism.
The Dallas Arts District will never be a part of a conventional city in the European sense: it is closer to the existential isolation of the convention centre or the starchitect-designed airport. It is both unique and unsettling, a glimpse of a future in which architecture and culture are imported to save a city from itself.

I'm playing around with a new tool, and Rod's blog posts have been a fun test case:

Arnold Schwarzenegger sends a message to the California legislature with his latest veto. This you've got to see. Wonder if Rick Perry could find a way to work "Adios, mofo" into a note to our Lege...

Did you know that according to a recent Gallup poll, half the people who support the death penalty believe that an innocent person has been put to death at some point over the last five years? I didn't know that until just now. That's incredibly depressing. It suggests to me also that Gov. Perry's not going to have a thing to worry about in stonewalling the Willingham investigation until at least after the election. He knows that enough people don't really care if Cameron Todd Willingham was guilty or not. He needed killin'.

Here's a YouTube trailer for Hank Stuever's new book "Tinsel," which should be hitting bookstores right about now. He spent three Christmases in Frisco, observing Christmas rituals and writing about them as a way to explore what Christmas means in modern America. I've read the book, and it's very, very good -- but it's going to be very, very controversial in North Texas, because many folks will not like the portrait he's painted. It's one of those books that you're just going to have to read, because it's lively (Stuever is a Washington Post features writer, and a terrific prose stylist), it makes you think, and it absolutely will make us all talk. I sense a special Viewpoints forum coming about the book, or maybe a Landauer-curated Community Opinions page. Here's the trailer:

If you're like me, you think autumn is the best time of the year. It means hauling out the black iron skillet and making heavy stews and roasts. It means drinking cold dark beer in the back yard around the fire pit. It means getting your butt over to The Cultured Cup and buying some Mariage Freres Montagne d'Or tea to sip by the fireplace while you read your big fat book (and not on a Kindle, either!). Really, try it.

In suburban Phoenix, police are looking for an Iraqi immigrant who allegedly ran over his adult daughter with his car because she was becoming too Westernized. The daughter, 20, is in the hospital fighting for her life.

I know you're all thinking about the most important question raised by this story: how is this event going to give aid and comfort to those who wish to think ill of Muslims? Not to fear, we in the news media will surely ask that difficult question for you. Jack Shafer is right -- reporters really are suckers for victimhood tales -- and the important thing to remember about stories like this is that the real victim is not the real victim. If you follow me.

I wonder how Dallas Episcopalians are going to respond to Pope Benedict XVI's outreach to them, making it easier for traditional Anglicans to convert to Catholicism without giving up many of their traditions. Speaking as a former Catholic who admires this pope, I'm very pleased by his approach to ecumenism. Pope Benedict has spoken many times of his belief that with Christianity waning in the West, only a "creative minority" of true believers are going to be able to hold on, and to set the stage for a rebirth of the faith. Those Christians who have accomodated themselves to modernity will not hang on, over time. He seems driven to gather in traditionalists from all Christian churches. It's an ecumenism of tradition, not of indifference. I love it.

Jim Schutze agrees that Don Hill is politically talented, but he doesn't feel sorry for the convicted ex-council member for ruining his own life. Here's why:

All of this--the corruption, the salary structure, the lack of independent staff--goes to explain the outcome, which is a City Hall that shuts out the city's middle classes. You wind up with two players in control--the business interests with money to give and the hungry people on the council who are willing to take.

It's how the American Airlines Center got built, how the Trinity River project got passed, how the downtown convention hotel got done, how the strong mayor reform was defeated. It's why we can't have community gardens or neighborhood farmers markets.

Everything is controlled by a partnership of the very rich with the very poor. The rich get jewels--monumental theaters and opera centers downtown, fake suspension bridges over the river, things to make us look good in The New York Times. The poor get crumbs, but they go for crumbs. Their price is their price. The people who get priced out of this system are the ones in the middle, the ones who want all those boring things like better public schools, pothole repairs and clean city parks.

This is why I have a bad attitude about the Arts District. So sue me.

If you didn't see PBS Frontline last night, by all means catch the broadcast on the website. I keep saying that the financial crisis was not brought to us by Bush alone, but by Bush and Clinton -- and last night's Frontline dwelled exclusively on a shameful episode from the second Clinton administration that made my point. It's about how a minor regulator named Brooksley Born tried to put reins on Wall Street's trading in over the counter derivatives -- and found herself squashed by Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and other top economic policymakers, who said Wall Street should be trusted to take care of itself. When she refused to bend, the Greenspan Gang -- including Larry Summers -- went to Congress and got her shut down. We all know the rest of the story.

The astonishing thing is that Rubin's top deputies -- Larry Summers and Tim Geithner -- are now the architects of Obama's financial policy. Is there any wonder that even after the crash, the Obama White House is treading oh-so-softly on Wall Street's turf? Frankly, I don't believe anybody in Washington, except Ron Paul and a handful of others, is looking out for ordinary people. They're all in the pocket of the Wall Street oligarchy. I have never been so disgusted with and alienated from politics. Elizabeth Warren of the Congressional Oversight panel created to oversee the TARP money seems to be on the side of angels -- but what real power does she have, living in Babylon? They'll crush her like they crushed Born. Excerpt below the jump:

a) before the dawn?

or b) after they put the hood on your head, just before they take you out to shoot you?

I ask because Jim Manzi writes against false optimism on the recovery, saying that the fundamentals are still very weak, and pointing out that there was a huge stock market rally after the 1929 crash. He adds:

Any prudent company or individual is planning for a 2010 that could fall anywhere from "Well, we got through that crisis, and now we're back to growth" to "It's 1931".

Malcolm Gladwell, in Time:

If you had a single piece of advice to offer young journalists, what would it be?

The issue is not writing. It's what you write about. One of my favorite columnists is Jonathan Weil, who writes for Bloomberg. He broke the Enron story, and he broke it because he's one of the very few mainstream journalists in America who really knows how to read a balance sheet. That means Jonathan Weil will always have a job, and will always be read, and will always have something interesting to say. He's unique. Most accountants don't write articles, and most journalists don't know anything about accounting. Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master's in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that's the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get smarter.

Question for my colleagues: if you had the time and the money of going to grad school to get an advanced degree to help you with your writing, what would you study? Speaking for myself, an economics degree would probably be most helpful, but I struggle with economics, and don't have a natural facility with numbers. What I do love is history, and I would hope to get a greater grounding in modern history, especially cultural history, so I can better understand, interpret and explain current events in light of what's gone before. However, I doubt that solves the "role of the generalist" problem. On the other hand, as I see it, the two big, important areas that American journalists struggle to understand are religion and economics. Religion is something that interests me personally, professionally and intellectually, so perhaps studying religion and culture within a historical context would make me a better journalist. Then again, American news organizations generally don't care about religion news... . Anyway, thoughts from you colleagues, and you readers, about the kind of training you'd like to see in journalists of tomorrow?

This City Journal article discusses how urban spaces are often made to work not because of big plans, but because of small tweaks that make places more welcoming and human. I've not been to the Arts District since the completion of the Wyly and the Winspear, but I don't know how any Dallasite could have been anything but pleased by how well the opening weekend went. For those who have been down there, can you come up with some tweaks that would make the public space more inviting? How about for downtown Dallas -- what little things would turn the struggling, sterile downtown into a vital community?

What about the areas of southern Dallas seeking redevelopment? What small things would have potentially big results?

In my neighborhood in Old East Dallas, having coffee shops and small restaurants that people could walk to and socialize at would do wonders for the neighborhood. The Garden Cafe is nice, but it's the only thing around, and its hours are restricted. But there's very little attractive commercial space within walking distance. Not sure how to fix this...

Yesterday TDMN ran a front pager about concerns local Muslim leaders have that the wider public will judge all Muslims by the actions of Smadi, the alleged terrorist bomber. I don't blame them for being concerned, even though it would be plainly unjust to hold an entire community responsible for the alleged actions of a lone wolf living in Italy and working at a gas station. But that's not the whole story. Here's some supplemental information.

Have we forgotten about the Holy Land Foundation terrorist fundraising convictions? Those defendants weren't outliers like Smadi, but pillars of the local Islamic community. Have we forgotten about the anti-Christian, anti-Semitic hate literature found at the Dallas Central Mosque, which prompted this newspaper to editorialize thus in 2005 (the link to the entire editorial is dead, but here's an excerpt):

According to the report (available at freedomhouse.org/religion), investigators gathered literature that teaches contempt for Jews, Christians and tolerant Muslims, as well as hatred for America. Material found in a Houston mosque even commands the faithful to establish a revolutionary fifth column.

Some of these documents came from the Dallas Central Mosque in Richardson. Unfortunately, this kind of thing is not altogether alien to this mosque. Last spring, it hosted a youth quiz competition, sponsored by two national organizations closely tied to the worldwide Islamist movement. Kids were tested on the work of premier jihad ideologist Sayyid Qutb.

The mosque's imam, Dr. Yusuf Kavakci, has publicly praised two of the world's foremost radical Islamists, Yusuf Qaradawi and Hasan al-Turabi, as exemplary leaders. Dr. Kavakci also sits on the board of the Saudi-backed Islamic Society of North America, described in congressional testimony as a major conduit of Wahhabist teaching. Yet Dr. Kavakci tells The Dallas Morning News he rejects Wahhabist teaching. Something doesn't add up.

Dr. Kavakci is a national leader in the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which according to the FBI and other authoritative sources, is rooted in the radical global Muslim Brotherhood. This connection is what earned ISNA, CAIR and other Muslim groups a place on the U.S. government's list of unindicted co-conspirators in the HLF trial.

And have we forgotten about the notorious event held at an Irving mosque a few years ago -- the "Tribute to the Great Islamic Visionary," the Ayatollah Khomeini -- and which attracted the cream of North Texas Islamic leaders? The story of Islamic extremism in North Texas is a lot more complicated than you might think. One may well be a stone-cold bigot for having critical suspicions of the local Muslim community. Or one may simply be paying attention to the facts as they are, not as one would prefer them to be.

Just rolled back in from the U2 concert, and I have to say what a bitter disappointment it was for me. It's not the band's fault; it's the new Cowboys Stadium. We had nosebleed seats, and the acoustics were horrible, by far the worst I've experienced at any stadium anywhere. The opening band Muse was so loud and garbled their set sounded like D-Day in a Dumpster. My kid and I had to go out into the concourse to get away from it. U2 was somewhat better, but the best way to describe the aural experience is to ask you to imagine that your downstairs neighbor bought the new U2 album and is playing it loud enough for you to hear that U2 is playing, but not clear enough to understand which songs they're playing (except those you can't mistake because you've heard them a thousand times). Bono sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher, Mrs. Othmar, every time he spoke. It was so bad where we were that a steady stream of people started leaving at about the halfway point. If I hadn't had a 10-year-old with me whose first concert this was, and who was desperate to stay, I would have joined them. By the time the show was over, our entire section had lost about half its people, and my son and I were the only ones left on our row.

Can you imagine leaving a U2 concert long before it was over? People were doing it in droves, at least in our section. You can't blame them. The sound was a muddy, garbled mess.

I'm warning you, don't be a fool and buy tickets high up for any concert in the new stadium. One doesn't expect the Meyerson in terms of acoustics, but again, I've never had any concert at any other stadium sound close to this bad. All in all, tonight was a total waste of money (again I stress: it wasn't the band's fault; if not for the great giant TV screen that was part of their set -- not the big stadium screen -- there would have been no reason to stay, because you wouldn't have been able to see them, and of course you couldn't hear them worth a damn). By the time I got gouged $30 for parking, $40 for the concert T-shirt my kid had to have, $8 for a Jerry Jones bottle of Miller Lite, plus the cost of dinner, and the five-dollar bottles of water, I ended up throwing away $200 this evening, and having the show ruined by that stupid stadium. May the earth open it up and swallow it. If I don't have floor seats next time, I'm not going to see another concert there, ever.

If Obama can win the Nobel Peace prize for doing little or nothing, I see no reason to deny these brilliant researchers the Nobel prize in chemistry:

That's the question put forth by Joe Carter, a conservative Christian who works at the theological and cultural magazine First Things. Excerpt:

The American right has begun to mimic the left in adopting a perverse form of political syncretism. A decade ago we'd mock well-intentioned, but misguided, liberals for being so intent on advancing their cause that they'd gloss over the views of their nutcase, extremist radical allies. Now, we do the same thing without giving it a second thought. Indeed, if you point out that there may be something wrong with embracing the loony ideas of fringe cultists--directly as with Ayn Rand, or indirectly, as with W. Cleon Skousen--you'll be accused of being, depending on how polite your accuser, everything from an elitist to a socialist dhimmi.

Despite the fact that these well-meaning conservatives fail to exhibit any discernment about the views they are imbibing, they become terribly offended when you question how they could accept such nonsense.

Tell me about it. After writing a column harshly criticizing from the Right that gibbering poltroon Glenn Beck as discrediting conservatives who embrace him, my in-box filled up with rants, many of them grammatically correct, calling me a socialist, communist, etc. My favorite e-mail was from the guy who said my column belongs in the same league as "Hitler's Communist Manifesto." Anyway, Carter goes on to say that all this sloppy thinking and emotionalism on the Right is making us ineffective, as is the anti-intellectualism rising on the Right. He writes: "Is it too much to ask that ideas be presented to us in a sober manner rather than like a dramatic reading of the apocalyptic Left Behind novels?"

What can I say? I've got happy feet!

Afghanistan is a hellhole. Afghanistan has always been a hellhole. Afghanistan always will be a hellhole. It cannot be any better because it is brought low by tribalism, fundamentalist religion and corruption. So why are we condemning our soldiers to a Sisyphean task? From the Times of London:

American soldiers serving in Afghanistan are depressed and deeply disillusioned, according to the chaplains of two US battalions that have spent nine months on the front line in the war against the Taleban.

Many feel that they are risking their lives -- and that colleagues have died -- for a futile mission and an Afghan population that does nothing to help them, the chaplains told The Times in their makeshift chapel on this fortress-like base in a dusty, brown valley southwest of Kabul.

"The many soldiers who come to see us have a sense of futility and anger about being here. They are really in a state of depression and despair and just want to get back to their families," said Captain Jeff Masengale, of the 10th Mountain Division's 2-87 Infantry Battalion.

"They feel they are risking their lives for progress that's hard to discern," said Captain Sam Rico, of the Division's 4-25 Field Artillery Battalion. "They are tired, strained, confused and just want to get through." The chaplains said that they were speaking out because the men could not.

For me, it's not a matter of sympathy with murderers. There are many who oppose capital punishment because they believe the inherent human dignity of all persons renders the death penalty immoral. To the contrary, I believe a persuasive case can be made that respecting human dignity requires taking the life of those convicted of taking innocent life. I don't mourn the execution of murderers. Sorry if that offends you.

But I do oppose the death penalty because I profoundly doubt the ability of us flawed human beings to determine actual guilt in capital cases. Most of the time, I believe, we get it right. But "most of the time" is an unacceptable standard when human life is on the line. I lost my faith in capital punishment eight or so years ago, when that Oklahoma crime lab technician was revealed to have been either corrupt or horribly incompetent, and it was shown that men had been sent to their deaths at the hands of the state based on her expert testimony. The Willingham case only confirms for me that we have no business executing people. I shudder to think that I or one of my children might be falsely accused of a crime, and would come before the court of Judge John Jackson, the prosecutor in the Willingham case. Watch this three-minute clip from ABC's Nightline, and tell me it doesn't damage your confidence in Texas justice, especially in matters of life and death:

If you've been following the travails of the newspaper and magazine business, you know that we're all going through an incredibly difficult time of transition, driven by the collapse of the traditional advertising model for funding publications. Folks may not understand that the price of the newspaper via subscription or on the newsstand only makes up a fraction of what it costs to produce the thing; the rest comes from advertising. The DMN has moved in recent months to establish more of a subscriber-based model, by charging more for the paper. Consequently, we're going to report significant circulation losses in our next audit, but the readers who remain are committed to us -- and we, in turn, must redouble our commitment to them, to make sure they're getting their money's worth.

I thought about this just now reading Christopher Kimball's op-ed reflections on the death of the venerable Gourmet magazine. Kimball is the founder and publisher of the brilliant Cook's Illustrated, which he runs on a subscriber basis (that is, without advertising). In some cases, the Internet promotes excellence, by elevating experienced voices who might not have been able to make it into the old media model. But Kimball is concerned that too often the Internet devalues the kind of experience that the editors and writers of Gourmet provided to its readers. Excerpt:

The shuttering of Gourmet reminds us that in a click-or-die advertising marketplace, one ruled by a million instant pundits, where an anonymous Twitter comment might be seen to pack more resonance and useful content than an article that reflects a lifetime of experience, experts are not created from the top down but from the bottom up. They can no longer be coronated; their voices have to be deemed essential to the lives of their customers. That leaves, I think, little room for the thoughtful, considered editorial with which Gourmet delighted its readers for almost seven decades.

To survive, those of us who believe that inexperience rarely leads to wisdom need to swim against the tide, better define our brands, prove our worth, ask to be paid for what we do, and refuse to climb aboard this ship of fools, the one where everyone has an equal voice. Google "broccoli casserole" and make the first recipe you find. I guarantee it will be disappointing. The world needs fewer opinions and more thoughtful expertise -- the kind that comes from real experience, the hard-won blood-on-the-floor kind. I like my reporters, my pilots, my pundits, my doctors, my teachers and my cooking instructors to have graduated from the school of hard knocks.

This turbulent media environment we're in now requires we editors and writers to be better. But it also requires readers to be more discerning. We get what we pay for.

Nancy Nichols continues to report that city health authorities are moving against farmers markets that don't offer mechanical refrigeration (dry ice doesn't cut it, they say). My wife, a Dallas native, said, "Oh great, that's just like Dallas. Somebody tries something fun and different, and the city can't wait to shut them down." The city argues, according to Nancy, that it's protecting the public from potentially spoiled food.

First they went after North Haven Gardens' chickens, and because I was not a pullet...

I feel a column coming on... . Meanwhile, please make some time this weekend to go out and support the Chapman Chile kitchen in Old East Dallas, which is in financial trouble. Surely you could stand some chili ... and stuffed jalapenos too, yes?

Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald rips the Washington Post editorial page a new one for criticizing Roman Polanski's defenders while ignoring the fact that two prominent Post columnists are among those defenders. I think he seriously misunderstands how editorial pages work. Bill McKenzie and I are editorial board members who also happen to be regular editorial columnists. I can't speak for Bill, but often my own view on a topic contrasts with the editorial board's, and sometimes I even write a column taking the opposite side from the editorial (that's why they call them op-eds, heh). If I wrote a column advocating the invasion of Freedonia, and the editorial board published an editorial calling advocates of war on Freedonia dangerous kooks, I would be surprised if they identified me by name. It would be professionally discourteous, but it would also be unnecessary. Readers of our pages would know that my colleagues consider me to be a dangerous kook on the subject of war with Freedonia. I don't understand why Greenwald expects the Post's editorial board (on which I doubt pro-Polanski Post columnists Anne Applebaum and Richard Cohen serve) to identify the Post's own columnists in their sweeping denunciation of Polanski defenders. The implicit denunciation seems to me what I would expect. DMN columnist Mark Davis doesn't sit on our editorial board, but even when the board thinks he's on the wrong side of an issue, it would be rude and unprofessional to criticize him, our colleague, directly in print.

Joan Arbery has a fine list of things that other cities have downtown, but Dallas doesn't -- and that she'd like to see here. I'm with her on the bookstore idea, and also her call for trees. Closer to home (meaning, the News building on Young Street), I would really like to have a good bar. What would you like to see in downtown Dallas? Why can't we have it?

What I don't get (seriously) about downtown is why so many people seem to understand that downtown will never take off without real street life, which requires people living downtown ... but nobody ever seems to do much to encourage the growth of the kinds of small businesses that make an urban pedestrian community possible. Why is that? I'm not asking rhetorically; I really would like to know. My suspicion is that many people who would be interested in living downtown -- students, artists, creative types, waiters, baristas, et al. -- aren't the kind of people who can afford expensive lofts and condos.

I go out on a limb whacking Glenn Beck for his paranoid conspiracy ranting, and have to put up with three days worth of angry e-mails from Beck fans who literally call me a communist ... and now something like this, from a Religious Left activist group called the Gamaliel Foundation, appears. Jeez, I give up. Poor Obama. With friends like these crackpots at the Gamaliel Foundation, who literally pray a litany to Obama in this video, Obama doesn't need enemies. See it here before it goes into heavy rotation on Fox:

No one, says Tom DeLay:

"It's all the same old guys who were in leadership with me, and those old guys aren't the leaders the party needs."

He couldn't name one viable leader for the Republicans, saying that the party has no chance, "barring a miracle," of regaining the House or Senate next year.

From yesterday:

Today's Opinion Home features links to D Magazine's great coverage of the Dallas Arts District.

If you ever found yourself wondering, "What would Sharon Grigsby see if she dropped bad acid?," well, wonder no longer:

Media managers defend "diversity" hiring by saying that a newsroom that doesn't have ethnic diversity will miss stories important to the broader community, simply because they aren't sensitive to the importance of those stories. I am in the main opposed to what is called "diversity" hiring, but they do have a point. Conservative media critics often point out, though, that this same standard is not applied ideologically. The indisputable fact that liberals heavily dominate the journalism profession (e.g., see page 55 of this comprehensive 2008 study by the non-partisan Pew Center, showing that there are very few conservatives in newsrooms, and very few journalists who attend religious services with any regularity) is not seen among media managers as a significant problem, at least not one that should affect hiring.

Yesterday, the Washington Post's ombudsman wrote a column in which he aired the view that the Post and other MSM outlets were very slow on the uptake regarding the ACORN story because they don't have enough conservatives in the newsroom. Excerpt:

It "can't be discounted," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. "Complaints by conservatives are slower to be picked up by non-ideological media because there are not enough conservatives and too many liberals in most newsrooms."

"They just don't see the resonance of these issues. They don't hear about them as fast [and] they're not naturally watching as much," he added.

Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said he worries "that we are not well-enough informed about conservative issues. It's particularly a problem in a town so dominated by Democrats and the Democratic point of view."

The thing is, none of this is news to these people. If they're so concerned that the lack of opinion/ideological diversity is hurting their ability to report the news, what are they going to do about it? Why haven't they done something about it, given that the reputable non-partisan media studies have reported the same thing over and over for many years?

Ever heard of the Myers-Briggs test? It's a personality test that lots of companies use to sort out the personality orientation of their employees, to assess their strengths and weaknesses. Here's a quick online version of it I took over the weekend. I had done a more extensive version of it before, and the results were the same. My type is INFP, which is explained here. Excerpt:

As an INFP, your primary mode of living is focused internally, where you deal with things according to how you feel about them, or how they fit into your personal value system. Your secondary mode is external, where you take things in primarily via your intuition.

Their primary goal is to find out their meaning in life. What is their purpose? How can they best serve humanity in their lives? They are idealists and perfectionists, who drive themselves hard in their quest for achieving the goals they have identified for themselves ...

INFPs are highly intuitive about people. They rely heavily on their intuitions to guide them, and use their discoveries to constantly search for value in life. They are on a continuous mission to find the truth and meaning underlying things. Every encounter and every piece of knowledge gained gets sifted through the INFP's value system, and is evaluated to see if it has any potential to help the INFP define or refine their own path in life.

Thumbnail sketches of all the types are here. I'm curious to know how the rest of you on the board score on this test. You can take it and have your results in five minutes or less. Give it a shot.

The first time I took a Myers-Briggs assessment, about 15 years ago, I was an ENFP (E = Extrovert). The last time I took it, about two years ago, I had become more of an Introvert. Not surprising, at least not to me.

How on earth did this crackpot get a national TV show? Watch this amazing eight-minute monologue in which Glenn Beck interprets public art, and ties together the Rockefellers, communism, fascism, corporatism, the United Nations and the Obama White House together in a grand conspiracy. If this were in a movie, you wouldn't believe it. But this is on national TV, on Fox News, every weeknight:

Where's Beck getting this garbage? Listen to this 1976 speech by Beck guru W. Cleon Skousen, in which he cites Mormon prophecy to bolster his rant against the Rockefellers, the communists, and all kinds of "secret combinations" infiltrating everything, trying to destroy the Constitution at the direction of Satan.

Yesterday I wrote a post about W. Cleon Skousen, a far-right crank, and his book "The 5,000 Year Leap," which has been pushed hard by Glenn Beck, and was cited by Gov. Rick Perry as an example of the kind of book one should read to understand our time. The late Skousen was pretty extreme, but having read most of "Leap" last night, I have to say that none of this comes through in this particular book. His reputation as a weirdo and paranoid must have come through his other books, because "Leap" is a fairly anodyne and sentimental work of pseudo-history. In it, he treats the American founding as a "miracle," and writes of the Founders as if they were semi-divine figures leading the new nation forward in its manifest destiny. This is a problematic idea, to say the least, but it's hardly outside of the mainstream of the American tradition. "Leap" is poorly written and poorly argued, a mediocre book in every way, but it's not a malicious or crazy book by any stretch. If the only thing you knew about Cleon Skousen and his thought came from this book, you'd think he was an old-fashioned, 1950s-style patriotic type, and "Leap" the kind of book Opie's civics teacher at Mayberry High would assign him to read. I wish the governor were looking to more serious works of history about the American founding for guidance, but having actually read most of "Leap," I'm not worried that he's informed by it. In fact, it's take on the meaning of American history, however sentimental, nostalgic and misguided, would make sense to a lot of Texans.

I blogged the other day about Irving-born supermodel Erin Wasson's bid to become the Mother Teresa of our time with her remarks about homeless fashion. I've just located a clip of the interview where she bared her soul about the aesthetic brilliance of the destitute. The money quote starts just shy of the one-minute mark. Warning, some language:

What, according to the Wall Street Journal, is Gov. Rick Perry urging people to read to understand the times?:

Naturally, the governor is concerned about what is happening in Washington. When I ask him if Mr. Obama's policies would send this country down the same path as California, Mr. Perry lunges forward, "If you want to know what this guy's policies are doing, it's been written about before."

"Read that book. Read this book," he says, gesturing toward the nearby table. I see something from Weight Watchers and a Harry Potter paperback--but the governor is referring to the "The Road to Serfdom" by Frederick Hayek and "The 5000 Year Leap" by W. Cleon Skousen. "Read Amity Shlaes's 'The Forgotten Man.' Amity's book is very eye-opening--scary--for me."

What is "The 5,000 Year Leap"? It's a radical right pseudohistory whose late author, a Mormon, was so far to the right he thought Eisenhower was a communist, and whose extremism caused even the conservative LDS Church to distance themselves from him. According to this must-read Salon piece on Skousen, the "Leap" author was an anti-communist conspiracy freak and hardcore fundamentalist theocrat. An earlier Skousen "history" caused controversy by referring to black children as "pickaninnies" and calling slave owners the "worst victims" of slavery. TV and radio talker Glenn Beck read "The 5,000 Year Leap," and it changed his life. He's been pushing the book like crazy on his program, and mainstreaming this radical-right conspiracy nuts ideas.

Hayek's work, I know. Shlaes' work, I know. But what on earth does the Governor of Texas see as commendable in the thought of W. Cleon Skousen? I think a lot of people would like to know.

From Rush Limbaugh's radio broadcast yesterday:

It's Obama's America, is it not? Obama's America, white kids getting beat up on school buses now. You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety but in Obama's America the white kids now get beat up ..."

So, I guess that now that we have a black man in the White House, it's open season on white children, right? Oh no, say Rush's defenders, that's not what Rush meant. He was being sarcastic. Ah, I see. Well, how do you think things would go if Limbaugh said something like this, if, say, Joe Lieberman were president?:

It's Lieberman's America, is it not? Lieberman's America, Gentiles getting defrauded and robbed by Jews on Wall Street. You put your money in a mutual fund, you expect security but in Lieberman's America the non-Jews now get robbed blind..."

How does that sound, Dittoheads? Yeah, right, sarcasm, if by "sarcasm" you mean using vile racial and ethnic tropes to make a political point.

Verily:

Today's page is here -- lotsa stuff on Obama, racism, ACORN and little fluffy bunnies. Except not the little fluffy bunnies part.

Jim Schutze says Dallas is run by a group of cynical white elites who co-opt poor black unprincipled dupes. Excerpt:

The same people figured out quickly that the path of least resistance on the city council was through the unemployed African-American paupers on the council (upwardly mobile black people with real jobs, like upwardly mobile white people with real jobs, couldn't afford to serve). You could have Al Lipscomb's vote for a cab ride, for God's sake.

The old wealthy leadership of the city, which used to pat itself on the back all the time for being civic-minded, mainly because it was easy for them to get their way, became the prime enablers of corruption on the city council. That's what you see in the Lynn Flint Shaw deal above, and, by the way, it's what you see every day at City Hall in the approach of Mayor Tom Leppert -- contracts for votes.

Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, says Rep. Kenny Marchant, the District 24 Republican, is pretty much a do-nothing member of Congress. I'm trying to decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Here's the Opinion Home page from Friday, and over the weekend:

And here's today's version -- be sure to read Luigi Zingales' terrific lead essay about the future of capitalism.

Dallas' answer to Marie Antoinette once again praises the fashion sense of the poorest of the poor. From Saturday's NYTimes:

As she prepared for her debut runway show at the tents on Friday, Erin Wasson, a model turned designer, seconded Mr. Duffty's view that the professionals could take some tips from the homeless. And she defended remarks she made last year in an interview with Nylon magazine. "The people with the best style for me are the people that are the poorest," Ms. Wasson said then, a remark that generated an online firestorm -- and a very funny video parody of her by the actress Julia Stiles.

"I'm not saying let's glamorize the homeless," said Ms. Wasson, who is often cited by fashion magazines as a style "icon" and a "muse" for Alexander Wang, a designer known for outfitting the kind of women who a couple of minutes ago were reverenced by fashion as "It" girls.

"It's not like I'm saying, 'Oh, God, that's so inspiring -- you got your clothes from a garbage can,' " Ms. Wasson said. What is she saying then? "When I moved down to Venice Beach, I found these people with this amazing mentality, this gypsy mentality -- people that you couldn't label and put in a box," said the designer, perhaps forgetting that some of those very people live in one.

"I got trashed for it," Ms. Wasson said. "But I still don't think I'm wrong."

Nit, meet wit.

Time for me to start thinking about ways I'm going to avoid the State Fair of Texas. I'm shooting for the sixth year in a row of bah-humbug, and preparing to take incoming fire from Rodger Jones, Chuck Bloom and Rawlins Gilliland (who will no doubt drag himself in from the Great Trinity Swamp to masticate Deep Fried Butter on the midway). Oh, do I hate the state fair! And I hate it with a special purity, because see, I've never been. It's pure, uncut prejudice. You corny dogs get off my lawn! Besides, Big Tex is some sort of perv, and don't act like you haven't had the same thought.

Weekends this fall, my kids will be with their mother and Uncle Rawlins, no doubt, inspecting mullets at the degenerate Fair Park hootenanny, while I plan to remain alone at home, drinking bone-dry martinis, pulling the legs off of insects, and composing anonymous letters to neighborhood children telling them that their mommies drink because they're bad. Basically, getting in touch with my inner Evelyn Waugh (who looks in this picture suspiciously like Mr. Dallas).

We all know what President Bush was doing eight years ago today, on 9/11/01. But think about what he was doing 10 years ago on this date. On September 11, 1999, this was the only item that appeared in the Dallas Morning News about the governor of Texas:

Vice President Al Gore, not Republican presidential hopeful George W. Bush, greeted children at a local elementary school Friday. His slogan: "Kids over cash." Mr. Gore quickly changed his campaign schedule to talk to the mostly Hispanic students at the Ella Risk School after Mr. Bush canceled his visit Wednesday.

Bad weather delayed the GOP front-runner's plane, and he chose to attend his only other campaign stop in Rhode Island -- a $1,000-plate fund-raiser in Providence.

Set aside your political views of G.W. Bush, and think about, on a human level, what the next 10 years would bring for that man: election to the presidency, 9/11, war, the worst economic crisis since the great Depression, the inglorious end of the era of conservative governance, which began almost half his lifetime ago.

But on this date in 1999, the worst thing he had to worry about was Al Gore giving him a noogie for having missed an appointment at a school because of bad weather.

Our Steve Blow is correct -- Your Working Boy was the arthur of today's editorial making reference to the St. Crispin's Day speech in Shakespeare's "Henry V." Steve draws your attention to Laurence Olivier's recitation of this speech from the 1940s film version:

Me, I much prefer Kenneth Branagh's more contemporary take (which benefits from better staging, and music):

Angela Hunt says Dallas is piling up wholly unsustainable levels of municipal debt, and that she approached Mayor Leppert about the frightening balance sheet. Here's what she claims happened:

I brought this up at last week's council meeting when we were discussing the budget: We're about to dig ourselves into a bigger hole, I said. A $24 million hole at a time when we're looking for pennies in the couch. Bad idea. Only Councilmember Ann Margolin shared my concern.

I went over to the mayor, thinking, "He's a business guy. Surely, he gets this." Instead, he did that thing he does when he wants to dismiss any opposition. You know the thing I'm talking about. It goes something like this:

"We must do [X] to make Dallas a great city. If you oppose [X], you don't want Dallas to be a great city."

It's a hell of a syllogism, and it's worked for him through the Trinity Toll Road and Convention Center Hotel campaigns, so why not go back to the same well?

So when I told him my concerns, he just shook his head. "We can't just throw up our hands and not invest in our city." (As if I were proposing to eliminate bond projects altogether and let Dallas devolve into a third-world country.) I asked him where he thought he was going to get $24 million. "We'll find it." Are you planning on raising taxes? "Absolutely not."

So I guess the mayor is saying, "Spend, baby, spend! Who cares if we don't have the money! We'll tell everyone that we have to do it, or else Dallas won't be a world-class city!"

I cannot tell you how crazy this makes me. As a Dallas taxpayer, I don't give a flying flapjack about whether or not the city's elites can feel that people in New York, Los Angeles and London admire the size and shape of this city's buildings. I want a city with streets that aren't potholed. I want libraries that stay open. I want a city that can afford to pay its cops to keep crime down. Why are Dallas elites so consumed by the idea of building a city that people who don't live here will gush over? Isn't the idea of spending more than you can afford for the sake of impressing others morally bankrupt?

It's interesting to think of what kind of city we could have if its leaders cared more about building a Dallas-class Dallas than a world-class Dallas.

I was out motoring around with Hashimoto the other day after he picked me up at the community garden where I volunteer, growing exotic varieties of free-range oregano for homeless crackheads in the ghetto, when we drove by a large stretch of woodlands. This was over by Pleasant Grove. I'd never been to that part of town, so I asked him, "Is that the Great Trinity Forest?"

"That would be it," he said.

"That's where Rawlins is always trying to get me to go hiking," I said. "It looks horrible. Think of all the mosquitos in there. There's nowhere to get a cocktail. I wouldn't go inside that thing unless I had to dump a body."

Meanwhile, it is reported that most of the cases of West Nile virus in Dallas County are in the Lakewood/Old East Dallas area, where I live. Oh goody, another reason, aside from not wanting the ice in my drink to melt too quickly, to stay inside under the air conditioning until the first freeze. I am an avid indoorsman.

Betty Culbreath's semi-literate, deranged rant against Trey Garrison raises an important question: Who's crazier, Mrs. Culbreath, or a city whose politics allows someone of this caliber to rise to important positions of leadership? I'm serious -- how does someone who cannot write an English sentence and who can be plunged into dark visions of race war by a cranky libertarian's column get to be a mover and shaker on the DFW Airport Board, to say nothing of her past plum position in the county bureaucracy?

Behold!:

And here is today's Opinion Home page, with every dang comment on Dear Leader's (shout out to Trey!) Obama's school speech you could possibly hope to read.

I liked Steve Blow's column this morning, in which he says that he wants to like DA-For-Life Craig Watkins, but the DA's incompetence and self-pity make that awfully difficult. It's been quite a descent, this past year has, for TDMN's Texan of the Year.

UPDATE: Let me clarify what I mean: I mean the DA has been politically incompetent in the way he's handled the constable matter, and the way he's handled the bail-jumper matter. I have no opinion on the rest of the way he's done his job, and I admire the work he's done to clear the name of the innocent.

UPDATE.2: Just got off the phone with the DA, who obviously didn't think much of this post, but who wouldn't go on the record, unfortunately, with the substance of his criticism. Let's just say that if he's right about what's really going on here, critics like me are going to eat some crow. We'll see.

This week, panelists consider a question raised by the life of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, a man who was involved in the moral horror of a woman's death at Chappaquiddick, but who went on to lead a life of great accomplishment as a lawmaker. Can good works ever erase an evil deed? How should we judge the life of someone who has done evil, but also great good? Go here to see how our panel of Texas religious leaders answered that question.

Last night I saw my wife reading the newspaper and fighting back tears. "You've got to read this story," she said, choking up. It was Lee Hancock's amazing piece about Deidrea and T.K. Laux, and their decision to go forth with her pregnancy after learning that their unborn son Thomas had a terminal genetic defect that would likely kill him within hours of his birth, if he survived the birth at all.

I'm not quite sure that words are adequate to capture the love and the courage of this mother and father, which is, God knows, no slight on Lee. I'm so grateful to her and to everyone at the newspaper for telling this story (including videographer Sonya Hebert), which has, I hear, elicited enormous reader interest -- especially because people are anxious to read next weekend's installment, to find out what happened.

You can get a jump on next week by watching this video presentation of the Laux family's story. Our cameras were there when Thomas was born, and recorded Deidrea and T.K.'s first moments with their boy. The emotions were so intense I had to turn off the video player. This is one of the most remarkable things I've seen in ages.

Yesterday's Opinion Home page:

Here's today's; bet you forgot today was the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans didn't -- and we have Katrina pieces up on the site. Also: you think you've read all the Teddy Kennedy reflections you can stand, but I found a few that are well worth your time, even today.

There's a great reflection by "Corbusier" on why the downtown Dallas Victory Park development has flopped, and why the cheaper, more crappily constructed Harbor development in Rockwall is thriving. But neither one is as well done as the West Village, says Corbu. Excerpt:

What can be learned from these projects? For one thing, scale matters a lot. Trying to do too much too fast sets one up for failure that much more easily. One of Dallas' most successful new districts is West Village, an area not much older than Victory but a lot smaller. It includes several blocks of low- to mid-rise blocks dressed in historicist (yet high quality) clothing and incorporating a lively mix of shops, restaurants, bars, a movie theatre and bookstore. It sensitively integrates with the surrounding neighborhoods and densities, incorporates the streetcar and the lightrail system. West Village functions as a connective tissue to smaller yet fast emerging neighborhoods, such as Knox-Henderson, with their traditional commercial cores lying nearby. Victory suffers from feeling like an isolated precinct, placed on a large abandoned site with nary a relation to the surrounding city. Its self-imposed architectural conformity in the use of the beige masonry, satin-finished metal panel and blue-tinted glass lend an unnecessary sterility to the place. By contrast, the random hodge-podge character of the older more established districts or the deliberate heterogeneity of styles in newer developments promote a lively feel for pedestrians. And lastly, when masterplanning a district it is more important to appeal to as many potential users as possible before creating a niche-based identity. It's understandable that selling a brand is critical in attracting high-paying residents to a new development, but this has to be balanced with the need to supply as broad pool of customers to support the retail. Apartment dwellers alone can't keep the street-level businesses below in business.

What's the lesson here? Corbu says developers have to pay attention to two things: 1) getting actual people, not theoretical richie-riches, to use the place, and 2) observing how thriving built communities come into being. What I'd like to know is how much supporting the Victory white elephant cost Dallas taxpayers, and if we are collectively capable of learning a meaningful lesson from Ross Jr.'s folly? Or will we continue to build Big Inhuman Shiny Things that have no natural connection to their environment?

(H/T: RenegadeBus)

I just read an amazing thing about Ted Kennedy. The conservative writer David Frum writes that he couldn't stand the man after what he (Kennedy) had done to Robert Bork, and later to Ted Olson. And then came 9/11. Trust me, you'll want to go to today's Opinion Home page to read Frum's astonishing story about the private Ted Kennedy, as well as today's round-up of Kennedy commentary.

Here is yesterday's Opinion Home page:

Here's Monday's Opinion Home page:

Today's Opinion Home is chock full of hot arguments over whether or not the Attorney General was right to announce an investigation into CIA torture allegations. Go thee thither and check 'em out.

The other day, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) okayed same-sex clergy in committed relationships. For this post, I'm not interested in knowing whether you think this was the right decision or the wrong decision in terms of morality and theology. Rather, I'm interested in gauging what you think will happen to the Lutherans, and to other American churches, around how they handle the issue of homosexuality. As I see it, there are three basic scenarios:

1. The ELCA, which has been in fairly serious decline in terms of membership, will see that decline accelerate as conservatives leave the church in protest. Churches that liberalize policies on homosexuality will wither, in large part because they have become so acculturated to the times that they don't offer a clear alternative to the mainstream.

2. The ELCA, which has been in fairly serious membership decline, will see that decline accelerate in the short term, but this is just the darkness before the dawn. Research shows that young Americans are vastly more accepting of homosexuality than older Americans. When those people start looking for churches, as often happens when they mature, especially when they have kids, they are going to flock to churches that are more tolerant and open on gay issues. Those churches will prosper.

3. The ELCA will continue to decline, while more conservative churches will probably prosper in the short run. But the demographic wave on homosexuality is real, and it's going to impact conservative churches in a big way over the coming decades. But secularism -- that is, being unchurched and happy with it -- is also a rising trend among younger Americans. Liberalization on the gay issue ought to in theory help more tolerant congregations attract people, but in practice, it's going to be a wash because significantly fewer of these people are going to care about belonging to any church at all in the future.

As you think about this question, answer not what you hope does happen, but what you think will happen. I think No. 3 is the likely outcome. Mind you, I exhort readers to answer as dispassionately and as analytically as possible; I will unpublish responses that rant about eeeevul homosexuals or eeeevul right-wing Christians. Let's approach this question with light, not heat.

Here ya go:

And here's today's page -- note especially the red-hot Lockerbie pieces, especially the one from the ex-CIA agent.

My wife went to Jimmy's the legendary neighborhood Italian market in Old East Dallas, for vegetables this afternoon. The total came to around five dollars, which must have visibly startled her, because the guy behind the register said:

"It's not Central Jimmy's, it's not Whole Jimmy's. It's just Jimmy's."

God bless Jimmy's, says I.

Sad news for fans and patrons of the West End Chipotle, which is more or less the editorial department cafeteria: longtime manager Elvir Ibrahimpasic has been promoted to run the store in Allen. This was a blow. He's been a good friend to us ed board Chipotle fanatics, and he runs a tight ship. The Allen Chipotle has good things in store for it, for sure. As one of my lunch partners who may or may not be a board member said, "It's like losing your parish priest, but he becomes a bishop." True.

Paul Burka has written a sensible thing about the Perry-Hutchison race. Excerpt:

It's premature, at this stage, to call the race for Perry, and I'm not going to do it. But when I try to envision a winning strategy for Hutchison, I can't get there. I don't think her people are up to it. They have her attacking Perry at every turn. I think this is all wrong. There is only one way for Hutchison to win this race, and that is to enlarge the primary. But when your message is negative, you have the opposite effect: You suppress turnout. That's Perry's strategy, to attack her and keep the primary small. She is playing into his hands. And speaking of playing into Perry's hands, why does she persist in criticizing his refusal to take unemployment insurance stimulus funds? Has the Hutchison campaign read the polls? Something like 7 out of 10 Republican primary voters AGREE with Perry. She's on the other side, 3 out of 10. That's a good average for a baseball player, but it stinks for a politician.

Can you think of a winning primary strategy for KBH? Bueller? Bueller?

Yesterday's Opinion Home page, for free:

Check out today's Opinion Home page by following this link. I never thought I'd be able to embed a video of Mike Hashimoto's losing tryout for "Dancing With the Stars," but when Tom DeLay's office linked it to me, I thought, well, heck yeah!

Angela Hunt notes a neat way the city of Pittsburgh has of using iPhone technology to empower its citizens to report code violations. Writes Angela:

Anyone who sees a code violation can snap a pic, upload, and be done with it, without having to (a) sit on hold with a 311 operator forever or (b) remember all the relevant location/violation info for later input into the 311 website (assuming you don't forget).

And no more confusion about incorrect addresses (look at picture; compare to reality; done). Plus, the city's got tangible evidence of an alleged violation and can evaluate the problem before going out to investigate.

She says she'll be asking the city to look into getting this going in Dallas. Sounds like a great idea to me.

Sorry, I'm late filing yesterday's archived Opinion Home page -- I'm still trying to get the hang of this new thing Hashimoto started doing while I was summering at Balmoral with the Windsors. Here's what our site looked like on Wednesday:

And here's what it looks like today.

Where would we be without Canadian researchers? According to the BBC, academics have just published a paper advising humanity how to respond to a zombie attack. Their conclusion?:

In their scientific paper, the authors conclude that humanity's only hope is to "hit them [the undead] hard and hit them often".

They added: "It's imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else... we are all in a great deal of trouble."

Funnily enough, I think this might be good advice for Keven to follow when our editorial board meetings drag on past 10:30...

Sorry Jose Escobedo, we know you meant well with your Astroturf'd yard, but the editorial board says that Frankenlawns aren't the answer.

Did you know that putting in a Frankenlawn -- that is, artificial turf in place of your grass lawn -- is the green, sensitivo thing to do? So says Texas Turf, which sells them. Excerpt:

In addition to its low maintenance requirements, SofGrass™ Lawn also: • Requires no water • Requires no chemicals, fertilizer or insecticides • Alleviates allergy symptoms • Provides handicap accessibility • Prevents injuries associated with rocks and ground debris • Is safe for pets

Man, it takes chutzpah to try to sell killing off every living thing on your lawn and turning it into a field of grass-like plastic into a pro-environmental thing to do (as well as kind to pets and the handicapped!). But somehow, that strikes me as very Dallas. We've got no real cultural prejudice here against fakey-fake.

Yesterday Kay Bailey Hutchison said:

"I will not preside over a shrinking Republican Party."

As far as I can tell, that's pretty much the rationale for her candidacy, and it's not a bad one. She's saying that Perry-style GOP base politics is taking the Republicans further into the weeds, and sacrificing long-term gain for Perry's short-term interests. I think she's probably right, but I find it hard at this point to imagine that the grassroots support that Perry has is going to be overrun by more moderate GOP sentiment. Furthermore, I doubt that she has what it takes to play hardball with Perry. I would love to be wrong, because it's also hard to see much of a future for Texas Republicans without some change of course away from the Palin-style fever swamps.

New Texas Faith posted: "Why should science talk to religion?"
See how our panelists answered the question.

As a registered Texas Republican, I have no idea how I'm going to vote in my party's gubernatorial primary. I have problems with the way Rick Perry has run his office, and even though I'm a social conservative, I see that the Texas GOP can't run on the social conservative base if it wants to maintain power in the long run. The suburbs and younger voters are put off by the GOP hardcore. So I'm the sort of Republican voter who ought to be easy for Kay Bailey Hutchison to scoop up.

But it's very hard to get excited about her candidacy. She's got a big sell job ahead of her. Seems to me that at this early stage, all she has going for her is that she's not Rick Perry. I doubt that will be enough. When I heard on the radio yesterday that Perry's people sent out a scout to dog KBH at her campaign kickoff yesterday, my first thought was that Perry is going to mop the floor with her. I'm not saying that's what should happen; I'm saying that unless she gets her head into the game and starts pushing hard, she's not going to give GOP voters dissatisfied with the status quo reason to vote for her.

Monday's Opinion Home, ratcheer:

Here's a link to today's page -- yeah, yeah, lots of health care fighting, but I'm amazed by how much good writing is coming out of this abstruse subject. Check out especially the interview with Wendell Potter, a former top health insurance industry executive, who explains how he helped snow the public on reform.

That's all I can figure after reading the apocalyptic news that the former House Majority Leader is going to appear on Dancing With the Stars. I think if you look deeply enough into the Book of Daniel (or was that the Collected Works of Nostradamus?), you'll find that this was prophesied as a harbinger of the end.

Who needs drugs anymore? Reality is surreal enough these days.

If you missed TDMN restaurant critic Leslie Brenner's excellent essay yesterday detailing how Dallas's restaurants could improve, run, don't walk, to read it. She does exactly what a good and useful critic is supposed to do: praise what it praiseworthy, but also offer constructive advice on how our local restaurants can improve the art of cooking. One thing she said challenged me personally, though:

Diners have a responsibility here too. If there's something wrong with a dish, say something. Is your gnocchi partially frozen? Say something. Is a dish so salty you can't eat it? Say something. We all need to raise the bar together.

Too right. I can't think of a time I've complained about a meal, even when I've wanted to. It's a Southern thing, I think; it seems ... not nice. I'll leave a meager tip when the service is awful, but it has to be really poor. But I'm someone who loves to eat, and would like restaurants to get better. I'd better start speaking up. Anyway, a restaurant critic willing to, you know, criticize performs a great service to the city. I once worked for a newspaper that seemed to expect its restaurant critics to write by the principle, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." The reviews were therefore widely considered worthless by anybody who knew anything about restaurants. But at least they didn't bring angry phone calls from restaurauters, which may have been the point.

Friday's home page, and the weekend's:

On today's Opinion Home page, several essays -- including one from Bill Maher -- about how the health care debate is bringing the crazy.

What do you think of Jose Escobedo's fight with the City over the Astroturf he put on his Junius Heights lawn? The man, who lives in my Old East Dallas neighborhood, has said he's sick and tired of trying and failing to grow grass, so he laid down Astroturf. No can do, says the city, not in the Junius Heights Conservation District -- and, if you read the ordinance, the city has an airtight case (Section 3.2 forbids "artificial grass"). I don't see how Escobedo can get out of this one. But there's more to this story than the law.

Mind you, I haven't seen Escobedo's lawn, though I'll drive by and look at it this afternoon. But I find myself in surprising sympathy with him, even though I support the conservation district. My neighbors, both retirees on a limited income, have had lots of trouble growing grass on their front lawn, in part because of the shade from the giant tree, and in part because of drainage issues that keep washing away their seeds. They wanted to build a short wall in front of their yard to keep it from washing away, but another neighbor got mad about it, and complained to the city that such a wall would violate the conservation district. They had a big to-do with the city, and came away with permission to build a much smaller wall. But now a longtime friendship has been busted up. It was a lose-lose for everybody. Frankly, I'd rather see a wall there and a healthy lawn than no wall and a bald patch where grass would otherwise be. But the law's the law, I guess. Still, I don't blame them for being angry over what's happened to the neighborhood; they've been there for over 30 years, and moved in when few other would. Now, from their viewpoint, they're being pushed around by newcomers. Did I mention that they're Hispanic?

Here's where race and class conflict come into the picture. (Read on...)

Here's yesterday's Opinion Home page, preserved for posterity, or until the North Koreans knock out the Interwebs:

Here's a link to today's Opinion Home -- be sure to check out Dr. Abraham Verghese's explanation about why everyone is irrational when it comes to health care, and Megan McArdle's observation that poll numbers show the town hells are working. Bonus: Mark Cuban on patriotism! If Cubes didn't exist, we'd have to invent him.

In what is no doubt an orchestrated leak, an unidentified associate of Dick Cheney is telling the Washington Post that Cheney's going to unload on Dubya in his upcoming memoir, accusing Bush of going soft in his second term.

I'm sure this will hurt Bush personally, but in truth, I can hardly think of a better gift to Bush, in terms of rehabilitating his reputation, than being attacked in this way by Dick Cheney. Now, if only Karl Rove would do the same.

Speaking of Rove, did you see his op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal, in which he criticized Obama for governing as if he were still in campaign mode, and counterproductively making enemies of his opponents? What's next from the Journal, an investing column from Bernie Madoff? When Sharon gets back, perhaps I can get her to commission a Viewpoints piece on ethics in government from Don Hill.

Here's Wednesday's Opinion Home page:

And here's a link to today's page. I particular recommend the Nouriel Roubini column about the weak recovery, the various warnings that the recovery is based on insane and unsustainable levels of spending (and is therefore an illusion), and Jim Schutze's dispatch from the city hall corruption trial. Oh, and there's a full quiver of arguments about the town hall meetings; you might think there's nothing interesting left to be said about them, but amazingly enough, there is.

As you may know, I took a break from my daily newspaper job this summer to spend two months on a journalism fellowship. Instead of obsessively reading newspapers, magazines and blogs every day, I disengaged, and spent time reading about theology and Chinese medicine -- things I rarely have time to read about in my normal life, because I'm so busy chasing current events, and opinions about current events.

Now I'm on Day Two of being back in the office, and in some ways it feels like I've stumbled off a pleasant forest path into a raging river. I've been up since five a.m. reading the papers online, and the blogs, culling and compiling the most interesting stuff for the Dallas Morning News op-ed home page I edit. It's been disorienting, jumping back into things so quickly. A frustrated colleague asked me, "Didn't you check [a particular blog] while you were away?"

Actually, I didn't. Or I hardly did. In fact, I was on a media diet for two months. Half the time, I didn't even read the newspaper. Almost never turned on cable news. I skimmed a few blogs and news sites, but read about 25 percent of what I normally do. I simply had more interesting things to do. My reading for my fellowship really captured my imagination, and besides, I was writing a paper on it, so I needed to give it most of my attention. And when I wasn't working on fellowship stuff, there were kids to play with, and a backyard garden, and ... life.

What did I learn about my profession from this? Read on...

This summer, I studied what Western healthcare and medicine has to learn from two Eastern ways of knowing: Traditional Chinese Medicine (whose metaphysical basis is in Taoist religion and philosophy), and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. In this healthcare debate of recent weeks, especially regarding the so-called "death panels," I've thought a bit about the teaching of Orthodox Christian theologian Jean-Claude Larchet, who says in his short, excellent "Theology of Illness" that we suffer in modernity from having forgotten how to approach our illnesses -- and eventual deaths -- philosophically. He identifies these areas as things that harm our ability to face illness responsibly:

1. An over-valuation of biological life -- that is, the idea that preserving biological life is the utmost value, and a concomitant fear that biological death means the absolute end of human existence. This can cause us to face our illness with great fear, which only undermines our ability to resist it.

2. Psychological health conceived as an enjoyment of well-being in the body. This has to do with a fundamental refusal to conceive of suffering as having any redemptive or positive effect, and with the suppression of pain and elimination of suffering -- as opposed to transforming pain and suffering -- as the highest value of civilization.

3. The fear of everything that can reduce or eliminate enjoyment of well-being in the body.

To what extent is our seeming inability to talk about dying well, or dying at all, preventing us from having a rational, mature and necessary discussion about health care?

I'm back in the office after a 13-week hiatus. I traveled a lot this summer: two stints in Cambridge (England) on a fellowship, a week's vacation in Colorado Springs, and a week in Alaska giving speeches. That means I have spent a total of one month this summer in places where the temperature/climate was spectacular. Unlike our roasty, toasty home on the Plains. Oh happy day.

Though I had a great time in the various places I spent time in this summer, and met some great folks, it was a reminder to me of all the good things I've got going on in Dallas. I hate the weather here, but you just can't beat the people. I had lunch yesterday with a friend who's an immigrant from a place of constant conflict between people of different religions and ethnicities; he told me that there's nothing like going back to the old country and seeing how mired in ancient hatreds the people there are to make him appreciate the simple but extraordinary blessing of living in Dallas, where he's free to get on with his life and his business without being hassled.

I thought about all this this morning when I read urbanist Joel Kotkin's post about how skewed the "Best Places to Live" lists tend to be, to the preferences of a certain kind of professional-class elite. For all the problems in Dallas, it is and remains a good place to make friends, to find a good church, and to raise a family. It's just not such a good place to be comfortable from June till November, but you can't have everything, can you? Oh, and unlike Colorado and Alaska, and most definitely unlike England, Dallas has champion guacamole. As William Carlos Williams might have said, but did not, so much depends upon reliable guacamole. I am so not kidding.

The other day I was changing my two-year-old daughter's diaper, and she said, "Dad, you know what my favorite word is? 'Whoop!'"

She didn't say it in the right way. She said it in that deficient-chromosome Aggie way. Wupp. I froze. "Julie, come in here and listen to this," I said nervously.

The child repeated what she'd said in front of her mother, a graduate of UT-Austin. Whose mouth fell open.

Where could she have gotten this? The little girl is doomed. You, Landauer, you put a curse on her!

Greetings from the University of Cambridge, where I finished up today a two-week seminar in science and religion sponsored by the Templeton Foundation. It was pretty damn great, I have to say, though my brain hurts, and I'm dying for some guacamole (you know how they say British cooking has gotten a lot better in recent years? They lie.). I'll be spending the next five weeks researching Chinese medicine, and how it's being integrated into US mainstream healthcare -- and the philosophical overlaps between Taoism, the theoretical basis for Chinese medicine, and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Lots of metaphysics reading ahead this summer. Oh frabjous day.

I'm ready to get back to Dallas, and am coming home tomorrow, but one thing I will miss more than anything else: the weather here. For most of my time here, the high temps have been in the low 60s. Our English hosts have apologized for the cool and the wet, but I've said, "No, no, you don't understand. This is glorious. I come from Dallas." I see that it's supposed to be 101 degrees or something close to it when I arrive at DFW tomorrow. Tonight I wore a wool cardigan to dinner. Heavenly. Well, back to Hell, which whatever else may be said for it, has much better eats. Plus my family. Plus my dog.

You might have seen Jeanie Potthoff's TDMN op-ed column advocating for Greyson's Law, which would expand newborn screening to check for diseases. Had the law been in place, it might have saved the life of her nephew Greyson.

Well, this just in from Jeanie to her e-mail list:

I am sorry to again ask a favor concerning House Bill 1795. The bill has been passed in the House but as many of you know, it must then go through the Senate before it can go to Perry to become law. Lt. Governor Dewhurst is sitting on HB 1795 and if it does not go through the Senate today, the bill is done and Greyson's Law is dead (for now). In a last ditch effort to get it passed we are requesting that everyone call Dewhurst's office TODAY before 5pm "urging him to push House Bill 1795 through the Senate TODAY before 5." His number is 512-463-0001.