For whom this Bell tolls, it tolls for bigotry and stupidity

I haven’t taken a position on gay marriage one way or the other. I have, however, taken a position on marriage, which is any two adult human beings who love each other and chose of their own free will to display publicly that love through marriage should be able to do so. That’s it. No other qualifications. If you’re an adult, in love, and want to get married, our free society should allow you to do so.

The lead story on the front page of today’s Austin American-Statesman bears the headline "FIRST GAY COUPLE MARRIED IN TEXAS" (yes, the headline was in all capital letters). My first reaction was "Texas finally enters the 20^th century 115 years after the rest of the world" and then I was struck by a tinge of sadness that I live in a world where the marriage of two women who are in love, who have lived together for 31 years, should even be in the news in the first place.

But those emotions turned to anger when I followed the story to the inside pages that featured reaction to this news from a number of people including the village idiot from Magnolia, one Cecil Bell, who also happens to represent that area of southeast Texas in the state House. The last sentence of his reaction, as printed in the Statesman, reads as follows: "I am very conservative myself and I have very strong religious beliefs, and I believe that this is an enormous intrusion on the rights of Texas and it tramples on the religious rights of Texas."

Now I have absolutely no problems with this fool’s conservative leanings and I will defend forever his rights to maintain his own "very strong religious beliefs." However I take extremely strong exception to his statement that this marriage "tramples on the religious rights of Texas."

First of all, this couple was married by a rabbi. Now, I can imagine that in the walled-off world in which Dingdong Bell has erected for himself, he might not even know what a rabbi is. And even if someone tried to tell him, I’m not sure he would accept the facts. I mean, look, the Flat Earth Society is still alive and well and some still dispute the facts of climate change and refuse to acknowledge that "trickle-down economics" doesn’t create jobs because it quits trickling down at the CEO level.

But anyone with the IQ of your average 2-year-old or better will know that if any ordained spiritual leader of a religious congregation performs a ritual ceremony of any kind, the odds are very good that ritual ceremony is not going to trample on the religious rights of the members of that congregation, whether than congregation is in Texas, Alabama, California, Argentina, Russia, anywhere.

But even more important than that is the question: So what if it does? This country was founded on the idea there should be "a separation of church and state." And I gotta tell you, I’m getting damn sick and tired of these people who claim they are "very conservative myself," arguing we should only enact laws as intended by "our founding fathers" no matter what except if those laws contradict their "very strong religious beliefs."

The original illegal immigrants who came to this country came, in large numbers, to escape religious persecution. They knew that the religious teachings of one group may be directly the opposite of the teachings of another. That’s why they established a secular society that protected the freedoms of all religious teachings and beliefs, but made it clear that those beliefs should have no part in civil and criminal law. They knew that most of society’s most horrendous acts were fomented in the name of religion. The root cause of entire conflict in the Middle East today is the result of religious differences, not only among the actual Middle East nations, but also because the United States tried to obliterate the religious teachings of many Middle Eastern cultures and to replace them with our own value systems, not that much different from what Bell is doing through his backward statements on marriage.

This a Bell that needs to stop ringing.

It’s how the team was named that matters

Eugene Talmadge, the governor of Georgia from 1933 to 1937 and again from 1941 to 1946, was an overt racist. Although the unemployment rate for blacks in Georgia was twice as high as it was for whites, Talmadge refused to allow blacks to go to work for the Civilian Conservation Corps in Georgia. He fired University of Georgia regent Walter Cocking when the latter raised questions about the disparity between black and white schools in Georgia. When the rest of the regents overrode Cocking’s firing, Talmadge fired three members of the board and replaced them with three of his cronies.

Eugene Talmadge

Talmadge often bragged that the African American boys called him "mean Lugene." Talmadge said that he liked the "nigger" well enough in his place, and his place was at the back door, with his hat in his hand and saying, "Yes, Sir." Talmadge confessed to having flogged at least one African American. On his death bed, he told his Baptist preacher that the black race was created inferior by God. He said the white race was on top, the yellow race next, then the brown and red races, and at the very bottom, the blacks who were created to be servants to all other races.

Talmadge acted aggressively to enforce Jim Crow. His response to two federal court orders decided in 1946 illustrates his attitudes. In Morgan v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation on busses engaged in interstate commerce was unconstitutional. Talmadge pledged that there would be no more interstate bus travel in Georgia, only intrastate. Passengers would have to get off the bus before entering Georgia and buy a ticket good only for transit through Georgia. When they had crossed Georgia, they would get off and buy a ticket to the other state.

On March 8, 1946, the federal district court ruled in Albright v. Texas that political parties could no longer exclude African American voters. Admitting African Americans, about a third of the state's population would begin the end of total control of state government by Talmadge and other white supremacists. Talmadge announced plans to call a special session of the state legislature to overturn all the state's election laws. His plan was thwarted in part because eliminating all election laws would also eliminate the county unit system, a convoluted voting scheme that allowed him to remain in office even though he might not win the most popular votes in an election. Instead, he ran for governor on a platform of white supremacy.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

One of Talmadge’s closest running buddies was a fellow by the name of George Preston Marshall, who shared Talmadge’s racist beliefs. In fact, when Marshall died in 1969, his will directed that the bulk of his estate be set up as a foundation that bore his name. He attached, however, one firm condition: that the foundation, operating out of Washington, D.C., should not direct a single dollar toward "any purpose which supports or employs the principle of racial integration in any form."

George Preston Marshall

Marshall, born in 1896, became financially successful through his ownership of a chain of laundries in Washington, D.C. In 1932, he and three partners were awarded an NFL franchise for Boston and he named his team the Boston Braves because the team shared a stadium with the old Major League Baseball team, Boston Braves. Marshall’s partners sold their interests to Marshall after one season and, thus, in 1933 he moved the team’s home to Fenway Park so he could name them the Redskins. He thought Redskins was funny, just as he thought the war paint and feather headdress he made the head coach wear were funny.

This is a man who proposed to his wife against the backdrop of a group of black performers he’d hired to croon "Carry Me Back to Ol’ Virginny" as he popped the question ("Massa and Missus have long since gone before me / Soon we will meet on that bright and golden shore"). Who ordered the Redskins marching band to play "Dixie" right before "The Star-Spangled Banner" prior to every game — up into the 1960s. And who reportedly instigated the banning of black athletes from the NFL from 1933 until 1946.

I say "reportedly" because the league’s owners at the time always kept it a deep secret, but Thomas G. Smith, who wrote a 2011 book about all this, got as close as a person could get to putting Marshall at the center of the ban. The league had blacks before 1933 only because people didn’t care much about pro football then, not nearly as much as they did about baseball. But in 1933, at someone’s instigation, the owners got together and agreed on the ban. Certainly, Marshall was the biggest racist of the bunch.

Most famously of all, Marshall was the last owner to accept a black player — fully 15 years after the ban was lifted. And his team drafted an African-American then (in 1961) only because it was forced to by the government — the then-new stadium that later becamel RFK Stadium was built on Department of Interior land, which permitted the Kennedy administration to order the lessee (the team) to adhere to federal nondiscrimination policies. In other words, Marshall wasn’t merely a standard-issue racist of the time, like H.L. Mencken or countless others. He, like his buddy Talmadge, was diseased. He seethed with hatred of nonwhite people. And "Redskins" is his handiwork.

In the ongoing debate on whether the team’s name should be changed, the argument should be framed around the name’s origin and the racist who decided to attach the moniker to his franchise. When seen in this light, a name change is long overdue.

Jon Stewart: Gay Watch Texas Edition

On last night's Daily Show, Jon Stewart "discussed" the move by the Texas Republican Party to include a plank in its platform endorsing reparative therapy to cure homosexuality. This is must-viewing, especially if you're a Texan with an IQ above 40 (which may, the way it appears, eliminate the overwhelming majority of Texas Republicans).

Which way to die: smoking or trying to quit?

Have you seen that commercial for Chantix, the wonder drug that is supposed to get its users to quit smoking? Like all the other commercials for pharmaceuticals that require a doctor’s prescription, this ad lists all the various possible side effects. The ones for Chantix, I kid you not, may include "drastic change in behavior, suicidal thoughts or actions … "

Suicidal thoughts or actions?

I get the thoughts part. People who swear off cigs may be so nicotine deprived they could think that a better alternative would be to off oneself? But "actions"??? I read that as saying some folks who have taken these pills have bought the big one, have actually committed suicide — or, at the very least, have given suicide a damn good try.

Here’s a possible sales slogan for Chantix: "If smoking doesn’t kill you, than using Chantix to quit just might do the trick."
 

Vibrators don't kill people; however, people armed with a vibrator and an assault rifle ...

"Ah yes, Miss Jones, I think I have the cure for what ails you."

Sandy Springs, Ga., is to Atlanta what Richardson is to Dallas, a toney, ultra-conservative suburb that border's Georgia's largest city on the north. It has, according to the 2010 census, a population of 93,853, 65percent of whom are white; a median family income of $129,810; and a council-manager form of government run these days by a bunch of kooks.

The reason I know they are a bunch of kooks is that the City Council -- six council members and a mayor, all of whom are males (which is vitally important in lieu of what comes next) -- recently passed an ordinance that makes it illegal for women to purchase a marital aide without a doctor's prescription. That's right: If a woman desires to purchase a vibrator, for example, she must schedule an appointment with her physician, pay for that appointment and during that appointment persuade the physician she has a valid medical reason for purchasing a vibrator. If the physician believes she is in medical need of the sex toy, he will give her the necessary prescription for purchasing it.

By the way, in Georgia you can carry a gun without even a minimal background check. So men can carry around their fun toys, but women can't.

No word yet on how many bootleggers are frequenting neighboring Atlanta's adult book stores, purchasing vibrators, dildos, edible undies, etc., and selling them on the black market in Sandy Springs.

The 10 Most Disappointing Chain Restaurants

I don't have any real problem with this list and, yes, I'll bet some folks will find some of their favorites on here. The one thing I'm not sure about is whether the list starts or ends with THE most disappointing or whether the author feels they are all equally worthy of being on the list. If I had to pick, I would say it was trying to start at the top and work it's way from there.

The Evil that is Donald Sterling

 

Donald Sterling is a bad man — a very, very bad man.

The fact that the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers pro basketball team is an out and out racist is undeniable. His taped conversation with his girlfriend was only the latest example. Back in the early 1990s, Sterling’s insurance company shelled out $2.75 million to settle a racial discrimination suit filed against him by the Justice Department involving some of the apartment properties Sterling owns in Los Angeles.

Former Clippers employee and Los Angeles Lakers legend Elgin Baylor filed a racial and age discrimination suit against Sterling claiming the owner had "a plantation mentality" and thought of the Clippers players as "poor black boys from the South playing for a white coach." The suit further claimed that after home games Sterling would take guests into the Clippers’ locker room so the guests could check out his players’ "beautiful black bodies."

But Sterling’s "badness" goes deeper than his racism. Who are the most despicable people on earth? That’s right — divorce lawyers. OK, perhaps the attorney who represented you in when you split with the spouse might have been an alright person during daylight hours but you also know that shark that represented your spouse was — on the evolutionary scale — one step below pond scum.

So now I’m talking about a guy who was born Donny Tokowitz in the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles who made his bones as a — you guessed it — not only a divorce lawyer, but a personal injury shyster as well.

He used the sums he amassed in these nefarious pursuits to purchase real estate all over Los Angeles. And he never sold any of it. In 1981, he shelled out $12.5 million to purchase the San Diego Clippers, which had moved to the Southern California city from Buffalo three years earlier. During his time in San Diego, his players claimed they would receive their paychecks after the banks closed on Fridays, presumably to keep them from bouncing.

In 1984, he abruptly moved the team to Los Angeles without the NBA’s permission and got slapped with a $25 million fine from the league for doing it. And not only did he decide not to share the Forum, the then home court of the Lakers, with the older LA NBA franchise, he forced the Clippers to play in the decrepit Los Angeles Sports Arena and made a nice profit from a lousy team because of his sweetheart lease deal.

Like I said at the beginning: Donald Sterling is a bad man.

By now, anyone who’s over the age of 7 and breathing the air of this country knows that this week that taped conversation I referred to earlier — in which he implored his girlfriend to quit posting pictures on public forums of herself with black athletes and, while he was on the subject, to quit bringing blacks to see Clippers’ games — has resulted in Sterling being banned from the Clippers and the NBA for life. Not only that, the league’s other 29 owners seemed determined to make sure Sterling doesn’t own the Clippers for too much longer.

Most everyone I’ve talked to or have heard talking about this seems to believe it’d karma — Donald Sterling is finally getting just what he deserved.

However, my very intelligent South Florida correspondent smells a rat in all this. He presents an extremely well reasoned argument that Sterling has been wanting to sell the team for a while and what he’s doing now is driving up the price of the team by producing all this publicity surrounding it. Why else, Mr. Howard Schulman claims, would he freely admit that "Yes, that is my voice on that tape and those are my views"? Why else, he argues, would Sterling not dispute the fact that private conversations should remain private and not cause punitive judgments if and when they become public. And, it appears, his tactic is working. The proof of that, according to Mr. Schulman, is the fact that mega-buck folks such as Oprah Winfrey and David Geffen, both of whom could probably pay for the team by collecting the cash they could find by removing the cushions of their respective living room couches, are among those interested in shelling out the $1 billion or more I’ve heard it will take to puchase the Clippers. But I don’t want to put words into the great Mr. Schulman’s mouth. You can read it all for yourself here.

Now, as reasoned and as well articulated as Mr. Schulman’s arguments are, I am going to take exactly the opposite point of view. Why? Because, as I’ve said twice now: Donald Sterling is a bad man — a very, very bad man. I also said that Sterling made his bones as a divorce lawyer.

Unlike most in the legal profession who seem to want to achieve justice, divorce lawyers want nothing of the kind, Divorce lawyers want revenge — regardless of the monetary or emotional cost. And when someone lashes out at Donald Sterling, he lashes right back with double or triple the intensity.

Remember, he didn’t lose that racial discrimination suit against the Justice Department. He also emerged victorious in the Baylor affair. When the NBA slapped that $25 million fine on him for moving the Clippers without permission, he simply countersued. The case dragged on for three years and in 1987 Sterling wound up paying a fine $6 million, less than a fourth of the original judgment.

Right now Donald Sterling is a bitter old man plotting ways to get even with an NBA and fellow team owners he is convinced have done him wrong. And here’s how he’s going to do it: He’s going to file for divorce from his long-suffering wife Rochelle. And when that happens, everything else grinds to a halt.

The team, you see, is not owned by Sterling per se, but a Sterling family trust that includes Rochelle. Such a divorce filing would put the jurisdiction of the team into the multi-layered California’s family court, while both sides decide how to divide the community property, Agreement on those decisions could take years, perhaps not even in Donald Sterling’s lifetime.

According to Sharon Kalemkiarian, a California family law specialist: "If somebody is looking for a litigation strategy, and they want to slow down a forced sale by the league, you file for divorce so you get more people involved arguing over it. Everybody's got to spend more money trying to figure out what happens to it. Getting the family court involved in it would create another layer of complexity to the sale and another set of lawyers who would be trying stop it from getting sold."

So what happens to the Clippers in the process? Coach Doc Rivers will absolutely refuse to participate in any actions that would put more money in Sterling’s pockets and, as a result, will resign before the start of the 2014-15 season. Premier players such as Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan and Matt Barnes will feel the same way and demand the league declare them to be free agents, a demand to which the NBA will undoubtedly honor. And quickly the value of the team plummets, down to the point where, when and if the dust settles, the only person who will want to purchase it is another divorce lawyer. Still, the selling price will be more than the $12.5 million Sterling paid for it, so he still makes a profit.

And when that happens, if he does happen to be among those still living on this planet, Donald Sterling — that very, very bad man — will prominently display his middle finger to NBA Commisioner Adam Silver, the NBA, and the other league owners, and walk off into the sunset with a huge smile on that very, very bad face.

BOOM-er Sooner

Oklahoma has experienced more than 100 earthquakes since last Friday. None of them have caused epic damages on the scale of, say, comparatively recent earthquakes in California, but many residents have reported new cracks in their ceilings and walls and even one county jail has sustained minor structural damage.

Far be it from me to tell Oklahoma how to manage its state's geology, but it's worth noting that the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport experienced the same earthquake phenomena in October of 2012. Those earthquakes were linked to the disposal of wastewater from hydraulic fracturing operations taking place on airport grounds. In response, the DFW Airport Board ordered to end to "fracking" operations at the airport. The result? No more earthquakes.

Just sayin'.

Here's why you should never put Christmas lights on a palm tree

Dallas mayor recites The Gettysburg Address

Thanks to documentarian Ken Burns you can go here and not only see a number of individuals, including Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, recite the Gettysburg Addresss, but you can also see a magnificent compilation of speakers reciting it including President Obama and all four living former Presidents. However, you can also go here and see the same compilation along with ABC News' hysterical headline on the event.
You really have got to see it (both the compilation and the headline) to believe it. What was ABC News thinking?

Margolin gets it right

 

I’ll admit it. I was wrong. Boy, was I wrong. Dallas City Council Member Ann Margolin will complete her tenure with style, grace and a demonstration of leadership and courage not seen on this council for some time and certainly not from a council member representing District 13.

Much to the relief of every other person on the council today, Margolin came out in support of Ursuline Academy’s desire to construct a soccer field, with lights, on its campus located at the southwest corner of Walnut Hill Lane and Inwood Road in Northwest Dallas.

City Council Member
Ann Margolin

After she announced her support and received much-deserved plaudits from her colleagues for her decision, the council voted 14-0 (Tennell Atkins was absent today) to approve the project. Which illustrates one of the many problems with how things get done (or, in many cases, not done) by our City Council. If Margolin had opposed the idea, the vote would not have been 13-1 in favor because council members never, ever, vote on zoning issues according to the way they believe. They vote according to the whims of the council member who represents the property under consideration. Thus, if Margolin had opposed the lighted field, which I incorrectly predicted she would, then it would have been defeated. Instead of "Do the Right Thing," the Dallas City Council’s motto is "You Scratch My Back, I’ll Scratch Yours."

Opponents of the field came out with a bunch of bogus studies about safety and glare from the lights, but, as one of Ursuline’s neighbors, who supported the project, said in a video shown to the council today, "I hate to say this, but (the opposition) really has nothing to do with lights."

The neighbor who said that was black.

I first came in contact with the blatant racism inbred in the people who live in this neighborhood a little more than 20 years ago. Then Dallas Mayor Steve Bartlett led a group of Dallas business leaders on a trade mission to Mexico. One of the business leaders accompanying Bartlett was Lee Roy Mitchell, the founder and board chairman of Cinemark Theaters, which, although headquartered at that time in an office building on the northeast corner of Walnut Hill Lane and Greenville Avenue, did not have one single theater in Dallas or the surrounding area. Bartlett asked Mitchell why this was so and Mitchell told the Mayor the company could not find any property within the Dallas city limits that fit its economic viability model. Bartlett promised Mitchell he would find him a suitable location to locate a theater.


Lee Roy Mitchell also felt the
racist wrath of this neighborhood

And the mayor fulfilled that promise. The property he chose was a long-abandoned K-Mart, whose only use was as a shelter for drug addicts, located just north of Forest Lane on Inwood Road. However, when Bartlett and Mitchell jointly announced Cinemark, a Dallas company, was going to finally locate a theater in Dallas, the neighborhood residents — much the same ones fighting Ursuline — came out in huge numbers to oppose the theater chain’s plans.

At the time, I was a partner in what I still regard as the world’s greatest crisis consulting firm and Cinemark hired us to advise it on how to proceed and how to properly present its side of the story to a public, which, outside the immediate radius of the proposed location, overwhelmingly supported the project.

One day the opposition staged a huge media event outside the proposed site and, of course, I was there to advise Cinemark. At one point, I engaged a small group those protesters, who didn’t have a clue who I was or what I was doing there, and asked them why they were so opposed to the theater. One of the women in the group said, as though she was letting me in on their conspiracy, "Because it attracts those kind of people."

"Those kind of people?" I asked in honest astonishment. "Those kind of people? You mean like people who enjoy going to movies? Hey, I’m a card carrying member of those kind of people."

"No, no, no," another one said in a tone meaning I needed to lower my voice. "You know (and she nodded her head at two back individuals standing about 25 yards away), those kind of people."

It was then I realized it wasn’t the theater they opposed, it was the thought of blacks driving through their neighborhoods, especially at night.

That’s why the words of the black gentleman on the video ("I hate to say this, but [the opposition] really has nothing to do with lights.") was so right on the money and so appropriate coming from him. Lights mean games played at night and these racists residents — 21 years later — still fear blacks driving through their neighborhoods at night. Forget the bogus studies about safety and glare — this is what it all boiled down to.

And that’s why I squealed in delight when the first person to congratulate Margolin after she came out in favor of Ursuline’s request was D-Wayne Carriedaway who announced that he was anxious to attend Ursuline’s home games at their new soccer field.

But, for once, racism was defeated at City Hall today and I applaud Margolin for leading the charge. She displayed far more courage than her predecessor did when the same issue came before the council 12 years earlier.

Reason #4,387,236 why I love Goldens

I saw this story a couple of days ago on Sports Center. If you haven't seen it, you owe it to yourself to watch.

Arlington has its own Park Cities. Who knew?

Here is the second-to-the-last paragraph of a rather convoluted story that appeared in the Metro section of Monday’s Dallas Morning News concerning liquor sales in Arlington and how it may affect the Texas Rangers’ ballpark:

"But (Arlington City Council member Sheri) Capehart said the city already has to deal with liquor stores. The cities of Dalworthington Gardens and Pantego — both completely surrounded by Arlington — already allow liquor stores."

I have lived in Dallas 45 years now and I had never heard of Dalworthington Gardens and Pantego until I read that story.

So I went to trusty Google maps and, whaddaya know, Dalworthington Gardens is a rather substantial chuck of real estate east of West Arlington that stretches from just north of I20 all the way to Pioneer Parkway on the north. Pantego is a noticeably less substantial chuck of real estate that goes from the northern border of Dalworthington Gardens up to West Park Row.

Then I checked out my good friends at Wikipedia. From there I learned Dalworthington Gardens was named as an amalgamation of its neighbors DALlas, Fort WORTH and ArlINGTON. Clever, eh? It was established in 1934 as "a subsistence homestead project during the Great Depression under the authority of the National Industrial Recovery Act … The purpose of the homestead program was to help families attain a better standard of living through a combination of part-time industrial employment and subsistence agriculture. Dalworthington Gardens was one of five such projects located in Texas and the only one still in existence today." The city’s total area is 1.8 miles and has a population of 2,186.

Pantego is 1 square miles with a population of 2,394, making it almost twice as dense as its southern neighbor. Originally incorporated in 1949, the town dissolved in February 1952 and re-incorporated on May 22, 1952. Whether it re-incoporated just so it could sell liquor to those thirsty folks in Arlington, I can’t say.

So there you have it — Dalworthington Gardens and Pantego — which has liquor stores that Arlington doesn’t and here endeth the lesson.

Better than watching the Olympics opening ceremony

I'm still amazed that these folks realized sticking a ladder into the dumpster would work as quickly and as easily as it did.

After Aurora: Vigilante justice is not the answer

From the editorial pages of today’s New York Times:

The most appropriate response now to the shootings early Friday in Aurora, Colo., is also the simplest: sympathy for the victims, for the injured and for their families.

President Obama asked a crowd in Fort Myers, Fla., "to pause in a moment of silence for the victims of this terrible tragedy, for the people who knew them and loved them, for those who are still struggling to recover, and for all the victims of less publicized acts of violence that plague our communities every single day."

He returned to the White House and, like Mitt Romney, pulled his political ads off the air in Colorado.

Romney addressed the senseless violence at a previously scheduled campaign stop in New Hampshire.

"I stand before you today not as a man running for office but as a father and grandfather, a husband, an American," he said. "This is a time for each of us to look into our hearts and remember how much we love one another and how much we love and how much we care for our great country."

Both men struck absolutely the right note. The country needs a pause for reflection, to wait for more information and to take a break from this ugly political campaign. But as Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, a leader in the search for sensible answers about guns, said, we will need to do more than reflect.

"Maybe," the mayor said, "it’s time that the two people who want to be president of the United States stand up and tell us what they’re going to do about it."

Sadly, however, it seems unlikely that they will tell us what they are going to do about it, or that there will be a national dialogue about it, just as there was no national dialogue after Columbine or after Virginia Tech or after Jared Lee Loughner tried to assassinate then-Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

Politicians are far too fearful of the gun lobby to address gun violence, and, as a society, we keep getting stuck on a theoretical debate about the Second Amendment, which keeps us from taking practical measures that just might help avoid the all-too-frequent tragedies like the one in Aurora.

Whether you believe, as many perfectly reasonable people do, that the amendment gives each individual the right to bear arms, or whether you believe, as (I and) this editorial page has often argued, that it is society’s right to raising a militia, there is no excuse to ignore the out-of-control gun market.

The country needs laws that allow gun ownership, but laws that also control their sale and use in careful ways. Instead, we have been seeing a rash of "stand your ground" self-defense laws, other laws that recklessly encourage the carrying of concealed weapons and efforts to force every state to knuckle under to those laws. Assault rifles like one used by the killer in Colorado are too readily available, as are high-capacity ammunition clips.

What we do not need is more heedless rhetoric like we heard on Friday from Representative Louie Gohmert, the Texas Republican who drew a bizarre connection during a radio interview between the horror in Colorado and "ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs."

Gohmert added: "It does make me wonder, you know, with all those people in the theater, was there nobody that was carrying? That could have stopped this guy more quickly?"

That sort of call to vigilante justice is sadly too familiar, and it may be the single most dangerous idea in the debate over gun ownership.

©2012 New York Times

Anybody know the name of an expert sadist, torturer

There are certain people who need to be tortured, who need to experience such excruciating pain that they are praying their lives will end quickly. But they keep on living and they keep on feeling a pain so intense it literally drives them out of their minds.

My latest nominee for this sentence is one Elisabeth Escalona.

Now in case you missed the story on the front page of the Metro Section of Friday’s Dallas Morning News, the aformentioned monster pleaded guilty Thursday to "injury to a child."

"Injury" doesn’t begin to convey what she did. When her 2-year-old daughter pooped in her pants, the woman dragged her daughter by her feet from the kitchen to another room in their house where she kicked her in the stomach, hit her with a jug of milk, a belt and a shoe. She then put glue on the poor girl’s hands and glued them to the wall. When the infant was finally taken to the hospital she was suffering from "extensive bruising, brain swelling, broken bones, swollen intestines, bruised lungs and an injured liver."

To all interested sadists and torturers: the line forms outside my door.

Breast feeding shouldn’t be turned into a spectator sport

This has nothing whatsoever with the pros and cons of breast feeding. Like just about everything else that has to do with a woman’s body, whether to breast feed should be a woman’s choice. Like just about everything else that has to do with a woman’s body, men should not even be allowed to participate in the debate.

But I do have a problem with turning something so personal into a public spectacle and that’s just what something like World Breast Feeding Week does. If the week was just about raising public awareness, I wouldn’t have a problem. But staging "a synchronized breast feeding event" and then inviting media photographers to document it is simply a gross invasion of privacy. It doesn’t help that the Dallas event, according to a news release from the City of Dallas (why our municipal government is involved with this horrendous spectacle defies explanation), will be staged "behind O’Reily Auto Parts." That just adds another layer of insult.

And, according to the city’s release, door prizes will be awarded. I won’t even hazard a guess…

At least the city had the good sense not to put this release on its Web site. It was simply e-mailed to area reporters, editors and bloggers.

There are, I’m guessing, millions of women out there who would prefer to breast feed their newborns but for reasons beyond their control, are unable to do so. How do you think such a display makes them feel?

This is just so wrong on so many different levels.

If you decide to live next to a swine processing plant, don’t complain about the smell

If you build a home along the Atlantic or Gulf coasts, you have to know that at some time you might be in the path of a hurricane. If you build along a California fault line, you do risk falling into a large crevice while you’re sleeping. But those risks may be worth the gamble in many circumstances. I, for one, would love to have a beachfront shack, like this one, on one of the Florida keys.

However, there are other things that are dead solid certain. For instance, if you decide to build or buy a home adjacent to an airport, you are going to be afflicted with some degree of noise that’s going to be of a higher decibel level than, say, if you decided to build next to a cemetery. Yet, it never ceases to amaze me. People will build or buy homes adjacent to a major airport and then complain about the noise. And what amazes me even more is that officials will bend over and grab their knees in attempts to appease these homeowners. Don’t believe me. Love Field sponsors a Web site where it practically begs adjacent residents to complain about the noise. It’s ridiculous.

Likewise, there’s a story in today’s Dallas Morning News about a group of homeowners who decided to build or buy homes next to a municipally operated golf course and are now complaining that golf balls may fly into their yards or through their windows. Duh! I can’t describe how little regard I have for dupes like this. Stop complaining and start selling used golf balls.

The revenge of George Lucas

One thing you got to admit about the guy: He really knows how to piss people off. The same guy who brought you Howard the Duck and Jar Jar Binks has now picked a fight with his tony neighbors in Marin County, north of San Francisco.

Lucas moved into the area in 1978, a year after his mega-hit Star Wars was released. He purchased 6,100 acres and began constructing his Lucasfilm empire, starting with Skywalker Ranch. His neighbors seemed to love the fact that he was in the area.

George Lucas

All that changed recently. After he announced in 2009 he was going to build a third facility — a 269,701-square-foot digital studio on a third ranch called Grady — a once defunct homeowners group resurrected itself last summer and announced its opposition to the project as county officials were putting their stamp of approval on it. The group said Lucas should find a "far more appropriate location for the development." The group sent a letter to Lucas that said his project would "pose a serious and alarming threat to the nature of our valley and our community," "dwarf the average Costco warehouse," and generate light pollution so that "our dark starry skies would be destroyed." As a result, the county Board of Supervisors postponed its vote on the project, although it was still expected to sail through at a later date.

But Lucas decided not to wait and pulled the plug. Tom Forster, head of community relations at Lucasfilm, said the company feared the homeowners would file lawsuits that would delay construction for years. On his Website, Lucas said he would relocate the facility to a place "that sees us as a creative asset, not the evil empire."

But that’s not all. Lucas sold the property to a philanthropic group, the Marin Community Foundation, which plans to construct low income housing there. Forster said "George, being the great guy he is, doesn’t want to build more housing for rich people since Marin is loaded with them."

Indeed it is and now a whole bunch of them are really upset. One of them said she now fears for her life, lives in "sheer terror," and likened it to living in Syria. Another letter writer said "You’re going to bring drug dealers, all this crime and lowlife in here."

And just think. They could have had Howard the Duck and Jar Jar Binks.

Arboretum parking

The Dallas Arboretum

One of the many reasons I have opposed the Trinity River Tollroad from the get-go is because it is my firm belief city officials should be deploying all their resources to finding ways to get people TO Dallas, not THROUGH Dallas.

As part of this campaign, I always thought one of Dallas’ shamefully overlooked treasures was the Arboretum on the east shore of White Rock Lake. I really believed this facility needed to be marketed nationally so that it became a vacation destination point and a reason to bring tourists to Dallas (where they will spend tax dollars). When I was the head of the East Dallas Chamber of Commerce (then called the Dallas Northeast C of C) I tried to convince the membership to support and work for the installation of highway directional signs on Interstates 30 (at the Grand Ave. Exit) and 635 (at the Garland Road exits) for the Arboretum.

But it now appears the Arboretum is gaining in popularity even without the help of city marketing or local business support. It’s doing it simply on its own. Congratulations and job well done to whomever is handling the Arboretum’s promotions.

However, all the Arboretum’s good work may be undone by a bunch of narrow-minded residents who refuse to accept one simple fact: They live in a a city, a metropolitan area, a major urban environment. These are the same ignorant fools who blocked the construction of a high-rise condominium project a little north of the Arboretum on Garland road that could have had a marvelously positive economic impact on the Garland Road/Grand Avenue corridor, an area that desperately needs an economic shot. These jerks don’t accept the fact that Dallas’ borders are completely closed and the only way the city can grow — the only way it can expand — is by going up!

Now these same idiots are trying to block plans for the Arboretum to add much needed parking to handle the larger crowds expected for some planned new attractions. Their opposition is wrong on so many levels. One of their spokespersons, according to a story on the front page of the Metro section in today’s Dallas Morning News, is one Matt White, identified as an American history professor at Ferris Junior College. (Sorry. I’m not impressed.) White laments the fact, according to the News, that "few pieces of the Texas prairie land, which once stretched along the Interstate 35 corridor from San Antonio to Dallas, exist today." It doesn’t exist in Dallas, prof, because Dallas is a city. I hate to break the news to you, prof, but few pieces of the rolling grasslands that once was the major feature of Manhattan island exist today either. It’s a city now, too. But I can also tell you this, prof: Yesterday and today I took my golden retriever to the prairie land and the woods of Moss Park, an island of wilderness in the middle of a metropolitan area. Yes, I had to drive to Moss, but there are plenty of wilderness experiences in Dallas if you just know where to look (and if you get to them before they build a toll road through them).

But there’s another reason opposing additional parking for the Arboretum is a form of mass suicide. The visitors are going to come, whether the parking lot is built or not. And they will park their cars and walk to the Arboretum. And if there is not a parking lot for them, they will simply go to the other side of Garland road and park all along the streets where the idiots live. Then these two-faced folks will come crying to the City to do something about that and I hope the City has the courage to respond by saying "We tried, but your narrow-mindedness prohibited us from taking care of the problem. Now you gotta live with it."

This area east of White Rock lake is in desperate need of major infrastructure repair. Problem is there’s no money in the city’s coffers to make those repairs. The ironic part of all this is that the residents of the area continue to do everything in their power to keep the city from collecting the money needed to really help this area. Shakespeare would have a field day with these folks.