03/12/2010

Act in haste, repent at leisure
Our parents used to tell us that actions have consequences. Most of us ignored that valuable truism until we got caught at something we shouldn’t have been doing. A lot of us got the message at that point, but some didn’t.

03/11/2010

An invitation to the dance
Today, the University of North Texas men’s basketball team lays claim to the title of Sun Belt Conference champs. It is a moment for celebration — for the team and for the entire community.

03/10/2010

Other Voices: Improve aid for poor defendants
They are common stories by now: The court-appointed defense lawyer who falls asleep during a client’s murder trial. The beleaguered big-city public defender who barely has a chance to scan a client’s file as she rushes from courtroom to courtroom, laboring under a crushing caseload.

03/09/2010

Other Voices: Poisonous views crop up in Japan
Yukihisa Fujita is an influential member of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan. As chief of the DPJ’s international department and head of the Research Committee on Foreign Affairs in the upper house of Japan’s parliament, to which he was elected in 2007, he is a Brahmin in the foreign policy establishment of Washington’s most important East Asian ally.

03/08/2010

Other Voices / Rethinking rules on nontraditional classes
Texas’ entry into the world of school choice has been slow — much too slow for most people who don’t benefit from the public school system, such as teachers’ unions and school boards, and administrators whose funding increases with enrollment.

03/06/2010

The good idea that didn’t sail
The Corinth City Council has shut down a new disc golf course in Corinth Community Park because nobody seems to have properly authorized its construction in the first place. Mayor Paul Ruggiere seemed chagrined at the whole business, as he should have been.

03/05/2010

An idyllic look at Downtown
The plans for downtown Denton discussed Tuesday night at a public meeting envisioned tree-shaded streets, wide, sun-dappled sidewalks, ample parking and peaceful coexistence among motorists, pedestrians, bicyclists and bus and rail passengers. It was a little like heaven; we will all be equal there. Tuesday night’s program was presented to almost 100 residents in what we jaded, ink-stained wretches of the news business call Consultantspeak, which is the language of the mythical land of Consultania, where trees along the streets never get blight, tax revenues always exceed predictions, bond ratings never plummet and nobody ever throws up on the sidewalk.

A good start for Frank Phillips
Frank Phillips had big shoes to fill. As the successor to Don Alexander as Denton County’s elections administrator, he was bound to be measured against Alexander’s admirable record of competence and professionalism. Tuesday’s party primaries were the first elections held under Phillips’ supervision, and he and his staff of professionals and volunteers passed their first test.

03/04/2010

Down in the mud with bench and bar
We can remember a time when judicial races were the most polite and cordial of political contests, followed closely by races for prosecuting attorney. Not anymore; not in Denton County. Apparently, Denton County lawyers like to fight, and they like to fight dirty.

03/03/2010

Why there are Aggie jokes
A couple of Texas A&M-Commerce football players have been caught on video stealing copies of the student newspaper that contained an unflattering story about a teammate. Their coach, Guy Morriss, says he’s proud of them.

03/02/2010

Thelma waits for the big one
Like many Denton residents, we usually begin our day with a cup of coffee and a bleary-eyed examination of both the newspaper and the television news. On Saturday, the TV news won out in the battle for our attention as we were snapped from our semi-stupor by the news of the devastating earthquake in Chile.

03/01/2010

An aversion to sunshine
Opponents of the city’s plan to annex 18 parcels of land have arguments aplenty at their disposal; the Denton City Council doesn’t need to be giving them another.

02/27/2010

The man who brings Christmas
To those of us for whom Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without The Nutcracker, Hugh Nini is a very important fellow. Each year for more than 20 years, he has rounded up a cast of 100 dancers whose abilities range from breathtaking to “just tell me where to stand,” and molds them into an enchanting production of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s classic Christmas ballet.

02/26/2010

The Department of Silly Solutions
There are times when we suspect there is an office deep within the headquarters of every public agency in which a dedicated bureaucrat sits all day and reviews proposed solutions to pressing problems, making sure the final solution makes the agency look as bad as possible.

No way to run a university
Public concern about the abrupt resignation of Dr. Gretchen Bataille as president of the University of North Texas has not abated since her surprise announcement two weeks ago, and no one at UNT seems interested in easing it.

02/25/2010

Balance key on bicycle boundaries
As the number of bicyclists in Denton increases, it makes good sense to consider traffic ordinances that would help protect the cyclists on our city streets. But such a law should go hand-in-hand with a concentrated effort to educate cyclists about safety measures they should be taking, and perhaps an ordinance governing their behavior as well as that of motorists.

02/24/2010

Apology accepted; now please shut up
Chris Brown is sorry for belting Rihanna. Akio Toyoda is sorry that your Prius may not stop when you ask it to. David Letterman is sorry for canoodling with the office help, and, incidentally, for dissing Sarah Palin’s daughter. Mark Sanford seems to be sorry about something concerning his adulterous affair with a woman in South America, though it’s hard to tell exactly what.

02/23/2010

The rehabilitation of an evil cliche
The people in charge of tidying up the language have been saying for years that “the banality of evil” is a worn-out cliche — used, overused and misused by hacks like us who are intent on making literary mountains out of rhetorical molehills.

02/22/2010

Honoring the best of small business
The Denton Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business of the Year award has always been our favorite of those the chamber presents, because small businesses are not only the economic backbone of this good town; they are its social backbone, too, and its heart.

02/20/2010

Gov. Perry’s visit was like old times
It was as though Captain Kirk and the Away Team had beamed aboard the bridge of a Klingon battle cruiser: Gov. Rick Perry and an entourage of well-dressed Republican supporters appeared Friday morning at Denton’s Jupiter House, a collegiate hangout with a decidedly un-Republican clientele.

02/19/2010

The vacuum forms around Joe Stack
The smoke had not yet cleared from around the Austin office building where Andrew Joseph Stack III crashed his single-engine airplane Thursday when the usual suspects began to distance themselves from the suicidal malcontent and point fingers at another man behind the curtain.

This little sister is on her own
This newspaper, owned by the Cross and Patterson families of Denton for decades, has for the last several years been the property of the A.H. Belo Corp., which owns newspapers in Texas, California and Rhode Island. Our readers worry about that from time to time, which is not a bad thing in itself, and it behooves us to occasionally clear the air about the relationship between those of us at this little paper and the Belo behemoth up the road.

02/18/2010

Bad news on the doorstep
Denton finally is following the economic trend of the rest of the country, and the result is gloom at City Hall.

02/17/2010

‘We don’t need no stinking facts’
We were happily skipping through a front-page article about the Thin Line Film Fest when we fell into a pothole. We are not completely out of it yet, and the experience has us musing about truth, art and what — if anything — words mean any more.

02/16/2010

Ready! Set! Go! (to the polls)
Early voting begins today all over Texas for Democrats and Republicans, and we urge our friends of both persuasions to avail themselves of this convenient means of exercising the franchise.

02/15/2010

‘Where did I put that crash helmet?’
This has not been a good week for Denton parents. Snow days may be welcomed by schoolchildren, but many parents are less enthusiastic. Even worse than the snow, we’d bet, was the news that the Denton school district would drop driver’s education courses at the end of this semester.

02/13/2010

Medina vs. Beck: When loons collide
We would have thought that a radio conversation between Republican gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina and commentator Glenn Beck would be a love fest — a meeting of two 18th century minds grousing about Marbury v. Madison while extolling the virtues of Alexander H. Stephens and Roger B. Taney. We were mistaken, and we have spent a little time since the dust-up occurred trying to figure out why.

02/12/2010

Gretchen Bataille in the tumbrel
If Gretchen Bataille’s health is good (we hope and assume it is) and the cops aren’t after her (we can’t think of anything more far-fetched), her abrupt resignation as president of the University of North Texas can mean only one thing: There was a serious argument between Bataille and her superiors at UNT, and Bataille lost it.

02/11/2010

Other Voices / U.S. should press for change at OAS
Since its founding in 1948, the Organization of American States (OAS) has defined its two top purposes as “to strengthen peace and security” and “to consolidate and promote representative democracy.” On the second count, it is failing.

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