The Federal Aviation Administration is considering whether to relax rules that ban the use of in-flight electronic devices. For the techno-geeks out there, that’s good news.

But I have even better news: The FAA is not – repeat, not – considering a change in rules banning in-flight cellphone conversations.

http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/travelkit/disruptions-f-may-loosen-curbs-fliers-use-electronics-1B9053926

I do not consider myself to be a technoid. I was a bit behind the curve in obtaining a cellphone … but that was on purpose. I declared victory in my publicly stated desire to be the last man on the planet to get a cellphone. And the phone I now possess is not a “smart phone,” but rather it’s a dumb device that performs essentially two tasks: It allows me to make phone calls and to receive them.

So, I don’t care much about whether the FAA allows I-Pads and I-Pods and Play Station devices to be used while jetliners are in flight. Have at it, folks. As the article linked here notes, the FAA does allow pilots to use these devices to chart their flight plans. Thus, some folks say, it’s only fair to let passengers have a little fun with these gizmos while they’re sitting in cramped seats back in the passenger compartment, right?

I am happy to report that sanity continues to rule at the FAA, as it regards the use of cellphones.

I can think of few more unpleasant circumstances than to be caught sitting next to someone – in a pressurized aircraft cruising at 35,000 feet above the Earth’s surface – who is chatting nonsensically with God-knows-who on a cellphone. Enduring water torture is worse, I suppose.

I barely can contain myself when I see motorists blabbing on these devices, even though Amarillo has said this activity is now illegal.

Our streets are crawling with lawbreakers, City Hall!

The day the FAA allows that kind of activity on board commercial jetliners is the day I stop flying anywhere. I am guessing I won’t be the only one who’ll stay on the ground.

John Sharp wanted to be Texas lieutenant governor so badly he ran twice for the office, but lost – in order – to Rick Perry and David Dewhurst.

But as the Texas Tribune reports, these two men – one of whom is a college classmate of Sharp – have become his major political allies. And it’s bringing good things to the institution that Sharp now leads.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/03/24/m-sharp-charts-smooth-course-major-changes/

Sharp has had his share of electoral success in politics. He served as state senator from Victoria, as a Texas railroad commissioner, as state comptroller (and was the last Democrat to win a statewide office when he won re-election in 1994). He ran for lieutenant governor in 1998, losing to Perry by a narrow margin and again in 2002, losing to Dewhurst also narrowly.

Then the Texas A&M University System needed a chancellor. Who were Sharp’s biggest fans? Lt. Gov. Dewhurst, who argued that  Sharp’s legislative skill would serve him well as the Aggies’ chancellor, and finally, Gov. Perry, who appointed his former rival-turned-pal to the post in 2011.

It’s paying dividends for the system, which has taken off on smooth waters while stormy seas have made life difficult for the folks over at the “other” university, the University of Texas – or as Aggies are fond of calling it, “tu,” which is shorthand for “texas university.”

UT regents are being accused of micromanaging the school’s flagship campus in Austin. UT-Austin President Bill Powers has been in a snit with his bosses over some regents’ alleged interference in administrative matters. Meanwhile, Sharp has been steering the A&M System through some legislative funding successes.

Texas Democrats have been looking for someone to break the Republicans’ elective-office stranglehold in this state. Sharp has come close twice in his most recent bids for statewide office.

Something tells me John Sharp isn’t about to surrender the good gig he’s enjoying in College Station. After all, how much better can it get when the Aggies bolt to the powerhouse Southeastern Conference, more than hold their own on the football field and then have one of their own win the Heisman Trophy?

I’m guessing Chancellor Sharp is a happy man these days.

I don’t want to sound like Chicken Little, so forgive me if I am pushing an alarm button.

Weather forecasters are telling us the drought that’s gripped the middle of the country is going to continue through this spring and summer. I believe we ought to prepare for some mandatory water-use restrictions.

http://amarillo.com/news/local-news/2013-03-23/long-range-forecast-shows-regions-drought-continuing

Amarillo utility officials keep telling us we have plenty of water. Yes, the city has been buying water rights left and right in recent years. Canadian River Municipal Water Authority officials recently purchased a lot of groundwater from T. Boone Pickens, so that water is in the bank … so to speak.

However, Mother Nature isn’t playing nice with us, which is something about which we mere mortal human beings are powerless to control. Yes, we had that massive near-record snowfall in February, but the moisture content did next to nothing to stem the drought. The snow melted and we returned almost immediately to what we’ve been seeing throughout the region: lots of sunshine from a cloudless sky.

Should cities such as Amarillo impose drastic measures? No, not yet. But mandatory odd-even lawn watering measures are reasonable restrictions to place on homeowners. The past two summers have seen the promote its “Every Drop Counts” water conservation initiative. The media reports on the amounts of water used daily to call attention to what residents and business owners are consuming; the city set a 60-million-gallon daily limit, only to watch as the city went well beyond that limit on most days.

I’m thinking the time has come for authorities to start getting serious about it and for them to begin imposing reasonable restrictions.

I know that irrigated agriculture is the main consumer of water in the Panhandle. I also know that residential water use comprises a tiny fraction of the groundwater sucked out of the aquifer.

But this drought will be with us until the Almighty himself decides to end it. No one – not even the smartest utility officials on the planet – can know when that will occur. What are we going to do about our water use until then?

Texas legislators are considering a law that would ban the possession of big cats – tigers, lions, cougars, cheetahs, leopards, jaguars etc. – and “non-human primates.”
Animal-rights activists are declaring this to be a good thing, because they don’t want to see wild animals kept in captivity by people who don’t know what they’re doing with them. I agree with the legislation, but I also see it as a human-rights concern, given the danger these creatures pose to human beings.
http://www.texastribune.org/2013/03/21/lawmakers-discuss-regulating-ownership-large-anima/
Remember the poor woman who had her face torn off by the chimpanzee? Or how about the young woman recently mauled to death by a lion? Both of the animals involved were killed. The disfigured woman has been fitted with a new face.
But the issue here isn’t just about the safety of the animals, although as an animal lover I consider it important. The more critical consideration is for human beings who are put in harm’s way in the presence of these animals.
State Rep. Ryan Guillen, D-Rio Grande City, has proposed House Bill 1015, which would ban possession of these exotic creatures by those who aren’t associated with an accredited zoo. “The ownership of wild animals are a serious problem and a threat to human safety,” Guillen told the Texas Tribune. They spread disease and, of course, can turn on their human captors.
I’ve been exposed only a couple of times in my life to big cats. Once in Oregon, some folks from a wildlife sanctuary in the southern part of the state brought a fully grown cheetah into our office in suburban Portland on a promotional tour. I will admit up front that the sight of that animal scared the daylights out of me – until he began sucking on my fingers while purring like a 150-pound kitten. The next time came many years later in Amarillo, when the financial institution with which I do business had a jaguar in its office; that cat is the official mascot of the company. He, too, was a big baby.
I’ve lucked out in my exposure to these animals. Too many others haven’t been so fortunate.
Rep. Guillen’s bill makes sense because it protects animals … and humans.

The New Mexico Senate celebrated Sunshine Week by – what? – cloaking lawmakers’ emails in secrecy.

Nice going, folks. You’ve just made a mockery of the transparency many of you say you favor.

http://www.cnjonline.com/digest/senatehasfunnywayofcelebratingtransparency.html#.UUtcLPB_ccU.twitter

Sunshine Week, which concludes today, is meant to call attention to the need for government openness. The government conducts the public’s business and thus, the public has a right to know what’s being done in its name. New Mexico legislators, though, flouted that need by agreeing to keep emails from public view.

The New Mexico Senate bill stipulates that communications are public only when the body meets. Legislators’ private emails and other communications can be kept from the public, even when they’re delivered on public time, using public equipment. The state’s attorney general disagrees with the Legislature’s decision to conceal public records. Gov. Susana Martinez must sign the legislation for it to allow a special exemption under the state’s Inspection of Public Records Act. It’s unlikely she’ll go along.

Still, for a body of state legislators to approve such an abomination on the very week intended to avoid this kind of chicanery is an insult to the people who pay the Legislature’s freight.

That would be the public, for whom lawmakers’ work – not the other way around.

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the leader of his Republican caucus, said two things in the wake of the Senate’s narrow vote early Saturday approving a budget resolution.

He called the Senate debate and vote “one of the Senate’s finest days in recent years.” But then he described the budget as a “rehash of the extreme policies that continue to hobble the economy and crush the middle class,”

I guess McConnell enjoyed the debate, but didn’t like its outcome.

Here is how The Hill reported the final vote:

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/289989-senate-passes-first-budget-in-four-years

The 50-49 vote goes to show that whatever good will President Obama has sought to build with both houses of Congress apparently isn’t getting traction yet.

From my perspective, the Democratic plan presents the kind of balance needed to help reduce the deficit and the debt. The alternative is too drastic and worrisome to too many in the middle class that McConnell said are being “hobbled” by the economy.

As for the “extreme policies” that McConnell said are so bad for the economy, I’m still curious as to just what he’s talking about. Those extremes have produced significant job growth in the past two years, although admittedly not as quickly as we would like to help bring down the jobless rate.

But on the plus side – which McConnell and his GOP brethren won’t acknowledge – the housing industry, the one of the economy’s key drivers, has come back. McConnell ought to take a look here in Amarillo at all the home construction that’s occurring.

Come to my neighborhood, Mr. Republican Leader, and I’ll show you how “extreme policies” are hobbling activity around here.

Congressional Republicans accuse the president of being in constant campaign mode. They might have a point. But they also ought to look at their own view of the world and wonder if they, too, aren’t engaging in the same kind of politicking. And we wonder why we can’t bridge the partisan divide on Capitol Hill?

There can be many instances of cowardice found among politicians.

The 2013 Texas Legislature is providing a shining example of it with its debate over whether to impose term limits on some elected officials.

http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/03/20/4717902/texas-debate-on-term-limits-is.html

State Sen. Kevin Eltife, R-Tyler, wants to impose term limits on statewide elected officials. Who do you think his proposed constitutional amendment exempts from that rule? Those who serve in the Legislature, of course.

At least Newt Gingrich, who helped draft the Contract With America in 1994 and used it to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1994 election, had the guts to seek term limits on members of the House and the Senate. That effort – as if it’s a big surprise – so far has failed to bear fruit for the former House speaker and his minions.

But the Texas Legislature’s comical effort to impose term limits on others while exempting itself from the same rules is bordering on farce.

As the Fort Worth Star-Telegram said in an editorial posted here, “Voters already set term limits. No constitutional amendment is necessary or justified.”

“We could come here a thousand times, and each time our hearts would break.”

So said President Barack Obama today as he toured what must be considered the world’s pre-eminent memorial to human cruelty. Yad Vashem sits on the outskirts of Jerusalem and it remembers the tragedy of the Holocaust.

http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/middle-east-north-africa/289763-obama-places-stones-from-mlk-memorial-at-key-israeli-site

The Yad Vashem visit brings the president’s visit to Israel to a close. He also laid a stone from Martin Luther King Jr.’s memorial at the grave of slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. But it’s the Yad Vashem tour that got my attention today.

I’ve had the honor of visiting that place. It was nearly four years ago that I toured Israel with four of my best friends. We were there on Rotary International Group Study Exchange. We had toured the country from top to bottom, from Nahariyah, to Eilat, Ashkelon, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Nazareth, Caeserea, Golan Heights, Sderot, Be’er Sheva and the outskirts of Gaza City.

Our four-week journey concluded with a Rotary district conference in Jerusalem. But as we arrived in that holiest of cities, our hosts took us to Yad Vashem, where we saw in graphic detail what had happened to Jews in Europe preceding and during World War II.

Yad Vashem is the most somber place imaginable. Photos, artifacts – such as shoes and articles of clothing – taken from death camps, text taken from letters written by Holocaust victims to loved ones, all of it told the story of the worst kind of inhumanity imaginable.

Israelis make a point of teaching the Holocaust to their children. They want younger generations to understand what happened to their people. In Eilat, we met a Dutch-born Israeli professor who takes high school students on pilgrimages to tour the death camps in Poland, Hungary and Germany where these unspeakable atrocities occurred.

Yad Vashem brings it all home to the descendants of that horror.

I’m glad the president went there. Indeed, a tour of Yad Vashem ought to be required of every head of state who takes an oath to preserve the peace.

Matthew Perry is a well-known funnyman, but he also has a serious side.

He’s a long-time drug abuser who’s taken to testifying in recent years about the effectiveness of drug courts. Perry knows of which he speaks.

http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/289641-matthew-perry-ive-been-to-rehab-too-many-times-to-run-for-office

He testified recently before a congressional committee and said that 75 percent of those who go through drug courts remain clean after they come out of rehab and treatment.

To its credit, the Texas Panhandle criminal justice system has established a drug court, led by 181st District Judge John Board, that is contributing to the well-being of people seeking to kick their destructive drug habits. The Amarillo drug court hasn’t been around for very long, but it does draw good marks from corrections and community supervision officers who have watched it work.

Drug courts handle cases involving non-violent drug offenders. They send these offenders into rehabilitation and monitor them carefully before releasing them back into society.

Perry is a firm believer in them, and is none too bashful about saying so out loud.

It’s to his credit that he devotes time to this worthy endeavor – and affirms the good work being done in court systems such as the one that operates in the Texas Panhandle.

State Rep. Four Price has introduced a bill in the Texas House of Representatives that cleans up a glaring loophole in the state election law.

The Amarillo Republican is onto something.

House Bill 728 would disqualify anyone who’s been placed on “deferred adjudication” for a felony. Price wants to add that provision to an existing law. It’s simple, straightforward … and correct.

Price is reacting to a strange story out of Skellytown, a tiny community in the Panhandle that elected a city councilman who had been placed on the state’s sex offender registry and who also had completed a deferred adjudication sentence. Under state law, Warren “Red” Mills, the town’s former mayor – who was forced to quit that office at the time of the offense – is not considered a felon. But he was elected to a city council post even though he had this particular blot on his record.

He had been placed on probation for sex crimes allegedly involving minors. That didn’t seem to dissuade voters from putting him into office.

Price thinks a sentence of deferred adjudication for a felony should disqualify someone from seeking, let alone holding, public office.

Deferred adjudication is a sometimes-strange sentence. If someone completes the sentence – which usually involves probation – his or her record does not carry a conviction. However, the state does keep a record of the sentence. Price’s amendment to the law would declare that such a sentence for a felony should matter more than it currently does.

In the case of Warren Mills, the successful completion of the sentence does not remove him from the state’s sex offender registry, which makes this particular case even more weird.

The law needs fixing. Four Price has come up with a way to repair it.