Old habits do have this way of hanging on.

One of them appears to be reading newspapers. You know, those things that used to get tossed on our front porches. It had all those news stories and commentary in them. They made people angry, sad, happy, curious … all of those things at once even.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune has decided to restore daily newspaper delivery after scaling back its print publication to three times a week.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/business/media/in-new-orleans-times-picayunes-monopoly-crumbles.html?pagewanted=all&_r=3&

Good call, T-P.

I come from the old school. I’ve learned how to adapt to the new way of presenting my own thoughts – as this blog demonstrates. I have a Facebook account and I tweet 140-character thoughts daily. I’m getting this new social media thing.

A big part of me, though, is glad to see that others out there apparently share my view that a newspaper belongs in one’s hands, enabling us to turn pages and to skip past things we don’t want to read and soak up those items that capture our attention.

As the New York Times link attached here notes, New Orleans residents didn’t much like reading their “newspaper” online. Neither did advertisers. Thus, the company that owns the Picayune lost money. So, the company is going to restore its daily print edition. It won’t return in quite the same form. But the paper is taking a step back toward a formula that enabled it to make a lot of money.

Welcome back, Times-Picayune.

I’ve known Paul Harpole for quite a few years, long before he became a city commissioner and mayor of Amarillo.

And I’ve developed great respect for him. But I cannot fathom how he can put any kind of positive spin on the hideous voter turnout in this past Saturday’s municipal election.

The turnout attracted 6.9 percent of the city’s registered voters. Harpole was re-elected mayor with 82 percent of the vote in a two-person race, which was the only contested seat on the City Commission ballot.

He told the Amarillo Globe-News’s Kevin Welch, “I’m not pleased (with the turnout) but it’s higher than some off-year elections. But it’s not high enough.” But it’s higher than “some off-year elections”? That sounds a bit to me like positive spin.

No, the election history in Amarillo is one of maximum apathy. It astounds me.

I remember well the 1996 special election to determine whether the Amarillo Hospital District should sell Northwest Texas Hospital to a private health-care provider. That measure drew 22 percent of the district’s registered voters. Four out of five voters sat that one out. But judging by the reaction of local officials to that turnout, you’d have thought the city had experienced a smashing breakthrough in civic involvement.

In 2011, with three open seats on the commission, including the mayor’s seat, turnout was about 15 percent.

Single-digit turnouts for municipal and other local elections are not cause for any kind of positive spin.

Harpole indicated that people must be satisfied with the job commission members are doing. That’s a valid point. But why don’t people turn out to affirm the job their public officials are doing on their behalf? That seems to be the question of the day.

I’m running out of ways to say this, but local elections have more of a direct impact on people’s lives than state and national elections. City commissioners set tax rates that property owners have to pay. They determine the level of public service that people receive directly.

It’s critical that the public takes part in determining who serves on our behalf. Ninety-four percent of the city’s registered voters decided they didn’t care. What’s worse, the number of non-voters grows even more when you measure it against those who eligible to vote but who haven’t even bothered to register.

Pathetic.

Ari Fleischer served as President George W. Bush’s press secretary and has been a fairly vocal critic of the Obama administration.

Here’s what he tweeted today about the Internal Revenue Service’s revelation that it hassled tea party activists and groups: “I’d b shocked if WH told IRS 2do it, but when O vilifies Tparty & VP likens them 2 terrorists, bureaucrats follow the culture.”

I’m hoping Fleischer is right, that the president did not tell IRS agents to ruffle tea party feathers just for the sake of getting even with that wing of the Republican Party.

But the man does make a point about what bureaucrats will do when their higher-ups say unkind things about their foes. It’s probably unlikely that they acted on orders handed down from the West Wing of the White House. They merely could have assumed it was all right to hassle tea party organizations and their organizers just because President Obama and Vice President Biden made those angry comments about them.

We all know, though, what happens when we assume too much, correct?

It appears to me that a few low-level agency bosses have created a monstrous headache for a president seeking to build a legacy. This isn’t the one he had in mind.

I love watching golf on TV. I particularly love watching Tiger Woods play golf on TV – and one of my bucket-list events is to see Woods play in person before he hangs up his clubs for keeps, or before I, um, kick it.

An intriguing feud erupted into the open this past weekend at the Players Championship between Woods and Sergio Garcia, one of Woods’s contemporaries on the PGA Tour.

Here’s my take on what ought to happen now: Sergio, put a sock in it, concentrate on playing golf and stop whining about whether Tiger Woods is enough of a gentleman to suit your taste.

http://msn.foxsports.com/golf/story/tiger-woods-wins-the-players-championship-sergio-garcia-falters-051213

These two young men seem to dislike each other. They came onto the PGA scene at roughly the same time; Tiger debuted a couple of years earlier than Sergio. Tiger began winning almost immediately. He won his first of 14 – and likely still counting – major championships in 1997. Sergio’s record in majors? Zero. Tiger has won 78 PGA tournaments overall. Sergio’s PGA record? Eight.

Garcia called Woods out during Saturday’s third round at the Players. They were paired together. They hit tee shots. Tiger hit a shot toward the green just as Sergio was taking a cut at his ball on the other side of the fairway. Crowd erupted. Sergio’s timing was thrown off. Sergio hit a bad shot and then blamed Tiger for not showing proper course etiquette. 

It went downhill from there. The two men sniped at each other publicly.

The Players Championship ended badly for Garcia and quite well for Woods, who won the event on Sunday while Garcia faltered badly down the stretch.

Here’s my advice to Sergio. If you’re going to take pot shots at the No. 1 player in the world, a guy aiming to become the greatest golfer who ever walked on Planet Earth, you’d better have the goods to back up your snarky talk.

Benghazi, Shmenghazi …

I am not denigrating the loss of lives in the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. I mourn the deaths of the four Americans who died in that terrible attack and firefight. But I’m beginning to wonder whether Republicans’ continuing keen interest in the aftermath of the attack isn’t politically motivated.

The Internal Revenue Service apology for pestering tea party activists in an election year is another matter. This one is troubling in the extreme.

http://thehill.com/video/house/299209-issa-irs-apology-for-tea-party-targeting-dishonest

U.S. House Government Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said this morning that the IRS “mea culpa’s not an honest one.” Maybe so. Maybe not.

But the IRS has admitted that it dogged tea party activists for a year prior to the 2012 presidential election. Agents reportedly placed conservatives under closer scrutiny on tax matters, leading some to accuse the agency of political harassment.

What needs to be settled immediately is whether this was done under orders, or with the tacit approval of those in the White House.

I’ll be clear on this point: I am not a tea party supporter and I truly hope that the IRS acted on its own, that some rogues within the agency took matters into their own hands and that the White House is not involved in any way.

But this matter has to be cleared up quickly. If the IRS acted on its own, those individuals involved need to be identified, fired and prosecuted.

Some Republicans have compared the Benghazi kerfuffle to the Watergate scandal that took down an administration in 1974. The closer comparison might be the alleged IRS activity. I hope that it’s false, but the nation needs answers.

Texas legislators want us to believe they are acting out of goodness in their heart by considering a nice raise for state district court judges.

Oh, but wait. There’s a kicker. If the Legislature approves the raise, there’s something in it for legislators. Their retirement pension gets a boost. Good-heartedness has its limits, yes?

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/05/10/pay-raise-little-something-extra/

At issue is a $26,000-plus annual raise for the judges. For every $1,000 added to the increase, the state legislators’ retirement pension fund kicks in $23 additional annually for every of service in the Legislature.

It’s a nice way to pad your retirement account without ever having to vote openly and overtly for it. They’re doing it for those hard-working judges all across Texas, you see.

We amend the Texas Constitution for almost everything under the sun. Not so with the U.S. Constitution, which has been amended all of 27 times. The most recent amendment comes to mind here. It’s the one that says no congressional or executive branch pay increase can take effect until after the next congressional or presidential election. I’m unaware of any such provision in the Texas Constitution that stipulates that kind of provision.

Maybe it’s time to consider something like it, even if it applies to legislators’ retirement funds. Either that or make these fine legislators vote on their own retirement income in the open. Up or down. Stand tall, legislators!

It’s good to see Olympic medal-winning wrestlers wanting to keep their sport as part of the Games.

The International Olympic Committee wants to dump wrestling as an Olympic sport beginning with the 2020 Games at a site to be named this year.

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/298645-wrestlers-go-to-mat-to-keep-sport-in-olympics-

It would be a travesty of the highest order to eliminate one of the original Olympic sports. The IOC would keep rhythmic gymnastics, synchronized swimming and polo. But wrestling? No, the IOC says fan interest has waned to a level that detracts from the overall Olympic experience.

What a croc!

I’m pulling for the Olympic medal-winners to persuade the IOC to change its mind, restore its sanity and rekindle the spirit of the Games that began with wrestlers grappling with each other – in the nude, I should add – in Olympia, Greece, beginning in 776 B.C.

I’ve had the honor of walking through the original Olympic site with my wife in 2001. We were awestruck just knowing what had happened there nearly three millennia ago. For the keepers of that spirit to think of throwing over one of the world’s oldest sports is unthinkable … or so I thought.

I might have to change my way of thinking on the wisdom of reducing the federal budget deficit if some high-powered private- and public-sector economists are correct.

They say that reducing government spending and tax increases have slowed the economic recovery and that the jobless rate might be a percentage point lower than it is today if we didn’t do those two things in 2011.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/us/deficit-reduction-is-seen-by-economists-as-impeding-recovery.html?_r=2&

What’s going on here? Didn’t the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Reps tell us that deficit reduction was Job One the past two years – right up there with defeating President Barack Obama? And didn’t they tell us that slashing government spending would jumpstart the economy by handing it all over to the private sector, which is so much better at job creation than the federal government? As for taxes, didn’t the Democrats tell us that rich folks who could afford to pay more should do so and it wouldn’t harm middle-income Americans’ pocketbooks?

I’m still grappling with trying to understand which strategy is more wrongheaded – spending reductions or tax cuts. I’m tending to believe that severe government spending cuts has been the big inhibitor.

More than three decades ago, Ronald Reagan ran for president when the deficit was a then-staggering $40 billion annually. The economy was in the tank and he blamed President Jimmy Carter for wrecking the nation’s economy, not to mention turning out national mood so sour. The voters agreed with him, electing Reagan president in a stunning landslide in 1980. The economy continued to stumble along for the first two years of his presidency, then it took off – right along with the deficit.

Now some economists are saying that deficit spending isn’t the bogeyman Republicans have labeled it.

Time to rethink everything … maybe.

It’s fascinating what a successful re-election campaign can do for a public official who decides to walk straight into the belly of the political beast.

President Obama ventured to Texas today to talk about jobs and his ideas for creating more of them. Texas, of course, isn’t exactly Obama Country. He carried 41 percent of the vote here in 2012 compared to Mitt Romney’s 57 percent total.

What’s more, the president has been pilloried at every opportunity by one of the individuals who greeted him warmly today in Austin: Gov. Rick Perry.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/05/09/obama-perry-visit/

But the president came, released from the bonds of having to campaign ever again for elected office. Think about that for a moment. During the 2012 campaign, Obama ventured into Texas only to attend private fundraisers that generated a lot of money for him. We saw no public stump speeches from him; no plant-gate handshaking; no baby-kissing at the State Fair in Dallas.

Now that his final election is behind him, Obama has come to Texas to speak about jobs.

And I’m glad to see the Republican governor there to greet him. They made nice in public, which is a good thing given that the president serves all the people of this country, not just those who voted for him.

But oh man, I would love to be a fly on the wall in a room where President Obama and Gov. Perry can speak candidly to each other. In diplomatic parlance, I’m quite certain their discussions would be “frank.”

An East Texas district judge has given some high school leaders something to cheer.

Good for him, and for them.

Hardin County District Judge Steve Thomas ruled that the Kountze High School cheerleaders may display religious messages on their run-through banners prior to the start of their football games. He said the banners do not establish a state religion and that it does not violate the First Amendment to the Constitution that prohibits such an establishment.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/05/08/tx-judge-cheerleaders-can-keep-bible-verses-banner/

I’m with him on this one.

Here’s where I draw the line.

The kids want to display the banner containing Scripture passages. No one is forcing them to do it. Had the Kountze Independent School District ordered the students to put the messages out there – as agents of a government entity – that would violate the First Amendment that disallows government from taking such action. But since the students are acting on their own volition and the community supports their display, then – if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor – no harm, no foul.

The case has drawn national attention. Some civil libertarians opposed the banners because they contend they foist religion on non-religious spectators attending these football games. C’mon, folks. No one forces anyone to read these banners, let alone adhere to their message.

Thomas’s ruling states: “The evidence in this case confirms that religious messages expressed on run-through banners have not created, and will not create, and establishment of religion in the Kountze community.”

The fact that the students are free to do as they please means they are exercising their liberties as citizens of a country that encourages freedom of expression.