News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News

11/14/2008

John B. Judis: Race didn't decide the election
Race is the most enduring cleavage in American politics. It divided the authors of the Constitution and fueled the Civil War; afterward, Southern Democrats invoked white supremacy to maintain a one-party system. The success of the civil rights movement undermined that system; but after 1968, Republicans used a Southern strategy, employing both subtle and not-so-subtle racial appeals to lure away white voters from the Democratic Party.As social scientists have demonstrated, Americans no longer subscribe to the explicit racism that denied blacks the vote and refused them entry into the same public facilities as whites. But many white Americans still harbor degrees of conscious or unconscious resentment against blacks. In an analysis of the extensive surveys conducted by the American National Election Studies, polling analyst Scott Winship and I found that this kind of resentment remains, most commonly among men rather than women, the less well-to-do rather than the wealthy, those who lack a college degree, those who work at blue-collar rather than white-collar jobs and those who live in small towns in the Midwest and South.

Patricia J. Williams: Mutts like me
It was surely meant as a wry aside when, speaking about his daughters' search for a puppy, Barack Obama observed that most shelter dogs are "mutts like me." My first thought, however, was: "Ain't I a mutt, too?"

Robert Samuelson: The specter of deflation
Until recently, the idea that deflation – the decline of most prices – was possible, let alone a potential economic danger, seemed outlandish. If anything, inflation was the threat. Led by rising oil and food prices, it was increasing in most countries. But in the past two months, deflation has suddenly become conceivable and, though still a long shot, it's much more menacing than most people realize. The most urgent economic task for Barack Obama and other world leaders is to prevent the long shot from happening.

Robert Kaplan: Five silver linings for Obama
It's a truism that Barack Obama faces the most intractable set of challenges any president has faced in at least 50 years. But on a few issues in foreign and military policy, he's caught a break. Whether by luck, the effect of his election or President George W. Bush's stepped-up drive to win last-minute kudos, Mr. Obama will enter the White House with some paths to success already marked, if not quite paved.

Rod Dreher: Why Prop 8 victory was Pyrrhic for conservatives

Point of Contact: Angela Hunt
Our Q&A with District 14 City Council member Angela Hunt regarding a recent Dallas Morning News analysis of taxpayer-funded trips by her colleagues.

Talking Points
"I'm a market-oriented guy, but not when I'm faced with the prospect of a global meltdown ." – President George W. Bush, defending broad government intervention in the economy (Forbes.com, Friday)

11/07/2008

Whither the GOP?
After a sound defeat, conservatives must refocus, but on what? Points asked thoughtful Republicans from Dallas and beyond; here are their responses.

Rod Dreher: Here comes the conservative civil war
Ronald Reagan is dead, and he's not coming back. The intellectual poverty showed itself by the GOP primary candidates' ritualistic invocation of his name, as if saying it often enough would compensate for the lack of new ideas among the sorry bunch.

William McKenzie: GOP needs broader new brand
The GOP needs an energetic, forward-looking conservatism that reassures traditional Republicans that their party is reclaiming its fiscal roots while attracting independents and suburbanites who believe it has declined into a party of seething cultural warriors.

Keven Ann Willey: I hear it's Texan of the Year time
Shhhh. I was trying to listen very carefully. Was I was hearing voices? Were they just in my head? If I kept really quiet and listened really hard, I could swear the voices were discussing The Dallas Morning News 2008 Texan of the Year.

Michael Kinsley: Undivided government not as bad as you think
In fact, almost no one actually chooses divided government. What is the appeal? Why would people hope for it or vote for it? Why would Republican strategists choose this argument as John McCain's Hail Mary pass? The reason is fear of change.

Daniel Larison: How eternal optimism kills happiness
After the recent calamitous weeks of financial turmoil, five years of war in Iraq and a world haunted by the specter of catastrophic terrorism, it may seem bizarre to say that the greatest problem that we face as a people is the problem of excessive optimism.

Sophia Dembling: Is our obsession with luxury finally waning?
I don't object to luxury, per se. Nobody is immune to its seduction. But I am bothered by the relentlessness of the trend. Every time a place is polished to an opulent gleam, it becomes more like the next luxury place and a little bit of something is lost.

Joel Stein: Taking Detroit for a spin
I decided to figure out whether the government should bail out GM and Chrysler by testing their products. I'd wanted to run this same experiment on Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch but got bogged down when I couldn't figure out what either of them did.

David Brooks: Here's change I can believe in
I have dreams. And right now I'm dreaming of an administration led by Barack Obama, but which stretches beyond the normal Democratic base. It makes time for moderate voters, suburban voters, rural voters and even people who voted for the other guy.

Fareed Zakaria: A new way for Obama to govern
Barack Obama has won more than a presidential victory. He has gained a chance to realign the national landscape and to create a new governing ideology for the West.

Christopher Beam: Rahm Emanuel will bring discipline
Mr. Emanuel's nickname is "Rahmbo," and he is known for mowing down his opponents. Of course, steamrolling doesn't win you friends. But making friends isn't Mr. Emanuel's job. The chief of staff is tasked with making sure the trains run on time.

Point of Contact: State Rep. Rafael Anchía
Our Q&A with state Rep. Rafael Anchía, an Oak Cliff Democrat who was an early supporter of Sen. Barack Obama.

Talking Points
Some of the week's most interesting comments, from the president-elect to a defeated congressman to a Dallas schools trustee.

10/31/2008

Rod Dreher: Time for a stiff slug of forced austerity?
It wouldn't be such a bad thing to emulate the lessons of the Depression generation and learn to live far more frugally than we do.

Join in the Dallas Festival of Ideas
Next weekend, the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture launches its inaugural Festival of Ideas. It aims to bring together some of the nation's brightest thinkers to spend a weekend in conversation with the people of Dallas.

Herman Schwartz: Supreme Court at risk (the liberal view)
A McCain victory would threaten many important Supreme Court rulings we hold dear.

Terry Eastland: Supreme Court at risk (a conservative view)
Barack Obama has proved to be one of his party's most determined opponents of judicially conservative nominees.

Andrew Bacevich: The Age of Triumphalism is over
President Bush's "bring-'em-on" attitude after 9/11 merely reflected ideas and attitudes to which the majority of Americans already subscribed. But today those ideas and attitudes have become the equivalent of an oversize SUV: They no longer sell.

Amy Alexander: Rocking the black vote
Dallas DJ Tom Joyner is encouraging African-American listeners to engage in electoral politics.

Susan Nielsen: Admit it, you might be wrong
Here's a coping technique for the last couple days of the presidential race.

10/24/2008

Rod Dreher: Wendell Berry's time is now
In essays, poems and novels, the traditionalist agrarian writer, now 74, has stood for fidelity to family and community, self-sufficiency, localism, conservation and, above all, learning to get by decently within natural limits. Seems especially relevant in today's economic crisis.

Mark Davis: A moment of a thousand lifetimes
Neil Armstrong's steps on the moon were half his life ago. A quiet, guarded man at 78, he has shunned every beam of the limelight that could have swallowed him whole as the first man on the moon. He makes virtually no public appearances, but he did in Dallas, and I got to meet him.

Lawrence Lessig: Copyright and politics don't mix
Americans are using the extraordinary capacity of digital technologies to capture and respond to arguments with which they disagree. But this explosion in political speech has been met with a troubling response: the increasing use of copyright laws as tools for censorship.

Anne Applebaum: These days, it's easy to destabilize a nation
A month ago, in the first round of this global economic crisis, panicky rumors brought down banks. Now, with trillions of nervous dollars sloshing around the international markets, panicky rumors are bringing down countries.

Paul Waldman: A double standard for Democrats
We usually have to wait until after the Democrats emerge victorious at the polls for the Beltway finger-waggers to begin warning them not to be too ambitious, not to do too much, not to actually follow through on the proposals they presented to the voters.

10/26/2008

Point of Contact: Paul Sadler
Our Q&A with former Democratic State Rep. Paul Sadler of Henderson on Oliver Stone's "W."

Talking Points
"I think that we may be experiencing something that is vastly worse than we think it is." – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, leading financial analyst, on why the worst-case estimates on the economic crisis are too optimistic ("PBS News Hour," Tuesday)

10/17/2008

Alex Berenson: How free should a free market be?
Americans are fundamentally suspicious of government in a way Europeans are not. Anyone expecting a major expansion of Washington's powers – whether under a Barack Obama or John McCain administration – may be disappointed.

Lenny McAllister: Real election risk is voter suspicion, not fraud
Unfortunately young, black voters have purged ourselves of political diversity with a fervor that would be scary if it were applied to race relations. The scourging of black Republicans within the black community is not only misguided, it clearly misses the point.

Judith Warner: Chronicles of middle age, in which I attend a wedding
Indeed, I am an expert in the Youth of Today, because I've attended two weddings of twentysomethings in the past year. And the most recent was a first: It was the first time I was invited as a friend of the parents. Yes – a friend of the parents.

A storm unforeseen, always about to pass
Irrational exuberance? As the nation entered recession in the summer of 1929, there were still plenty of economists, business leaders and politicians who looked to the future with optimism.

Rod Dreher: Mad men in crazy economic times
Perhaps the cracking of our collective confidence in the wealth-generating system will be a salutary reckoning. Our riches and the liberties they purchased were not based on reality, but on putting full faith and credit in the false hope of the Everlasting Now.

Point of Contact: Harry Dent
Our Q&A with economist Harry S. Dent, who specializes in demography. His new book, "The Great Depression Ahead," will be out later this year.

Talking Points
Some of the week's most interesting comments, from a president to a comedian to an elementary school teacher victimized by a school district's incompetence.

10/19/2008