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County clerk shows honor and resigns

Roosevelt County (N.M.) Clerk Donna Carpenter has just quit her job and given new meaning to the term “honor.”

http://www.pntonline.com/2013/12/20/roosevelt-county-clerk-resigns/

Carpenter resigned her post because she disagrees with the New Mexico Supreme Court’s decision that effectively legalizes same-sex marriage in that state.

Carpenter said she believes more strongly in God’s law than in man’s law. Thus, she quit a job she’d held for only about a year after being elected in 2012.

Why the honor in her quitting?

It’s a matter of principle. She decided she no longer could serve as county clerk if the state’s highest court was going to make her issue marriage licenses against her deeply held religious beliefs.

I cannot quibble with her decision.

I’m not going to enter the discussion over whether I endorse “marriage equality.” I’m still grappling with that in my own heart and head. Donna Carpenter’s decision to resign, though, is a deeply principled one for which she should be applauded.

She could have stayed on, swallowed hard and said, in effect, that while she disagrees with the ruling, she took an oath to follow the laws of the state. Or, she could have kept her job and refused to endorse the ruling issued by the New Mexico court; the result of that would have been a costly and probably futile court battle that would have cost her constituents a boatload of money.

She didn’t. She said she couldn’t follow the law and would surrender the office to someone who could follow it.

Donna Carpenter made an honorable decision.

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Amarillo is snow-wise on the road

I am happy to report that I live in a city where drivers actually do know how to drive in the snow and ice.

Amarillo, Texas is the place.

It snowed today. Not a lot, but it snowed for most of the afternoon. Not sure when it’ll stop. I think I heard a forecast that called for 3 to 4 inches.

Here’s what I saw on my way home from work this evening: Cars streaming down three busy streets very slowly and carefully. That was a good thing to see.

Amarillo gets usually a total winter snow accumulation of about a foot every winter. Last winter, we got nearly twice that amount in one heap. It paralyzed the city, which is really saying something. It takes a great deal of snow to close school systems here. Last winter, they closed for three or four days before enough snow melted to make the streets passable.

This evening was not an unusual event. I call attention to it only because I hear so many stories — constantly, it seems — about folks in cities where residents do not know how to handle the snow. I’ve lived in a couple of them, actually: Portland, Ore., where I was born and where I grew up, and Beaumont, Texas, where snow and ice are quite rare, but not totally out of the question.

Portland gets snow most winters. However, for some reason Portlanders seem to get caught on hilly streets with cars skidding out of control. Beaumont? That’s another story altogether. I remember just one winter during our nearly 11 years there when snow fell and ice coated the streets. You would have thought the world had just come to an end.

We moved to Amarillo in early 1995 and we’ve seen our fair share of severe winters. We’ve had some mild winters as well, but the long-timers around here remember the old days when blizzards would blind everyone. Highways would close. Livestock would freeze to death.

Through it all, they managed to get through in their vehicles.

It’s still true. Yes, I know some folks have seen madness on the streets during snow storms on the High Plains. I’ve seen it, too.

Still, I’m glad my normally five-minute drive home from work tonight took me 30 minutes to complete. Go slow and be very careful out there.

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Duck Dynasty dad … one more time

OK, this will be my final comment on Phil Robertson, the Duck Dynasty daddy who got suspended because he told a magazine interviewer he thinks homosexuality is a sin.

Robertson is the 67-year-old patriarch of a family that’s featured on the A&E television network. A&E suspended Robertson from the show after his interview in GQ magazine appeared. He cited Scripture as informing his views on homosexuality, which I have to believe was well-known by the brass at A&E when they hired the Robertson clan on to do the “Duck Dynasty” reality series.

My question of the day is this: If A&E knew Robertson to be a deeply devout Christian who believes in the words written in the Holy Bible, why did it have to suspend him for speaking his mind about an issue related to his faith?

Did he surprise the high command at A&E with this revelation?

I’m wondering now whether Robertson violated some agreement that prohibited him or anyone in his family from being interviewed by other media outlets — and that is why the network took him off the show.

I haven’t heard that one.

A&E has stepped in it with this suspension. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. In this case, the network should have known what it was buying when it signed the Robertson family on for this gig. My hunch is that it knew all along.

There. I’m done now.

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Economy jumps ahead, but few folks notice

The latest report from the U.S. Commerce Department about the state of the nation’s economy has me wondering about something.

When are Americans going to start accepting that we are recovering from the Great Recession of 2008-2009?

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/economy/193730-economy-jumped-41-percent-in-third-quarter

Commerce officials report that the economy grew 4.1 percent in the third quarter, which is revised upward from 3.6 percent — which isn’t a bad report, either.

Joblessness is down to 7 percent. We’re adding an average of just less than 200,000 jobs a month; the vast bulk of those jobs are in the private sector. Foreclosure rates on homes are at a five-year low. Companies are making money. The stock market is rockin’ and rollin’. The Federal Reserve Board is going to start scaling back the stimulus initiatives it launched with its bond-buying.

And yet …

We keep hearing pundits, commentators and some economists harping about a struggling economy.

I totally understand that a 7 percent unemployment rate isn’t good. It’s a lot better than where it was four years ago. And it’s trending downward.

Some leading individuals — such as former Texas Workforce Chairman Tom Pauken — have griped openly about what they’ve called a “jobless recovery.” Employers are finding they’re able to boost productivity with fewer employees; I despise the term “workers,” by the way. However, we’re not in the middle of a “jobless recovery.”

I should add that energy production — which helps fuel the Texas economy — is way up. The Energy Department reports our oil imports are way down and the United States is on the verge of becoming the world’s leading producer of fossil fuels, a spot occupied for many decades by Russia.

The gloomy Gus crowd, though, keeps winning the argument.

How come? What am I missing?

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‘Duck Dynasty’ patriarch gets slapped … why?

I’ll have to stipulate right up front that I have not watched a single nano-second of the “Duck Dynasty” TV series. All I really know about this family is what I’ve read.

Lately, it’s been a lot and most of it has been about Phil Robertson, the 67-year-old patriarch of the Louisiana family that apparently likes to go huntin’ and fishin’ … a lot.

With that said, I have read about the GQ article in which Daddy Phil was asked what he considers to be “sinful.”

He said: “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men.”

For that and some other things he said along those lines he has been suspended from his A&E TV network show. The family, I guess, will continue on without dear old dad.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/phil-robertsons-suspension-from-duck-dynasty-sends-fans-rallying-to-his-side/2013/12/19/eb1c427e-68f8-11e3-997b-9213b17dac97_story.html

What do I think of the suspension and of the reaction from the gay community over what he said?

I accept that he is a deeply religious man, a devout Christian who adheres to Scriptures’ teaching that sex should only be between married partners, and that marriage should only involve a man and a woman. He believes it as an article of his faith.

That is where I believe he bases his comments. I read more later of what he said and I do not interpret what he said as being “anti-gay.” As a straight man, perhaps I do not quite have the same sensitivity to perceived anti-gay slurs as a gay individual.

What is more troubling to me, though, has been the reaction from supposedly “progressive” groups who on most days promote the notion of tolerance and diversity. I’m totally fine with that. What is striking is that they are quite intolerant of the views of a man whose devotion to Christianity apparently is well-known around the nation.

A magazine interviewer asked him what he considered to be “sinful,” and he answered from his heart. He said homosexuality is a sin, according to Scripture. Did he equate homosexuality with bestiality and adultery? Only in the sense that Scripture tells him that all sins are equal in God’s eyes.

That’s what I got out of it.

Maybe someone should ask the GQ reporter what he intended with the question. Was it of the “gotcha” variety? If it was, then ol’ Phil got “got.”

The Washington Post talked to an openly gay Christian, Brandon Ambrosino, who doesn’t think Robertson should have been suspended. Ambrosino told the Post, “Whether or not I think his understanding of desire is primitive and brute, there are lot of people in America who hold his opinion. Dismissing an idea is not engaging a debate; that is not even entering into one.”

None of this has piqued my interest in “Duck Dynasty.” I do hope, though, that A&E reinstates the old fella.

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Party switch gives Democrats hope

Texas Democrats shouldn’t read too much into a recent party switch of a statewide elected official who’s now one of them.

Court of Criminals Appeals Judge Larry Meyers has made the leap from Republican to Democrat, becoming officially the only statewide elected official with the label “Democrat” next to his name.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/12/20/party-switch-gives-democrats-something-build/

Meyers, who hails from Fort Worth where he served as a trial judge, was elected as a Republican, so Democrats will have to be careful to avoid labeling him in a manner that implies he was elected as a Democrat.

Perhaps the most important element of this switch, from a Democratic standpoint, is that it marks the first such switch from “R” to “D” in many years. The inter-party movement in Texas has been in the opposite direction, with Democrats switching to the Republican Party. The late Potter County Sheriff Jimmy Don Boydston made the switch some years back; Texas Tech Chancellor Kent Hance got his political start as a Democrat, then switched to Republican after losing a bid to become a U.S. senator in 1984. The roster of Democrat-to-Republican across the state is virtually endless.

Now, though, comes this switch in the other direction. It has statewide Democratic Party officials borderline giddy. They need to take care in going overboard here.

Texas Democratic Party chairman Gilbert Hinojosa is quite happy with the news.

As the Texas Tribune reported: “With this and the candidates that we are fielding in this election, I think people are saying, ‘Wow, this is a totally different Texas Democratic Party,’” Hinojosa said. Hinojosa said Meyers had told party officials he was a big fan of state Sen. Wendy Davis, the Democratic candidate for governor, and indicated that he had grown uncomfortable with the rightward shift of the Texas Republican Party. Hinojosa said the party had been in talks with Meyers about the switch for about three months. “He just said, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’” Hinojosa said. “He’s been thinking about this for quite some time.”

Meyers is the senior member of the state’s highest criminal appellate court, which gives some added boost to his party switch. Will this move be the catalyst that produces a truly competitive political climate in Texas? Time will tell.

That’s my hope, anyway. Texas needs two vibrant parties to compete vigorously for votes. Democrats have been rolled in this state by a muscular Republican Party.

It appears Democrats finally have lifted themselves off the floor and started punching back.

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No tats for this guy, thank you very much

I cannot believe I am writing about this, but I feel this overpowering need to weigh in.

Tattoos are the thing these days. Virtually everyone has them. I go to the gym Monday through Friday almost every week. I notice them around the weight room. I notice them in the locker room.

Men have them. Women have them. Old or young? Doesn’t matter. Old folks are tatted up right along with the youngsters.

I cannot recall the youngest person I’ve ever seen with a tattoo. So, I won’t go there.

The old guys have them likely from their days serving in World War II or Korea.

Long ago, way before my sons were born, and before I met the girl I would marry, I made a vow to my father. No tattoo ever will scar my body.

Dad implored me not to get one as I was getting ready to be inducted into the Army in the summer of 1968. He was adamant about many things while counseling me about what would lie ahead: I would learn to hate long lines, sleeping in pajamas and I would hate most of the so-called “food” I would get at the mess hall. He spoke of that dish known commonly as “s— on a shingle,” which is chipped beef served on toast. I did manage to tell Dad upon my return in 1970 that I actually liked that stuff.

He was right about long lines and sleeping in jammies.

He also regretted the tattoo he got while serving in North Africa during World War II. As I remember it, he got one while on shore leave from the ship on which he served. I also recall him telling he was, shall we say, more than slightly inebriated when the got the tat artists to put the design on his upper arm.

He regretted it every day of his life. Dad begged me not to get one while I was away in the Army.

And to honor my father’s fervent wish, I never once even entered a tat parlor.

I haven’t to this day.

I had vowed years ago to be the last man on the planet to get a cell phone. I declared victory in that effort as I purchased my first device. I’ve since upgraded to a smart phone.

That said, I now will vow to be among the last men on Earth not to have a tattoo. Others can ink their bodies to the max, to their hearts’ content. If my sons ever get tats, I don’t want to know about it.

Me? I’m declaring my battered old bod to be a tat-free zone.

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Senate GOP demonstrates its petulance

U.S. Senate Republicans angry over Democrats’ changing of the rules regarding filibusters have decided to let their Democratic “friends” do all the work of the Senate just before the start of the Christmas recess.

That’ll teach those Democrats, by golly.

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/193622-lawmakers-anxious-to-get-home-as-senate-deadlocked-over-nominees

Plans call for GOP senators to be absent over the weekend, except for perhaps one senator who can raise any objections over procedural matters. However, when it comes time to vote on President Obama’s nominees for various executive positions or judgeships, Democrats — who control a majority of the Senate — are on their own.

Seems that Republicans are still steamed over Democrats’ change of the cloture rule that used to require 60 votes to end a filibuster, which Republicans had employed regularly over Obama nominations. The new rule now enables senators to curtail a filibuster with just 51 votes.

Democrats and independents who vote with them number 55 in the Senate. Should be smooth sailing for nominations that had been blocked, right? Not exactly.

Republicans are banking on Democrats having difficulty rounding up 51 senators, which they would to have a quorum in the chamber.

It’s Republicans’ hope, then, that they can block these nominations from going through just by taking leave of the Senate.

It will fall on Democratic Senate leaders to ensure they have enough votes to do the business to which Americans elected them to do. One of their duties is to confirm presidential appointments of qualified individuals to key executive and judicial branch positions.

Such petulance is quite unbecoming.

Merry Christmas, Senate Republicans.

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Tea party Ted makes no apologies

This might be the least surprising development of the year-end review of all things political.

It is that U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, makes no apologies for his first year in office.

Imagine that. The guy who stormed into the Senate at the start of the year and began immediately to hog the limelight and TV time from virtually all his more senior colleagues, men and women who’ve worked hard to earn the respect of their colleagues.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/12/19/ted-cruz-ends-year-he-began-it-no-apologies/

Cruz sat down with the Texas Tribune and said, in effect, he’d do it all over again if given the chance.

Why in the name of all that is holy am I not surprised at that?

Cruz’s brashness preceded him to the Senate. He had knocked off the presumptive Republican favorite for the Senate, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. They were vying to win the seat occupied for nearly 20 years by Kay Bailey Hutchison, who retired from public life.

Cruz polled enough votes in the primary to force a runoff, and then beat Dewhurst to win his party’s nomination. He then swamped Democratic nominee Paul Sadler in November 2012.

It took him no time at all to make a name for himself in the Senate. He flouted tradition by spouting off about this and that. He impugned the integrity of two Vietnam War heroes — Chuck Hagel and John Kerry. He led a fake filibuster on the Senate floor to try to derail the Affordable Care Act. He has been virtually everywhere — seemingly at once. Turn on TV lights and there he has been.

This is my favorite: He has blamed all that he believes is wrong with the country on — get ready — his fellow Republicans who he has suggested don’t have the courage to join him in his fierce objections to virtually all legislation.

Cruz probably will run for the presidency in 2016. Heck, someone who stormed to the front row in the Senate so quickly likely feels it is his destiny to go for the next big prize. That’s his shtick.

This Texan is tired of him already.

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Education becomes Texas campaign issue

I’m glad to see Wendy Davis and Greg Abbott arguing in public — more or less — about education.

One of them is going to be the next Texas governor and public education must remain at the forefront of the cluster of issues that need intense public discussion.

So far, though, only Davis — the presumptive Democratic nominee — seems willing and/or able to talk about it openly. Abbott, the Republican state attorney general who is defending the state’s school funding system in a court battle, has been mum.

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2013/12/wendy-davis-prods-greg-abbott-on-education-cuts/

You need to speak to us, Mr. Attorney General.

Davis is attacking Abbott over the state’s $5.4 billion education cutbacks made three years ago. They were made allegedly on some faulty revenue forecasts. The state ended up being more flush that economists had predicted.

Davis is trying to smoke Abbott out on the cuts. Abbott, meanwhile, is representing the state in a lawsuit challenging the Texas public school funding system that a judge has ruled to be unconstitutional.

Abbott says he can’t talk about it because he’ll be in court soon to argue on behalf of the state. He’s scheduled to appear in court in another month. Perhaps after that he’ll be able to tell voters what he really thinks about the way Texas pays for public education.

Abbott is a smart lawyer. He’s experienced enough to parse his language carefully if he is truly concerned about whether he could jeopardize the standing of his client — the State of Texas.

Davis isn’t encumbered by job requirements. She’s free to speak her mind.

“Greg Abbott’s refusal to answer basic questions on the $5 billion in cuts to neighborhood schools he defends in court has revealed a ‘me first’ leadership style,” according Bo Delp, Davis’s communications director.

Both candidates say they place public education as a top priority for the next governor.

Fine. Then tell us, Mr. Attorney General, how you intend to maintain the health of our public education system.

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