Amarillo-area public school officials are taking the reasoned approach to dealing with gun violence.

They don’t plan to arm school personnel with firearms. I applaud them.

Gun violence has taken center stage in recent weeks. The heartache in Newtown, Conn., has become the nation’s heartache. Twenty first-graders died in a massacre brought to them by a deranged teenager, who also killed six teachers who tried to protect the kids against the madman.

The reaction to that terrible event from public institutions and individuals has been varied and at times a bit overheated. But I’m glad that Amarillo metro-area school officials are taking a measured approach to protecting our children.

Their response is quite different from what Childress school officials’ decision to arm certain personnel and keep firearms locked up in “secure locations” on school campuses. I wish them the very best luck in ensuring that they train their personnel adequately so that they don’t make a tragic mistake in the event they need to unlock the weaponry.

Amarillo Independent School District Superintendent Rod Schroder said this week the district is “actively reviewing our security procedures.” That active review must be comprehensive, but it need not include putting more firearms in school buildings.

One option might be what’s been done for years in Dumas: creation of a school district police department.

I won’t pretend to have the answers to the gun violence problem. One proposed “solution” that does concern me is the notion of putting more guns in school.

Former Republican South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford says he never “cheated taxpayers,” but did admit to some grievous personal mistakes.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/mark-sanford-i-never-cheated-taxpayers-87772.html?hp=l4

He wants to represent the state in Congress once again and is seeking the House seat he held before he was elected governor. But then his personal life took a bizarre turn in 2009 and his career ended.

Sanford’s declaration that he never “cheated taxpayers” needs some examination. Allow me this shot at analysis:

Look at the record. Over Fathers Day Weekend 2009, it was revealed that Sanford’s office staff put out word that the governor was “hiking on the Appalachian Trail.” Oops, turns out he wasn’t doing that at all. The married governor instead was in Argentina engaging in a romantic rendezvous with his Latin American girlfriend. Thus, the governor, who had duped the public into thinking he was doing one thing in fact was doing something quite different many thousands of miles away. And he was getting paid with public money to do it.

Therefore, I submit, that constitutes “cheating taxpayers.”

I will stipulate that Sanford didn’t embezzle money. He didn’t dip into the till. He didn’t make private investments with the public’s money. He didn’t spend state sales tax revenue on some personal gambling habit.

But the deceit associated with his South American frolic when he supposedly was clearing his head in the cool Appalachian Mountains air amounts to cheating Palmetto State taxpayers.

Sanford needs to roll out another strategy in his quest for political redemption.

The Beaumont Enterprise, where I used to work so very long ago, has taken the appropriate stance on an idea to erect a Confederate memorial alongside Interstate 10 in Orange County, Texas.

The paper is against it. Good going, folks.

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/opinions/editorials/article/EDITORIAL-Confederate-memorial-not-welcome-in-4288281.php

Orange County is the southeastern-most entry point into Texas from points east. I-10, one of the busiest highways in the United States, carrying many thousands of vehicles daily from Cajun Country into the Lone Star State.

The paper’s view is that the Confederate memorial reminds the vast majority of Americans of the bloodiest war in U.S. history, when more than 600,000 Americans died on battlefields throughout the eastern half of the country.

And, as the paper noted, the memorial would be placed in a location where many political leaders are trying to re-brand their image. Namely, many conservatives are finding themselves being labeled with names such as “intolerant,” “divisive,” “out of touch” and, yes, even “racist.”

Are any of these labels true? That depends on who defines them. One undeniable truth is that national attitudes and outlooks are changing among many millions of people.

Placing a statue honoring the Confederacy, which comprised states that pulled out of the Union because of disputes ostensibly over “states’ rights” – and which many historians have said actually meant the right to enslave human beings – would be offensive on its face to the vast majority of Americans.

And I have witnessed racism at a ghastly level. Where? In Orange County, Texas.

Nix the Confederate memorial idea.

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford wants to serve in the House of Reps once again and he’s released the first of the campaign to win back his old House seat.

Here it is:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/340930/mark-sanford-debuts-first-ad-we-all-make-mistakes-eliana-johnson

He tacitly admits to making “mistakes.” Well, he made a major blunder on two horrendous levels. One was that he cheated on his wife, with whom he took a sacred vow not to do for as long as they both shall live. The second mistake was lying to the world about where he was over Father’s Day Weekend 2009. His staff said he was hiking along the Appalachian Trail when in fact he was in Argentina frolicking with his girlfriend.

Did he instruct his staff to lie or did he just lie to them and force them tell falsehoods unknowingly? It doesn’t matter. The man duped the public.

Michelle Malkin, one of the nation’s more fiery conservative columnists, tweeted today that Sanford “makes me want to throw up.” He treats his “adultery and humiliation of his family like a typo,” Malkin said in her tweet.

Malkin is justified in her nausea. Sanford made far more than a simple “mistake.” And now, in this TV ad, he invokes God’s grace and benevolence as a tool to cultivate votes. “We all make mistakes,” Sanford says in the ad. No, Mark, we don’t … not like that.

Sanford makes me sick, too.

Bloggers all over the country should be rejoicing at the arrival of Ted Cruz to the U.S. Senate.

On the job just a few weeks and he’s already managed to:

* Wonder aloud whether the next defense secretary has been accepting speaking fees from radical groups.

* Question whether said defense boss-designate and the secretary of state – two decorated Vietnam War combat veterans – were “ardent” enough in their support of the military.

* Draw a rebuke from a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, himself a former Vietnam prisoner of war and a one-time Republican nominee for president of the United States, for “impugning” the integrity of the probable new defense secretary.

To be honest, although the grist mill may be clogged with material on which to comment as it spews from Ted Cruz’s mouth, it leaves me chagrined. Why? Cruz represents Texas, which I have called home for nearly 29 years.

I am going to hate listening to others ridicule my state merely because most Texas voters elected this guy to the Senate in November 2012. Late-night comics will have a field day. Liberal commentators will join them. And perhaps even some conservative pundits are going to grow weary over time of the kinds of statements Cruz utters. They’ll become incensed that the Senate’s Republican elders will allow him to pop off as he has done with such regularity in so little time.

Used to be that Senate newcomers were to be seen and seldom heard. In this new age, though, new guys get to be seen and heard at the same time.

It’s good for folks like me who need material with which to work.

But a part of me is holding out that Texas’s senior Republican senator, John Cornyn, takes the new fellow aside and schools him on matters of decorum, which I believe still counts for something in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.

I can’t seem to let go of this Chuck Hagel-for-defense-secretary brouhaha. Stop me … but not until I get one more thing off my chest.

Sens. John McCain and Lindsay Graham, both Republicans of Arizona and South Carolina, respectively, have let the cat out of the bag over their fierce resistance to Hagel’s nomination to lead the Pentagon.

Both men have said they’re angry with their fellow Republican for turning his back on his party – their party.

What? When did national defense become a partisan issue? When did the secretary of defense have to toe some party line in order to lead an institution whose leaders insist that the men and women who wear their nation’s military uniform forgo political considerations? These brave heroes take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution without regard to politics. They are bound by that oath to follow “lawful orders” issued by anyone farther up the chain of command than they are – and that includes the civilian commander in chief.

Now it seems that because Hagel, who served two terms as a GOP senator from Nebraska, is being punished by his fellow Republicans because he changed his mind on whether the Iraq War was a noble effort. The new White House chief of staff, Denis McDonough, made a salient point this morning on “Meet the Press.” It is that national security and defense issues belong far beyond the partisan realm.

Another distinguished Republican, U.S. Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan once offered sage advice that his political descendants should heed as they discuss national defense in the context of overarching foreign policy. He said: “To me, ‘bipartisan foreign policy’ means a mutual effort, under our indispensable, two-party system, to unite our official voice at the water’s edge so that America speaks with one voice to those who would divide and conquer us and the free world.”

Are you listening, Republicans?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/opinion/sunday/ted-cruz-the-gops-nasty-newcomer.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

Frank Bruni’s column in today’s New York Times is spot on in its critique of Texas’s shiny new U.S. senator, Republican Ted Cruz, who pranced onto the national stage six weeks ago – and promptly embarrassed himself and the state he represents.

My favorite passage from the column is this:

“Separately, in front of an audience of conservatives, he smirked dismissively as he griped that (Defense Secretary-designate Chuck) Hagel and (Secretary of State) John Kerry were ‘less than ardent fans of the U.S. military.’ Those two men fought in Vietnam, and earned Purple Hearts; Cruz never served in the institution he purports to regard so much more highly than they do.

“Only three senators voted against Kerry’s confirmation as secretary of state. Cruz was among them.”

I’ve always thought it to be senatorial custom for new guys to learn their way around the place before stepping on so many toes all at once. Cruz is emboldened, I suppose, by the big victory he scored in winning the senatorial race this past November in Texas, not that it surprised anyone, given the state’s heavily Republican leanings.

The sheer insult, though, of someone such as Cruz questioning the military credentials of two decorated combat veterans simply goes beyond the pale.

There’s really nothing more I can add to Bruni’s commentary. Well said, Mr. Bruni.

I’ve been trying for several days to process the spectacle that Gov. Rick Perry made of himself when he went recently to California to solicit business for the Lone Star State.

Finally, I think I’ve settled on this conclusion: Perry performed a gratuitous gesture of public relations grandstanding.

Perry ventured to California stating up front that, by gum, he was going to talk business execs into relocating from there to here. We’re just more business-friendly than California, he said, what with all the Golden State’s high taxes, rules and regulations, not to mention all them environmentalists telling business owners what they can do.

Perry’s telegraphing of his mission drew a pithy response from California Gov. Jerry Brown – formerly known as “Gov. Moonbeam.” Brown, who himself isn’t exactly a shrinking public-relations violet, called Perry’s visit, um, “barely a fart.”

My point here is that Texas’s pro-business climate is well-known among every Fortune 500 company on the planet. We have no state income tax; real estate here remains a huge bargain compared to California – even with the real estate crash that hit that state in late 2008; our state’s environmental agencies do not heap huge burdens on those seeking to do business here; our Legislature is filled with pro-business Republicans who vow, along with Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, to do everything they can to maintain that pro-business climate in Texas; and even the Texas Supreme Court, the state’s highest civil appellate court, rules routinely in favor of businesses caught up in civil actions brought by others.

All this is part of the public’s vast knowledge of Texas, which by itself should serve as a sufficient magnet to help attract business. And this state has no shortage of top-drawer, high-dollar companies already thriving in this environment.

So, what was Gov. Goodhair’s intent in making this grand “business recruitment” foray way out west? My only conclusion is that he wanted to call attention mainly to himself. Mission accomplished, governor.

Poor Mark Rubio. He’s being ridiculed for the silliest of reasons.

Then again, are they so silly?

The Florida Republican senator was asked to give the GOP’s response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night. In the middle of his speech, he was hit with a touch of cotton mouth. He looked for the water bottle and had to reach way beyond his grasp to grab it; the then took a quite audible gulp of water on national TV.

Many in the media have taken shots at Rubio, who has been hailed by Time magazine with a cover story that calls him the savior of the Republican Party. His status in that regard will be determined in due course.

But one awkward moment in front of millions of Americans is not a deal-breaker.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/02/15/david-lettermans-top-10-things-going-through-marco-rubios-mind-video/

It is, however, the stuff of lessons to be learned. Rubio’s only been in the national stage since 2011, when he took his Senate seat and became an immediate media star. That’s what makes the Gulpgate moment so funny. Politicians routinely get dry mouths when the lights shine brightly. It’s wise, therefore, to have the water handy, where one can grab it without slipping off the TV screen.

Rubio won’t get caught ever again, I’m quite sure, making that kind of clumsy grab on national television. In this media age, stagecraft does matter. The young senator will have to learn it if he aspires to even higher office.

Sen. Ted Cruz wants to know what about Chuck Hagel? He wants the former Nebraska senator to account for his personal income before becoming the next secretary of defense?

I believe that’s what the Texas Republican – who’s been in the Senate a little more than a month – wants to know. What a disgraceful display of petty petulance. Cruz said something about wondering whether Hagel had received payments from “radicals.” What the … ?

http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2013/02/texmessage-sen-nelson-says-cruz-crossed-the-line-by-questioning-hagels-patriotism/

Cruz made the comments this week just as the Senate Armed Services Committee was voting on whether to send Hagel’s nomination to the full Senate for an up-or-down vote.

What galls me the most is that this kind of cheap theater comes at the expense of a decorated Vietnam War combat veteran from someone who’s never worn the nation’s military uniform. Hagel got roughed up pretty badly as he testified before the committee, which recommended him to the full Senate on a strictly partisan vote. Cruz was one of the roughest on Hagel during the former senator’s hearing.

Hagel, it should be noted, is a Republican – just like the pols who grilled him. That he has been nominated for this key Cabinet post by a dreaded Democratic president hasn’t gone over well with his former colleagues. But leave it Cruz, who never served with Hagel in the Senate, to take these questions to a new low.

And leave it to fellow Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona – the former Vietnam War prisoner and unsuccessful GOP presidential nominee in 2008 – to put Cruz in his place. “Chuck Hagel is an honorable man,” McCain said of his fellow Vietnam vet, “and no one on this committee” should impugn Hagel’s integrity or honesty.

I think Sen. McCain is talking to you, Ted.