Houston’s Astrodome likely won’t be knocked to the ground, or blown to bits.

It likely will remain standing, but not in the form that some of us wanted for it.

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Sports-Corp-promises-new-Dome-experience-4610316.php

The Harris County Sports and Convention Corp. says it wants to turn the Astrodome – the one-time Eighth Wonder of the World – into a convention center. It will strip out the seats and turn the Dome into a gigantic meeting place.

The new venue will create a new “Dome experience.” I frankly have enjoyed some of my own old Dome experience, although admittedly not too much of it over the years.

I once took my sons to a 5A high school football playoff game there. My wife and one of my sons went with me once to a Houston Oilers NFL game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Then my wife and I went to a Paul McCartney concert there, where we sang “Hey Jude” – along with many other songs – with Sir Paul and about 50,000 fans packed into the place.

I feared they would tear the place down. That likely won’t happen. The plans now call for $194 million to turn the Dome into a non-sports venue.

This news doesn’t excite me. It does give me some sense of relief that the grand structure will still stand, which is something of a victory for those of us who want to save the place.

Harris County commissioners will consider the proposal next week. I hope they approve it.

I’ve known for a long time that I’m getting old. Other than the obvious signs of aging, I’m discovering that the older I get the less worked up I become over things that used to rankle me terribly.

Take the issue of drones, the unmanned aerial vehicles used with great effectiveness against terrorists on battlefields overseas.

Now we learn that the FBI is using the UAVs in U.S. airspace. My gut reaction? So what?

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/06/19/fbi-acknowledges-using-drones-on-u-s-soil/

FBI Director Robert Mueller said that law enforcement is using the drones in a minimal way. They track suspected terrorists and drug dealers – which some folks consider to be one in the same.

I haven’t seen much of a problem using these aircraft ever since President Bush began deploying them not long after the 9/11 attacks. President Obama has continued using them – even accelerating their use – as the anti-terrorist war has continued.

The question came up during confirmation hearings for CIA Director John Brennan whether we’d use the drones to attack targets on U.S. soil. He said it wouldn’t happen. That’s a good thing, too.

Indeed, that is where I would draw the line and get rankled – as I would have when I was much younger. No one should endorse the notion of drones launching missile attacks against criminals in the United States. We should save these actions for the battlefield. These are weapons of war and they should be deployed in that manner only in a war zone.

Using them for surveillance purposes here? No problem.

Gov. Rick Perry’s job-recruitment journey has taken him to the northeastern United States where he’s appealing directly to businesses to relocate to Texas.

I’ve seen the latest ad and to be candid, it’s actually a pretty good piece of work.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/rick-perry-takes-aim-at-new-york-93030.html?hp=r3

I continue to be amazed at the in-your-face approach Perry is taking toward his fellow governors. The previous targeted states – California, Illinois and now, New York – all are governed by Democrats. Perry, who once was a Democrat, is now a card-carrying Republican who’s demonstrating time and again that he doesn’t care one bit about working with Democrats.

Still, he is a member of the National Governors Association, which still has a number of members from the “other” party. He goes to NGA meetings, hob-knobs – I presume – with other states’ governors. Maybe they swap stories about working with their legislatures or even brag about how good things are going in their particular state.

Does he cross the proverbial aisle at these meetings and talk shop with Democrats? My hunch is that he rubs shoulders only with Republicans, mainly because he’s managing to tick off Democrats with his job-poaching initiative.

Frankly, I cannot blame the governor for wanting to lure more business to Texas. Name a governor of any political stripe who doesn’t want to put more constituents to work and I’ll show you someone who’s not long for the office he or she holds.

But every business magazine published already has touted the Lone Star State’s business-friendly environment. It’s the worst-kept secret in the realm of national politics.

The governor might need some of those Democratic governors one day to help push some bipartisan idea forward – if any such notion ever pops into Perry’s noggin. I’m betting they won’t stand with him.

Canyon public school officials are pondering whether to allow the storage of guns and ammunition on the two high school campuses in the district.

http://www.connectamarillo.com/news/story.aspx?id=910828#.UcDtFkoo6t8

Guard this stuff very carefully, folks.

Canyon and Randall high schools would be the site of the munitions depots. Canyon Independent School District officials want to store the weapons there in case violence were to erupt at either campus. The only people with access to the cache would be Canyon and Amarillo police officers.

I share the concern expressed by Kathy Gilmore, a parent who lives in CISD. “I think they would have to really be careful about where they put them and only have certain people, only the officers that were licensed, to take take care of them if they were stored,” Gilmore said.

But what if someone, somehow, in some unexplainable fashion were to get hold of the keys? What if that someone did so with evil intent? What if tragedy were to erupt in the remote – but still possible – event of such a theft? What if … ?

I question the wisdom of this idea.

Ted Cruz wasn’t even supposed to be a member of the U.S. Senate when he began his campaign back in 2011. But there he is, the junior Republican senator from Texas.

A University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll has some rather strange news – depending, of course, on your point of view – regarding just how far Cruz has climbed up the political mountain. Cruz is the prohibitive favorite among Texas Republicans to become their party’s 2016 presidential nominee.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/06/17/uttt-poll-texans-favor-cruz-over-perry-president/

Yikes!

Cruz polls much better than another guy we’ve all heard of: Gov. Rick “Oops” Perry, the guy who tried and failed famously in his brief run for the GOP nomination in 2012.

Sen. Cruz ran in the Republican primary last year against Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the man with the deepest pockets in Texas politics and the odds-on favorite to succeed fellow Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who didn’t seek another term. Then Dewhurst ran into Cruz, who beat him in the Republican runoff and went on to win the general election handily against former Democratic state Rep. Paul Sadler of Henderson.

Since taking office those months ago, Cruz has taken on a role once performed by another loudmouthed Texan, former Republican Sen. Phil Gramm, of whom it was once said, “The most dangerous place in the world is the space between Phil Gramm and a television camera.” Cruz loves the limelight perhaps even more than Gramm did. He basks in it, saying strange things about Democrats and even some of his fellow Republicans. He lectures senior senators on the Constitution and in his goofy way demonstrates that he isn’t going to be stalled by such things as Senate decorum and protocol.

The Texas Tribune reported this about the poll: “’What you’re seeing here with the Cruz number is that he has become the pre-eminent rising conservative in Texas,’ said poll co-director Jim Henson, who runs the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. ‘What we’re witnessing in the numbers is Cruz running ahead and reaching back for the baton, and Rick Perry has the baton. The only question is whether Rick Perry is ready to hand it to him.’”

Cruz’s rise almost – please note I said “almost” – makes me hope that Gov. Perry refuses to hand it over.

Dick Cheney has thrown out the t-word to describe Edward Snowden, the man at the center of a controversy involving the leaking of classified National Security Agency information.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/17/edward-snowden-dick-cheney_n_3454632.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037

The former vice president made his remarks on Fox News Sunday, the news talk show that’s a favorite venue for Republican politicians to vent their anger.

Snowden “is a traitor,” Cheney said, alluding to the secrets the man has released that in Cheney’s view have put Americans at risk.

I am struck immediately by something about Cheney’s accusation. It simply is this: due process.

No one has accused Snowden officially of treason. No one has filed charges. If convicted of treason, a traitor faces the death penalty. It’s arguably the most serious crime imaginable short of murdering someone.

The Constitution — which Cheney has sworn to uphold and defend as a member of Congress, defense secretary and then vice president — lays out the requirement for every criminal defendant to be given the right of due process.

I have no earthly idea whether Edward Snowden is guilty of any crime, let alone treason. He well might be a traitor. However, doesn’t the Constitution provide a mechanism to prove such a thing beyond a reasonable doubt?

Dick Cheney has gotten way ahead of that process.

Today is a big day in the annals of American political history and no one is giving it any attention.

Well, almost no one.

Forty-one years ago today – on June 17, 1972 – a band of burglars broke into an office at the Watergate Hotel in Washington and pilfered some papers from the Democratic National Committee. What would transpire over the course of the next two years would rip the nation’s political structure apart. But as it turned out, we got through it and emerged in good shape on the other side.

Watergate has become part of our nation’s political jargon. It defines scandals. Part of that word – “gate” – has been used countless times since to label subsequent political scandals and even minor dust-ups. Watergate stands on its own.

The burglars got caught. The Washington Post, after some time had elapsed, began looking deeply into what actually happened, who ordered it, who sought to cover it up and who eventually was responsible. The trail led eventually into the Oval Office, which was occupied at the time by President Richard Nixon.

The president, the nation would learn in a stunning surprise about a year later during congressional hearings, tape-recorded conversations. One of those recordings would reveal that President Nixon ordered the cover-up.

Bad call, Mr. President.

It would not end well for Richard Nixon’s presidency. The U.S. House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment, setting the stage for the full House of Representatives to follow suit, which would have resulted in a Senate trial and – in my view – the likely conviction of the president. Nixon got ahead of the train and quit the presidency on Aug. 9, 1974.

A lot of individuals who dislike the current president, Barack Obama, now are saying the controversies that are nipping at his flanks rank right up there with Watergate. Some of my fellow travelers say, for example, that “no one died” from the Watergate scandal, unlike those who died in the Benghazi, Libya firefight this past September. That, they say, makes the Benghazi matter worse.

Tragic as the Benghazi consulate disaster was, it doesn’t yet rise to the kind of abuse of power revealed in the Watergate investigation. Back then a president ordered the CIA to get involved in stopping a criminal probe and worked diligently to keep the truth from the public. President Nixon clearly committed an “impeachable offense.”

But the good news is that we survived. Our nation healed, thanks in part to the decency that came to the White House when Gerald R. Ford took the oath as the nation’s 38th president.

I call attention to this date not so much to herald the misdeeds, but to salute the strength of the system of government that serves us.

As President Ford said when he addressed the nation after taking office, “The Constitution works.”

A pair of editorials published by a paper where I used to work debates whether air conditioning units should be installed in Texas prisons.

The Beaumont Enterprise asks readers to make the call.

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/opinions/editorials/article/PRO-CON-VIEW-Should-Texas-prisons-provide-4601603.php

Here’s my call: I don’t think Texas prisons need air conditioning.

My first tour of a Texas maximum-security prison occurred not long after I arrived in Amarillo in early 1995. The then-assistant warden took me on a tour of the lockdown, the William Clements Unit, and that’s where I saw how the inmates lived. The TDCJ tour guide, Rick Hudson, explained to me that the state just didn’t see a compelling need to air-condition its prison units. The Clements Unit is equipped with fans that blow ambient air around and that, he said, was sufficient for the inmates.

As the Enterprise editorial points out while arguing against the AC units, the cost of outfitting every prison facility in Texas would be astronomical. Didn’t the state just go through yet another legislative session in which budget-cutting was near the top of lawmakers’ agenda?

I am acutely aware of how hot it gets throughout the state. The Panhandle gets as hot as any other region of Texas. In places such as Beaumont – where I lived and worked for nearly 11 years – the heat is compounded by intense summer humidity that almost defies description.

The state, though, doesn’t lack for ways to help keep inmates reasonably comfortable during the hottest time of the year. Keep them hydrated. Let the fans blow the air throughout common areas.

I’ve been struck over the years by comments from hard-core Texans who complain that the prison system has become too much like a “country club.” I’ll tell you this: The Clements Unit is no country club. Many of the individuals who are doing time in these places have done some terrible deeds against society.

Are they suffering unduly because it gets warm inside those walls? Hardly.

I’m in the midst of trying to settle a score with a major American airline. To those seeking to do the same thing, I offer this simple piece of advice: Be patient … if you can.

My nightmare began the evening of June 6 on a United Airlines flight from Amarillo to Portland – the one in Oregon. The plane took off from AMA a bit late that afternoon and headed southeast toward Houston. About 20 minutes out, the pilot told us we would be diverted to College Station because inclement weather had shut down Houston’s Intercontinental Airport.

I glanced at my watch. I had a long layover at IAH so I figured, “No sweat. I’ll still get to Portland on time.” I knew how the Gulf Coast weather changes quickly. We landed in College Station.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, the pilot told us IAH was reopening and we would take off shortly … after the plane was refueled.

Then the fun began. About an hour later, the pilot came back on the air and said the ground crew put too much fuel in the plane and had to “defuel” the bird before we could take off. More time elapsed. Pilot then told us we couldn’t defuel the plane and we would take off and fly around for awhile so we could burn off the “excess fuel.” A 20-minute hop to IAH turned into an hour-plus.

I looked at my watch again. Out of luck. I would miss my connection to PDX. We landed in Houston. We sat on the taxiway for about, oh, an hour. Weather-related bedlam at the airport had backed gate traffic up. The pilot eventually parked our bird. We got vouchers for a hotel and some meals and then were bused to our hotel.

I took a three-hour power nap. Woke up. Got back to the airport in time for a 7:33 a.m. flight to Denver, where I would connect to another flight to Portland. We boarded the plane, a shiny new 787 Dreamliner.

We sat there. Pilot told us the plane wouldn’t start. We exited the plane, walked to another gate and boarded another Dreamliner. Our 7:33 a.m. departure was now set for 9:30 a.m. Then that departure was delayed while the crew awaited the arrival of the drinks they would serve us en route to Denver. We left around 10:30 a.m.

I looked at my watch … once more. With any luck we would arrive at Denver and I could make my connecting flight to Portland – but only if the airline would ensure the plane could wait a few minutes for me and some other passengers needing to make that connection.

We got to Denver about 15 minutes past the departure time. I deplaned, went to the agent at the end of the gate and was told my connecting flight already had taken off; I needed to rebook another flight.

I did. I then waited nearly 10 more hours in Denver before taking off for Portland at 9:22 p.m.

I landed safely at PDX.

Moral of the story: If it had been just the weather, I would have made every connection the previous evening and would not have lost a full day of vacation.

But now I’m trying to work through the airline’s website to get someone’s attention. The link I’m supposed to use keeps giving me “error” messages. I go to the “feedback” link. I’ve filled out three forms telling the airline what happened and asking for some kind of compensation, either a refund or a travel voucher.

I’m still waiting to hear from them.

I’m trying desperately now to follow my own advice about being patient. But my patience is running thin.

I’m baffled by the election results out of Iran.

The returns are in and an Islamic cleric named Hassan Rowhani has been elected the next president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He’s been called a “moderate,” which well could have much different meanings in Iran than it does in the land of the so-called “Great Satan.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/world/middleeast/iran-election.html?hp&_r=0

I’ll admit, though, to being mildly optimistic about what the returns mean. Might they mean a gradual cessation of the bluster and sabre-rattling we’ve heard from the current Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Could it mean that the new leadership wants, finally, to talk to us instead of threatening us with violence? And might it mean that our most valued and trusted ally in the Middle East, Israel, can stand down just a bit from the high-alert status created by Iran’s declared intent to wipe Israel off the face of the planet?

Rowhani’s victory well might signal the dawning of a new spring in Iran, where the economy is tanking thanks in part to the choking sanctions imposed by two American administrations – led by George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Rowhani well might be listening to those who put him into power; he finished with 50.7 percent of the vote in a six-man field of candidates, avoiding a runoff.

Of course, time will have to tell us what all this means. It could mean nothing at all. Rowhani’s policies could turn out to be just a continuation of his predecessor’s madness. Then again, Rowhani’ victory could portend a new day that brings some semblance of reason and sanity to an Iranian government that, by my reckoning, never has experienced either trait.

If the latter is the case, the Iranians’ learning curve will be steep, but not insurmountable.