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Dr. Laura gets a TV show-but at what cost?

After many months of controversy over her anti-gay statements to millions of radio listeners, Dr. Laura ascended the airwaves to an even higher and mightier pulpit. Her crusade has reached televisionland.

Over the summer, Schlessinger held onto the misconceptions that led her to describe homosexuality as "a biological error" manifested by "deviants." Meanwhile, she tried some damage control -- but couldn't let go of her bigotry.

In a July interview with Time magazine, she insisted: "Not being able to relate normally to a member of the opposite sex is some kind of error. I do not see that as insulting at all. It is a statement of biological fact."

Actually, it's nothing of the kind. Dr. Laura is about as scientific as William Jennings Bryan was at the Scopes trial, thumping the Bible as a backbeat for old prejudices. Fortunately, these days, most clergy are far more enlightened.

End social promotion -- defeat Bush?

AUSTIN, Texas -- OK, let's try this again verrrrry slowly, class -- like Al Gore in his Mr. Rogers mode.

George W. Bush on education, supposedly his strong point, is making no sense. He is getting it all wrong and is dumbing down what could have been a really useful debate on how to fix the public schools.

For political reasons, he needs to claim that his little nostrums have more to do with the improvement in Texas public schools than the fundamental reforms made long before he showed up.

This is depressing and dangerous, and could well lead to our once again falling for some cute little quick-fix slogan (higher standards, end social promotion, vouchers, accountability, back to basics, phonics, school choice), while ignoring the real basics (smaller class sizes, more preschool programs, spending more on poor kids and better classroom equipment -- not to mention fixing the roofs and the windows).

God talk

Remember the days when liberal groups screamed with fear on a daily basis about the onrush of the Christian right and raised millions by playing on the fear that Pat Robertson would seize power and force God's way down the throats of all freedom-loving Americans?

Earlier this week in Peoria, Ill., Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman was at it again. He said religion should be part of public life and politicians have an obligation to make America's "moral future better by the tone we set." Just over a week earlier, on Aug. 27 at the Fellowship Chapel Church in Detroit, Lieberman declared, "The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion." Lieberman nominated the Judeo-Christian God as the basis of morality and the spiritual engine of our society. "As a people," he said, "we need to reaffirm our faith and renew the dedication of our nation and ourselves to God and God's purpose."

Escaping from Blackness: Racial identity and public policy

The greatest struggle of any oppressed group in a racist society is the struggle to reclaim collective memory and identity. At the level of culture, racism seeks to deny people of African, American Indian, Asian and Latino descent their own voices, histories and traditions. From the vantagepoint of racism, black people have no “story” worth telling; that the master narrative woven into the national hierarchy of white prejudice, privilege and power represents the only legitimate experience worth knowing.

Who is Joe Lieberman?

The major political surprise of this summer was Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore’s selection of Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman as his running mate. Lieberman, a socially conservative Orthodox Jew, had first become widely known nationally as the most prominent Senate Democrat to denounce President Clinton’s misconduct in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The media, for the most part, was overwhelmingly positive with the selection of the first Jewish candidate on a major party national ticket. The New York Post, for example, declared that Lieberman was “Miracle Man Joe.” The Miami Herald summed up the general media consensus: “Gore’s VP Pick Historic.”

What was most unusual was the Republican response to Lieberman, which was also extremely positive. William Bennett, Reagan’s former secretary of education declared that even “conservatives acknowledged that the vice president had made a wise choice by picking a man of principle, intelligence and civility.” Republicans immediately noted that the Connecticut Senator was ideologically closer on many issues to Texas Governor George W. Bush than to Gore.

A mostly forgotten labor tale of 19th century

When I took Texas history in public school, we weren't taught one single thing about the labor movement in this state -- but we did learn the name of the horse that Sam Houston rode at the Battle of San Jacinto, which happened to be Saracen.

So you may not have heard of the Great Southwest Strike of 1886, the largest and most important clash between management and organized labor in 19th-century Texas history.

In Bruceville, 16 miles south of Waco, is a monument to Martin Irons, who led the Great Strike. Even allowing for the florid sentimentality of 19th-century orators, Irons seems to have been an uncommonly good man, gentle and warm, and a natural leader.

He was born in Scotland in 1827 and immigrated to the United States at the age of 14. He worked as a machinist for the railroads all over the Southwest; he was a member of the machinists union and the Knights of Pythias. He was also interested in the Grange, the populist farmers movement.

When watchdogs have a blind spot - for themselves

I've just read a stunning new report titled "Off the Record: What Media Corporations Don't Tell You About Their Legislative Agendas." Unfortunately, the information in it will not be coming to a television set near you.

In the hours after release of the report, the big cable TV networks were devoting lots of live coverage to breathless stories about tragic deaths that occurred years ago. Yet again, mighty news operations focused on JonBenet Ramsey and Princess Diana. And none of the outlets were more transfixed with those stories than CNN -- owned by Time Warner, the largest media conglomerate.

As it happens, Time Warner figures prominently in "Off the Record," a carefully researched document from the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity. "No media corporation lavishes more money on lobbyists or political campaigns than Time Warner," the report explains. "The media giant spent nearly $4.1 million for lobbying last year, and since 1993 has contributed $4.6 million to congressional and presidential candidates and the two political parties."

Before Texas spends more on prisons, let's think

AUSTIN, Texas -- The people of Texas should be gearing up to pitch a fit come January.

They want us to pay for more prisons. MORE prisons. We just finished the biggest prison-spending spree in history. Starting in 1991, we spent billions to more than double the number of beds in the system. They promised us that we wouldn't have to build another prison for at least a generation. And now they want more.

And there's one other point. This. Is. Not. Working.

The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that Texas has more of its people imprisoned than any other state -- 163,190. That's more than California, which has 13 million more people than Texas does.

The study, released this week by the Justice Policy Institute, not only finds Texas with the highest incarceration rate in the country -- it also finds the incarceration rate among young African-American men 63 percent higher than the national average. Nearly one out of three young black men is under some form of criminal justice control in Texas.

The Pentagon auctions the presidency

In A.D. 193, the Roman Praetorian Guard murdered the Emperor Pertinax, and proceeded to auction off the imperial throne to the highest bidder. Until this year, the most strenuous emulation of this feat by the U.S. military came in 1980, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff took bids on the White House from the ramparts of the Pentagon. Despite fierce bidding by Jimmy Carter, the Chiefs had no hesitation in accepting Republican pledges and in proclaiming that only Ronald Reagan would keep the Empire strong.

We are in the climactic moments of the 2000 auction. In mid-August, Frank Gaffney Jr., a Defense Department official in the Reagan years, relayed the Praetorians' reserve price on the imperial throne: "A nation with a projected $1.9 trillion budget surplus can afford consistently to allocate a minimum of 4 percent of its gross domestic product to ensure its security."

Oral arguments

AUSTIN, Texas -- Texas Health Commissioner Reyn Archer. Ooops.

Maybe we should just make that a standing headline. As you know, Archer, Gov. W. Bush's pick for the job, has this tendency to put his foot in it. He's often disastrously frank, which is sort of endearing.

Last time he got into trouble was for saying Texas has a high teen-age pregnancy rate because the state's Hispanic population does not believe that "getting pregnant is a bad thing."

The Alan Guttmacher Institute says that Texas Hispanics have a higher pregnancy rate than Anglos or blacks, but that the white rate is among the highest in the nation, too.

All this upset the Mexican-American community.

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