I’ve listened to a lot of commentary in recent days about Jackie Robinson, the man who broke baseball’s racial barrier in 1947 when he became the first African-American to suit up in the big leagues.

I believe it was the Boston Celtics basketball legend Bill Russell – the first black coach in the National Basketball Association – who said it best. Robinson, he said, probably wasn’t the best player in the Negro League when the big leagues were looking for a player to break that barrier. But he possessed the strength of character, the spine of steel and the resolve to withstand what everyone knew was coming: the hate-filled racial epithets that would be thrown at him.

And he stood up and stood tall in the face of it all.

I’m going to see the film “42” later today with my wife and one of my sons. I’m looking forward to seeing how Hollywood tells this compelling story. I pray the filmmakers tell the truth as I understand it, which is that Jackie Robinson was willing to pay a huge price for the chance to play against the best baseball players in the world. He didn’t pay that price stoically at all times. He was hurt emotionally many times along the way. But he tried his best to show the public face of strength.

Some years ago, MLB did something unprecedented. The league retired a number, 42. That was number Robinson wore on his Brooklyn Dodgers uniform. I’m aware that at least one player is wearing the number today, Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees, who’s going to retire at the end of this season. But the big leagues no longer will allow any team to issue that number to another player ever again.

I cannot think of a player who deserves that honor more than Jackie Robinson.

Robinson died in 1972 in his early 50s of diabetes-related complications. I so wish he could be here to soak up the respect and love he has engendered. Lord knows he didn’t get it in 1947.

I am willing to concede one point to the gun-rights crowd about background checks and whether they would have prevented the Sandy Hook school massacre in Newtown, Conn.

The National Rifle Association has been saying repeatedly that background checks wouldn’t have prevented the madman from killing 20 children, six educators, his own mother and then himself.

I can agree to that single point.

Adam Lanza’s weaponry came from his mother’s house. He took the guns from dear ol’ Mom and killed her with one of them before he set out to slaughter the rest of his victims. Mrs. Lanza had obtained the weapons legally. Why she owned a Bushmaster, though, remains a mystery.

But the point is that checking Adam Lanza’s background is irrelevant as it relates to this particular crime.

The NRA’s use of the Sandy Hook example to make its point about background checks, though, begs the bigger issue … which is that background checks can block known criminals from purchasing weapons they might want to use to harm other human beings.

I consider myself to be someone of reasonable intelligence, although I don’t profess to be an expert on anything, which I suppose shields me from having to explain myself too often.

Someone will have to explain something to me. How does checking the background of a law-abiding gun-buyer with no criminal or medical history to cause anyone concern violate that person’s Second Amendment right to own a firearm?

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/293461-house-gop-shows-little-appetite-for-senate-gun-control-measure

The Second Amendment to the Constitution lays it out there, admittedly in some clumsy language: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” I get what the Founders meant: Americans have the right to own firearms.

However, these days the debate has turned to a couple of key elements of the gun control debate in the wake of the Dec. 14, 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where 20 precious children and six educators died in a senseless massacre. One of the elements centers on the size of ammo clips; the other is on background checks.

Let’s focus on background checks for a moment. The National Rifle Association used to favor the checks. Now it opposes them. Ninety percent of Americans favor stricter gun control measures. The NRA opposes them. Background checks of those seeking to purchase a firearm, to my mind, seem to be the least intrusive measure under discussion.

If someone wants to buy a gun from a dealer, he or she submits to a criminal/medical background check. If it comes back clean, no problem. He or she buys the gun. But what if the background check reveals a criminal record that, say, involves a violent act? That individual might be deemed too big a risk to own a firearm, or one would think.

I suppose a major sticking point, which I haven’t heard discussed yet in the current debate, is the level of criminal history that disqualifies someone from purchasing a firearm. Would a serial embezzler or tax cheater be treated the same as someone who’s been convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon?

These questions need to be fleshed out.

But back to my point: A decent, law-abiding citizen with no criminal history is just as free to purchase a firearm while submitting to a criminal background check as he or she is at this very moment.

So, how does that infringe on his Second Amendment rights?

Michael Morton is going to become a hero to individuals who are tried unjustly for crimes they didn’t commit.

He’s also going to become a thorn in the side of overzealous prosecutors.

Just who is Michael Morton? He is a man whose name is on a piece of legislation approved by the Texas Senate that now requires prosecutors to hand over DNA evidence in criminal trials. And why is Morton’s name on this bill? Because in 1987 he was convicted wrongfully of murdering his wife. He spend a quarter-century in the Big House serving time for a crime he didn’t commit. The proof of his innocence arrived just recently when authorities examined DNA evidence from the investigation that proved what Morton had said all along: that he was innocent.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/04/11/senate-approves-michael-morton-act/

The bill was co-authored by Sens. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, and Bob Duncan, R-Lubbock – two of the Senate’s brighter lights.

Senate Bill 1611 will require DNA evidence to be handed over to defense counsel. Current law requires it now only if a court orders it. Michael Morton deserved to have that evidence handy when he was being railroaded into the prison system. The district attorney in that 1987 case, Ken Anderson, is now a Williamson County district judge who says he did nothing wrong. He faces possible prosecution himself for the manner in which he prosecuted the case.

Texas long has had this reputation as being “tough on criminals.” I have no problem with that label. I do have a problem, though, with the notion of the state disallowing evidence that would exonerate innocent people.

The Michael Morton Act has helped reinvigorate the term “justice” in the Texas criminal justice system.

The Club for Growth, a conservative political watchdog group, is now taking aim at U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., because Walden had the temerity recently to criticize President Obama’s plans to overhaul the government’s “entitlement” programs.

They’re looking at finding a suitable GOP primary opponent to try to knock off their fellow conservative who’s been in Congress since 1999.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/293353-club-for-growth-targets-gop-campaign-chairman-for-primary

This is going to be fun to watch.

I know a little about Walden and about the Second Congressional District he represents in the U.S. House of Representatives. He serves folks in my home state of Oregon, where I was born, raised and where my journalism career began.

My favorite quote in the story, published by The Hill, comes from Club for Growth president Chris Chocola: “We always knew Greg Walden had a liberal record, but he really cemented it with his public opposition to even modest entitlement reform.”

Liberal record? Greg Walden?

Walden served from 1981 until 1987 as press secretary to then-U.S. Rep. Denny Smith, himself a Ronald Reagan revolutionary who knocked off Democratic House Ways and Means Chairman Al Ullman in one of 1980’s more stunning upsets. I was editor of a suburban daily newspaper just south of Portland at the time and I had plenty of interaction with Walden. He spoke eloquently in support of his boss’s conservative record.

Walden then was elected in his own right to the House in 1998 – long after I had left Oregon for Texas. And his district, the sprawling Second, is one of the most conservative districts in the country. It ranges far across the eastern two-thirds of Oregon, from the Cascade Range to the Idaho border. Its major constituency comprises people who work the land, wheat farmers and cattle ranchers who are just about as conservative as anyone in America. Indeed, there’s more than a tinge of John Bircherism out there on the high plateau.

I remember Walden as a capable press aide and a straight shooter. He has compiled a solidly conservative voting record in Congress, just as his former mentor, Smith, did.

OK, so he had some unkind things to say about Social Security reform. House Speaker John Boehner said he has “had some conversation” with Walden about the remarks. But now we have this right-wing fringe outfit seeking actually to oust one of its own because of those remarks?

This quest for ideological purity is utter nonsense.

All this debate over how to stop gun violence actually has produced reasonable discussion between those who think the country should enact more laws to control firearms and those who think existing laws are sufficient.

But one idea stands out as among the most bizarre to date: whether to allow school teachers to carry guns in the classroom. My own view? Absolutely not.

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/opinions/editorials/article/EDITORIAL-Proposals-to-arm-teachers-correctly-4425164.php

As the editorial attached to this blog notes, teachers should be trained to teach children not trained to carry a firearm and open fire at the sign of trouble.

The Texas Senate is considering a bill to pay for teacher training in firearms use. It’s been scaled back to a shadow of its former self. It ought to disappear completely.

The violence that erupted most recently in Newtown, Conn., has stirred emotional debate across the country. Congress is considering whether to broaden background checks on anyone seeking to buy a firearm. That proposal is beginning to gain some momentum, with senators in both parties agreeing on the principle. As U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., a darling of the conservative wing of his Republican Party, said this week: He doesn’t consider background checks to be “gun control.” Good for him.

Let’s stick to reasonable, rational debate on reasonable, rational solutions. Requiring background checks on those wishing to buy a gun will have zero impact on law-abiding citizens’ ability to arm themselves; thus, the Second Amendment remains intact.

Letting school teachers pack heat on their hips isn’t reasonable or rational. It’s fraught with too much peril in the event violence were to erupt yet again in one of our schools.

Let’s call 2013 the Year of the Comeback Goofballs.

The main player certainly has to be former Republican Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who’s now running for a congressional seat after leaving his prior office in disgrace. You remember ol’ Mark: He vanished on Mother’s Day 2009 and put the word out he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail when, in fact, he was messing around many thousands of miles away in Argentina with a woman – who wasn’t his wife.

Shame on you, governor.

Now, though, comes someone from the other party, former Democratic U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York, who’s beginning to make noises about running for something in the Empire State, possibly mayor of New York City. Weiner’s escapade might be even more bizarre than Sanford’s, although Sanford committed a pretty egregious transgression by duping the public the way he did about his whereabouts.

Weiner got caught sending sexually provocative tweets and pictures of himself through cyberspace to women. He denied it at first, telling a curious public that the pictures weren’t of his body. But then the lying couldn’t continue. The pressure mounted. The curiosity intensified. Finally, Weiner – according to an interview to be published this Sunday in the New York Times – fessed up to his wife. Yep, honey, it was me all along, he said – or something like it. Weiner quit his U.S. House seat  and disappeared from public view until just recently.

Both of these goofballs have something in common. The women they betrayed are paragons of strength and dignity.

Jenny Sanford divorced Mark and came out of that scandal looking like the far better person than her husband. She’s conducted herself with dignity and class. Her former husband, on the other hand, did something that borders on the ridiculous the night he won the GOP primary runoff for the congressional seat he’s trying to claim: He thanked the very woman with whom he was having an affair at the time of his scandal, reminding South Carolinians of precisely why so many of them consider him to be such a slug.

Huma Abedin is still married to Weiner. Abedin has conducted herself with equal amounts of dignity since her husband decided to show off his body to other women. Abedin worked as a trusted aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. And let’s not forget that Weiner was sharing lurid pictures of himself with his Twitter mistresses while his lovely wife was pregnant with their child, a son who was born in December 2011.

Now both of these clowns – Mark Sanford and Anthony Weiner – want to get back into the political arena. Call me old-fashioned, but I am one of those who expects elected public officials to be free of the kind of humiliation that will dog these two guys for the rest of their lives.

The Texas Legislature is driving me nuts with its never-ending proposals to bring casino gambling to Texas.

The 181-member legislative body is at it again for the 27th consecutive session, according to the Texas Tribune.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/04/09/agenda-texas-another-run-casino-gambling/

State Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, said this the other day: “According to a study released this month, Texans spend nearly $3 billion annually at gaming facilities in Oklahoma, Louisiana and New Mexico, helping to pay for their roads, their schools and their hospitals, and it’s time that do something about that.”

What’s the “something” Carona has in mind? It’s to save suckers a trip across our state’s borders for them to waste their money.

I’m running out of ways to object to the notion of casino gambling. The state says it can use the revenue developed by casinos. But as Texas learned with its lottery, the revenue isn’t always reliable. The state should plan its biennial budget based on what it hopes to get from people willing to squander their savings on the chance of hitting the jackpot. Texans were enamored of the lottery when it came into being in 1991; then they realized their chances of winning were as remote as being kidnapped by Martians. The revenue stream has ebbed and flowed during the past two-plus decades.

The same can be said of gambling – which proponents of the activity euphemistically refer to as “gaming.” No. It’s a gamble and people who can least afford to take that risk almost always lose.

I wish the Legislature would stop playing footsy with gambling interests. There can be better ways to generate income for state government than relying on the temptations that prey on many Texans’ desire to seek instant wealth.

Here’s the way I look at President Obama’s proposed 2014 federal budget.

If both sides are angry with him, he must have done something right.

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/292851-obama-to-unveil-1058t-budget

Obama released his budget today to groans from conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. He wants the rich to pay more in taxes because, the president said, he doesn’t want to reignite the economy “on the backs of the middle class.” That notion has angered Republicans who think the rich pay enough in taxes already. Obama also wants to overhaul Medicare and Social Security by reducing the rate of growth in both those programs. That proposal has drawn the wrath of liberal Democrats who consider those programs to be immune to any change.

The proposed budget projects a deficit of “only” $744 billion. Think about that for a minute. When did a budget deficit of less than a trillion dollars seem like an improvement? But it is, given the size of the deficit over the past half-dozen years or so.

I haven’t yet heard any remarks from lawmakers such as, “The president’s budget is ‘dead on arrival’ on Capitol Hill.” At least not yet. Presidential budgets never emerge on the other side in the form they are presented. Congress has the right, indeed the obligation, to tinker and mess with them. This Congress no doubt will do that with Obama’s proposed budget.

But legislating involves making some people angry. President Obama has done that with his budget proposal. He’s ticked ‘em off on both ends of the political see-saw.

In my view, that’s a positive sign. Barack Obama is learning how to compromise.

Amarillo spends the greatest amount of its municipal budget on police and fire protection.

I know. It’s hard to believe. Actually, this might be a major non-event. It does illustrate the importance people place on vital government services. I cannot think of anything more vital than protecting people’s safety, even their lives.

http://www.connectamarillo.com/news/story.aspx?id=882927

The link attached to this note sketches the city expenses for police and fire. The city’s 2012 budget totals around $258 million, with $88 million of it spent on public safety issues, or about 34 percent of the total.

I haven’t heard of a single community in America that doesn’t place top value on its police and fire protection. Every human being wants to be safe in their homes. To that end, Amarillo is answering the call.

But this link mentions the potential for future change in the city’s priorities. The way I see it, water might edge its way toward the head of the line. It’s not that the city will devalue public safety. It’s that the development of water resources is going to become more critical, particularly as the city’s water supply becomes, shall we say, a bit more endangered.

I mention water as a critical need mainly because without it, none of the rest of it – police, fire, roads, lights, libraries, trash pickup, parks, you name it – will matter.

But for now, thanks ought to go to City Hall for recognizing the need to keep its residents safe.