Plot to Blow Up Dallas Skyscraper Foiled

Not cool dude. Not cool at all:

Federal authorities arrested a 19-year-old Jordanian citizen whom they said placed an inactive car bomb today at Fountain Place, a 60-story skyscraper in downtown Dallas.

[...]

Authorities said that Smadi was under continuous FBI surveillance. Federal agents posed as members of an al-Qa’ida sleeper cell. Smadi, who was in the U.S. illegally, allegedly told them that he came to the country specifically to commit “Jihad for the sake of God.”

And indeed he was, as the criminal complaint filed against him makes clear. It appears that Smadi was acting entirely on his own, with only the aid of the FBI informants who were aware of his every act. Regardless, Smadi will now be in no position to network with authentic terrorists (or more serious amateurs at least) as he is likely to spend quite a bit of time in prison.

Wednesday Morning Round-Up

1. Iraq is moving ahead with a referendum on the Iraq-US security agreement. Such is the perils of democracy. Though Iraqi leaders would almost certainly prefer American troops stay in the country, they can't afford to oppose the referendum in an election year.

2. The Obama administration signals that they may move away from a policy of isolation with the regime in Burma. Since that hasn't worked to date, I think it's worth trying something new.

3. The Senate is moving ahead with a bill that would give the FDA the power to regulate tobacco products.

4. A profile of the guard killed in yesterday's shooting at the Holocaust Museum in D.C. It would be interesting to ask the murderer what he thought he might accomplish with his act, though fanatics always seem to have a grander view of their place in the world than most of the rest of us do. I visited the museum when I was at law school in D.C., and was surprised at the heavy security required to enter the museum. Now I understand.

5. Some local news: Dallas County meals on wheels needs help. They don't need your money, so much as they need volunteers to deliver meals so they won't have to pay drivers to do so. If you'd like to help, more information is here. Also, local residents know about the odd series of minor earthquakes the area has experienced in recent months. Scientists at SMU hope to get to the bottom of the mystery.

6. Two mentally disabled men in Texas have (separately) been given ridiculously long sentences for molesting young children. Even the jury in Hart's case was shocked by the 100-year sentence the man, reported to have an IQ of roughly 47, received. The question I would like to ask the prosecutors in this case is, if both men are reported to have IQs themselves that are roughly equivalent to those of young children, why are they sentenced as if they were fully functioning adults? And, the Hart story points out, repeat sex offenders routinely receive shorter sentences than these men did, which raises the question of whether there is some discrimination against the mentally disabled going on here, at least in my mind.

7. Perhaps you heard about the collapse of the Cowboy's practice facility in Valley Ranch, Irving, last month that paralyzed a Cowboys scouting assistant? It appears the Cowboys knew of a similar incident involving a canopy built by the contractor they hired. While this isn't exactly proof of negligence on the Cowboys part, it sure does make it easier to add the Cowboys to the lawsuit that I'm sure is being contemplated against the contractor.

Update on UNT Law

Not much more information here, but Texas Lawyer reports that, provided the school can get their own funding, they plan on opening their doors in 2011, with plans to eventually accommodate about 750 students total. That means the school won't turn out it's first grads until 2014, by which hopefully the legal industry will have recovered from the 2008-2009 downturn.

UNT Law to Dallas

The Texas House follows the lead of the Texas Senate in approving the creation of a new law school in Dallas, to be run by the University of North Texas:

Dallas will be home to the state's next public law school under a bill that won tentative House approval today.

However, budget woes mean funding for the law school remains uncertain, at least for the next two years. At that point, officials could come back to the Legislature again for funding, or seek tuition revenue bonds instead.

Still, North Texas lawmakers said simply getting approval for the University of North Texas Law School – which already passed the Senate – is a great achievement. This is the third legislative session in which they've pushed for it.

They've had to make Dallas' case over the requests of other regions for graduate schools, and over the recommendations of Texas' Higher Education Coordinating Board, which said there's no urgent need for a law school in North Texas.

North Texas lawmakers vehemently disagree. They say that while the region has two private law schools – at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth – there's no option for students who can't afford private school tuition.

The Dallas-Fort Worth area is the largest in the country without a public law school. Houston, meanwhile, has two, while Austin and Lubbock each have one.

Unfortunately, both sides have a legitimate point. In fact it's a bit of an understatement to say there's no "urgent need" for another law school right now; more law school graduates is only a bad thing for the legal community, which in the wake of the recession we're enduring is experiencing massive layoffs. At the same time it's true that Dallas could use a public law school, given that the only options are expensive private schools which aren't affordable to students who can only obtain federally subsidized student loans. And since the new school isn't actually funded yet, it'll be awhile before any budding attorneys are churned out. Maybe by then, the legal market will be in a growth cycle once more.

The Bush Propaganda Organ

The rest of the country may be done with Bush, but residents of Dallas can't get away from him. James Traub summarizes the controversy over the Bush library at SMU, and how Bush's underlings fought (successfully) to be as free of academic standards and accountability as the Bush administration was of law in general. It's unfortunate that Bush doesn't call Virginia his home, as either Regent or Liberty would surely welcome Bush's effort to rescue his reputation and they have less academic credibility to be concerned with losing anyway.

Dallas Police Officer Killed

A member of the Dallas PD was killed last night, attempting to serve a warrant in East Oak Cliff. Officer Norman Smith was an eighteen-year veteran of the department, and a member of the gang task force.

Offensive Yes, But Not The Way You Mean

Recently the Family Place, a Dallas non-profit organization that provides shelter and counseling to women and children who are victims of domestic violence, launched a campaign that features their ads on the side of DART buses. The ads are pretty bracing; one features a little girl with the text "One Day My Husband Will Kill Me." Attention getting, no doubt, but the attention to issue of family violence is long overdue. Of course, the fact that women and children are routinely beaten and killed by their husbands, boyfriends and partners is something that those with delicate sensibilities would prefer not to forced to think about as their driving to work (or well, anytime) so there have been quite a few complaints about the ads. And of course, there are a men who want to whine about the unfairness of these ads, such as this "father's advocate":

A domestic violence shelter's ad campaign on Dallas city buses has drawn the ire of a fatherhood advocate who said Monday that the campaign is "hostile to fathers."

One ad shows a smiling young girl wearing a tiara next to the caption, "One day my husband will kill me." Another features a boy next to the caption, "When I grow up, I will beat my wife."

A Dallas Area Rapid Transit spokesman said the agency has received nearly 1,000 form letters by e-mail since Sunday night from readers of advocate Glenn Sacks criticizing the ads and calling for DART to remove them.

"They are offensive to fathers and to families," Sacks said. "Imagine your average father going to work on a DART bus, working hard and supporting his kids. He has to go there and be insulted by these ads."

Sacks said a third of all domestic violence injuries are suffered by men, and that women are just as likely to strike men as men are to strike women.

"I think they should take the ads down," Sacks said. "Domestic violence is still a problem that affects women more than men, but it affects them both. I can guarantee you if the genders were reversed, there is no way DART would have accepted those ads."

So if you can follow that logic...because some men beat and kill their wives and children, ALL fathers everywhere should be insulted by these ads. And oh yeah, women beat men too so really it's not even fair. Frankly, anyone who thinks this is a jack-ass. I'm a father, and I'm not insulted by an ad that says men beat and kill women and children; I'm insulted by the fact that men beat and kill women and children and I'm offended and irritated to no small amount by men who think that opposing the stating of such a blunt fact is somehow "protecting" the rights of fathers. I don't really understand why this bozo thinks that ads that try to bring attention to this problem will cause men everywhere to be untreated fairly, even men who don't abuse their wives, girlfriends and kids. But if you can stand to read any of Sacks' blog, you'll see that it's mostly full of the kinds of rantings that are enjoyed by exactly the sort of men who have issues with women; a selection of post titles includes "Ok, it's not always the man who's the idiot in TV commercials", "Women remember every negative thing said about them", "Remember, women don't lie about rape and abuse" (highlighting the weird Ashley Todd case that has nothing to do with either) and "We take rape seriously but refuse to take allegations of rape seriously" (that's news to me.) Sacks isn't an "advocate" for father's issues; he's a zealot. He's not interested in fairness for father's; he wants to minimize and diminish the issue of family violence because he appears to believe that it's not that big of a problem. He's wrong, utterly and incredibly so. In 2006 alone there were almost 200,000 incidents of family violence in Texas, and a hundred and twenty women were killed by their partners. Despite his ridiculous assertion that women are just as likely to beat men as the reverse, nation-wide women are the victims of in a domestic violence incident 85% of the time, and 1,200 women a year are murdered by their partners. But nobody should launch a blunt ad campaign to inform the public of the severity of this problem because that's "offensive" to fathers. What's really offensive to fathers is weak and insecure men who have issues with women like Sacks and his readers. He and his letter-writing fanatics shouldn't be allowed to bully DART into removing these ads. If you agree, write to DART using their customer feedback form and tell them that these ads are valuable, that you support this ad campaign and that they shouldn't cave to pressure from zelots like Sacks. Or if you prefer a more direct approach (recommended) send an email or call directly the DART officials helpfully listed by Sacks on his blog (scroll about halfway down.) 

Dallas Con Defects

Wick Allison, Editor-in-Chief of our very own D Magazine, explains why he ardent conservatism leads him to endorse Barack Obama for President. I shouldn't say Allison defected, so much as he appears to have realized that his party defected from him:

Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.

“Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.

I may not agree with the man's principles, but his willingness to adhere to them is a mark of integrity. To be fair, many conservatives who are alarmed at the path George W. Bush and his version of the GOP have trod nonetheless can't bring themselves to vote for a Democrat. Their unwillingness doesn't make them less principled, but it does indicate that they perhaps misjudge the danger posed to our nation by their runaway party. Clearly, Allison does not.

I'm sure it would have been cheaper just to fix things in the first place

Dallas County hit with $900,000 verdict in jail neglect case

Dallas County was slapped Tuesday with a $900,000 verdict in a federal jail neglect case involving a prisoner who suffered a stroke while in custody after being denied proper medical care, the man's lawyer said.

Stanley Shepherd sued in 2005 in federal court, saying the county violated his constitutional rights by denying him basic medical care while he was in the Lew Sterrett Justice Center.

The jury issued its verdict Tuesday morning after deliberating since about 1 p.m. Monday, said Don Tittle, the attorney for Mr. Shepherd. The trial began last Monday. If lawyers' fees and interest are granted, the county could have to pay more than $1 million, he said.

Yep. This is not the first time the jail has been mentioned in connection with a lawsuit. Probably won't be the last.

What to do with all that trash?

Vaporize it!

A Florida county has grand plans to ditch its dump, generate electricity and help build roads -- all by vaporizing garbage at temperatures hotter than parts of the sun.

The $425 million facility expected to be built in St. Lucie County will use lightning-like plasma arcs to turn trash into gas and rock-like material. It will be the first such plant in the nation operating on such a massive scale and the largest in the world.

Supporters say the process is cleaner than traditional trash incineration, though skeptics question whether the technology can meet the lofty expectations.

The 100,000-square-foot plant, slated to be operational in two years, is expected to vaporize 3,000 tons of garbage a day. County officials estimate their entire landfill -- 4.3 million tons of trash collected since 1978 -- will be gone in 18 years.

As of yet, the facility hasn't yet been built, despite this project's declaration two years ago that it would be built within two years. Hey, that's government for you. Does that mean it's pie-in-the-sky science fiction? Nope. This technology actually isn't brand new and is in operation in other countries.

This article from Popular Science gives an in-depth look at an American company hoping to convince cities to use its plasma jet waste disposal technology.

Called plasma gasification, it works a little like the big bang, only backward (you get nothing from something). Inside a sealed vessel made of stainless steel and filled with a stable gas—either pure nitrogen or, as in this case, ordinary air—a 650-volt current passing between two electrodes rips electrons from the air, converting the gas into plasma. Current flows continuously through this newly formed plasma, creating a field of extremely intense energy very much like lightning. The radiant energy of the plasma arc is so powerful, it disintegrates trash into its constituent elements by tearing apart molecular bonds. The system is capable of breaking down pretty much anything except nuclear waste, the isotopes of which are indestructible. The only by-products are an obsidian-like glass used as a raw material for numerous applications, including bathroom tiles and high-strength asphalt, and a synthesis gas, or “syngas”—a mixture of primarily hydrogen and carbon monoxide that can be converted into a variety of marketable fuels, including ethanol, natural gas and hydrogen.

Perhaps the most amazing part of the process is that it’s self-sustaining. Just like your toaster, Startech’s Plasma Converter draws its power from the electrical grid to get started. The initial voltage is about equal to the zap from a police stun gun. But once the cycle is under way, the 2,200˚F syngas is fed into a cooling system, generating steam that drives turbines to produce electricity. About two thirds of the power is siphoned off to run the converter; the rest can be used on-site for heating or electricity, or sold back to the utility grid. “Even a blackout would not stop the operation of the facility,” Longo says.

It all sounds far too good to be true. But the technology works. Over the past decade, half a dozen companies have been developing plasma technology to turn garbage into energy. “The best renewable energy is the one we complain about the most: municipal solid waste,” says Louis Circeo, the director of plasma research at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “It will prove cheaper to take garbage to a plasma plant than it is to dump it on a landfill.” A Startech machine that costs roughly $250 million could handle 2,000 tons of waste daily, approximately what a city of a million people amasses in that time span. Large municipalities typically haul their trash to landfills, where the operator charges a “tipping fee” to dump the waste. The national average is $35 a ton, although the cost can be more than twice that in the Northeast (where land is scarce, tipping fees are higher). And the tipping fee a city pays doesn’t include the price of trucking the garbage often hundreds of miles to a landfill or the cost of capturing leaky methane—a greenhouse gas—from the decomposing waste. In a city with an average tipping fee, a $250-million converter could pay for itself in about 10 years, and that’s without factoring in the money made from selling the excess electricity and syngas. After that break-even point, it’s pure profit.

Someday very soon, cities might actually make money from garbage.

Of course there are naysayers and skeptics. I'm hoping they'll be proven wrong and we can get this technology under way very soon. Not only would it make trash into money, it would mean that we could actually do something with all that plastic in the landfills (styrofoam!!) and cities wouldn't have to deal with all the problems of trash. And of course, the energy bonus is a must in these times where energy is in such high demand.

In the meanwhile, some cities are trying out other options to make the best of what they've got. Dallas is implementing an advanced method to compost all the old trash in the landfill.

The city is currently preparing the first “cell” of the landfill for use in the project.

At 30 acres, the cell is little more than a giant trench with rising bluffs that overlook downtown.

Come October, the city will bury the first stretch of pipeline in the cell.

The pipes, which will be stacked in layers of seven across the cell, are the key to a system designed to feed microorganisms that produce gas, largely methane and carbon dioxide, as a byproduct.

One series of pipes will pump in water and landfill liquid, known as leachate. The moisture will saturate the trash, making a better food source for the naturally occurring organisms. As gas is produced, a second series of pipes will extract it using vacuum pressure. It will then be sent to an on-site processing plant where carbon dioxide will be separated from methane. The methane then will be transferred to an Atmos Energy pipeline.

“The theory behind this is nothing more than a big compost pile,” Mr. Smith said.

Only, you can’t turn a landfill over like you can a compost pile in the backyard. Instead, water has to leach slowly through the trash.

As it does so, “the microbes go crazy,” Mr. Smith said.

Methane gas, the main component of natural gas, is produced at two to three times or more the rate that it would be in a traditional landfill.

As it stands, McCommas already captures about 5.6 million cubic feet of methane a day, which is piped to an on-site plant operated by the independent company, Dallas Clean Energy. Some of the city’s estimates show that by 2012, output could exceed 20 million cubic feet per day.

That will not only generate more fuel for use in and around Dallas, it will add a pot of revenue to the city coffers of $30,000 to $50,000 a month, officials estimate.

Very cool.

Legal Action in Irving

Things are still happening in Irving, although I haven't posted anything on it recently. There are a couple of lawsuits in the works. One is against the City Council's at-large election system and the other is against the school district's at-large election system. Here's the story. The ACLU has been involved in a few lawsuits against at-large election systems, and evidently such systems have been overturned before, especially notably in Dallas in 1988.

One of the tests that any proposed single member district plan has to pass is whether or not it would produce minority leaders. That may be hard to pull off, although while this fight seems to be mainly between Hispanic activists and the city leadership, it should be noted that Irving has a historic African American community. It should be noted that at present the city council is all white, despite a slightly more than 10% African-American community and a 31% Hispanic community as of the 2000 census. Whites make up 64% of the population as of 2000, but control all 9 council seats (including the mayor).

Now one needn't presuppose that an all-white council cannot govern a multi-cultural, multi-racial city fairly and equally, doing justice for all. By and large, the kind of overt racial politics of the Old South are gone. While the focus of some council members on immigration issues evokes suspicion of race-based hostility, the dominant forces of the council are those that are concerned with keeping Irving's economic growth and renovation on track. However, just because people are not acting with racist motives it doesn't mean their efforts don't negatively impact certain groups more than others. Again, as the great apartment debate goes on, we see that the city is cracking down on apartments which appeal to a certain class of people, many of whom happen to be poorer Hispanic people. It might be that if they were free to elect a council member who was looking out for their interests there would be more projects focusing on the improvement of living conditions for Irving's poorest instead of redeveloping those areas into attractions for people with money.

Some people look at Dallas and charge that the single-member districts work to the detriment of the city as a whole, since the council members will work for their own interests (namely the good of their electorate). As is pointed out though, corruption didn't begin with the ending of the at-large elections; it was already well established.

As regards the school district, the numbers are a little more convincing. Irving's school populace is roughly 67% Hispanic, yet not one Hispanic serves on the school board. Two Hispanic candidates were defeated in the elections. It's not like the whites got together and said, "Hey, we can't let those damn Mexicans get on to the school board" or anything. It's just that with at-large elections, the white majority holds sway, even though they represent a third of the school populace. There's got to be something wrong with that.

It'll be interesting when these cases go to court.

Dallas Killing

A Dallas double-homicide (technically it was in Irving, but whatever) has gotten unusual attention in the national blogosphere. Unfair Park chronicles how the murders, involving a Muslim father allegedy killing his two teenage daughters, have prompted various right-wing blogs to immediately jump to unsubstantiated, baseless and more than slightly racist conclusions. Though it's unusual to see the right-wing blogosphere surveyed on Unfair Park (which covers local issues), it's not at all unusual for the right-wing blogosphere to seize on any supposed outrage committed by a Muslim to condemn an entire religion and make themselves look like morons ("Dallastan"...seriously?) and assholes in the process.

Dallas' compact car spots are too compact?

This is one of those situations where I, who made the smart choice and bought a small, fuel-efficient car, get shafted by people who insist on buying giant road hogs (from the DMN):

Now, after years of complaints from drivers and developers, the Dallas City Council appears poised to do something next year about the narrow spaces that so often crop up between behemoth SUVs.

So...instead of punishing people for being stupid, the city decides to cave and encourage people to keep driving their oversize monsters? Well, let's be fair and see what they have to say:

"I have a small car, and it doesn't even fit in these spaces. It's virtually impossible to get in and out of the car," said council member Angela Hunt, whose four-door Audi tests the 7 ½ -foot width of a compact space.

Whine, whine, whine. Is it really so difficult to walk that extra 50 feet from the normal sized parking spots? And all those people who drive the extra large vehicles could usually use the exercise!

A standard parking space is a foot wider. But sometime in the late 1980s, no one seems to recall exactly when, the city adopted a policy that it hoped would help solve growing parking woes and nudge people toward buying smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.

Like so many programs that start out with good intentions, however, it didn't quite work out that way.

No argument there. I think that's a fairly worthless incentive. But it is a perq for those of us who did buy small cars that compact car spacing is sometimes available simply because people can't fit their bigass trucks and SUVs in the spots.

"The reality of the marketplace is that even the hybrids are big," said Theresa O'Donnell, director of the city's Development Services department.

What, are you kidding me? My car in that space has almost a foot of space on either side inside the stripes. A car of similar width parked on one side leaves 2 feet of space to open the door for both cars. I don't see a problem with that.

And to cite one final example showing the absolute absurdity of the opposition's point, I'll also share this quote:

Mr. Plum and three friends were grabbing a quick takeaway lunch, but his friend Patrick Garcia had a tough time squeezing his Dodge Durango into one of the compact-car spots.

Mr. Garcia said that when he goes out in central Dallas "you're forced pretty much to valet."

Yeah, uh, dude, it's called "compact-car" for a reason. Or perhaps he doesn't understand that a Dodge Durango is not compact. My point is this: the compact car parking is not the problem. The problem is people insisting that all things be made convenient for them. The article goes on to say that the city is probably going to change ordinances to allow fewer parking spaces and require more large-width parking spots. But they also say that the city expects the issue to become less of a problem as developments lead toward more walkable shopping areas. All I'm saying is, people need to get what they deserve for insisting on driving the biggest vehicles they can buy, so don't take away the one time I get the advantage over them.

Eyewitness Procedures Changing at Dallas PD

We've already written here about the danger of unreliable and mistaken eyewitness identifications of criminal suspects. Fortunately it appears that the Dallas Police Dept. has also recognized the problem and is hoping to help fix the problem by participating in a national study of which eyewitness identification methods are the most reliable:

The $300,000 federally funded study will be led by the Washington-based Urban Institute beginning in January. Officials have also been in discussions with Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., as well as other cities, about participating in the study.

"Dallas ought to be a laboratory – a poster child for reform," said state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, who unsuccessfully tried to get the state Legislature to set up a working group to come up with a model policy for lineup procedures.

Earlier this year, in part as a result of the continuing stream of exonerations, Dallas police officials formalized their procedures on conducting photo lineups. Individual units previously had their own policies.

The new policy sets out stringent procedures for conducting lineups, including that the people presented in the lineup "display similar physical characteristics" to the suspect and that the administrator tell the victim or witness that the lineup may or may not contain the suspected guilty party.

The policy also states that only under "very limited circumstances" should a victim or witness be shown a second lineup and that it should only be done with approval from the detective's supervisor and after consultation with the district attorney's office.

"Everybody in law enforcement wants to use the best system," said Dallas police Assistant Chief Ron Waldrop, commander of the criminal investigations bureau. "Once it's been shown scientifically which is the best system, I think everybody will move to that system."

Amen to that. Police-like everyone-want the guilty to go to jail, and the innocent to go home. Unfortunately law enforcement can be slow to recognize problems with their procedures, which can lead to the reverse happening. It's good to hear that the Dallas PD want to get this right, and are willing to take the time and the trouble find out how to go about it.

"Screaming Eagle"

A local soldier makes good. And he's soon to have a memoir out, detailing his experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think I'll be picking that one up.

Holy smokes!

I admit this story falls short of the mostly lofty standards of TWM, but come on, the Southwestern Industrial Gas fire is just cool! I know, this post has no redeeming moral value and is pure fluff unless somehow this blog makes the first mention of it you've heard today and you were just about to head out on I-30 or I-35 through Dallas. Still, I am a Dallas native and anytime something explodes in my city I'm going to pay attention. Check out the best video here, and read more about the story here. Traffic is almost always bad in the mixmaster, but this has really torn Dallas a new one!

Dallas Culture

It's always nice to be noticed, though that bridge thing is sort of a sore point.

Dallas County Jails Settle Lawsuit

Via Unfair Park, we learn that the Dallas County Commissioners Court has settled an inmate lawsuit that touched off a U.S. Dept. of Justice investigation of the Dallas County Jails:

Voting unanimously, the commissioners agreed to pay the families of three county inmates $950,000, an extraordinary sum for this type of litigation. Typically, convicted criminals don’t make the most sympathetic victims. But this case was the exception. In 2004, Mims suffered severe renal failure nearly two weeks after jailors left Mims without water for more than 10 days, as punishment for flooding his cell. A subsequent internal affairs investigation concluded that Mims had slipped “through the cracks.” The jail’s medical provider at the time, the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston (UTMB), was also to blame.

Although Mims had been found to be mentally incompetent to stand trial over a period of 25 years, having been transferred between Terrell State Hospital and the county jail during that time, UTMB’s psychiatric staff failed to follow through on three separate referrals from medical personnel to evaluate him. They also failed to provide his prescribed medication. But because of a loophole in its contract with the county, UTMB was not liable for fatal errors.

That's just one example. Here are some others that we've profiled. But as the folks at the Observer point out, things aren't getting much better:

Although Sheriff Jim Bowles ran the jail when Mims and the other inmates were incarcerated, there’s little evidence that things have improved under his replacement Lupe Valdez. A recent U.S. Department of Justice report excoriated both the medical care and the management of the jail, while the Texas Commission of Jail Standards has flunked the facility ever year Valdez has been in office.

“Things have improved, but it’s marginal — they still have a long way to go,” says attorney David Finn, who, along with Fort Worth lawyers Mark Haney and Jeff Kobs, represented Mims. “If they don’t clean up their act quickly, there is a very good chance the DOJ will sue Dallas County and place that jail under federal oversight for five to 10 years.”

The sooner, the better.

This day in Texas history...WTF?

The new Dallas Cowboys head coach is named, and it is Wade Phillips. I think if you're going to hire somebody who will only be known by those who have an NFL season pass on tv, he at least ought to be young. We've gone from the well-known mediocre to the unknown mediocre. I don't understand this at all, but then I'm not a guy with an NFL season pass. Oh well.

In the only news that could possibly overshadow the selection of the head coach for the Dallas Cowboys, Anna Nicole Smith is dead. You may rightly ask why anybody cares, and why I'm even mentioning it. Obviously, it's because as soon as you heard you went online and looked up a bunch of Anna Nicole Smith pictures. Don't lie.

Seriously, I can't ignore news like this when Texans are intrigued over things like who'll win American Idol. I could spend yet more time lamenting the Iraq war, lamenting the lack of coverage over ill-advised American intervention in Somalia, the disappearance of New Orleans, or even Rick Perry's love of mercury, but honestly, the number of searches this post is going to garner is too tempting!

By the way, on this day in Texas history:

Violence presages end of notorious red-light district
On this day in 1887, "Longhair Jim" Courtright, former town marshall of Fort Worth, was killed in a gunfight with Luke Short. This was one of the most famous gunfights in western history--and, contrary to the movie legends, one of the few face-to-face shootouts. The duel was the first of two events that drew increased hostile attention to the hive of brothels and bars known as Hell's Half Acre. The second was the discovery of a murdered prostitute named Sally, two weeks later. Before these violent occurrences, even legitimate businesses had resisted reform of the Acre because of the money it brought in. But the deaths of Courtright and Sally brought renewed and ultimately successful cleanup efforts.

Is the library your mommy?

Busy parents Bill and Troy McKenzie said the public library was a place they had come to trust.

"Our kids...have grown up in the library," Mrs. McKenzie said. "I thought the library was kid-friendly."

However, when the family returned home from the Martin Luther King library branch in South Dallas last week, they started watching Black Shampoo, which was the movie their 8-year-old daughter Gabby checked out. The movie had sexual situations, full frontal nudity and foul language.

"I would categorize that movie as porn," Mrs. McKenzie said. "Porn should go where it belongs, and it's not in the libraries,"

The library did pull Black Shampoo from its shelves, but didn't bend on McKenzie's bigger concern, which is letting children take home "R" rated films.

"If there is an 'R' rating on this movie, why should somebody at the age of six, seven, eight, nine and 10 be allowed to rent it out?" she said.

Branch manager Lynne Craddock said none of the 18 Dallas libraries deny access to "R" rated films, and parents should assume that responsibility when they get their child a card.

"The policy of the library states that the parent is ultimately responsible for their child whenever they want to check out materials," she said.

The first problem is that these people think that some material they don't like shouldn't be available for anyone. The fundamental flaw with that is that people aren't going to agree on what's offensive and what's not. Not even in general. Some years back I witnessed a lady telling the librarian at one of our branches that we needed to get rid of "A Clockwork Orange" because it has a rape scene. She was offended, and didn't feel it should be on our shelves. Well, what about any of the movies we have with graphic sex or violence? There are people who object to those. Should we take them all off? You'll be able to find people who object to just about anything we have. Some people don't want books that teach evolution on our shelves. Some people don't want us to have books by the Marquis de Sade. Some people don't think we should have A Catcher in the Rye, or Huck Finn. If we just pulled everything people objected to, pretty soon we'd have nothing left but a couple of cds by Raffi. It's not appropriate for us to limit our selection simply for that reason. We're paid for with public funds, which is exactly why we should have materials that appeal to every citizen.

Then, of course, there are those who think we should evaluate the content as to decide what's appropriate for someone to read or watch. Well, adults have the right to watch or read anything they want. While you might argue that children don't, well, the public library is not the arbiter of anyone's rights or freedoms. If the parents don't want kids watching or reading something, it's the parent's job to keep them from getting that material. The library not only shouldn't be burdened with the responsibility of judging what's right or wrong for kids, it shouldn't have that power. Some parents send their kids to the library to pick up movies for the parents! If we had any restrictions on what their kids could get, they'd be pissed off. Well, that's their call, as parents.

The reporter compares the library to the movie theater or Blockbuster, where they enforce age restrictions. Well, that's ignorant. They're happy to take your money and your kids' money, and if that means restricting by age, so be it. They don't have any worries about misusing public funds, and they'll take your money and not watch your kids any more than the library will. The problem here is that parents have gotten so lazy they don't take responsibility for what movies their kids go see, or what dvds they buy. And they pay for that privilege at these stores. But the library isn't a daycare anymore than Blockbuster is, and if you don't want your kid getting R-rated movies, well, get your ass over there and make sure they don't get any. Is that too hard? The parents in this story admitted that they weren't there watching over what their kids were checking out, but instead of saying, "We need to be more watchful", they said the library was at fault for making questionable materials available to their children. Yeah, sure, make everyone but yourself responsible for your kids.

I have to make this point explicitly clear: the library is not a daycare. The librarians are not paid or expected to supervise your kids or keep them safe. They get a Masters of Library Science to be able to effectively put together collections and programs that entertain and educate the public, both kids and adults. If you want somebody to wipe your kid's ass, you get a babysitter, not a librarian. The library is not designed with unsupervised children in mind, and even if it were there's no way we have the money for the staff to watch them all because most people wouldn't vote for tax increases for necessary services like water and sewer, much less library personnel.

Final point: DVD players and TV sets from the last decade all have parental controls built in. You don't want your kids watching hardcore sex, USE THE CONTROLS. Quit trying to make it other people's problem.