All this talk of secession is making me more than a little bit crazy.

After a majority of voters – nearly 51 percent of them – re-elected President Obama on Nov. 6, petitions began circulating asking voters in several (mostly Southern) states if they wanted to secede from the Union.

Leading the way? Why, Texas – of course. We’re No. 1, apparently, in the number of goofballs who believe a better form of governance is to remove the state from the Union, start a new country and then try to become a part of the world community. Gov. Rick Perry opposes secession … now! Good for him.

Have you seen the bumper stickers popping up on motor vehicles in Amarillo? They make you swallow hard … you know?

I’ve been wondering for weeks now whether residents of, say, Maryland wanted to secede in 1980 after the nation elected Ronald Reagan overwhelmingly for president over the wishes of that state’s voters, who endorsed President Carter’s re-election. I surely don’t recall that kind of groundswell emerging then. Or how about when Texas Gov. George W. Bush was elected president in 2000 despite losing the popular vote to Vice President Al Gore. That election was settled eventually by a narrow U.S. Supreme Court decision to stop a recount in Florida, where Bush held a 537-vote lead and ended up winning with barely enough electoral votes to claim the presidency. Where were the secessionists then?

No, this idiocy is a recent phenomenon. What’s driving it? The secession crowd says it’s the president’s policies. They say the country is heading in the wrong direction. They want to “take the country back.” But from whom? The majority of Americans who preferred on Nov. 6 to keep the president we have rather than replace him with someone else?

I believe in majority-rule government, even if an election doesn’t go the way I prefer. The secessionist loons ought to sign on to that notion, too.

This thought just occurred to me.

On Friday of this past week, the Labor Department released some jobs numbers: The economy added 146,000 jobs in November; the unemployment rate dropped from 7.9 percent to 7.7 percent, the lowest jobless rate in four years.

Good numbers, yes? Sort of. The dip in joblessness seems to be a function in part of people no longer looking for work. The addition of 146,000 jobs is good news in any context, although some “experts” say we need to add about 100,000 more than that figure to make substantial progress on an economic recovery.

The thought that occurs is this: During the presidential campaign, the Republicans were like ugly on an ape when figures like this were released, telling all who would listen that the “dismal” numbers were proof that President Obama’s policies aren’t working. Indeed, when the September jobs figures came out, some blowhards – such as former GE boss Jack Welch – accused the White House of cooking the books to make the president look good. These latest job numbers look much as they have done for many months in a row … but the critics have been virtually silent.

The election has ended, the Democrats won. Obama has been re-elected. No need now, apparently, for the “loyal opposition” to put negative spin on positive news.

One of premier political commentators of the age, Maureen Dowd, hit it out of the park with her column in today’s New York Times.

She noted how the Republican Party – or what’s left of it – can’t yet grasp how it lost the White House to an incumbent president who is struggling with a massive national debt, a trillion-dollar annual deficit and an economy that just refuses to snap out of its doldrums. Her take? Republicans managed to antagonize just about every demographic group it needed to defeat President Obama.

Dowd writes the following.

“Who would ever have thought blacks would get out and support the first black president? Who would ever have thought women would shy away from the party of transvaginal probes? Who would ever have thought gays would work against a party that treated them as immoral and subhuman? Who would have ever thought young people would desert a party that ignored science and hectored on social issues? Who would ever have thought Latinos would scorn a party that expected them to finish up their chores and self-deport?”

Her full column is attached to this link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/opinion/sunday/dowd-a-lost-civilization.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

One of these days the Republican Party will pull its head out and realize that it cannot depend on its fringe to carry the day. The Democratic Party tried it in the early 1970s, remember? Democrats came out of the 1968 election that it lost for a variety of reasons. A leading candidate for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated. Sen. Eugene McCarthy carried his anti-Vietnam War crusade to the convention, but lost the nomination to Vice President Hubert Humphrey – who then lost narrowly to Republican nominee Richard Nixon.

Democrats then turned to its anti-war leftist base, nominated Sen. George McGovern in 1972, and got wiped out in a 49-state landslide against President Nixon.

Republicans are wrestling now with the reverse of the Democrats’ dilemma. They need to relearn how to compromise with the other side, just as Democrats learned it in 1992 by nominating Bill Clinton, who was elected twice with near-landslide vote margins.

They cannot keep kicking dirt on growing blocs of voters.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/271755-sen-lugar-joins-university-of-indianapolis-as-distinguished-professor-

I almost wish I could attend school next year at the University of Indianapolis.

Why? The U of I has a new professor by the name of Richard Lugar. At the end of the year he’ll be stepping down from his U.S. Senate seat. He’ll be teaching students about history and politics, the mix of the two, and perhaps he might be able to tell them what has happened to a once-great political party.

Lugar is a proud Republican. President Nixon once called Lugar his “favorite mayor,” who at the time was mayor of Indianapolis. He left city hall for the Senate in the 1970s and forged a career as a great statesman and GOP wise man. Lugar ran for president in 1996, but fell far short of being nominated. I had the pleasure of shaking his hand at a conference I attended in D.C. early in that election year.

But the Republican Party to which he belongs has become something quite different. Lugar lost his party’s primary this year to a guy named Richard Mourdock, a favorite of the tea party wing of the Republican Party. Mourdock said he didn’t care to work with Democrats, thinking that the only “compromise” he favored would be if the Dems saw the world the way he saw it.Then Mourdock declared it to be “God’s will” if a woman got pregnant while being raped.

Mourdock lost the election in November to a Democrat. Thank goodness.

Lugar has plenty of knowledge to pass on to young students attending the University of Indianapolis. I urge him to explain to them what has become of a great political party, which gave the nation the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower. I’d throw Ronald Reagan into that mix as well, given that I am not sure The Gipper would like what has become of the party that its current leaders keep invoking his memory.

Rock-solid mainstream conservatives no longer seem welcome in the Grand Old Party, which has been hijacked by its lunatic fringe. I hope Professor Lugar is ready to trace that journey to young minds willing to listen to his wisdom.

I feel this overpowering need to say something nice about police officers.

I’ve known many cops over the years. I haven’t liked all of them personally. As with any profession, law enforcement has its bad actors serving alongside the overwhelming majority of people who go out of their way to do good things.

When I was a working daily journalist, I came to understand that police officers have this mistrust of media types. We’re too nosey for our own good, some of the police would think to themselves – if not say it out loud. My response to that view? Too bad. That’s what reporters and editors get paid to do. They get paid to be inquisitive and ask questions Joe and Jane Sixpack can’t ask themselves.

I’ve long admired the work that cops do. I’ve tried whenever possible to say so publicly. I’ll do so right here, once again.

Some years ago, I got a peek into police life as a member of the Amarillo Citizens Police Academy. How did I get that gig? I wrote a column that was mildly critical of some police officers. One of the department’s top brass called me out on that, telling me – in effect – that I didn’t know what I was talking about. He invited me to apply for the next Citizens Police Academy class. I did. I got accepted and then spent one night a week for 11 weeks seeing how the cops do their job.

We learned about such things as crime scene investigations, dispatching officers to trouble spots, how drug-sniffing dogs do their job, what happens when you get hit with a Taser. We fired weapons at the shooting range and got to ride along with an officer on patrol.

APD didn’t tell us everything. But we got enough of a look to understand more fully about the dangers that cops must face every time they report for work. “Routine traffic stops” do not exist, as they can erupt into violent confrontations without warning. “Domestic beefs” are the worst of all, the police will tell you. Emotions run white hot and those events, too, can end badly.

But perhaps the biggest takeaway I got from that academy session was the idea that police officers spend a huge amount of their time helping people. Their workday doesn’t comprise non-stop confrontation with bad guys. They are trained to lend comfort when the need arises. I’ve seen them do it and I appreciate that side of police work as much as I appreciate their apprehension of criminals.

Thank you for your service.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/12/04/15675104-senate-gop-kills-disabilities-treaty

A great political party has been hijacked by a cabal of lunatics.

The latest example occurred the other day on the floor of the U.S. Senate, the place once known as the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.” It now should be called as the “World’s Greatest Loony Bin.”

Senate Republicans blocked enactment of a United Nations treaty designed to guarantee human rights for people with disabilities. Thirty-eight GOP senators voted “no” on the treaty, apparently believing that the U.N. was seeking to usurp American sovereignty. This is all part of the tea party wing of the GOP’s pitch to those with an irrational fear of the United Nations.

The convention wouldn’t require a change in U.S. law. It merely allows the United States to say that it thinks the U.N. convention is a good idea.

The Senate vote featured a rare appearance by a true American hero, Bob Dole, the former Republican senator from Kansas, who sat in a wheelchair on the Senate floor to make the case in favor of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. Dole was injured grievously during World War II, recovered and went on to serve with great honor and distinction in the Senate. He was the GOP’s presidential nominee in 1996. He, along with Sens. John McCain and Dick Lugar support the convention, as well as Senate Democrats and eight “renegade” Republicans who joined in voting in favor of the convention.

But 38 hard-core fear-mongers – all Republicans – held firm and denied the convention the two-thirds supermajority it needed to pass.

And for the record, Texas’ two GOP senators, John Cornyn and lame-duck Kay Bailey Hutchison, voted “nay” on the measure. Shame on both of them.

Of all the political/public figures I’ve met over the past 40 years of my working life, none – absolutely no one – came close to the unique qualities that embodied one Jack Brooks.

I know what you may be thinking: The term “unique” encompasses a wide range of feelings and emotions. Well, Jack was difficult to pigeonhole.

He died last night at a Beaumont hospital. He was around 90, but it seemed like he was 90 forever. He seemed almost that old when our paths crossed when I was a journalist working in the southeastern corner of Texas, which Brooks represented in Congress for four decades until losing his re-election bid in 1994. I had thought back then that if Brooks lost his Ninth Congressional District seat – which included one of the remaining yellow-dog Democratic voting blocs in Texas – there would be no way the Dems could hold on to the House of Reps. He lost, the Democrats lost the House and the Senate that year and Jack Brooks went quietly into retirement.

He chaired the House Judiciary Committee at the time. He despised Republicans. He was irascible, grouchy, profane, smelled of cigars and generally was known as one of the fiercest partisan gut-fighters in Congress. He also was a champion of the blue-collar Democrats who kept sending him back to the House every other year. He fought for their interests and was a friend of the African-American community that comprises such a large portion of the voting population in Southeast Texas.

How did I get along with him? OK … I guess. He didn’t seem to care much for media types. I couldn’t pick up the phone and call him the way I could, say, the late “Good Time Charlie” Wilson, Brooks’ Democratic House colleague who represented the neighboring Second District, and with whom I had a much better working relationship. I also enjoyed better relations with Republican U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry of Clarendon.

Once, after authoring an editorial that endorsed the guy who ran against Brooks in his campaign for the House, Jack told my editor that I needed to take a “permanent vacation.” And he meant it.

Brooks was one of a kind. He was a throwback. He represented the old Texas Democratic establishment that produced Sam Rayburn, John Connally, Lyndon Johnson and Jim Wright.

It might be that Brooks’ most endearing quality was a form of self-deprecation. He knew what people thought of his gruff demeanor. He didn’t shy away from it. He was proud of his image.

His self-titled nickname said it all: Sweet Old Brooks. He might have been an SOB, but he was our SOB.

Rest in peace, Jack.

This item just slays me.

The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives is going to essentially work part-time in 2013. House leaders announced they plan to work only 15 Fridays next year. It amounts to a 30 percent decrease from the previous year.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/270419-house-cuts-back-on-fridays

Let’s ponder this for a moment. These are the folks who bemoan the slackers who refuse to put their shoulder to the wheel and work ‘til they drop. I think I actually have heard some of these individuals say words to that effect. Yet here they are, drawing six-figure salaries – that you and I pay – and they’re now saying they plan to be on the job four days a week for almost the entire upcoming calendar year.

And that doesn’t count the extended time off from debating, deliberating, conferencing and voting on policy matters on Capitol Hill. They’ll be taking time off from all that drudgery ostensibly to talk to constituents back home, collecting facts and opinions from their “bosses” – the people who pay the freight.

Let us not forget the myriad “factfinding” junkets, er, trips they’ll make to places overseas that may – or may not – be of vital national concern.

I know what you might be thinking. These folks work hard for their salary. It’s a thankless job, what with all the grief they have to endure while wrestling with troublesome issues. We voters don’t appreciate them, you might suggest.

I appreciate my member of Congress very much. Mac Thornberry, a Republican who took office within days of my arrival in the Texas Panhandle in early 1995, is a stand-up guy. He’s also a member of the party that runs the House of Reps and who goes along with the lightened workload. I don’t recall Mac ever talking badly about those allegedly lazy bums who refuse to work hard. But some of his fellow Republicans have said pretty distasteful things about their fellow Americans.

Last time I checked, the nation had some serious matters to resolve. The budget? Our long-term financial condition? Ongoing national security concerns? These matters require lots of attention and they should compel lawmakers to be on the job working non-stop until they’re all fixed.

What has become of leading by example?