Military Losses for 20 Years….I play at being Snopes.com

January 20, 2008.Reading time 22 minutes.

I’ve written about chain/spam emails before. I’ve written about Snopes.com before. These days I assume everyone knows about both, and that anybody who really wants to be well informed will check stuff out on their own. But every now and then, an email comes my way that is so wrong, and so un-refuted, that I […]

American People’s Poll on Iraq

September 1, 2007.Reading time 1 minute.

Later today, I will be a part of a large peace rally planned for downtown Fort Worth. It’s called “The American People’s Poll on Iraq,” and is set to be an all day festival featuring music and speakers. I just looked on their website, and it seems Cindy Sheehan may be there, along with other […]

Style vs. Substance

July 14, 2007.Reading time 16 minutes.

For years, we Americans have enjoyed a love-hate relationship with our television news anchors. We trust them to frame the issues of the day and present us with a snapshot of the world as it is. (Or, at least, the world as they see it…) We turn to them again and again in moments of […]

The First Mother’s Day

May 14, 2007.Reading time 9 minutes.

Hope you’re having a good Mother’s Day today. Did you know, however, that the very first Mother’s Day in America was not a day for flowers or Hallmark Cards? Did you realize that it was not a day of champagne brunches and long distance phone calls? The very first Mother’s Day in America was an […]

What about This General?

May 11, 2007.Reading time 2 minutes.

The President listens to the troops…the men and women on the ground? Yes, it’s a question. And the longer the war goes, the more I wonder about it For example, how about these? Is that ad too connected with Wesley Clark to be convincing? Still doesn’t include someone “on the ground” from Iraq? OK, then. […]

When There Are No Answers

April 18, 2007.Reading time 15 minutes.

Sometimes, when a horrible tragedy happens, there are simply no good answers. Or, if there are, it takes weeks –if not months– for them to emerge. This morning, I am thinking, of course, of the shocking events at Virginia Tech yesterday. And it strikes me that the one thing we know is that we don’t […]

Why We Should Elect Judges

November 23, 2006.Reading time 18 minutes.

In the days after the election, everyone from Republican partisans to Steve Blow raised up a clarion call we’ve heard before: Why do we elect judges? Isn’t there a better way? Well, in short, there may be a better way to elect judges, but there is not a better way to get judges than through […]

Free Speech and Our Elections

November 23, 2006.Reading time 10 minutes.

The following stories are ones I have waited to share for two years. Each of them happened during the campaign of 2004, when my wife originally ran for judge in Dallas County. I did not share them until now, because in no way did I want to affect (positively or negatively) her election campaign this […]

Why Democrats Won in Dallas County

November 23, 2006.Reading time 35 minutes.

Many people have already written about the Democrat’s win in Dallas County. Here is a very good essay by Ken Molberg that covers much of the same ground that I will here. I think Ken is quite right in almost everything he says. (UPDATE (12.16.06): The Lone Star Project has now released their own report […]

Election Night 2006

November 23, 2006.Reading time 9 minutes.

On the day after early voting ended, I decided to do a little analysis of the vote, based on a quick and dirty formula I personally devised. You should know that I am not the best “detail” person in the world. I don’t do trees very well. But I do forests exquisitely. So, I took […]