Big weapons commanded the big letters in the headlines relaying the policy shift in the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Robert Gates would de-emphasize outer-space missile defense in favor of defenses on terra firma. He’d emphasize smaller ships over big ones. He would phase out the F-22 fighter and cancel a $13 billion splurge for a new…
Uh, oh. Here they come with charts, ominous charts — as scary as the times. In lines of red: deficits, crippling deficits, unconscionable deficits, the Obama deficits. The speakers pace back and forth, pointers pecking. And I’m wondering: Where were these birds the same time last year? Likely they were clucking about how the Bush…
The appeal from Fargo, N.D., was heartfelt and reverent. A flood threatened to consume a city. Prayers were solicited. The exhortation, however, left one confused. Were we to pray to spare Fargo? Or were we to pray to punish it? Punish it for allowing women to end unwanted pregnancies with a legal medical procedure. Surely,…
Andrew Dessler is as dispassionate as an academic should be — except about things he knows to be beyond dispute. In the first sentence, first chapter, of The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change, that passion shows through. “Of all the environmental issues that have emerged in the past few decades, global climate change is…
Addressing the state’s newspaper executives Monday, Rick Perry might have been wearing a coonskin cap and leaning on Ol’ Betsy. Or he could have been Col. Travis drawing a line in the sand. To Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s joust that he’s wrong to turn down half a billion federal dollars in unemployment aid, Perry parried:…
Dress for success? In Texas, wear pads In basketball, they rate guard play by a turnovers-to-assists ratio. In football, they use interceptions-to-touchdowns to rate quarterbacks. I propose we start rating schools on their football-coach-to-guidance-counselor ratio. If we did, we’d start improving our turnovers/assists ratio. Assists: when we actually help a student figure out where he…
A few thousand people will read these words along with you. Hopefully, impressions will linger. I’ve not got my hopes up too high, though. For said expectations, I’m just not in the right creative endeavor. I’ve had people recite to me a line I wrote weeks or even years prior. But never could they hum…
In NBC’s series “Friday Night Lights,” a pampered high schooler goes into a senioritis death spiral. Why? She’s suddenly realized that with her middle-of-the-pack grades, the two Texas-college color schemes of her dreams — burnt orange and maroon — are out of the question. It’s hard to sympathize. Every student in this state with an…
A fable: Good-guy Dave was a steady sort. He wasn’t prone to excess. To that end, he saved his nickels and dimes. One day he counted all of his change: $503. Dave thought of the needs facing his family: a rusted-out water heater, a creaky A/C window unit, worn brake pads in the family’s second-hand…
In The Exorcist, the 1973 film that made Linda Blair a star and caused pea soup consumption to plummet, a man arrived at a house with a black bag and a Bible to drive out evil spirits. But what does one bring to undo an exorcism? Comparable tools, actually. Barack Obama swore on Abe Lincoln’s Bible. This…