OPINION

The following guest blog post is written by John C. Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis and co-author of "Lives at Risk: Single-Payer National Health Insurance Around the World." Respond to his comments here.

This is in response to Michael Landauer's questions about selling insurance across state lines.

If restrictions on buying insurance across state lines are lifted, Blue Cross of Texas would not "go" anywhere. However, it would have the ability to obtain a license in all 50 states. It will use the same physician network it now has. But you, as a consumer, would be able to get lower premiums in return for less onerous regulations.

Texas, by the way, is one of the worst states as far as mandated benefits are concerned. With 57 mandated benefits, only four states have more mandates than Texas. Rhode Island is the worst with 70, while Alabama has only 21 and Idaho ranks lowest with 13.

If you want all these mandates and are willing to pay for them, you will always be able to buy insurance under each state's rules.

But do you really want a plan that requires you to pay for in vitro fertilization? Acupuncture? Drug and alcohol abuse? Contraceptives? Hearing aids for minors? Marriage counseling? Or would you be willing to give up some of those benefits in order to pay less for coverage best suited to you and your family?

Every week, we poll the members of the editorial board on a timely and divisive topic. This week, that topic is the Smith County jury that sentenced a man in possession of 4.6 ounces of marijuana to 35 years in prison. He had two prior felonies, plus he was within 1,000 feet of a day care.

And this week's question is:

Is a 35-year sentence for possessing 4.6 ounces of marijuana too stiff?

Here are board members' responses:

We're working on editorials today regarding these two topics. Descriptions below. Please feel free to offer suggestions in the comments section about these topics or about others of import you think we're overlooking.....

DATES - We explain why it makes sense for public schools to share common start date and urge lawmakers to resist districts' pressure to allow a free-for-all here. Colleen McCain Nelson writing on behalf of the Editorial Board.

MJ - We are respectful but streamlined-persuasive in our tone suggesting that the guy sentenced to 35 years in Smith County for procession of 4.6 ounces of pot is extreme. Yeah, he was pretty darn stupid and this is a third offense, but do we really want to litter our jails up with a guy like this, who will essentially cost taxpayers upwards of $600,000 if he serves his full term (which we acknowledge he likely won't). Rodger Jones writing on behalf of the Editorial Board.

As we get ready for this fall's governor's race, we Texans need to prepare to deal with some myths coming from the candidates.

The first one I want to talk about is likely to be the biggest one, and that is this idea that Texas, like Gauguin's native, would be free at last if Washington would just leave us alone. Since my Texas pride runs deep, there's an element in that mythology that resonates with me. I certainly have a lot of friends who feel that way.

And Rick Perry's camp, which is running hard against Washington, has this fact going for it: Texas is a donor state when it comes to the amount of federal taxes that are collected in Texas and the amount of federal funds that are spent here.

According to Eva Luna de Castro of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, the feds collected $236 billion in taxes within Texas' borders in 2008 and they spent $210 billion within them. When you do the math, only 89 cents of every dollar collected in Texas was spent in Texas.

If you stop there, those numbers make for a terrific sound-bite. I won't quarrel with the ad-makers on that one.

But when you dig deeper, those numbers are skewed.

Call me cynical, but I just don't believe it when conservatives tell me there would be no downside to allowing people to buy insurance across state lines. John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis is very smart and knows a lot about this subject, so I looked to his blog today to convince me not to be so cynical.

No such luck.

This is what it's come to: White House Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell can't get Israelis and Palestinians to sit down at the same table and talk. So this week, he is spending his days shuttling back and forth between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah in hopes of finding something -- anything -- the two sides can agree on.

So, it looks like we're back to where we were in 1992, when the PLO was a terrorist organization and there seemed like zero chance of ever getting Israelis and the PLO (which was, at the time, the "sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people") to hold direct talks. Then the Oslo peace process occurred in 1993, leading to a series of breakthroughs culminating in Israeli and PLO mutual recognition. They emerged with the Oslo Declaration of Principles. Then came the Oslo Interim Agreement. Then came the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In 1998, there was the Wye River Plantation agreement, followed two years later by the second Intifada.

Etc.

(See also: Yasser Arafat. Gun. Olive Branch. Ariel Sharon. Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo. Ehud Barak. Benyamin Netanyahu. Gilad Shalit. Mahmoud Abbas. More guns. More olive branches.)

The last time there were direct talks between the two sides as December 2008, when Israeli troops invaded Gaza.

If anyone has the patience and experience to negotiate peace, it's George Mitchell, who mediated talks that led to peace in Northern Ireland. Still, the Israeli-Palestinian picture looks exceedingly bleak.

On Wednesday from 6:30 to 8:30 pm at the Addison Conference and Theatre Center, I will be moderating a Briefing on the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process with Emile Sahliyeh, Ph.D., Professor of International Relations and Middle East Politics at the University of North Texas and Gil Elan, Executive Director of the Southwest Jewish Congress.

I can't promise we'll come up with a formula for peace, but I can guarantee a very lively and thought-provoking discussion.

To create a forum for informed debate, we need the help of people in the classroom. From that perspective, we can learn a lot about how teachers and students react to the latest school reform idea out of Austin. Or how teachers feel about the cultural changes happening in their community. Or how young people feel about the changing world and their place in it.

News pages can give us the facts, but these people can tell us what others in our community think about those facts. And they can effect change.

For these reasons, The Dallas Morning News is accepting applications for Teacher Voices and Student Voices for the 2010-2011 school year. Voices volunteers contribute a few full-length columns per semester and are the stars of our weekly Sounding Off feature on Sundays. They also participate in writing workshops and other special events with the editorial staff. To apply:

For students:

1. Write a little about yourself, including your hobbies and activities. How would others describe you? Why should we choose you to be part of this diverse panel?
2. Share samples of your writing or write something on a current topic that could be published. Letters to the editor should be about 200 words, and full-length commentary should be about 650 words.
3. Jot down three topics you would like to write about.
4. Attach a letter of recommendation from a teacher or an adult supervisor in one of your extracurricular activities. No, the teacher does not need to be a journalism adviser. Please include your reference's full daytime contact information.
5. E-mail the application to voices@dallasnews.com. Include your address and phone number. Please send the entire application in one e-mail -- with minimal attachments.

1. Write a little about yourself: How long have you been a teacher? Where do you teach? What subjects do you teach? Why should we choose you to be part of this diverse panel?
2. Tell us (in a few paragraphs): Why do you teach?
3. Jot down three topics you would like to write about.
4. E-mail the application to voices@dallasnews.com. Include your address and phone number. Please send the entire application in one e-mail -- with minimal attachments.

Before our staff meeting yesterday morning we were talking Oscars. We were missing a couple of people, but it was revealed that only two of us had seen any of the ten movies nominated for best picture. I was one of the two and I had only seen two of the movies, The Blind Side and Up. That's not uncommon for me. My tastes and the academy's taste don't ever really match. Seeing only 20 percent of the best picture nominees is par for the course for me. But I still found it interesting that only two of us in attendance had seen any of the movies. SO, I have a question for both board members and readers, how culturally aware should members of the board be?

For me, I don't think we need to be recording TMZ every night to keep up with Hollywood's celebutants, but I do think we need to have some cultural awareness and maybe that means we need to be seeing more movies and watching more of the popular shows on TV.

1. CLOSE - We build off the weekend news story and continue our calls for accountability when it comes to school performance. Yes, closing schools can have dire consequences in the short-run for students, but so does keeping failing schools operating. That's why we think that while it's a risk to close schools, it's a risk worth taking in certain cases to improve the odds of progress for at some of the students because not to close the worst performers guarantees continued failure. We are careful to urge surgical closures - closing schools that aren't showing progress on any barometer, be it NCLB, state standards, etc. We caution against closing schools that are still sagging but showing documented progress. Our hope that by closing the worst at least some of those kids would go to other schools and be surrounded by a better system in which they may succeed and/or go to a burgeoning charter school system designed to meet such needs, etc. The real issue here, however, must be confronted: Too many kids are arriving in high schools not ready to learn high school material. This shifts the onus onto middle schools and ninth grade to get serious about reform. This is the nut of the issue that DISD and other districts simply must confront and conquer. Bill writing on behalf of the board.

2. IRAQ - We remind readers how monumental it is that Iraq has now had two major elections with high turnout and this week's without significant US presence. We explain what this means going forward. Tod writing on behalf of the board.

Join in the discussion in comments below.

Like everyone else, I've got concerns about the deadlock in Washington. But I don't think Washington is broken - the system works pretty well. The real problem is the current American political culture. On Sunday's Face the Nation, Lindsey Graham and Evan Bayh had a great discussion about what's going on and how we can overcome America's current can't-do funk.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

As I watched, I found myself asking, "How come we don't have more politicians like those two?"

The problem is that voters don't always rally behind the more pragmatic, deal-making politicians. The Associated Press warned, "The moderate middle is disappearing from Congress." Arkansas' Blanche Lincoln may be among the next batch to get booted out. And in Texas, voters just chose Washington-bashing Rick Perry over stateswoman Kay Bailey Hutchison (to be fair, part of the problem was Hutchison's snoozer of a campaign.)

I think most Americans want pragmatic politicians who are able to govern effectively. But our culture is not one where politicians are rewarded for moderation or compromise. Politics is now a zero-sum game. After all, we are a nation that watches Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann. Americans can't tune in to talk radio, watch shout-a-thons on cable and then be shocked when the tone in Washington is shouty and partisan.

Newsweek's Evan Thomas has a great piece out this week entitled "We the Problem" exploring why Washington is giving Americans the politics they deserve:

Jackson Diehl has a great column in today's Washington Post wondering why Obama doesn't seem to have many foreign friends:

The paradox here is that Obama remains hugely popular abroad -- from Germany and France to countries where anti-Americanism has recently been a problem, such as Turkey and Indonesia. His following means that, in democratic countries at least, leaders have a strong incentive to befriend him. And yet this president appears, so far, to have no genuine foreign friends.

It's baffling that Obama has failed to turn his popularity overseas into more policy wins for the U.S. Just a few examples of missed opportunities and blunders: he left Britain drifting this fall regarding Afghanistan and snubbed France's Sarkozy, who has responded by not being very helpful on Afghanistan. Then the Obama administration totally bungled the announcement of a shift on U.S. missile policy in Eastern Europe - they announced the decision on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland, leaving many staunch American allies in Eastern Europe feeling abandoned. And in Asia, democratic India has felt neglected as well.

Diehl offers up one possible explanation for Obama's lack of foreign friends:

... another big cause seems to be lack of interest on Obama's part. Focused intently on his domestic agenda, the president is said to be reluctant to take time to build relationships with foreign leaders. If something has needed to be done or decided, he has readily picked up the phone. If not, he generally hasn't been available.

Interesting to read Rudy Bush's continued excellent work on our City Hall blog, specifically that Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm is advising the City Council to slow the hiring of new police officers to account for budget shortfall realities.

I don't think you'll find many people, certainly not on this board, who wants more money spent on policing in Dallas than I do. If we're going to hold the police accountable for crime statistics, it's on us to make sure they have the resources they need to do their jobs. (For the record, it takes a pretty narrow view of the world to blame the Police Department solely or even primarily when crime goes up. And don't get me started on the alleged tinkering with crime stats, when that is far from the problem.)

That said, the city's insistence to keep up the 200-officers-over-attrition hiring bump struck me as a bad idea in the last budget cycle, given the city's other needs. When civilian workers, including those in the Police Department, were losing their jobs, it was hard to justify adding more sworn police officers.

We'll see how this plays out over this budget cycle, but I'm pleased to see Suhm sounding the alarm early. Also note that the city wasn't funding the 191-officer bump in the last budget solely out of city funds. Federal stimulus dollars picked up a share. I'd guess the city's share was around 71 officers, give or take.

Last week I began researching Comstock Middle School, the Pleasant Grove "feeder" into Spruce High School. Click here and you'll find its 2008-2009 "school report card."

Comstock's test scores mirror those of other middle schools in the southern half of our city -- with 50 percent to almost 90 percent of its students meeting minimum standard on TAKS (the high was 87 percent in writing and the low was 51 percent in science). There's been a small improvement each of the past three years in each category. You might even think, "not bad," until you look at the dropoff in the percentages for students who were on track by "college readiness standards."

Most concerning is this statistic -- 8th grade students on track for high school: 29 percent.

I'm no TAKS expert, but apparently above-50 percent "minimum standards" scores don't translate into high school-ready. And that brings me to this question:

Our editorials tomorrow will focus on these two topics.

WOMEN - We're looking in this editorial to build off something the UAE ambassador told the World Affairs Council a few weeks ago during his visit here in Dallas.... : "And few things exemplify the success of this approach better than the progress of Emirati women. Forty years ago, almost no girls went to school. Now, 70 percent of all graduates from UAE universities are women and so is 64 percent of our government workforce. Four women now serve in our federal cabinet, and in October of last year, the first female judge was sworn in. Three women recently received their certification as fighter pilots in the UAE Air Force. And in Dubai, the first class of women will train to be muftis, Sunni Muslim scholars who interpret Islamic law -- a first in the Middle East." Tod Robberson writing on behalf of the Editorial Board.

CENSUS - We spell out five common myths about the U.S. Census which is gearing up for the decennial count in a few weeks and we bust them as persuasively as possible. Jim Mitchell writing on behalf of the Editorial Board.

Please use the comments section here to tell us how we can make these editorials the best they can be and to let us know of any important topics you think we're missing....

How much would you pay to read this blog?

No, really.

Opinions (no pun intended) will vary, but I'm guessing that given the wealth of absolutely free content available to anyone with a working computer, your answer is in the ballpark of zero. Without gauging exactly how much you enjoy reading us, it would have to be more than a little for you to pay for something you could get in similar form somewhere else or might not miss so much if it weren't given away for nothing.

And there you have your newspapers-in-the-new-age conundrum.

Sorting letters reminds me of watching a basketball game. On many subjects -- health care comes to mind, but it's not just that -- we'll get maybe a couple of letters on a subject, and I'll make up "Pro" and "Con" folders. Then it's a game to watch which side "wins" the raw count. One side will get ahead by two or three additional letters, then the other side will send in a couple. Eventually, the count often evens out, but I find it entertaining. But then, I am easily amused.

Hot topics today include health care, Leonard Pitts' column last week and letters about other letters on the results of the gubernatorial election last week.

We asked our Sounding Off list members:

If the spirit moves you, feel free to respond to this question in the comments section here. Or, if you'd like to join the Sounding Off print respondents, send your full contact information to communityopinions@dallasnews.com.

Also, check out past Sounding Off questions.

For some of the responses to this week's question, keep reading ...

Defeated Democrat Farouk Shami made good on his promise to spend millions on his bid for governor. Nearly $12 million in expenditures netted Shami a paltry 12.8 percent of the vote.

Matt Stiles at the Texas Tribune crunched the numbers, calculating the cost per vote for primary candidates. Not surprisingly, Shami tops the list, spending an eye-popping $135 for each vote. As Matt wryly notes: For that price, Shami could have given each supporter one of his pricey hair straightening irons. Considering that I saw little evidence of Shami's millions out on the street, that might have been a better strategy.

Near the other end of the spending spectrum is George Clayton, who is the academic coordinator at North Dallas High School. He spent only five cents per vote to upset longtime State Board of Education member Tincy Miller in the Republican primary. Few folks, including Miller, saw that coming.

Interestingly, there are more winners on the list of 10 candidates who spent the least per vote than on the list of top 10 spenders. Perhaps I should rescind my earlier comment about giving away straightening irons.

When the news came out last year that the city was fudging adjusting crime statistics to more closely conform to federal reporting standards, it looked an awful lot like maybe the city was trying to make its statistics look better than they actually were so we wouldn't be listed around the country as one of the most crime-ridden cities in the country. When the news came out, again, that police weren't registering certain property crimes (like a guy busting through the front door but running away without stealing anything), it looked even more fishy.

Even so, Police Chief David Kunkle's explanation seemed at least plausible. We cut him some slack.

But now it emerges, thanks to excellent reporting from Tanya Eiserer and Scott Goldstein, that the city has deliberately made it difficult, if not impossible, to locate certain embarrassing statistics, like murders, rape and aggravated assault, on the crime-statistics Web site.

Well, gosh, we believe in transparency. They should be there because people need to know what's going on in their communities, Kunkle and other police officials say. "We were asked, and we complied with a request to remove from the public site the ability to select the offenses of Murder and Rape," counters Leslie Delatte, president of the company that maintains the Web site.

The Police Department denies issuing such instructions. City officials explain that there are, um, well, certain filters necessary for, um, certain kinds of murders, and well, uh.

Please, folks, just admit it. You've been trying to alter public perceptions by hiding the bad numbers.

A last word from me, at any rate.

I was amused by the insistence, especially from Debra Medina supporters, that polling on the Republican governor's primary was not to be trusted. Rasmussen Reports, the polling outfit that did the most on the race, came for special criticism, despite a history of generally getting it right.

Here's the final actual vote percentages:
-- Perry, 51.08%
-- Hutchison, 30.33%
-- Medina, 18.57%

Here's the final Rasmussen poll, taken Feb. 23:
-- Perry, 48%
-- Hutchison, 27%
-- Medina, 16%

That left Rasmussen with about 9 percent undecided, and those voters spread reasonably equally among the three candidates on Election Day.

Rasmussen was closest to the pin among the major polling outfits that took samples in February, when interest was at its highest and decisions were being made. Three others:
-- Public Policy Polling (Feb. 19-21): Perry 41, Hutchison 30, Medina 20
-- Daily Kos/Research 2000 (Feb. 8-10): Perry 42, Hutchison 30, Medina 17
-- DMN/Blum-Weprin (Feb. 2-10): Perry 45, Hutchison 29, Medina 17

For your entertainment, if you find such things entertaining, here are cherry-picked comments (all spelling and grammar in the original) to two blog posts about polling leading up to the vote:

This is my long-delayed, but not at all emotional, response to being without power for a couple of days back during the Great Blizzard of 2010. I have a couple of thoughts on things that could be done a little better:

1. GREENVILLE - We explain why this is such an important part of town and why we worry so about its decline, due to this week's fire and other recent signs of deterioration. We acknowledge in this editorial the ebb and flow of Lower Greenville, but the fundamental point of the edit is to warn the city against its deterioration. Colleen writing on behalf of the board.

2. SENTENCING - It was easy to lose sight amid all the election frenzy of the significance of the sentencing in the Dallas City Hall public corruption case. We remind readers why this was such an important case and a significant outcome. These sentences mean business and should be a lesson to others tempted to conspire to skirt the law. We are struck by an overall profound sense of sadness about the way the case ended up, and by Don Hill's stunning lack of recognition of his wrongdoing. We also remind readers of what a black eye this case was for both southern Dallas, an area historically underserved by many of its own representatives, and for the city as a whole, which is tarnished badly by this sort of publicity. Colleen writing on behalf of the board.

3. CHILE -- We reflect on the devastation of Chile but make apt comparisons to Haiti and explain why an earthquake substantially worse in South America did so much less damage than a less-worse earthquake in the Caribbean. There are lessons here about infrastructure and preparedness which cities like Dallas can learn from. Tod writing on behalf of the board.

4. STREETCARS -- We explain in greater detail why the recent funding for streetcars in downtown and Oak Cliff is a particular triumph for southern Dallas. Bill writing on behalf of the board.

5. DCTOLLWAY -- We aseess Maurine Dickey's Dallas County tollway authority idea and explain why we think she has the right goal but but not the right implementation idea. Rodger writing on behalf of the board.

Victor Carrillo, chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission, blames his loss to an unknown challenger in Tuesday's GOP primary on voter bias against his last name. "Given the choice between 'Porter' and 'Carrillo,' unfortunately, the Hispanic surname was a serious setback from which I could never recover, although I did all in my power to overcome this built-in bias," he says.

The victor, David Porter, says he worked hard for this victory and writes off Carrillo's comments as "sour grapes."

That was my initial reaction until I also looked at the extremely narrow victory in the Democratic primary of Hector Uribe in the Texas land commissioner's race. Here was a guy who had strong backing from the Democratic Party. He had spent 12 years as a state senator and House member. He was well-versed in the workings of the Legislature. The most impressive experience the other Democratic candidate, Bill Burton, offered was a short tenure as a justice of the peace in Henderson County.

I talked to both candidates, and of the two, Uribe was clearly the better qualified. Uribe narrowly won, with a 20,000-vote lead out of more than 560,000 votes cast statewide.

I think Carrillo might be making more of an issue out of ethnicity than he should, but I do believe it deserves more thorough examination. For both parties, I doubt Hispanic voters were well represented in the polls, and without them to balance out the results, I do believe non-Hispanic voters who weren't familiar with the candidates chose the non-Hispanic surname more often.

One of the perplexing elements of the Dallas County constables saga has been the apparent reluctance of District Attorney Craig Watkins to get to the bottom of it.

Watkins has gone out of his way to make clear that if anyone is going to investigate allegations of criminal corruption in his county, it's him and his prosecutors. Statutorially, he has a point. The question has been why, from the start, he just wouldn't say he was doing that, when we knew some number of constables employees had filed affidavits with Watkins' office alleging misdeeds.

Another angle that got washed away in the torrent of information was the possibility that Watkins faced a conflict of interest. I was reminded of that this morning, reading our news account by Kevin Krause and Ed Timms detailing the release of a report on the civil investigation into Precinct 1 Constable Derick Evans.