OPINION

We have asked our Voices contributors to share with us some of the more common stereotypes about people and places in North Texas. Now, we're asking them to tackle those myths head on.

Today, we tackle a few commonly held beliefs about Fair Park and southern Dallas, in general. How fair is it to say:

• Fair Park is unsafe at night?


• Oak Cliff is unsafe?


• I-30 is a dividing line between the good and the bad parts of Dallas?


• Most metroplex residents would be perfectly happy if some natural catastrophe leveled South Dallas so it could be rebuilt from the ground up?

We've had a bit of a firestorm on this blog of late, ignited by a nugget of friendly help from the managing editor on how to search our site, and stoked some by our own colleagues, notably the experienced flamethrower, Rod 'God's wrath on Earth' Dreher.

As the deputy managing editor for interactive at The Dallas Morning News, I guess it is my duty to knock down the blaze as best I can. (Note to Rod: Was office e-mail down when you fired off your blog comment? Have I ever failed to listen attentively as you vent? Are there deeper issues we need to explore, perhaps in a Freudian manner? A Papal inquiry?)

So: What's up with our search function?

Click below to learn more.

With about a $25 million shortfall, Dallas City Council and staff have some tough decisions ahead to achieve a budget.

And if council member Dwaine "The Dollars Belong To Us" Caraway is serious, this year's wrangling should yield some high-quality unintended comedy.

The city's community swimming pools are in the crosshairs again, as they are most years when expenses outstrip revenue. This year, the proposal is to close four with low attendance:

In all, city officials estimate they'd save nearly $200,000 annually by permanently closing Glendale, as well as Walnut Hill Pool in North Dallas, J.J. Craft Pool in South Dallas and Tipton Pool in West Dallas.

Recent visits to the four pools yielded spotty results: While Glendale hosted about 25 children one July afternoon, Walnut Hill and Tipton were nearly empty. Several children dog paddled their way around the J.J. Craft pool.

"Like in any budget, you don't have unlimited resources. You've got to make some calls back and forth," Mayor Tom Leppert said. "The pools -- they're in the cuts because no one is using them. There's no sense to put money in there if there's no demand. That's not fair to taxpayers."

Remember, the target is $25 million. That $200k isn't all they need, but it's a starting point. But not if you ask Caraway, usually a mayoral ally:

"All swimming pools should remain open. We built the pools for people to swim in, so we should let them swim in them," he said. "If there's just one kid who wants to swim in one of these pools they're thinking of closing, then that kid should be allowed to swim there."

Since we don't know when that one kid might drop by, we should staff that pool all day, presumably, with a lifeguard. And we should make sure we tend the grounds around the pool, unlock the gates every morning and lock them back up in the evening. Every day.

For that one kid.

And with that kind of thinking, closing that $25 million hole should be done about the time that one kid becomes a Navy SEAL.

Interesting Points commentary section this weekend, full of intriguing "points" of view. My personal faves are the Katz and Fulwood pieces for their sheer originality....

Hope you enjoy all or some of the following:

Robert D. Kaplan on what it takes to earn the highest award the U.S. military can bestow -- and why the public fails to appreciate its worth.

Rod Dreher about Episcopal priest Chloe Breyer memoir, in which she wrote about her befuddlement that prisoners she was ministering to responded more to the stern teachings of Islam than her squishy version of Christianity. Breyer, like so many liberals, didn't understand that the poor and the working class need a strict code of personal and social morality more than the well-off do, precisely because the consequences for failure are so much harsher for them. Conservatives get this. But what conservatives don't get, and liberals do, is the extent to which economic conditions help or hinder the development of a healthy moral atmosphere. In their important new book "Grand New Party," young conservatives Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam show how the Republican Party, whose cultural beliefs generally resonate with working-class views, has dropped the ball on relating to working-class economic insecurity. For all their advantages this election year, the Democrats are still in thrall to cultural elitists. If the GOP can get right on pro-family economic policies, it can hold off the Democratic tide.

Jon Katz on why his puppy has a crush on his ram. This relationship can't go anywhere, for obvious reasons. Love does hurt. But sometimes, it's nice while it lasts.

Peggy Orenstein on how an aphorism on a local storefront caught her attention: "Stress is related to 99 percent of all illness." I tried to imagine how that claim made it past the copywriters and project managers who must have approved it. It was hardly as benign as the suggestions that people should floss daily or drink lots of water. Or was it? Somewhere along the line, the notion of the mind's irrefutable power over the flesh became the conventional wisdom.

Sam Fulwood III on what Barack Obama owes Clarence Thomas.

Ben Westhoff of Dallas about how as he was writing a story a couple months ago, he rented a car at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. This was a pain in itself, but the real irritation was back in Hoboken a month later when he got a notice from Violation Management Services, informing him he had four toll violations. In addition to the 60 cent cost for the tolls, VMS tacked on a $5 processing fee for each, so the total was about $22, already charged to his credit card. It appears this phantom-toll arrangement is all perfectly legal. For locals, it means being able to move more quickly through tolls, but for out-of-towners it means you're screwed. You can't obey the law even if you want to.....

An astonishing report from Stratfor.com about paramilitary Mexican drug cartel operations inside the US. Excerpt:

The vast majority of police officers and federal agents in the United States simply are not prepared or equipped to deal with a highly trained fire team using insurgent tactics. That is a task suited more for the U.S. military forces currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These cartel gunmen also have the advantage of being camouflaged as cops. This might not only cause considerable confusion during a firefight (who do backup officers shoot at if both parties in the fight are dressed like cops?) but also means that responding officers might hesitate to fire on the criminals dressed as cops. Such hesitation could provide the criminals with an important tactical advantage -- an advantage that could prove fatal for the officers.

Mexican cartel enforcers have also demonstrated a history of using sophisticated scanners to listen to police radio traffic, and in some cases they have even employed police radios to confuse and misdirect the police responding to an armed confrontation with cartel enforcers.

We anticipate that as the Mexican cartels begin to go after more targets inside the United States, the spread of cartel violence and these dangerous tactics beyond the border region will catch some law enforcement officers by surprise.

This is one of the next step issues facing the Internet, namely the intersection of copyrighted material, legitimate free use, and court battles that may compromise the privacy of users.

I'll reserve comment for the moment, but would welcome any thoughts lawyers, Internet gurus et al have on this subject.

The top headline on Bloomberg.com is encouraging only to pessimists: U.S. Loses 62,000 Jobs, Jobless Rate Holds at 5.5% .

Analysts are saying that labor fundamentals are weak across the board, and that wages aren't likely to improve. This is not news to most people, though some letter writers scoffed at last week's Business headline announcing the peril of the impending bear market, of which we've now crossed the threshold. The credit crunch and housing meltdown is still sending ripples through investment circles. Oil prices are breaking ceiling after ceiling. American Airlines is cutting back on flight attendents and administrative staffing. Even the once invincible Starbucks is closing 600 storefronts.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to dig up as much positive economic news as possible. Tell us: what do we have to look forward to in our current economic environment? What's the silver lining?

I think the upshot to all of this is the tempering of our consumption-centric lifestyles. We're learning to live with less, which is good, especially when it comes to fossil fuels. I think our current energy situation is going to foster greater innovation throughout industries and will, in turn, help Americans develop a conservation-centric ethic. Our economy should seize this opportunity to become lean, mean and green.

Seems the truth is dribbling out in stages and in different shades.

E-mails seem to show that the U.S. government didn't have a problem with Hunt Oil's deal in the Kurdish North in Iraq. Frankly, that is not a surprise. In fact, I would expect that conversations this took place beforehand given the sensitive geopolitical nature of the deal. But this is different from what had been said when the deal drew headlines last year The U.S. government, and Mr. Bush, expressed surprise and consternation.

All this strikes me as a wink-and-nod deal, that administration officials in Washington wanted arm's distance deniability if the deal stirred controversy. It seems to reflect different moods-- Washington officials favoring the deal and U.S. diplomats in Iraq who worrying that it might be counterproductive.

I'm not sure why this deal requires the fishing expedition from Waxman's committee. I don't get the impression that any law was broken. Ah yes, it is an election year.

Depends on who you ask, considering the competing ag interests. And it looks like Texas A&M may have had trouble making up its mind on the issue as politics intervened. This is according to an interesting story by the Houston Chronicle.

The story referenced one study released by A&M this spring, which said the effect of corn going to ethanol has had minimal effect on retail prices. It said, in part:

A number of news stories have been written that cite recent increases in the farm level prices of corn, grain sorghum, wheat, soybeans, and rice as causing significant increases in retail food prices. ... It is clear that while some of the increase in retail food prices is due to farm level price increases, there are likely a number of causes ...

One element to rising food prices that tends to be overlooked is the impact of higher fuel prices (oil and natural gas) have on retail food prices.

The Chronicle suggested that A&M's position then evolved, as the governor raised his voice in opposition to federal ethanol production mandates:

Anyone who has struggled with dallasnews.com have an opinion on this advice to a reader from Managing Editor George Rodrigue, in the current Ask the Editor column?

Rob Kunkle of Dallas writes to say that he sometimes has trouble finding stories from The News on our Web site, even a day or two after publication. "I usually cut the article from the paper so I can accurately state the title, author, etc. - but still can't find it, even with search," he says.

Mr. Kunkle, we just invested some extra money to upgrade our Web site's search engine. I hope things are working better for you now. If not, here's a trick I sometimes use: Go to the regular Google search page, and enter your search terms plus the words "dallasnews.com." That should give you the main Google search engine's best idea of how to find stories on our site.

George is right that that's a good workaround for finding things on our site. (I use "site:dallasnews.com" in the search field, which I recall as a trick Dreher showed me.)

That said, what does it say about a business headed away from print and toward the Web that we have to provide workarounds for customers who just want to find something we're offering?

If you have some time to kill this morning (and who doesn't the day before a long weekend?) and you have access to cable TV, C-SPAN2 is supposed to show WBAP-AM (820) talker and News contributing columnist Mark Davis doing his daily radio show:

Well, they've finally run out of things to keep the cameras pointed at on C-SPAN 2 (351 on DirecTV).

Thursday morning, 8:30-10:45 Central, it's a live telecast of our humble little talk show, complete with live audio during the commercial breaks, during which I will regale the audience with compelling behind-the-scenes tales of big-time broadcasting. Or I may do some card tricks.

Mark gets the compelling lead-in of Robert Zoellick talking about some World Bank issue. (I presume that's the subject; I have the sound off.)

Hey, someone has to watch C-SPAN with McKenzie out of the country.

More bad news on the oil front. While Washington stupidly (but predictably) blames speculators for the high price of oil, the International Energy Agency is moving closer to embracing peak oil theory. It's becoming harder to deny that the world simply doesn't have enough supply to meet present and future demand -- and new drilling is not going to solve the problem.

How is it that a conservative American president, a man who confesses Evangelical Christianity, has overseen the training of U.S. military interrogators in torture techniques copied verbatim from a 1950s Chinese communist brainwashing manual? It's going to take a long time to figure out what the hell went wrong these last seven years.

Here's what we're working on for tomorrow's pages:

Editorials
* We are disappointed that the EPA approved this particular State Improvement Plan regarding air quality. We explain why. We recognize, however, that rejection of the plan could have resulted in at least two years of delay, which, of course, also would have benefited nobody. So we conclude that the most important thing to do going forward is to get the parties to the table to get real about air quality needs and lay out some meaningful benchmarks. Colleen on behalf of the Editorial Board.

* We comment on the latest brouhaha involving Sheriff Valdez. Politically speaking it would have been smart of her to seek such approval for the Discovery Channel filming at issue from the Commissioner's Court, whether the court rules that she was required to or not, because it's this court that control the department's purse strings. Mike on behalf of the Editorial Board.

* We urge rental car companies to follow the streamlined process that Enterprise uses in terms of making it easier and more cost efficient for NTTA to pursue owed tolls by rental customers. Currently, too many rental companies rely on third-party collectors, which automatically add surcharges and fines to the tolls due and this is both unfair in some cases to the rental car customers and very inefficient in terms of collections. Rodger on behalf of board.

Op-ed columns
(Carl Leubsdorf): A series of 5-4 Supreme Court decisions in the final week of its term underscore one of the most important aspects of the presidential election. The outcome will either enable conservatives to tighten their grip on the court and extend their influence to areas that include legalized abortions, or provide at least a temporary slowdown of that process. But it is very unlikely to permit anything like a return to the liberal domination that marked the high court through much of the second half of the last century. The reason is that the justices most likely to be replaced over the next four years are almost all members of the court's more liberal voting bloc. So a President Barack Obama would be unlikely to shift the court to the left, but a President John McCain almost surely could move it to the right.

(Jonah Goldberg) Congressmen, senators and presidents alike swear to protect and defend the same constitution as the Supreme Court justices do. In the 19th century, Congress actually debated constitutionality with passion, and if it found a proposed law falling short of that standard, it was fixed or killed, not outsourced to the Supreme Court for retrofitting. The court, by assuming that responsibility, and the other branches of government, by surrendering it, have permanently damaged the constitutional order.

(Anna Hill) President of the Dolphin Heights Neighborhood Association, in the I-30/Dolphin area, on what residents there have done to "bridge the gap" in recent years. With "Bridging the Gap" logo.

"The man is Ted Baxter."

That's Rush Limbaugh's nuclear take-down of Bill O'Reilly, in this interesting New York Times Magazine profile of Limbaugh.

"The man is Ted Baxter." Oh man, that's gotta hurt.

My favorite cartoon this week from William "Bubba" Flint, a special contributor to our Community Opinions pages.

In his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush cited North Korea as one of the three members of the elite and exclusive "Axis of Evil." He cited the fact that North Korea's leadership was spending heavily on missiles and weapons of mass destruction (nukes) while "starving its people."

This week, President Bush removed North Korea from the list of countries supporting international terrorism. Now they are wonderful. But what has changed? Yes, they blew up a cooling tower and shut down a weapons-capable nuclear reactor. But aren't their people still starving and oppressed? Have they come out with a statement condemning international terrorism? Have they met any of the other preconditions that the Bush administration has imposed on the other Axis of Evil members?

I don't think so. North Korea hasn't changed. It's philosophy remains the same. It's leader, Kim Jong Il, is still crazy as ever. It's people are still starving and unable to express their views, vote freely, travel freely, communicate with the outside world, or worship as they wish.

But what has changed is the Bush administration's position on what constitutes membership in the Axis of Evil -- as well as the conditions under which the United States will negotiate with its enemies. We impose one standard on Iran. There was a different one for Iraq and still a totally different one on North Korea.

I'd love to hear all five of you Bush supporters out there explain the consistency and logic behind Bush's action. Do we talk to our enemies or don't we? And is getting rid of nuclear weapons the only criterion on which we declare a country rehabilitated?

This morning we're waiting for a judge to rule in the riveting case of Dallas County v. Dallas County, which pits Sheriff Lupe Valdez againt the county commission. The sheriff, for reasons I am struggling to understand, thought that unleashing a camera crew in a jail that has failed five state inspections would yield good publicity. She also didn't think it necessary to alert the commissioners to her plan.

County Commissioners, it turns out, don't like surprises. And they're not convinced that the Discovery Channel chose a jail that's under federal court order to improve conditions with the idea of showing how smoothly things are running. Today, a judge will rule on whether the sheriff or the commission has the final say on whether the documentary crew can film.

Regardless of what the judge says, I don't see the payoff here. The sheriff is making improvements within the jail, but it's still a work in progress. And any documentary worth a darn would point out all the failed inspections and assorted struggles at the jail. Never mind that an inmate just died in the jail after an alteraction with guards -- imagine if the cameras had been rolling that day.

But Sheriff Valdez says this will paint Dallas County in a positive light. What am I missing?

Blog quiz! Rod said this in today's staff meeting: "It's gonna be worse than people realize." What was he talking about?

• Demographics in Western Europe relating to birthrates of Islamic people.


• The global rise of Islamist terror.


• Bird flu.


• Antibiotic-resistent super flu.


• SARS.


• Mad Cow Disease.


• Peak Oil.


• Drought.


• The newspaper business.


• The decline of public schools.


• The decline of Western cluture.


• Airline industry woes.

Here's what we're working on for tomorrow's pages:

Editorials
* We support school accountability unreservedly but for it to really matter to parents and taxpayers, school districts have to quit using so many exceptions to inflate their ratings. Mike on behalf of the Editorial Board.

* We lament the imprisonment of Patrick Leondos Waller, who has been behind bars since 1992 for a rape-robbery he did not commit. His freedom would have been secured years earlier if not for former DA Bill Hill's recommendation to deny DNA testing and subsequent court decisions to do just that. The lesson is obvious: There is little apparent downside to test evidence when new forensic technology becomes available. There is huge potential downside to refuse. Rodger on behalf of the board.

* A non-profit's plan to train emergency workers, including fire and police, to better coordinate cross-county/city lines when disaster hits strikes us a good idea. Mike on behalf of the board.

Op-ed columns
(Leonard Pitts) The thing that has made Obama a phenomenon is this sense that he Gets It, that he won't play the same old games by the same old rules. He comes across as a man brave enough to reason and to expect that voters will do the same, a man brave enough to treat intelligent adults like intelligent adults. His campaign, more than most, is an implicit promise to never put that which is politic above that which is right. Yet his standoffishness toward American Muslims is a denial of all those things.

(Sam Merten) Where Mayor Tom Leppert has gone wrong in his first year in office.

(Mark Davis) President Bush is despised by America's enemies around the world and political enemies at home for doing the right thing in the war on terror. He should wear their scorn like a badge of honor. I would love to see a day when America is admired consistently from continent to continent. But let the world admire us because we have done the right things, even when unpopular, not because we changed our definition of what is right to appease evil leaders and misguided masses around the globe.