A good leader is a good listener, for only when you listen do you hear ideas different from your own. It's hard to learn something new when you are talking. Laugh, Love, Listen and Learn!

Mike recounts a story from spring practice that says a lot about where the unlikely suspects came from that handed the Cowboys their victory over Kansas City yesterday.  And it is why Bill Parcells will tell you that he "likes my team."

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Taking nothing away from the magnificent effort of Highland Park's championship team, whatever it was that I witnessed Saturday afternoon needs some explaining. This game left me with so many questions non football related that I wanted to speed to Marshall and set up psychiatric counseling for players and coaches alike. Besides a royal butt-kicking, what was that I witnessed yesterday afternoon?

Highland Park has a seriously good team...well drilled and well coached. A week ago, they played a game Stephenville squad that showed them for the champions that they are. So what's with Marshall? I'll give you out classed, out gamed and out coached, heck the entire team might have had the flu, but I've never witnessed such a one-sided slaughter at the 4A championship level. At no time in this game did any part of Marshall's game plan have any effect. A team like Highland Park makes very few mistakes and, if they had, it would still have taken a monumental effort for the Mavericks to capitalize. Saying all that, you'd think deep down inner motivation, serious commitment and a dose or two of God given talent might have been enough for the Marshall gang to put a few points on the board.

No, this team did not come to play. I guess I just don't understand how a really good group of players with just one defeat in a great season can go into a championship game...a once in a lifetime event, and look so inept and lethargic.

Do you blame the players?...The coaches? Was this team just plain dumb lucky to be in the championship game in the first place? On so many levels this game is so hard to understand. If you're reading this and didn't watch the game, a lot of what this rant is about might seem pointless. Eventhough the HP kids played all out all afternoon, you had to witness the event to see how much of a non-game this was.

The final quarter even ended in a way that smacked of a dirt lot rumble with Marshall suffering two ugly and needless personal foul calls complete with an ejection. 59-0 in a championship game?...No way...Unbelievable. Counseling is in session. Who wants to go first?

Today the Dallas Morning News honored a comic with a gift for the obscene with a main headline on the front page while hardly noting the passing of a figure who shaped our world: Sen. Eugene McCarthy. Another giant step on a great institution's road to decline.

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Much to-do has been made this week of Sen. Joe Lieberman cozying up to the Bushies and Defense Department by reiterating his support for the war in Iraq. Is he angling for an appointment to replace Donald Rumsfeld? Is he positioning himself for a 2008 presidential run as a moderate-conservative Democrat? Whatever the reason, he doesn’t deserve the critical onslaught for disagreeing with other Democrats.

Lieberman has been solid in his position from the beginning. While I disagree with his linkage of fighting terrorism there or here, I support his right to say what he thinks. Texas Rep. Chet Edwards said it well in Todd Gillman’s weekly column on Texans in Congress in the DMN today: “Shame on any party, Democrat or Republican, that would try to make issues of war or peace a party loyalty test.”

Just as Lieberman should feel free to speak his mind, so should Republicans who disagree with the president on this paramount issue feel free to speak out against the war. Members of Congress shouldn’t have to march in lockstep with party leaders, whether Howard Dean or President Bush.

As for Lieberman, the country could do worse than him for defense secretary. But his chances of getting the Democratic nomination in 2008 are nil. If Lieberman couldn’t give Al Gore the boost he needed in 2000, he’s not going to convince Democrats he can run on his own and make it. It’s like, you had your chance, Joe.

Meanwhile, I do find his logic faulty, i.e. that if we don’t fight terrorists in Iraq they will be emboldened “to strike us directly again.” If that’s the case, why aren’t we at war in Saudi Arabia?

But even more objectionable to me are statements by Republican apologists who say that Bush and Cheney never made a connection between 9-11 and Iraq – as Lynn Cheney, the vice president’s wife, did recently on public radio’s Diane Rehm show. Like Lieberman, Bush and Cheney both have made repeated statements about the need to fight terrorists in Iraq or face them on our own soil. But Mrs. Cheney emphatically denied that either of them has linked 9-11 to the war in Iraq.

As for me, I side with those who say the longer we stay in Iraq the more the number of terrorists multiply. Let’s hope the Dec. 15 election is successful and we can begin the phased pullout.

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Al FrankenGlenda Vosburgh reports in this week's Dallas Business Journal that local supporters turned out to welcome comedian and liberal talk show host Al Franken when he broadcast his national, radio talk show from the Hard Rock Cafe in Dallas.  According to Ms. Vosburgh, "about 500 people attended the live broadcast, including former CBS producer Mary Mapes, antiwar protester and part-time Crawford resident Cindy Sheehan, Dallas City Councilwoman Angela Hunt and Sen. Royce West.  Dallas Mayor Laura Miller issued a special proclamation in honor of Franken's appearance."  Franken's show is carried locally on KXEB-AM (910) radio. 

Good news on the crime front for the city of Dallas.  Police Chief David Kunkle reported to the Mayor's office yesterday that crime is down for the year compared with the 2004 figures.  Particularly encouraging was the double dip drop in homicides, business robberies, and auto theft.  All crime was down by more than 5% this year. 

The Texas Border Sheriff’s Coalition along with 16 counties are slated to receive $6 million in state funds under a program to reduce crime and illegal immigration along the Texas-Mexico border. The funding is part of Gov. Rick Perry’s recently announced border security plan called Operation Linebacker.

“There can be no homeland security without border security,” Perry said. “Operation Linebacker makes sense because it gives new tools and resources to local law enforcement, the experts in the unique security challenges of the border.”

The following counties will receive $367,500: Brewster, Cameron, Culberson, Dimmit, El Paso, , Hidalgo, Hudspeth, Jeff Davis, Kinney, Maverick, Presidio, Starr, Terrell, Val Verde, Webb, and Zapata.

Disciplinary alternative education in Texas is not only failing, it’s exacerbating crime and poverty in the minority community, a panel on the subject concluded on Dec. 7. The event, hosted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, looked into the program, which was designed to move disruptive and dangerous students from classes, but which has begun ensnaring many more Texas schoolchildren, mostly from disadvantaged families.

Texas passed legislation in 1995 to require that all school districts establish Disciplinary Alternative Education Programs (DAEP). The programs take in disruptive students and, in theory, provide alternative instruction. The reality, however, is far different.

Dr. Robert Barr of the Center for School Improvement and Policy Studies at Boise State University in Idaho , said the Texas program provides little instruction while taking students out of the learning environment and placing them in one which is destined for failure. “You need to look at the program and ask the question: ‘Are we manufacturing low achievement?’” he said. Rep. Harold Dutton (D-Houston), a frequent critic of DAEP programs, called them the “education sewer.”

Biggest complaints
The program was designed for a very small subset of the population, but has now grown to include a broader segment of children. Last year, 103,696 individual students were placed in DAEP programs. Students can be placed in the program through either mandatory or discretionary procedures. Mandatory placement covers students who commit a crime on campus.

Students who commit serious crimes on campus, such as homicide, kidnapping, illegal trafficking of persons, sexual offenses or assault, are expelled and placed in the Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program run by the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission. However, a loophole in state law prevents schools from expelling students for crimes committed off campus (where most take place), and instead forces schools to place students who have committed even the most heinous of crimes in the same room with students who violated minor school rules – in DAEP.

The latter is where a growing number of placements come from - the discretionary placements. But the program is only nominally discretionary, because the classroom teacher can force the school’s hand. David Anderson , general counsel for the Texas Education Agency, said that if a teacher orders a student into DAEP, the school must send that student, although the school can determine the length of the stay.

Other members of the panel, however, said the districts themselves are just as guilty of over-sentencing through harsh, inflexible zero-tolerance policies on rules infractions. Dutton noted a constituent’s child who was placed in the alternative system for chewing gum.

Discretionary placements have now risen to 77 percent of the total of all students placed in DAEP. With virtually no limit to who can be placed in the program, the system is exposed to almost any kind of abuse. Richard LaVallo, an attorney with Advocacy Inc., a non-profit corporation advocating for people with disabilities, said a common abuse is to place students with disabilities in the program. Such kids may indeed be difficult for teachers to deal with – but for reasons of their disability.

“What happens,” LaVallo said, “is that it’s a convenient way of moving [disabled] kids from regular schools to DAEP.” LaVallo, also noting the large proportion of minority students in the program, said the effect was essentially to “re-segregate the schools.” Dutton, however, pointed out that he has “never seen a football player in these programs, and they’re often disruptive students.” Dutton said many placements in the program are driven by money. Schools, he said, often benefit by getting a portion of their population out of their regular classrooms.

Another concern with the program, raised by TPPF moderator Marc Levin, is that scores for DAEP students on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test are assigned to the district as a whole, and are not included in the score for the individual school from which they came. That raises the possibility that schools could inflate their own scores by removing students they know are likely to fail the test.

Lack of standards

Although the panel members all agreed that some kind of program was needed, the current program for alternative education was derided as virtually useless. One of the key points made was that while it was alternative, it isn’t exactly education. DAEP programs provide basic instruction that is not always grade-appropriate. In some districts, all elementary grades are placed in one classroom. LaVallo said they are a “one-size-fits-all” approach. Additionally, the programs are only required to operate four hours a day. Some operate as little as two hours a day.

Although students are supposed to be sent to the classrooms because of their behavior, there is no attempt at behavioral modification, nor is there adequate screening of the problems – often symptoms of learning disabilities – that led to the placement. Finally, there is no plan to re-integrate the children back into their classrooms when they leave DAEP.

Most surprising of all, the programs prohibit students from bringing books or homework into or out of the DAEP classroom, which makes keeping up with the child’s original class virtually impossible. The biggest concern with the system, Barr said, is that the children who are on the cusp of failure already are pushed over the edge, and a direct pipeline toward prisons is created. Students who are forced into programs like Texas ’ DAEP are significantly likely to fail, and therefore unlikely to graduate. Dropping out, Barr said, is one of the largest single determining factors in which children are likely to go to jail as adults.