[an error occurred while processing this directive] 09/07/2008

Dusty Horwitt: If everyone's talking, who will listen?
The information avalanche coming from all sides – the Internet, PDAs, hundreds of television channels – is burying us in extraneous data that prevent important facts and knowledge from reaching a broad audience. The implications for democracy are troubling.

Sarah Kershaw: Now, just pay for the news you want
The Spot Us idea of "community-funded journalism" is to solicit ideas for investigative articles and the money to pay for the reporting. Should this also raise concerns of journalism being bought by the highest bidder?

Francis Fukuyama: Is this the age of the autocrat?
U.S. dominance of the world system is slipping; Russia and China offer themselves as models, showing off a combination of authoritarianism and modernization that offers a clear challenge to liberal democracy. They seem to have plenty of imitators.

Rod Dreher: Palin's a fighter - and worth fighting for
Does the Angry Left really want to launch a culture war over Sarah Palin? Fine. Lock and load. If conservatives were indifferent or hostile to the Republican ticket, the cultural elite's savage treatment of Ms. Palin reminds them what's really in play this year.

Bob Herbert: Sarah Palin is just the latest GOP distraction
She's meant to shift attention away from the real issue – the awful state of the nation after eight years of Republican rule. The Republicans are brilliant at distractions. Willie Horton. The chatter about gays, guns and God. The Swift-boat campaign.

Stephanie Saul: Addicted to tobacco taxes
Smoking isn't good for you, but through taxation and legal settlements, government has become a financial stakeholder in you doing it, even as public health officials warn people about its deadly consequences.

Dalton Conley: Rich man's burden
Today, it's rich who are the most stressed and the most likely to work longer and harder. Perhaps for the first time since we've kept track of such things, higher-income folks work more hours than lower-wage earners do.

Point of Contact: Rob Schlein, Dallas County Log Cabin Republicans
Our Q&A with Rob Schlein, head of the Dallas County chapter of Log Cabin Republicans, an organization for gay and lesbian Republicans.

Talking Points
Some of the week's most interesting comments, from John McCain to Sarah Palin to a former senator from Texas.

08/31/2008

Bruce Riedel: The elections are coming. Is al-Qaeda?
The 2004 Madrid bombings reveal the close attention al-Qaeda pays to Western electoral cycles. Osama bin Laden, perpetrator of one of the greatest mass murders in U.S. history, is certain to want to have his say in our presidential election this fall.

Peter Bergen: Are al-Qaeda's tactics killing off its support?
Osama bin Laden still sees the U.S. as his main foe. Al-Qaeda has fatally undermined its claim to be the true representative of all Muslims by killing thousands of them. These strategic blunders are why al-Qaeda ultimately will lose. But don't expect that defeat any time soon.

Rod Dreher: GOP slouches toward St. Paul
The Sarah Palin pick does not erase the fundamental philosophical problems besetting the GOP. Even if John McCain pulls off a November upset, this GOP convention will, in effect, mark the last hurrah of a party as we've known it for a generation, as the party of Ronald Reagan.

Joshunda Sanders: One man's jail time is another's best seller
From People magazine to the New York Observer, the media gush over David Carr's exploration of a typically stigmatizing force in his new memoir, The Night of the Gun, should make us question some of society's rules and how white privilege can override all of them.

Jame Zumwalt: A son goes off to war
I knew this day would come. I thought I would be prepared. Coming from a family whose proud military heritage dates to this country's founding, and having served in the Marines for a quarter-century and lost a brother to war, I felt ready for any challenge military life might bring. I was not.

Frank Rich: Last call for change we can believe in
As the real campaign at last began in Denver, it's time for Barack Obama to dispatch "Change We Can Believe In" to a dignified death. Zero hour is here, and the strategy that vanquished Hillary Clinton must be rebooted to take out John McCain.

Mary Jo Murphy: Wind turbines, the 'it' item of the summer
Not since Don Quixote have so many windmills presented such an orgy of illusion: Wind power accounts for only about 1 percent of the nation's energy. Notwithstanding the ardent advocacy of people like T. Boone Pickens, it will be some time before production catches publicity.

Point of Contact: Julia Reed, New Orleans journalist
Our Q&A with Julia Reed, New Orleans journalist and author of "The House on First Street," a Katrina memoir.

Talking Points
Some of the week's most interesting comments, from Barack Obama to Sarah Palin to a former Abercrombie & Fitch employee.

08/24/2008

Steven Malanga: The plague of professional panhandling
Cities have overcome myriad obstacles in revitalizing their downtowns, but they face a new wave of "spangers" (that is, spare-change artists) who threaten their newfound prosperity by harassing residents, tourists and businesses. Unlike their predecessors, many of these new beggars aren't helpless victims or even homeless. Rather, they belong to a swelling community of street people who have made panhandling their calling.

Police Chief David Kunkle: Panhandling in Dallas
We get a significant number of complaints. People know that we have a city ordinance that prohibits panhandling. There's some misunderstanding about the ordinance. The ordinance doesn't pertain to all panhandling.

Mark Davis: Convention should bring end to Obama-mania
In Denver, the sun sets over the Rocky Mountains. That sun will shine brightly for the Democratic nominee this week as he enjoys his last few days of unfettered adulation. But by Friday, as attention turns to the Republican convention, the sun may also set on the eight months of Obama-mania.

Rod Dreher: Where pragmatism goes to die
Argue for the proposition that not every fight across the globe is properly America's, and you set yourself up for being called soft on tyranny. Who wants to vote for a squish? We prefer to believe the romantic image of ourselves and our country and to deal with the world as we wish it were rather than as it is.

Mary Sanchez: English spoken here (as it is everywhere)
To all those who fear the invasion of our shores by foreign languages – I'm speaking to you, stalwarts of the "English Only" movement – seriously, you need to travel more.

Olivia Judson: Testing genes, solving little
At the heart of this story, there is a paradox. We have accumulated huge databases on human genetic differences – but many of the differences appear to be more or less irrelevant.

Jessica Sidman: You don't have to burn bras anymore
While baby boomers often accuse my generation of apathy or laziness, we are leading a quiet revolution of our own. It's not happening in the streets, but we are making ourselves heard. It's all happening via the Internet.

Sally Kohn: Gen Y's online activism isn't enough
Internet activism is individualistic. It's great for a sense of interconnectedness, but it does not bind individuals in shared struggle like the face-to-face activism of the 1960s and '70s. The real challenges in our society won't politely go away with a few clicks of a mouse. Or even a million.

Point of Contact: Principal Clarissa Plair
Our Q&A with Clarissa Plair, principal of Felix G. Botello Elementary School in Oak Cliff .

Talking Points
Some of the week's most interesting comments, from Rick Perry to Condoleezza Rice to a Chinese gymnastics coach.

08/17/2008

Rod Dreher: Peak oil is coming, and we're unready
Has the world already reached peak oil, a time of permanently high oil prices and shortages that will profoundly change our way of life? The answer, I think, is likely yes, but the proximity of this catastrophe is not the most important question to ask.

Clayton M. McCleskey: Don't be so quick to chide America's 'failing' schools
t's back-to-school time, and before you know it, the debate about if, how and why America's schools are “failing” will fire up again. Despite all the doom and gloom, after a year studying in Europe, I have grown confident that the American approach to education is a model the rest of the world should seek to emulate.

Terry Box: Gas is sky-high, but I'm not junking my great American joyride
My car swills gas, downing shot after shot of rich red petrol. It rumbles rudely at stoplights, scaring the Prius drivers around me. Its flinty suspension – stiff and unyielding as a tax-department bureaucrat – pounds my middle-aged back on rough roads.

Alan Ehrenhalt: The great downtown migration
Will Chicago, the city of slaughterhouses and skyscrapers, soon look like haute bourgeois 19th-century Vienna?

Damian Mosley: The obesity blame game
People-watching in the United States can be a taxing endeavor. Besides the unfavorable ratio of plants to concrete, the neighborhoods I have called home are filled with legions of morbidly obese, diabetic and hypertensive adults and children who struggle daily with their afflictions.

Book club participants' take on 'The Long Emergency'
Book club participants made astute observations about The Long Emergency and how reading the book affected their thoughts on oil dependence. A sampling from the blog:

One last chance to share your thoughts, in person

Talking Points
"This is not 1968, and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can invade its neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it . Things have changed." – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on Russia's invasion of Georgia (The New York Times, Wednesday)

Point of Contact: Carlos Quintanilla of Acción America
Our Q&A with Carlos Quintanilla, president of Acción America. His immigrant-advocacy group plans a protest at Trinity Medical Center in Carrollton over the arrest of María Martínez, suspected to be an illegal immigrant and accused of submitting a false Social Security number with her job application.

08/10/2008

Tod Robberson: Housing the poor alongside the rich
If someone wanted to devise a plan for maintaining racial and social inequality in our city, it would probably look a lot like Conrad Hilton's formula for building successful hotels: location, location, location.

Rod Dreher: Solzhenitsyn and Wojtyla, tragic prophets
Two men stood astride the 20th century as prophets without peer: Pope John Paul II and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Their experience and testimony contained and transcended the terrible truths of the bloodiest epoch in human history. And they died tragically – tragic, in the Greek sense: They were admired and even beloved. But largely ignored.

John Hoberman: Myths of Olympic proportions
The Olympic Games were founded to bridge cultural divides and promote peace. Instead, they often mask human rights abuses, do little to spur political change and lend legitimacy to unsavory governments. Worse, the Beijing Games, which opened Friday night, could still be the most controversial of all.

Tim Wu: Peak oil, meet peak bandwidth
Americans today spend almost as much on bandwidth – the capacity to move information – as we do on energy. A family of four likely spends several hundred dollars a month on cellphones, cable television and Internet connections, which is about what we spend on gas and heating oil.

Olivia Judson: Feel the eyes upon you
LONDON – Imagine a photograph of the London skyline – the houses of Parliament, the clock tower of Big Ben. Now add, floating in the sky above, a large pair of eyes looking at you.

Tom Arnold: A humanitarian disaster may be looming
The cost of food is a matter of life and death for the poorest people in the world. The United Nations estimates that at least 14 million people in the Horn of Africa are in urgent need of food aid due to conflict, dramatic rises in food costs and severe drought. A region-wide humanitarian disaster may be looming.

Talking Points
"What the Latino community wants today is respect . How do you tell the community that César Chávez isn't good enough when this city has a 60 percent Latino population?" – Mayor Pro Tem Elba Garcia, on renaming Ross Avenue for the late Mexican-American labor leader (The Dallas Morning News, Wednesday)

08/03/2008

Drake Bennett: Amber Alerts are more theater than child protection
The disappearance of Brooke Bennett last month seemed exactly the sort of case that the Amber Alert system was created for. The 12-year-old went missing from a convenience store in Randolph, Vt., and the next day state police issued an Amber Alert, Vermont's first.

Rod Dreher: The hate-filled P.Z. Myers
"It is finished," professor P.Z. Myers wrote on his popular science blog. You've heard the line before. Those were the last words Jesus Christ was said to have uttered on the cross.

Mariana Greene: Time to add vibrancy to downtown Dallas
Downtown Dallas is not hot, and it's not cool.

John L. Allen Jr.: Catholicism's commitment to birth control ban more solid than ever
Forty years ago this summer, Pope Paul VI provoked the greatest uproar against a papal edict in the long history of the Roman Catholic Church when he reiterated the church's ban on artificial birth control by issuing the encyclical Humanae Vitae. At the time, commentators predicted that not only would the teaching collapse under its own weight, but it might well bring the "monarchical papacy" down with it. Those forecasts badly underestimated the capacity of the Catholic Church to resist change and to stand its ground.

John McWhorter: Many overlook Bush's compassion toward black America
As the Bush administration draws to a close, the good-thinking consensus is that President Bush's record with black America can be summed up largely by the name of a certain hurricane. Indeed, by the end of his first term, it was considered a mark of sagacity to dismiss George W. Bush as numb to race issues.

Jeffrey Brown: The Long Emergency is here
James Howard Kunstler has long criticized the suburban way of life as ugly, wasteful and destructive of authentic community. But in recent years, he has proclaimed that suburbia would crash and burn because the one thing necessary to its sustenance – cheap and abundant fossil fuel – is fast disappearing.

Trey Garrison: It's not time to panic over peak oil
I thought I saw something familiar in James Howard Kunstler's doomsday peak oil prophecy that promises to wipe clean from Earth all the things that Mr. Kunstler can't stand. Sure enough there was – almost everything he predicts from peak oil is what he predicted a decade ago, only the villain – avenging angel? – was the Y2K bug.

James Howard Kunstler: An excerpt from his book 'The Long Emergency'
Carl Jung, one of the fathers of psychology, famously remarked that "people cannot stand too much reality." What you're about to read may challenge your assumptions about the kind of world we live in, and especially the kind of world into which events are propelling us. We are in for a rough ride through uncharted territory.

Talking Points
"I'm trying to save the planet ." – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, impatiently explaining why she's using parliamentary maneuvers to prevent GOP members from offering energy policy alternatives (Politico.com, Monday)

Point of Contact: Bob Barr
Our Q&A with Bob Barr, former Republican member of Congress and current Libertarian Party candidate for president

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