Republicans promised to repeal the recently enacted health insurance reforms. Then they promised to "Repeal and replace." Then, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said the GOP is "not interested in repealing ... preexisting conditions." At this rate, soon the GOP will be taking credit for health insurance reform because of those 100+ GOP amendments in the final bill.
After the jump, why the GOP will have a hard time selling repeal.
The City of Richardson recently announced a "Tree the Town" program, a 10-year plan to plant 50,000 trees in Richardson, using money and services donated by corporations and civic groups across Richardson. The total value of the program is estimated at $34 million. The Dallas Morning News Richardson blog has details.
After the jump, where will all those trees go?
Richardson City Council member Amir Omar led the council in prayer before this week's city council meeting. He closed his prayer with, "In God's name we pray." Destiny Herndon (aka Lady__Madonna), who was in the audience, tweeted, "I heard at least 3 people whisper 'In JESUS' name' very indignantly after Amir's invocation."
How big a deal is this? Just how important is it that official prayer be to the God of your own personal belief? Because we don't all believe in the same god(s), how should it be determined in whose name we pray? Southern Baptist God regardless? Choice of the person chosen to lead? Majority rule? Rotation? And what about the atheists? Have we ever had an atheist chosen to lead a government body in prayer? What did he or she say? What was the response?
Personally, I'm willing to leave it up to the person chosen to lead and that honor should be rotated. By what logic do some argue indignantly that official prayer must be in Jesus' name?
That old bit of arrogant advice for those in power came to mind this week reading two stories in the news. Both reveal weaknesses in how local government communicates with citizens. The City of Richardson and the Richardson school district (RISD) are both getting beaten up online. Neither is doing much, if anything, to clear up misinformation or refute allegations of misconduct.
After the jump, my own criticism of how local government fails to head off criticism before the fact.
The Richardson ISD (RISD) recently announced a program of furnishing every student in certain grades at certain schools with school-owned netbook computers. The Dallas Morning News covered the news with a story on its main web site and another story on its Richardson blog. Your challenge, readers, is to guess what angle to this story was of most interest to the newspaper's readers. If you guessed tin-foil hat conspiracies and charges of government waste and fraud, you get a gold star.
After the jump, examples of why education's biggest obstacle to learning isn't the student, but his parents.
For the last several years, the City of Richardson has been defending itself from two lawsuits regarding, not eminent domain or taxes or even trash pickup, but how the city council conducts its meetings. One lawsuit charges the city with holding closed executive sessions prohibited by city charter. The city council implicitly acknowledged this (if not legally admitting to anything) by holding a charter amendment election in 2007, which passed, making the offenses alleged in the lawsuit moot today. The other lawsuit charges the city with unlawfully lobbying for passage of the charter amendment.
The lawuits have been making their way through the courts, slowly, as most such lawsuits do. In December, city attorney Pete Smith briefed the council, in open session about the status of the cases.
After the jump, an update.
As an aging Baby Boomer, I'm acutely aware of both my generation's outsized influence on American culture over the last fifty years and on its inevitable passing. It strikes home at events like the Oscar ceremonies where I found myself familiar with more faces in the "In Memoriam" tribute than with faces of the young presenters of the awards. Symbolically, I pictured the whole Baby Boom generation, standing on the stage, giving its acceptance speech for the "lifetime achievement" award, when the first faint notes of the orchestra begin to be heard, signifying our time is up, it's time to leave the stage.
After the jump, other signs of approaching obsolescence.
Jessica Cox is a normal, adventure-loving 27 year old woman with a bachelor's degree, a black belt in tae kwon do, a pilot's license, and scuba diving certification. But there's something she doesn't have -- arms. Born that way, she has demonstrated that determination and a positive attitude can result in great achievements. She carries that message around the world as a motivational speaker.
One group that she has motivated is a team of engineering students at Northwestern University who have used Jessica Cox's life as inspiration for their senior design project -- to design scuba controls that can be operated by armless divers like Jessica using their feet alone. Another group of Northwestern students, from the school of journalism, documented the engineering students' project:
By now, you are likely well aware of the brouhaha triggered by the Texas State Board of Education's proposed standards for the teaching of history and social studies to Texas schoolchildren. Everyone has weighed in on the subject. Today, The Dallas Morning News' Jacquielynn Floyd calls the SBOE a "whacked-out troop of underqualified ideologues ... [who] make us look like a bunch o' goobers in the eyes of the whole nation." Speaking of whacked-out ideologues, conservative talk radio host Mark Davis, in the guise of the "Textbook Ref", tells us how he personally would referee the disputes.
So, at risk of belaboring a point, after the jump I weigh in on how I would have behaved if I were on the SBOE.
