Category Archives: Uncategorized

State news, Uncategorized

Hoping the Legislature wises up to Empower Texans’ trickery

Empower Texans is a political action committee that has tremendous sway in the Texas Legislature, which at the moment comprises many legislators who adhere to Empower Texans’ extreme right-wing dogma.

We’ve got 181 legislators in both chambers, many of whom think Empower Texans speak for millions of Texans and deserve a special place at the legislative table.

The cabal of zealots deserves nothing of the sort.

My hope for the 2021 Legislature, which convenes next January, is that the legislative leadership — particularly in the House of Representatives — keeps its distance from Michael Quinn Sullivan’s PAC.

It’s not as though Sullivan hasn’t earned legislators’ scorn. Witness what he did to soon-to-be former House Speaker Dennis Bonnen. He and Bonnen had a “secret” meeting. They agreed that Bonnen would provide the names of 10 Republican lawmakers that Empower Texans could work to defeat in the 2020 election. Sullivan recorded the meeting without telling Bonnen. Then he spilled the beans on the speaker, who at first denied saying the mean things he said about his GOP colleagues. The denial lasted right up until the moment Sullivan produced the audio recording.

As they say … Oops!

Sullivan is untrustworthy. So, too, is Empower Texans, which Sullivan runs. Yet the PAC continues to throw its weight around. It seeks to demand that local legislators follow Empower Texans’ agenda.

I want Empower Texans to be put in its place. I want Michael Quinn Sullivan, who has launched efforts against legislators I happen to know and respect, to cease playing an outsized role in determining the Legislature’s political course.

He won’t bow out voluntarily. It then falls on legislative leaders to exert the power they possess to keep Sullivan and Empower Texans at arm’s length.

education news, Uncategorized

Strengthen, do not denigrate, public education

An interesting blog entry showed up on my Facebook news feed that I want to share with you. It comes from a young man who is an avid supporter of public education. His entry is written as an open letter to Donald J. Trump.

It starts this way: In your State of the Union speech last week you said, “for too long, countless American children have been trapped in failing government schools.”

He goes on with this: I suppose that sentiment isn’t surprising for a man who appointed the least qualified Secretary of Education in history.  Neither you or Ms. DeVos have ever spent any meaningful time in America’s outstanding PUBLIC schools.  You call them “government schools,” because that somehow ties our education system to the dysfunction in Washington, D.C. that you preside over.

Read the rest of the blog post here.

I want to endorse the principle that Patrick J. Kearney posits in his blog, which is to endorse public education and to declare that I share his view that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is as unqualified in her job as the man who nominated her is in the job he occupies.

DeVos became education secretary in 2017 after the Senate voted in a 50-50 tie to confirm her; it fell, then, to Vice President Mike Pence to cast the tie-breaking vote to confirm her, the first time that has occurred in a Cabinet confirmation vote.

I heard the president use the term “government schools” and I found it off-putting. He tossed that term out there to somehow separate the “government” from the “public” that pays for it. I am one American who sees the government and the public as being the same thing. Thus, when we speak of public education, we speak of an educational system that serves the public.

Our public schools are not to be feared. They shouldn’t be considered candidates for a political whipping. Are there problems with public education? Of course there are. The cure for those problems is not to take money from the public treasury and send it to private institutions.

Furthermore, I agree with the blogger whose entry came to my attention, who believes that Donald Trump would do well to visit a public school classroom and see for himself the great job that our public educators are doing for our children.

Uncategorized

Do your job, Mr. Texas AG

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sworn an oath to defend, among other things, the U.S. Constitution, which Texans still must obey under the law.

The Constitution, as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court, has an equal-protection clause that says all Americans are entitled to be treated equally. That means gay couples, men and women, who choose to marry some of the same gender.

So, when a justice of the peace refuses to follow the law, gets sanctioned by the Texas Commission on Judicial  Conduct, and then gets sued by the JP for allegedly violating her religious liberty, then the AG is bound by law to defend the TCJC. That’s how I read it.

Paxton ain’t doing it.

Oh, no. He is siding with the justice of the peace, Dianne Hensley, for refusing to preside over same-sex marriages, citing her religious convictions, which endorse only marriages between one man and one woman.

But wait! The SCOTUS has determined that gay marriage is legal in this country. That includes Texas, doesn’t it? Aren’t we part of the United States of America, the nation governed by a secular Constitution?

I am all in favor of religious liberty. This is just my interpretation, though, but I always have considered religious liberty to have boundaries. People are free to worship as they please, or not worship a deity. Religious liberty grants them that right. However, public officials who take an oath to follow the laws of the land have responsibilities to adhere strictly to that oath.

The JP is wrong to deny marrying individuals on the basis of their gender. The AG is wrong to refuse a legally constituted state agency that has ruled appropriately against the JP.

Just do your job, Mr. Attorney General.

national news, Uncategorized

Preparing for the next phase: defeating this POTUS imposter

Now that I have tossed in the towel on the impeachment and removal of Donald John Trump as the current president of the United States, I am intent on focusing my attention on the next task at hand.

That is to defeat this presidential imposter at the ballot box.

Trump is a virtual certainty to survive the scheduled up/down vote on the impeachment articles set for Wednesday afternoon. He will have delivered his State of the Union speech the previous evening. I don’t know what he’ll say, of course; it’s hard to predict what this guy will let fly from the podium. Many eyes will be focused on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as she “welcomes” the president into the House chamber as well as the reaction from the congressional audience arrayed before Trump.

But what’s done will be done in due course.

I believe firmly that Trump committed two acts that earned him an early exit from the Oval Office: I believe he abused the power of his office by soliciting a foreign government for personal political help and that he obstructed Congress by not allowing key aides to respond to congressional subpoenas.

That’s just me.

Once the Senate decides to keep Trump in office I intend fully to move on. Yes, the Constitution has worked in this process, even though it didn’t produce the outcome I desired.

My major concern going forward is whether the Senate decision will embolden Trump to do even more foolish things, seeking to buttress the power of the presidency at the expense of congressional oversight.

I also intend to remind those who read this blog that a Senate acquittal does not equal exoneration.

So the 2020 presidential campaign will rev up. Democrats will nominate someone. Republicans will send the forever impeachment-scarred president back into the fight.

A sorry spectacle is about to end. I just hope we can avoid an even sorrier spectacle if the nation can find a way to acknowledge the major mistake it made in the first place by electing Donald John Trump to the only public office he has ever sought.

national news, Uncategorized

Senate trial Q&A: exercise in efficiency

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

I want to say a word of praise for the way the Senate leadership has organized the Senate trial of Donald John Trump, the nation’s current president.

I am not thrilled that the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, has continued to resist the calling of witnesses to testify before the Senate.

However, today’s question-and-answer period has been scintillating, interesting and educational. What’s more, it has been done without allowing senators to bloviate, pontificate and make endless speeches.

Chief Justice John Roberts gets the questions in writing from senators. The questions are written on small cards, which cannot possibly contain too much text.

Moreover, the House managers who are prosecuting the case and the president’s lawyers who are defending him are given just five minutes to respond. Those who run over that time are shut down on the spot by the chief justice.

I also want to toss a bouquet to the House managers and to the president’s legal team for the direct answers they are giving in response to the questions.

I realize that the House managers are getting questions mostly from Democratic senators and that POTUS’s team is being quizzed mostly by Republican senators. However, at times they field tough queries from the “other side.”

I find this element of the Senate trial to be the most satisfying to date. My own mind hasn’t changed. I doubt others will change, either. All Americans who have an interest in watching the U.S. Constitution at work, though, should be pleased at what they are witnessing.

crime news, local news, Uncategorized

Memo to manager: Next chief should endorse community policing

Amarillo City Manager Jared Miller has a huge hiring decision to make soon. He needs to find someone to succeed Ed Drain as chief of the city’s police department.

Miller isn’t going to ask me for my advice, but I am going to give him just a bit of it here in brief form.

Mr. Manager, be sure the next top cop endorses community policing as a way to maintain the city’s relationship with the neighborhoods its officers swear to protect and defend.

Drain has been named the police chief of Plano, Texas, a burgeoning Dallas suburb. He went to Amarillo after serving for more than two decades with the Plano Police Department; he rose to the level of assistant chief.

Drain’s hiring in Amarillo was arguably the sole shining moment of former interim City Manager Terry Childers’ stormy tenure at City Hall. Childers took a hike and the city hired Miller from his city manager’s post in San Marcos.

Drain, meanwhile, reinstituted the community policing program that former Police Chief Robert Taylor let grow fallow during his years as the city’s top cop. I believe that was a regrettable policy decision on Taylor’s part, given the many miles the department had come under the leadership of his immediate predecessor, the late Police Chief Jerry Neal.

Community policing puts officers’ boots on the ground in the neighborhoods they patrol. They develop interpersonal relationships with residents. The policy is designed to build trust between law enforcement officers and the community … thus, the term “community policing.”

Drain has vowed to maintain the policy in Plano. As for Amarillo, I believe it is vital that it remain in force in that city.

I don’t know how Miller is going to conduct a search for a new police chief. He has some fine senior officers on staff already in the Amarillo PD. I actually have a favorite, if he’s willing to be considered for the post.

If Miller goes outside the department and looks far and wide, it would be my hope — no matter what he decides to do — that he insist that the next Amarillo police chief be as dedicated to community policing as Ed Drain was during his brief tenure there.

The policy works.

Uncategorized

What? Trump now accepts climate change as a serious threat?

This story has gone largely unnoticed by damn near all of us.

Donald Trump, the fellow who has called climate change a “hoax” concocted by China, which wants to undermine the U.S. manufacturing sector and our fossil fuel industry, has changed his tune … allegedly.

This past Thursday, Trump announced an initiative to make it easier to build natural gas pipelines. A reporter asked him if he still thinks climate change is a hoax. His answer is potentially jaw-dropping.

The Week.com reported: Trump said, “No, no. Not at all. Nothing’s a hoax … It’s a very serious subject. The environment is important to me. I’m a big believer in that word, the environment … I want clean air. I want clean water. I also want jobs, though.”

Oh, I want to believe him on this. I would except for a couple of factors. One is that is speaks in those sophomoric platitudes. He’s a “believer in that word, the environment”? He says he wants clean air and water. B … F … D, Mr. President. How do you intend to achieve it?

His newfound acceptance of climate change’s existential threat to Earth sounds to me as sincere as the time he said that President Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen. That sounded in the moment like a throwaway line. His acceptance of Obama’s U.S. citizenship was offered with far less vigor or outward sincerity than the “birther” lie he kept fomenting. Now the president says the “environment is important to me.”

The second reason that makes me skeptical is the president’s penchant for prevarication. He lies all the time. About all things. He and the truth have never met face to face.

I guess perhaps that explains why this story has been so grossly underreported. Whatever, my hope is that someone, somehow will be able to hold the president accountable for this alleged reversal.

local news, Uncategorized

City’s transparency a result of an ‘abundance of caution’

You want transparency in local government? You want to see how a certain city in North Texas handles any potential questions about whether its elected governing body is meeting in “secret,” or conducting public business “illegally”?

Farmersville, a Collin County community of roughly 3,500 residents, exercises what City Attorney Alan Lathrom describes as an “abundance of caution” in alerting residents of a “potential quorum” of elected City Council members.

The city posts a “notice of potential quorum” in advance of any event that might draw more than a majority of City Council members into the same room. That includes, as it did in November and December, an announcement of planned Thanksgiving and Christmas parties.

The city’s website contained under its “Council Meetings” tab announcements of those events. The city is not required under state law to post such events, Lathrom. “We just do it out of an abundance of caution,” he said, citing the possibility that inquiring minds might want to know if council members were discussing public business in a setting other than a called public meeting.

Lathrom said the Texas Open Meetings Act makes specific exemptions for social events. Council members are allowed to gather at holiday parties, for example, without it being posted in advance by City Hall, he said.

Lathrom said the city simply is trying to be as transparent as possible by posting these notices of potential quorum.

I stumbled upon the Christmas party notice recently while perusing the Farmersville website in search of some contact information. To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised at my discovery. I told Lathrom of my surprise in a phone conversation.

He doesn’t ascribe much in the way of a need to cover the city’s backside. Lathrom simply employs this strategy because, well, it’s the right thing to do.

I have covered many local government bodies over many years as a print journalist. This is the first example I’ve ever seen of a governing entity taking such a proactive posture toward transparency.

We hear occasional gripes from residents that government seeks to do too much of the public’s business improperly or even illegally. Do notices such as this generate a lot of public interest? That’s not likely. At least Farmersville City Hall can declare that it warned residents of a “potential quorum” of City Council members.

I consider that a fairly see-through approach to local government.

Uncategorized

No on dismissal; proceed to a Senate trial

My goodness. We’ve traveled a great distance already down this road, and now a member of the U.S. Senate wants to dismiss the impeachment charges leveled against Donald J. Trump?

Republican Josh Hawley of Missouri, are you serious? Show me the reasons why, if you dare.

Hawley is arguing that the delay in sending impeachment articles from the House of Representatives to the Senate has negated the charges filed by the House. I don’t believe it has done anything of the sort.

The House impeached Trump on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants the Senate to conduct a thorough trial, with witnesses brought before the upper chamber. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell so far isn’t budging; he’s pushing for a quick trial with no witnesses.

Sen. Hawley says he’ll file a motion to dismiss the charges. No trial, said Hawley. He needs 51 Senate votes to dismiss it; he isn’t likely to get them. Nor should he.

The House traveled a lengthy road to file the impeachment charges. The case needs to be decided by the Senate.

You may count me as one American who wants to McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer to find some common ground. Settle on the rules for the trial, enabling Pelosi to transmit the articles of impeachment.

Let this case proceed … with witnesses.

Uncategorized

By golly, the state of our Union is strong

This will be one of the more intriguing State of the Union speeches Americans will have heard in a while.

Donald Trump has accepted U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s invitation to deliver a State of the Union speech on Feb. 2. The president well might be on trial in the U.S. Senate when he steps to the microphone before a joint congressional session. Or, the trial might be over.

Whatever the case, the president will have a chance to declare the condition of our Union. You know what? If he says it is “strong,” I will have to agree.

Yes, we are in the midst of a tremendous and terrible constitutional crisis. The president has been impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The nation is divided deeply over how this impeachment should conclude. Millions of Americans want Trump to be cleared. Millions of other Americans — including me — want him booted out of office in the wake of a Senate conviction.

Through all of this, though, it is good to reflect on the system of government that our founders created. A good part of the founders’ genius is that they built in protections to shore up our government in the event of crises such as this one.

The separation of powers is one such protection. The presidency isn’t nearly as powerful as Trump seems to suggest it is; the president cannot “whatever he wants.” The founders handed out equal doses of power to Congress and to the judiciary. So, whatever happens in the Senate trial, the nation will survive. Our Constitution will have done its job.

The president’s declaration, if he chooses to make it, that our “Union is strong” likely will draw catcalls and jeers from the Democratic side of the congressional chamber. Indeed, I await watching the body language that Pelosi will exhibit along with her Democratic colleagues gathered before her, the vice president and the president.

Such a reaction would ignore what I believe is quite clear.

Which is that despite the trouble we are in, despite the abuses that Donald Trump has heaped upon the presidency and the high crimes and misdemeanors I believe he has committed, our Union remains steady and strong.