One week ago, a madman opened fire in a Connecticut elementary school. He killed 20 children, six teachers, his own mother and then himself.

The National Rifle Association, the nation’s leading pro-gun rights interest group, was silent for that entire week. Its spokesmen said something about wanting to respect the grief of those who were affected by the tragedy before speaking out.

Then, today, the NRA came out with what it said would be a significant statement on how curb the violence that pervades our culture. The nation awaited with bated breath what the NRA would recommend.

What did the NRA propose? It thinks now is the time to put armed guards in every school in America. “The best defense against a bad guy with a gun,” said NRA vice president Wayne LaPierre, “is a good guy with a gun.”

That’s the plan, according to NRA. Put more guns onto school campuses.

I … am … speechless.

The Newtown, Conn., massacre has launched a national conversation covering many topics.

“Guns” is one of them.

But as this discussion progresses, I’m struck once more by the dynamic that drives it. The extremists on both sides are out-shouting those – such as yours truly – who believe there can be a compromise solution that accomplishes two key aims: preserving the Second Amendment right to own firearms while restricting the flow of assault weapons onto our streets.

President Obama has launched a task force, headed by Vice President Biden, to examine legislation that produces what the president termed “meaningful action” in the wake of the Sandy Hook school massacre of Dec. 14.

I hope we can restore the ban on assault weapons as a start toward restoring our national sanity.

The founders crafted the Second Amendment without ever imagining a world with the types of weapons used in Newtown, or Columbine, or Aurora, or Fort Hood. And those are just the recent tragedies that have shocked the nation.

Can’t there be some accommodation found that results in a ban on these weapons? Does that mean ordinary folks like me can’t own a gun? No. I have no intention of ever purchasing an assault weapon that can blast off dozens of bullets in the blink of an eye. Indeed, the only logical reason for these weapons is for our warriors to use them on the battlefield.

The discussion, though, is focusing – as it always does – on the positions of both extremes. Gun-rights groups warn lawmakers not to do anything to limit the purchase and/or use of these weapons. Meanwhile, those at the other extreme shout with equal vigor that all guns should be confiscated.

The gun-rights extremist wing is winning the argument so far, given that they see any law regulating assault weapons as an infringement on their constitutional right to own firearms. That is utter nonsense.

Surely we can find a way to resolve this single matter. Then we can turn our attention to the vast array of other issues that has contributed to this violent madness.

I’m going to throw something out there for readers of this blog to ponder. And I want to hear back from them.

The question is this: Why should anyone care one bit about anything that flies out of Sarah Palin’s mouth?

The 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee has just criticized Time magazine’s choice of President Obama as its Person of the Year. She made some remarks the other day, in response to the Sandy Hook school massacre, that the nation lacks “moral leadership.” She keeps yapping about socialism, loss of freedom and even “death panels.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/sarah-palin-slams-time-on-person-of-the-year-85351.html?hp=l7

Palin’s public service record is, at best, spotty. She served half a term as Alaska governor before quitting not long after the 2008 election. Before that she was mayor of the tiny town of Wasilla, Alaska. Palin has been a superstar on the Fox News Channel, fielding softball questions from the network’s talking heads. She and members of her family have been featured on “reality” TV shows. Palin has developed a virtual cult following on the political right.

And yet the “lamestream media” – the term she hung on commentators with whom she disagrees – keep giving her air time and space in print … as if she has anything important to say.

She doesn’t.

Could someone explain to me why this individual still matters? You can comment at the bottom of this blog post. I’m all eyes and ears.

I’ve just spent about an hour in a major retail outlet in Amarillo staffed by individuals ranging in age from, oh, 18 to about 30.

I think I said “thank you” a dozen times to them as they helped my wife and me with our shopping needs. Their response? “No problem.”

That impolite response to an expression of thanks brought something to mind. My congressman, Republican Mac Thornberry of Clarendon, told me once years ago that he lays down a set of rules for young interns who work in his D.C. office. They are: Call your mother; remember that what’s said in the office stays in the office; use good manners all the time.

“Good manners” as I remember it included using proper responses, such as when someone says “thank you.” Mac’s rules mean that you respond with “you’re welcome.” Responding with “no problem” doesn’t cut it with Rep. Thornberry. I happen to agree with him.

I know the kids running around this retail outlet today didn’t intend to be disrespectful or rude. They smiled when they said “no problem” as I thanked them. I appreciate the grins and the good cheer.

It’s a simple thing, or so it would seem, to say “you’re welcome,” which is the proper way to answer someone who takes the time to thank you. “No problem” implies vaguely that you think there is a problem. Indeed, today there were no problems at all with the service we received, even in this place full of customers scurrying around in search of the perfect Christmas gift.

So, in the Christmas spirit, I would like to offer this gentle admonition to those who fall continually into the “no problem” verbal trap when someone offers them a word of thanks: Don’t do it, please.

You’re welcome.

Former federal judge Robert Bork has died at age 85. He became something of a symbol back in 1987 when the U.S. Senate denied him a place on the U.S. Supreme Court. Here’s how it went down, as I recall it.

President Reagan nominated Bork to the court. He was a brilliant legal scholar. On paper, he seemed eminently qualified to sit on the High Court. One little problem emerged, though. It seems that Bork’s writings on a whole array of social issues caused big-time grief with many senators, who were empowered by the Constitution to “advise and consent” to any federal judicial nomination. Many liberals – led by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy – expressed intense loathing, for example, of Bork’s views on abortion. They fought Bork tooth and nail.

In the end, Bork’s nomination was voted down. Indeed, the treatment he received from the Senate turned his name into a verb. To be “Borked,” according to conservatives, was to be treated unfairly by one’s critics. What’s more, the bitter tone of that fight has set the stage for many similar battles in subsequent Supreme Court nominations.

Bork’s nomination came to symbolize something about presidential appointments.

I tend to endorse presidential picks on a single principle: the prerogative that goes with holding the highest office in the land.

Reagan had been re-elected in 1984. He ran then as he did four years earlier, by pledging – among many things – to appoint conservative judges. And oh brother, he picked a doozy of a conservative in Bork.

Would this judge have been my choice? No. But it wasn’t my call to make.

He was qualified to serve on the Supreme Court, but he didn’t get the nod because the same Constitution that gives appointment power to the president also gives the Senate the authority to reject an appointment whenever it sees fit.

A Justice Bork could have turned out to be quite different than the federal judge whose lengthy paper trail became such an inviting target for critics. It’s happened before, with presidents picking justices who built legacies no one would have expected.

Robert Bork’s nomination and its result has provided a graphic lesson on the complexities of our system of government. Somehow, it works.

I cannot stop this nagging feeling in the pit of my gut that there may be some political good coming from the Sandy Hook school massacre.

The nation continues its grief over the unconscionable terror that visited the Newtown, Conn., school this past Friday. Twenty children died, along with six teachers in the slaughter perpetrated by a lone gunman, who then killed himself.

It will be a long time before we stop talking about those precious babies and those who sought to protect them from the madman. May their memories live forever in our hearts.

But is it interesting that in the wake of that horror, everything else seems insignificant? Even the so-called “fiscal cliff” talks in Washington now seem to be the stuff of petty petulance.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/17/politics/fiscal-cliff/index.html?hpt=hp_bn3

President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner are negotiating over tax rates for rich folks. Boehner is ready to consider boosting rates for those who earn a million bucks a year; Obama is sticking to his $250,000 annual income demand. They’re moving closer on a number of fronts … suddenly, as the nation turns its attention to matters of the heart and soul.

It strikes me today that differences between Democrats and Republicans no longer seem to matter as much as it did, say, the beginning of this past week. The gunman hadn’t yet done his evil deed and everyone in D.C. was focused on how to put one over on the other side.

Now it seems that everyone on both sides of the political debate seems small. And who among them – given what the nation is enduring in the wake of such profound tragedy – wants the public to blame either side for a failure to prevent fiscal catastrophe because of something called “political principle”?

One of the more troubling aspects of any tragedy must be the reaction of some leaders looking desperately for ways to prevent future tragic acts.

Twenty-six people – including 20 precious children – are dead at the hands of a madman who opened fire inside an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. A small fraction of the response has been politically motivated. We’ve seen some blame tossed around. Also some finger-pointing.

But the most idiotic response – in my view – has been the call by some elected “leaders” to arm school teachers and other educators with firearms. Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, said he “wished to God” the Sandy Hook school principal – who died in the rampage – had been armed with an M-4 assault rifle so that she could have taken the shooter out before he did more damage.

The idea, according to Gohmert, is to turn our schools into armed camps. Arm the teachers, principals, assistant principals, maybe even the secretaries with firearms. Why not let the custodians pack heat too? Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson – the author of Texas’ concealed handgun carry law – said much the same thing. Indeed, Patterson is proud of his “Gun Guy” nickname. I was an early critic of the concealed carry law, but I’ve softened my view of it, given the absence of any random shootouts on street corners I envisioned when then-state Sen. Patterson proposed it in the mid-1990s.

But what kind of environment do these so-called “leaders” seek to create on our public school campuses by allowing teachers to carry weapons? They apparently intend to put everyone – students, teachers, parents – on edge wondering who’s packing a firearm.

It is absolutely the wrong environment.

We need calm, rational discussion of viable choices to a complex set of issues. Arming our teachers with assault weapons – which Rep. Gohmert and other blowhards are pitching – is a prescription for even more bloodshed, not less.

I no longer can stand by while some of my fellow Americans start laying blame for the Connecticut school massacre on the lack of officially sanctioned prayer in school.

I’ve seen it on Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets. What happened in Newtown, Conn., was an evil act that utterly defies human understanding. Twenty-seven lives were snuffed out by what one TV commentator called an act committed by “Satan himself.” Indeed.

Would this have happened had the federal court system ruled in the 1960s that school-sponsored prayer didn’t violate the Constitution’s prohibition against it? My guess is that it would.

Let’s understand what the courts ruled. The Supreme Court – led by Chief Justice Earl Warren – did not ban prayer in school. It did declare that teachers, principals and other public school authorities – as agents of the state – cannot order kids to pray. The First Amendment lays it out clearly: There shall be no law that establishes a state religion and there should be no prohibition of the “free exercise thereof.”

The bottom line is that students are free to pray whenever they wish. And students do pray to whichever deity they worship. That is their right and no one can deny it to them.

No, blame for the hideous massacre in Newtown doesn’t belong to judges who ruled correctly on school prayer. It is infinitely more complex than that.

Many other things have occurred throughout our society in the five decades since the court banned mandated public school prayer. We need to examine all of them, collectively and individually, and search within our own souls on how to prevent recurrences of the tragedy that overwhelms us.

I think I’ll let this editorial from the Eugene Register-Guard in Oregon stand as a commentary worth reading in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy in Connecticut.

http://www.registerguard.com/web/opinion/29181521-47/nation-president-americans-connecticut-gun.html.csp

I’ll just add one thought that’s been rolling around in my noggin this morning.

I cannot help but wonder what the nation’s founders had in mind when they crafted the Second Amendment to the Constitution. It declares that the right to keep and bear arms shall be a citizen’s right. Did they ever envision a nation that would grow through the course of two centuries into a place where mass murders break the hearts of hundreds of millions of Americans?

The nation governed by that Constitution is reeling – once again –  because of an insane act.

What would those founders be thinking today?

http://www.texastribune.org/texas-house-of-representatives/speaker-of-the-house/simpson-files-speaker-texas-house/

The late state Sen. Teel Bivins of Amarillo used to say that redistricting every decade was a time when “Republicans eat their young.”

It appears that the GOP cannibalism occurs every more frequently these days, such as every two years when the Legislature gets ready to convene. The 2013 session is set to begin in less than a month and Republicans are seeing another challenge to House Speaker Joe Straus’ leadership. Straus, R-San Antonio, is facing a challenge from state Rep. David Simpson, R-Longview, who says the time for “go-along to get-along” leadership must come to an end.

Seems that Simpson doesn’t like Straus’ habit of cooperating with legislative Democrats to get things done for the state. Straus isn’t conservative enough for many members of his Republican caucus and once again they intend to show their distaste for Straus’ leadership by trotting out another challenger to his speakership.

Can they be serious? Apparently they’re as serious as the proverbial heart attack.

Republicans have seen their power increase for the past two-plus decades. Democrats cannot break the GOP vise-grip on statewide offices. The GOP has a near-supermajority in the state House of Reps, as well as a significant majority in the state Senate, which thankfully still is governed by the two-thirds rule that requires bipartisan support if bills are going to be put to a vote.

The House continues to be a more fractious body. Nothing wrong with legislators airing their differences. But what strikes me as weird is how the speaker – who’s supposed to lead the entire House, not just the segment of the body made up of folks from his own party – keeps getting these challenges from the hard-core wing of his caucus.

Texas is a wildly diverse state and its Legislature comprises individuals who represent that diversity. Whether it’s lieutenant governor (who runs the Senate) or the House speaker, the leaders of both legislative chambers – be they Republican or Democrat – need colleagues from both parties on board if they intend to help rank-and-file Texans.

Here’s hoping Joe Straus keeps his job.