Making America great — for everyone

It’s been quite a week for police news.

The lead story Wednesday on the front page of the San Antonio Express-News was headlined, “Trump says S.A.’s mayor should be feeling shame.”

The reference, of course, was to a phalanx of San Antonio police who were assigned to guard Trump during a recent fundraising trip here.

Until you talk to your daughters, you have no idea

Normally I don’t use this forum to comment on national events or controversies.

They draw plenty of comment without me.

Besides, San Antonio and Texas offer fertile fields that are much less plowed.

But now comes the release of the extraordinary tape in which Donald Trump is caught celebrating the fact, he says, that as a “star” he can do anything he wants with women without fear of retribution, including grabbing their crotches.

But I’m not here to talk about Trump.

Voter fraud and suppression are Texas traditions

In this year’s controversy over Texas’ voter ID laws are met two of the state’s great electoral traditions.

One is the suppression of votes of minority citizens.

The other is election fraud.

Should we be scared of Syrians moving to Texas?

Whenever Gov. Greg Abbott, Sen. Ted Cruz or presidential nominee Donald Trump warns of the dangers of admitting Syrian refugees into Texas and the United States, a curious thing happens to me.

I hear in my head the national anthem.

A swell of patriotism?

No, a clang of irony. I’ll explain in a bit.

How election laws require some logistic gymnastics

At least twice a decade I’m glad I’m not Jackie Callenen.

This year, I’m particularly glad.

Callenen is in charge of running the November election, in which more than half a million citizens of Bexar County will help elect a president, five members of the House of Representatives, 11 members of the Texas Legislature, 14 judges, a sheriff and a few other officials.

I am not foolish enough to predict who will win all these offices, but I will predict this:

The mechanics of the election will not go perfectly.

Gated community planned in historic neighborhood

First let me admit my bias. I consider the term “gated community” to be suspect from the start. Sort of like “gentlemen’s club.”

I don’t think establishments where men pay to watch women take off their clothes, gyrate around poles and perhaps give lap dances cater exclusively or even mainly to gentlemen.

And while there may be a few gated real estate developments that actually develop into communities, I think the basic form constitutes an assault on communities.

Mexican-American scholars in uproar over textbook

Two years ago, Mexican American educators, activists and officials persuaded the Texas State School Board to seek submissions for a textbook on Mexican American history.

They couldn’t have imagined that this Tuesday they would be traveling to Austin for a hearing on the sole submission, a 507-page tome titled “Mexican American Heritage.”

Or that they would be asking the state board to toss it in the trash bin.

Why has Baylor continually mishandled rape cases?

Last year’s rape scandals at Baylor University focused on what appeared to be a pattern of protecting football players from the consequences of criminal acts.

An investigation this year commissioned by the university was so troubling that it led to the firing of legendary football coach Art Briles and the demotion of University President Ken Starr.

But Baylor’s mishandling of rape cases for years has gone beyond the protection of football players.

Kaine says he and Clinton taking Texas seriously

Vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine visited Austin this week and stirred the hearts of some Democratic activists by telling them that he and Hillary take Texas seriously.

"This team, the Clinton-Kaine team, we are serious about Texas," Kaine said, speaking to a gathering of about 300 local campaign officials and volunteers.

"We are very serious because we know the kind of work that you do.”

The Texas Tribune reported that he amplified the thought:

The right way to create magnet schools

Recent announcements of two new magnet schools in the San Antonio Independent School District make me wonder why the English language doesn’t give us a word that means the opposite of nostalgia.

Let me take you back two decades, to the first time the school district established a set of magnet schools — at least that’s what they called them.

It was not the most glorious period in the district’s history.

Congressman investigates global warming investigators

Mild-mannered San Antonio Congressman Lamar Smith faced some solid stiff-arming this week from the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York.

Two weeks ago Rep. Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, sent extraordinary subpoenas to both attorneys general. 

• Response from Rep. Lamar Smith

Respected judge fired, and no reason given

Express-News columnist Gilbert Garcia told a disturbing tale this week about a good judge who was forced off the bench.

It wasn’t, as far as we can tell, because Judge Oscar Kazen was caught selling judicial rulings in exchange for auto repairs — the pathetic cause of the last untimely departure of a Bexar County judge.

Nor has Kazen been involved in any other public controversies.

Many have the wrong image of Dallas

For the first, oh, 30 years of my adult life I bought into the image of Dallas as a cauldron of right-wing paranoia and violence.

That image was cemented with the assassination of John Kennedy when I was a high school freshman, but it had an older and broader basis.

Some advice to bankers who seriously want to help

I was delighted to read last week that Frost Bank has opened a new branch on San Antonio’s East Side.

The 148-year-old downtown bank has branches throughout the suburbs, but this is its first branch in City Council District 2.

The area is historically the home of the city’s African-American community, and still has the largest black population in the city.

The move comes after considerable pressure from federal regulators.

Alamo's librarians take on state of Texas

Maybe Land Commissioner George P. Bush thought he was just taking on the Daughters of the Republic of Texas.

After all, when he attacked the DRT’s century-old position as occupiers of the Alamo, the DRT folded like Santa Anna at San Jacinto.

But when Commissioner Bush tried to capture the contents of the Alamo Research Center, housed in a building on the Alamo grounds, he was taking on more than the DRT.

He was taking on librarians.

Amusing agreement between the city, police union

Transgenders using bathrooms is not the problem

This may surprise Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, but transgendered Texans have been using the bathrooms of their choice for a long time.

So how many assaults of innocent girls has this resulted in?

The Charlotte Observer, in the overheated state of North Carolina, recently conducted a thorough PolitiFact investigation into the question.

How Uber and Lyft blew it in Austin

I confess I was as surprised as anyone at Donald Trump winning the Republican presidential nomination.

Had I been a consultant to Bush or Cruz or any of the others in the herd that began the campaign last year I would have offered the conventional advice: Ignore the guy.

He’s going to step on his tongue once too often and disappear.

It seemed like such a safe prediction.

But my surprise at Trump’s success is tempered by the fact that I don’t regard myself as particularly knowledgable on national political dynamics.

I remind myself regularly that on election eve in 1980 I predicted Mondale over Reagan.

But after watching Texas politics for 50 years, I do think I understand its political currents.

So I was even more surprised this week when the citizens of Austin told ride sharing companies Uber and Lyft they could take a hike.

Judge squashes ban on Castle Hills campaign flyer

What do the Pentagon Papers, the late madam Theresa Brown’s infamous “trick list,” a Corpus Christi car dealer and the current Castle Hills City Council election have in common?

They all raised a fundamental First Amendment issue, that of prior restraint:

Under what circumstances can a court order someone not to publish or broadcast something — or to retract something that has been published — without a full trial and a finding of libel?

Castle Hills clawed its way onto that illustrious list last Friday when State District Judge Larry Noll issued a temporary restraining order requiring Councilman Douglas Gregory to “immediately and publicly retract” claims in a campaign flyer criticizing his opponent in Saturday’s election, former Castle Hills Mayor Bruce Smiley-Kaliff.

If city wants a baseball stadium, let's put it to a vote

A few years ago I visited Parque Central, a plaza in Old Havana.

The square is rimmed with scores of booksellers sitting by their folding tables and portable bookcases.

Offerings range widely: fiction, politics, history, art.

It is a cultural marvel, a gem of civilization.

But on one corner was a group of men disturbing the peace.