Burnt Orange Report

Decisions

By Byron LaMasters

Thanks for everyone who posted in the open thread. I had several ideas of how to improve BOR, and your thoughts gave me even more. Here's what I've decided to do for now:

• I've added the user name "Guest Contributor" to BOR. Posting by us will likely be very light over the next week due to exams, so I plan on asking a few people to do guest posts over the next week to fill the lull. Where we go from there, I'm not sure, but I think a trial period will give us ideas on how to integrate more voices into BOR without sacrificing content or quality. If you've emailed me in the past about writing for BOR, it's probably buried in my email, so email me again: Byron AT BurntOrangeReport DOT com. If you haven't emailed me in the past, but are interested in writing a guest post, email me as well.
• I think the idea of a e-magazine format like The Gadflyer is quite intriguing. I've meant to work on the format of BOR for quite awhile (even if I just decide to make more subtle changes), but for some reason it tends to get delayed. Hopefully, I'll have time to make some changes over winter break.
• West Texas and Panhandle voices.... good idea. I'd love to have my friend Mike from El Paso contribute to BOR, and the folks over at Panhandle Truth Squad do a good job of covering the panhandle, although they'd certainly be welcome to guest post on occasion at BOR if interested.
• Andrew works for the Texas Democratic Party. He is a Democrat. He's not switching parties. I'm sometimes puzzled by the changes in his philosophy over the past years. After all, when I first met him, Andrew had been a Naderite in 2000, and thought that Ron Kirk was too conservative and pro-business for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate.

  Now, Andrew is by far the most conservative and hawkish member of BOR. And the whole Contumacy thing bothers me a little bit, but I'll let Andrew explain it when he wants. But then again, the Iraq issue is personal for him. His father is in (or is going to) Iraq to help train the Iraqi police force (And my thoughts and prayers are with him, even if my only experience meeting Andrew's father was at their family's Memorial Day BBQ where Mr. Dobbs told more than enough off-color John Kerry jokes). If my father (who served in the Air Force for nine years) was over in Iraq, I'd probably feel the same way. The debate over whether to attack Iraq is over. I opposed attacking Iraq, and I think that the evidence that has come out over the past year gives those of us who opposed the war vindication.

  But so what? Senator-Elect Barack Obama (D-IL) at the Democratic convention put it best: "There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."

  Whether one supported or opposed the war has nothing to do with what has to be done now. I think that President Bush has screwed up just about everything that could be screwed up with Iraq, but that doesn't change my position. We're in Iraq, we can't leave, and we need to win. Period. And while I'll never support this president, I'll always support our troops. As far as I'm concerned, Andrew does (and always will) have a place in both the Democratic Party and BOR.