Monthly Archives: November 2018

Sports news, State news

Missing this holiday tradition

If only Texas A&M University hadn’t decided to play football in the Southeastern Conference. If only the Aggies had stayed put in the Big 12. If only . . .

I’d be watching a Texas tradition today while consuming some turkey and all the other stuff.

Thanksgiving Day meant some good ol’ college tackle football between the University of Texas and them Aggies of A&M.

I wasn’t born in Texas. I didn’t attend either school. I’ve lived in Texas long enough — 34 years now — to appreciate the thrill, the pageantry and the excitement associated with this holiday tradition.

If only the Aggies hadn’t bolted to the SEC.

I have made the acquaintances of many Texas Exes and dedicated Aggies over the years. I have no particular loyalty to either school. Neither of my UT or A&M friends are “better” friends than the others. I do like to watch tackle football played at the college level.

My wife and I have attended one A&M football game. It was years ago in Lubbock, when the Aggies played Texas Tech’s Red Raiders in a windswept event at Jones Stadium. The Red Raiders won that game in a thriller.

Do you know what thrilled the daylights out of me, though? It was the sight — and the sound! — of the Aggie marching band walking onto the field. Talk about spit-and-polish precision!

Well, we won’t see any of that today. Nor will we get to see Bevo the steer roaming the sideline in front of the Longhorn faithful while his UT gridders play some block-and-tackle with their Aggie rivals.

Dang it, anyhow!

national news

A Thanksgiving plea to POTUS

I want to direct this next blog post to the president of the United States. He likely won’t see it, given that he has several million Twitter followers. But … here’s hoping for the best.

Mr. President, I want to wish you a happy Thanksgiving. Really, I do wish it for you and your family. But please, sir, I have a request: Do not do anything stupid, foolish, outrageous, insulting, moronic, idiotic or distasteful on this day … at least! It’s too much to ask that you refrain from such idiocy beyond this uniquely American holiday.

Enjoy your time at Mar-a-Lago. Surround yourself with friends. Give thanks for all that you have. I’m sure you’ve got some nice digs there.

Give thanks if you want to Vladimir Putin for all he sought to do to help you win the 2016 election. Give thanks also to your new BFF, Kim Jong Un, the guy with whom said you are in love. You are entitled to give thanks to Saudi prince Mohammad bin Salman (I will not refer to him as “MBS”) for buying all those jet fighters — even though he ordered the murder of that journalist in Istanbul.

Just don’t make any goofy policy pronouncements today via Twitter, Mr. President. I want to enjoy the day here in North Texas with my family and I do not want to get my blood boiling over some stupid remark from your Twitter account.

Tomorrow’s another day. I am sure you will provide millions of us with grist to either condemn or praise. Count me as one who’s likely to be in the former category.

Until then, sir … again, happy Thanksgiving.

local news

This is a seriously profound Thanksgiving story

One of these days — probably in the not-too-distant future — a little 1-year-old boy is going to become aware of a young man who saved his life. He will give heartfelt thanks to the effort of that young man and several other strangers who performed heroic deeds on Thanksgiving Eve, 2018.

Byron Campbell, 21 years of age, noticed smoke coming from an east Dallas apartment complex on Wednesday. (That’s him in the picture.) He rushed the building. He and several other individuals then began knocking on doors, informing residents of the fire, urging them to get out. First-floor residents dragged mattresses out so those on the upper floors could jump onto them while escaping the inferno.

A young woman was trapped on the third floor of the apartment building. She was holding her infant son. Byron stood on the ground urging her to let the baby go. He would catch him. The mom did it. The baby dropped and Byron caught him. He was safe.

Mom and Dad were able to escape the burning building. Indeed, everyone inside the structure escaped unharmed. The building was demolished. A Dallas firefighter suffered minor injuries.

This is the kind of story that makes one proud of humanity.

A group of young men risked their lives to save others. One of them had the presence of mind to steel himself for a harrowing escape orchestrated by a panicked woman who thought only of saving her helpless child. The woman placed her faith in the arms — and the heart — of a complete stranger.

I cannot possibly know how this young family will be thinking and feeling on this day we give thanks. I’ll start with the obvious: They will give thanks for the young man who saved their little boy’s life.

Soon, so will the little boy.

Wow!

International news

Give thanks to Saudis? I don’t think so

The president of the United States says Americans should “give thanks” to Saudi Arabia for the relatively low cost of gasoline.

I don’t think I’ll do that.

I will give thanks instead to a domestic energy policy that has enabled the United States to achieve energy independence. I’ll give thanks to a president, Barack Obama, who had the foresight to insist on an energy policy that sought to develop alternative sources of energy.

I’ll also give thanks to automakers for developing more fuel-efficient motor vehicles. My wife and I own one, a Toyota Prius, that we gas up about every, oh, three or four weeks.

No, I don’t believe the Saudis are our friends. They are murderers. The president likes to foment fear of terrorists coming to this country from Latin America. Hell, the Saudis are the breeding ground for terrorist monsters; 15 of the 19 hijackers who flew those commercial jets into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on 9/11 hailed from Saudi Arabia.

Am I going to give thanks to Saudi Arabia for anything? Cheap gasoline? Energy independence? For their alliance with us against Iran and other hardline states in the Middle East?

Hah! Hardly.

environmental news, media news

What’s with this ‘MBS’ crap?

Hey, what gives with the TV news talking heads and their various “contributors” and their casual reference to a guy who ordered the murder and alleged dismemberment of a U.S.-based Saudi journalist?

The individual to whom I refer is Mohammad bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The CIA says this monster issued the order to kill Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

He’s a bad dude, man!

The talking heads, though, are calling him “MBS.” MBS? I always thought we reserved that kind of reference — call it an endearment, if you wish — for public figures we held in much greater esteem.

You know who I mean. MLK Jr., JFK, RFK, LBJ, FDR. That’s all you need with these folks. No full names are necessary. We assign nicknames to others. Such as Ike, The Gipper, Give ‘Em Hell Harry, Dubya.

Mohammad bin Salman does not deserve this level of familiarity from our talking heads. I hereby call on them to knock it off.

Call the guy what he is: a cold-blooded murderer.

MBS. My keister.

local news

Giving thanks, even in this contentious time

I want to give thanks. We’re going to spend time on Thanksgiving Day with family and we’ll meet some new friends.

We’re all tempted at this time of year to offer a word of thanks and gratitude for our many blessings. We are Americans. We live in a great country that provides us with liberty that others around the world only can imagine.

I want to give particular thanks for being a citizen of this country and for being able to do what I do daily. I criticize my government. I criticize my president; yes, he is my president, even though I didn’t vote for him and I detest the notion of this man taking up residence in the White House, which is my house.

This blog gives me a tremendous release to vent my frustration and, yes, my anger. I make no apology for any of it.

I suppose I should give thanks for my grandparents, all four of them. They had the courage, the fortitude and the intrepidity to venture from Greece and Turkey in the early 20th century. They settled in United States of America and produced a man and a woman who themselves would marry and produce — that’s right! — yours truly.

Therein lies the source of my gratitude. I am grateful in the extreme that my grandparents sought to leave all that they knew and set out for a new frontier in a new world, an ocean away. They had deep faith in themselves, in each other and in God to guide their way.

Two generations later, my sisters and I came of age. We reached out to pursue our own lives. I found a young woman with whom I fell in love. We married 47 years ago and produced two sons, who have grown into successful men; more importantly, they are good men.

Through it all, I was able to pursue a career in journalism that enabled me to express myself, to tell others’ stories and to chronicle the lives in communities where my family and I lived.

My country allowed me to do all this. I am grateful for my country. I fairly routinely give thanks regularly for the opportunity I was given. I believe truly that I could not have experienced the professional joy that I did had my grandparents chosen to leave their homeland for some other place.

This great country of ours has allowed me to continue to bitch and moan about the direction our government is heading. I choose to keep yapping about it and I do so with full confidence that I will be allowed to express my displeasure without recrimination.

I’ll forgo that bitching at least for the next day. I likely will choose to comment on other matters while we focus our attention on the family with whom we will gather on Thanksgiving Day.

With that, I wish you all a happy day. Give thanks in your own way for the liberty we all enjoy.

legal news

Did the chief justice fire a shot across his colleagues’ bow?

I remain fully committed to the proposition that the nation’s founders got it exactly right when they established a system whereby federal judges get lifetime appointments to serve in a co-equal branch of the U.S. government.

These judges are intended to be independent of political pressure from the presidents who appoint them.

Thus, I am wondering about U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ stern rebuke of Donald Trump’s implication that judges are beholden to the men who nominate them to the federal judiciary.

Roberts issued the rarest of rejoinders in reminding Trump that there are “no Obama judges, or Trump judges, or Bush judges or Clinton judges.” They are independent thinkers and adjudicators, he said.

I wonder if the chief justice didn’t actually fire a shot across the front of the rest of the federal judiciary as well, reminding his colleagues of the responsibility they all have to follow the law without regard to the president who nominated them.

I wonder as well if that lesson will be heeded, for example, by the two men Donald Trump has selected for the nation’s highest court: Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Both men have pledged to follow the law and to be faithful exclusively to the U.S. Constitution, which they all have taken oaths to preserve and protect.

Donald Trump appears for all the world to be making the judicial system loyal to him, irrespective of what the law dictates. That is what I believe Chief Justice Roberts was seeking to address with his statement today.

And of course, the president isn’t taking the criticism quietly and respectfully. He is firing back at the chief justice. Trump said in a tweet: “Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges,’ and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.”

Good grief, Mr. President.

Yes, judges have differing points of view. To say that they are beholden to partisan politicians steeps to cynical depths we haven’t seen before.

It is demagoguery, pure and simple.

legal news

Should judges speak out more?

A former Clinton administration Cabinet official poses an interesting question in light of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ rebuke of Donald Trump.

Should they speak out more? asks former Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

My quick answer: no, they shouldn’t.

Roberts said this today: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”

It’s a rare rejoinder coming from the nation’s top jurist aimed at the nation’s top governmental executive.

We can argue all day about whether the federal judiciary is actually independent. Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation hearing showed just how political the high bench has become, many would argue. I won’t join that debate today.

The issue is whether the president should be condemning them or whether judges should be let loose to respond.

Donald Trump has been castigating judges, calling them “Obama judges” or “so-called judges” or judges who oppose his policies because they are appointed to the bench by someone from another political party.

The chief justice is responding cleanly and succinctly to the president.

It’s the rare quality that gives the statement its gravitas, adds weight to it. It lends and air of added ummmph to the chief’s rebuke of the president.

Thus, my hope would be that federal judges — let alone the chief justice of the nation’s highest court — would remain quiet. If they all start offering opinions about careless statements coming from politicians, the frequency would clearly water it all down.

I welcome the chief’s remarks. That they are so rare makes them even more significant.

legal news

SCOTUS chief to POTUS: No such thing as partisan judges

Listen up, Mr. President. Sit up straight and pay attention. The chief justice of the United States of America is speaking words of wisdom.

Chief Justice John Roberts has informed you, Donald Trump, that the country doesn’t have “Obama judges, or Bush judges or Clinton judges.” The federal judiciary, he reminded all of us in a statement issued today, is an independent branch of the government. The men and women who adjudicate cases must be free of partisan consideration, such as the individual who nominated them to whatever bench where they sit.

It’s a rare event to have the chief justice admonish a politician, Mr. President. Congratulations, you’ve stirred the pot!

The chief is admonishing you for those intemperate remarks you keep making about judges. You had the gall to refer to a U.S.-born federal jurist as a “Mexican” only because he is of Mexican heritage; the judge was ruling against your anti-immigration efforts. You referred to another judge based in Hawaii as a “so-called judge” because he knocked down your Muslim travel ban. Another judge who ruled against your recent asylum ban became an “Obama judge.”

Thus, the chief justice got riled enough to speak out against your careless references to the men and women who sit on our federal bench.

Perhaps he’s ticked that you criticized him directly for his vote in 2012 to preserve the Affordable Care Act. That makes it even worse, Mr. President.

You, Mr. President, keep demonstrating an absolute and unwavering ignorance of the roles that the co-equal branches of government play. You don’t understand the limits of your own executive power, or the limitations placed on the legislative and judicial branches of government. Your habitual loud mouth and careless rhetoric underscore your own ignorance of the governmental framework you took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend.”

I am glad to know that Chief Justice Roberts has called you out, although his language — quite understandably — was measured and scholarly.

I know you won’t learn from this. I just had to weigh in anyway.

Mr. President, you simply scare the spit out of me.

national news

Pelosi employs her superb ‘inside game’

This is what they mean, I suppose, when they say Nancy Pelosi plays an unparalleled “inside game” on Capitol Hill.

The Democratic leader in the U.S. House of Representatives is knocking off her former foes by “killing” them with promises. She intends to become the next/returning speaker of the House and she is lining up her friends to ensure they cast their votes in her favor.

Rep. Brian Higgins of New York had been a foe. He’s now on her side, thanks to a pledge to prioritize infrastructure legislation and Medicare expansion next year. Earlier, Pelosi struck a deal to win over Rep. Marsha Fudge of Ohio, who had considered running against Pelosi for speaker; Fudge climbed aboard the Pelosi haywagon after the presumptive speaker promised her a committee chairmanship and pledged to work to correct voting problems.

Isn’t that the sign of someone who knows how to turn foes into friends and start the process of organizing an occasionally unruly caucus of partisans with their own agendas, their own concerns and their own constituents?

This kind of skill is precisely what made her such an effective speaker during her first go-round, from 2007 until 2011.

Republicans will continue to demonize her. They do so at their peril.