OPINION: Editorials

Hits and Misses

08:23 AM CST on Saturday, November 18, 2006

HITS

What made Emmitt Smith's Dancing with the Stars victory so sweet was not just that his hard work paid off or that he charmed the show's fans. It's also that this man, immensely talented in one very specialized field, was willing to try something new. And not just try in the "give it a shot" sense, but with all his heart, soul and energy. He mentioned several times in the show's final two episodes this week that he made sacrifices in his latest competitive quest, and that kind of passion -- not just the fancy footwork -- is inspirational.

Austin's Congress Avenue Bridge will be renamed in honor of the late former Gov. Ann Richards, a fitting tribute in light of the divides she sought to bridge in her public service.

Local lawmakers who've been at the forefront of a prime open-government issue are ready to take on the fight again during next year's Legislature. State Sen. John Carona and Reps. Dan Branch, Brian McCall and Tony Goolsby have pre-filed measures to require mandatory on-the-record votes for all nonceremonial legislation. Austin Rep. Elliot Naishtat also has filed early legislation. A Carona bill cleared the Senate in 2005; Branch & Co. will need some extra muscle in the House next year.

Even if they were acting out of self-interest, you have to admire the group of health insurers that stepped forward this week with a way to cover more uninsured Americans. The proposal by the American Health Insurance Plans group blends the GOP's preference for tax credits with Democrats' preference for existing programs like Medicaid. The group hopes this one-two appr! oach wil l help more of the 47 million uninsured Americans find health insurance. Perhaps they feared the new Democratic Congress would stick it to private insurers, but the motivation doesn't matter as much as the discussion itself. Anyone have a better idea?

Since our office is downtown and some of us are known to hit the bricks, we will step more carefully now that the city of Dallas has started installing 40 wireless surveillance cameras at 31 locations. We'll also feel a bit safer. The Meadows Foundation deserves kudos for an $840,000 donation to help fund the project for two years, which could yield valuable evidence for prosecution. Remember, downtown miscreants, the cameras are rolling 24 hours a day and monitored by current and retired Dallas police. Watch yourselves.

The blue team may be the talk of Washington, but the red team still needs to field a set of leaders. So we were glad to see Senate Republicans select Texas' own Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn to serve as part of the GOP leadership team. We hope they will look at the election results and see what happens when the party plays only to its strongest supporters. (It gets only their votes.) A more inclusive GOP message could heal a lot of wounds, and their leadership can help.

We're glad to hear that negotiations over autism legislation held hostage by U.S. Rep. Joe Barton are picking up momentum. The bill includes research funds for autism, a neurobiological disorder that affects 1 in 166 U.S. children. No doubt, putting the bill back on the table is good news for many families.

MISSES

Apparently tired of looking for the "real killers" on the golf course, O.J. Simpson will discuss in a soon-to-be-published book and a two-part television interview how he would have committed the crime-of-the-century murders of his ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend Ronald Goldman. Billed as a hypothetical account, it's not a confession, just the former football star's surreal take on how he would have done it -- if he had done it, which, of course, he says he didn't. Hey O.J. -- just hypothetically -- suppose we don't watch the interview or buy the book?

An entire hurricane season has almost come and gone, yet we're still hearing about how officials mismanaged funds from Katrina and Rita. This week, we learned that hundreds of modular homes, most of them at an Army depot in Texarkana and meant for people left homeless by the 2005 hurricanes, were damaged beyond repair. They were just sitting there unprotected. Homeland Security promises now to "only order modular housing units if their potential uses have been clearly identified and storage sites are available that provide adequate protection." Great idea. If officials had thought of it earlier, they wouldn't have wasted $3 million to $4 million of taxpayer money.