In God's Name We Pray

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?

Never Explain; Never Apologize

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.

Netbooks, The New Books

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.

First Full Day Of Spring

From 2010 03 Snow

To see more photos, click here.

Law & Order: The Appeal

Richardson City Attorney Pete Smith

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.