Unca Darrell

JANUARY 28 / It's a sad day for the Houston Chronicle and . . .

. . . for Houston. 

THE ONLY ADULT on the Houston Chronicle editorial board, David Langworthy, retires this month. He is a Republican moderate -- the only representative of either category on the board.

When in recent years you have read a common-sense editorial about almost anything, he's the one who wrote it. Or so I, lacking inside information, believe.

This I certainly know: He's a good, smart, decent man, and the newspaper will be a worse place, far worse, for his leaving.

In the lexicon of the Chronicle, Mr. Langworthy was the house conservative. Sadly, he . . . 

JANUARY 27 / As we await what Rush is usefully describing as . . .

. . . the State-of-the-Coup Address -- President Barack Hussein Obama's national platform for announcing his plan to ignore Congress, the Constitution, and the law so he can fundamentally transform America by executive decree -- here's the reprint of a classic Unca D post that illustrates why we can expect no opposition from the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle. From August 2012:

JANUARY 25 / My next-door neighbor is no longer . . .

. . . the bull goose moose in charge of Children's Emergency Relief International, Inc. ("CERI"), but the agency still does great work for poor and deprived children around the world. Check here for details. Let's send . . .

JANUARY 24 / Ferguson on Cowperthwaite on statistics

A lovely essay, worth your time: Andrew Ferguson, "No Statistics, No Mischief," weeklystandard.com, January 27, 2014 (cover date).

It is about John Cowperthwaite, "a lifelong government bureaucrat who should be lionized by anyone who loathes and fears bureaucracies." 

Mr. Cowperthwaite was financial secretary of Hong Kong in the 1960s. "By the time he left office . . . the number of Hong Kongers in poverty had dropped by two-thirds, average wages had risen 50 percent, and Hong Kong had gone from one the poorest places on earth to one of  the richest."

Asked once what the greatest and farthest-reaching policy of his tenure was, he replied: . . . 

JANUARY 23 / As a public service, Unca D answers . . .

. . . the question Chronicle columnist Bill King could not get the educrats to answer.

How much should we be spending on public education? I put that question to the Texas Association of School Boards representatives during our conversation, and to my surprise they said they did not know. . . . [If] someone is going to sue the state claiming it has not adequately funded public education, it seems they [read he or he or she] ought to have some position on how much would be adequate. (Bill King, "It's time to simplify our school finance system," Houston Chronicle, January 23, 2013)

The TASB would not answer that question because the only honest answer it or any other representative of public education can ever give is . . . 

JANUARY 22 / UPDATED: No time to blog, but who can resist . . .

. . . laughing as the Houston Chronicle goes into full damage control for the rapidly fraying . . .

JANUARY 18 / Star of Hope Mission does . . .

. . . important work. You can help. Send a check to . . . 

JANUARY 12 / Conrad Black on "deafening cultural quietism"

OUR SECULAR leaders in the West, torn between adherence to the agnosticism (or atheism) of most of our media and a mere desire not to offend the fashion, have conspicuously failed . . .

JANUARY 11 / It's not that Bridgegate is not a legitimate story

It is.

What's illegitimate is . . .

JANUARY 10 / The thing to read

KIMBERLY Strassel, "Harry Reid's Senate Shutdown," wsj.com, January 10, 2013, wherein the author convincingly demonstrates that the Do-Nothing Congress is, in truth . . .