I wasn't the only person to notice. At the Dallas Observer, Jim Schutze ("the Jill Stewart of Dallas") is on the case. Unfortunately, his column's kicker isn't true. I easily found the original editorial on Nexis. He's the better shoe-leather reporter, but I'm good with the electronics.

UPDATE: The Nexis mystery deepens.

Elozua eventually created an online gallery, with a statement explaining the background (Via Liquid Treat.)

Just thought I'd comment on the desire for a "flash" laptop. There are some significant technical problems.

Firstly, the processor, screen, and battery taken together comprise the bulk of the weight of a laptop. It is hard to have a fast processor and a good screen and a big enough battery to power them both for a long time, without having a pretty heavy laptop (when compared to the weight of an iPod nano).

Secondly, you probably don't notice for your gadgets, but flash is VERY slow. For the constant reading & writing needed for any good operating system, this is very bad.

There are going to be some major advancements soon which should change this. Firstly flash is becoming faster and larger (the larger is important because computer makers assume people don't want less than 20GB in a computer). More importantly, there is a huge push to get lower-power processors. Also, new OLED displays draw far less power. Both mean that the battery can be smaller. Finally, fuel-cells are going to be more common in 2006 gadgets. The energy density is so much higher, that you can expect both high capacity and lighter weight.

All in all, I would venture to guess that in early 2007, you'll find an ultra-light almost-desktop-replacement laptop. The weight of an large iPod today, the footprint of a small qwerty, and pencil thin.

As for me, I'm about to buy a 9lb Dell, wishing I could afford to drop another grand on a 15lb Alienware beast.

Ivan, who is obviously less sensitive to laptop weight than I am, also sends links to these stories on Samsung's recent advances in flash memory for laptops.

I'm waiting for the iBook Nano--a superlight laptop that uses flash memory rather than a hard drive.

Social Security is a great example of the practical problems with this model. The conservative think tanks put reform on the map, but it was through a very unsophisticated argument: "Social Security returns 2 percent, stocks return 7 percent, let's make the switch." This made a lot of politicians favor accounts, but it didn't say anything about transition costs or market risk (which reduce/eliminate the benefits of accounts). If you tried to write about those issues you were the skunk at the garden party. The problem is that not writing about these issues doesn’t make them go away. They rear their heads when you build policy, so practical reform plans are seen as a bait and switch versus what was originally offered. ("You said the accounts would solve the problem; now we need to cut benefits, maybe raise taxes??") Politicians on the right, as well as the Republican base, weren't prepared for what was really involved with Social Security reform, in large part because no one told them. And we are where we are.

Indeed.

The RSC noted that travelers have many other modes of transportation available and significant savings could be achieved by ceasing to operate very expensive long-distance routes that serve a limited ridership. Savings: $2.5 billion over ten years ($1.3 billion over five years)....

Note that the savings from cutting back Amtrak are more significant than the complete elimination of an aviation program.

The post includes a link to the report, and the blog has more on transportation policy. Vranich is the author of End of the Line: The Failure of Amtrak Reform and the Future of America's Passenger Trains.

Just a note to say that I read your comments on think tanks the other day, the replies to them on Drezner and other sites, and your replies to the replies. I think you are absolutely right on the substance, and agree that this is a useful conversation to have.

About three years ago when the farm bill was going through Congress I noticed the same kind of thing from the major conservative think tanks that I had noticed years before when I worked in agriculture policy in Congress myself. Heritage and Cato would come up with some quickie analyses and quotes for the Post after the legislation cleared committee, by which time farm bills are pretty much set in concrete; a few Congressmen entirely unacquainted with the subject would quote them in one-minute floor statements; and the legislation would breeze through to enactment as if the think tanks didn't exist. I thought to myself, here I've been gone from Washington for a good decade, and nothing has changed.

For my money -- and I'll grant this was some time ago -- the "think tank" that churned out the most consistently useful papers was the Congressional Research Service. All the others produced such a high ratio of chaff to wheat that, like you, I was strongly tempted to ignore anything they sent me.

The chaff-to-wheat ratio raises an important point. Think tankers can always point to some good work. But what percentage of their output are they actually proud of? What percentage makes a difference, if not in changing immediate policy then in raising new, sophisticated arguments, answering new objections, and swaying public opinion? What percentage is interesting? What percentage will people who really know the issues take seriously?

These are all important, if subjective, judgments that people in think tanks are well-qualified to make (and do make, at least in their own heads). Unfortunately, they are not the criteria rewarded by supporters who, as far as I can tell from their complete lack of response, have absolutely no interest in this discussion.

Another potential source of bucks, on the revenue side, is the zillions of acres of western land owned by the Bureau of Land Management. Particularly around Las Vegas, which is rapidly running out of land for people, its market value would be quite high. (How high?--ed. That would require research. Do I look like a think tank?) But, of course, the western mining and grazing interests who enjoy subsidized rights today would object mightily to privatization. And while some environmental groups might love a chance to buy and preserve western land, in places like Las Vegas where the land is really valuable, we could expect them to squawk about the evils of sprawl, development, and human habitation.

I was going to note that even the Dallas Morning News recognized the porkbarrel nature of those bridges in an editorial yesterday, suggesting that funding might at least be delayed to help pay for Katrina recovery. But in today's paper, the editorial board took that back. Today's mea culpa said the bridges "and the Trinity Project will be a huge economic engine for the revitalization of downtown, which supplies the oxygen for much of the rest of North Texas. They are critical to resolving this area's transportation challenges and to enhancing our most important waterway." Of course, even if that argument is true, it has nothing to do with the national interest. I guess Belo higher-ups, conscious of the value of their downtown real estate, objected.

If I were writing the story as an economics column, rather than a small business feature, I would have taken a different tack. This is a classic tale of vertical integration, raising interesting Coase-Williamson questions. Why, for instance, does a company need to own the factory and machines in order to pick the people who'll run them? Does it matter that these people are employees? Or, as I suspect, simply that they take pride in their work?

I'm not asking think tanks to be universities. I'm asking them to do what they say they're trying to do. Think tanks--or at least the kind we're talking about--say they're about changing minds and affecting policy. To that end, think tank research should be able to pass scholarly scrutiny, if only because the arguments won't otherwise convince anyone but the already convinced. For the same reason, think tanks should seek not simply to repeat the same arguments but to advance the debate by responding to new critiques and new circumstances.

The problem is that think tanks face enormous incentives to do the easy job of making their supporters (moral or financial) feel good, rather than the hard job of persuading the unpersuaded or figuring out how to move policy, rather than simply to complain about it.

Take a recent example, Cato's news release purporting to offer "$62 billion in spending cuts that would offset Katrina relief in the short-term and create savings to reduce the federal deficit over the long-term." The release was great p.r., even garnering an Instalanche. It made a terrific soundbite: Tom DeLay is wrong. It's easy to find $62 billion of waste in the budget.

Unfortunately, anyone who looks at the release, even someone like me who agrees with the cuts, can tell the release is not serious. For starters, all the important details are missing. How exactly do you propose cutting farm subsidies in half? Ditto NASA? What specific programs are you going to zero out? Or how are you going to restructure allocations? How are you going to manage the politics? Do you have some reverse logroll in mind? How do you propose to cut the Army Corps of Engineers budget at a time when people are complaining about too little money for shoring up levees? These are not easy cuts, made even more justifiable by the Katrina crisis. They are a standard libertarian wish list in a new context. The release does nothing convince the typical reader that these programs are wasteful. It's just a publicity stunt--and an effective one--that makes ideological supporters feel good but does nothing to change short-term policy or long-term attitudes.

I'm not against think tanks. To the contrary, I believe they can fill a role no other institution fills. I appreciate the hard work and talent of the people who staff think tanks. My quarrel is less with them than with their short-sighted supporters. When faced with Dan Drezner's original question of why these organizations don't take on the difficult issues of the day, I come back to the same answer: because they need money to fund that research and donors, especially individuals, don't want to pay for it.

I am particularly skeptical of the one-stop-ideological shop, funded by individuals who care mostly about hearing their beliefs repeated in public. These organizations have almost no incentive to take on new or difficult questions or to work on the hard, unglamorous, long-term process of moving specialist opinion. (Unlike many think tank critics, I do not think corporate and foundation donors are usually a big problem, for the simple reason that their specialized program officers tend to be far more sophisticated about the state of debate and don't want their side to lose by making unpersuasive arguments.) I have more confidence in the effectiveness of organizations that focus on a specific discipline or policy area, because they tend to attract staffers with independent reputations in their field and to reward them for tackling the hot questions of the day, even if they don't know the answers in advance. Or maybe I just don't know enough about specialized organizations to see their problems.

As for the critique that there are many kinds of think tanks, not just the portmanteau ideological variety discussed in Dan's original post, all I can say is that Vogue is undeniably part of the mainstream media, but nobody thinks we're talking about fashion magazines when we examine news coverage.

Finally, on a positive note, I think the Manhattan Institute does a good job of funding smart, intellectually curious people and turning them loose to do in-depth research on topics they care about. But then, as its name suggests, this think tank isn't in Washington.

I have been a big fan of yours for some time (even stayed up late to see your appearance on Dennis Miller a few months ago). I'm sure you are already getting lots of response to your think tank riff, but I have to pile on. You made some good points, but you overstretched and oversimplified. Don't get me wrong: you don't owe anyone an apology -- and in fact I think this is a fascinating, worthwhile discussion.

As a think tank scholar from the Heritage Foundation - probably the singular example of the institution you are describing - it is difficult to compose a response without the feeling that it will come across as reflexively defensive. Your critique boils down to whether think tanks could be better by doing "better" research. I wonder. First, I suspect that think tanks in general like to have a mix of scholars and screamers (in different ratios). From personal experience, I can attest that Heirtage prides itself on getting the facts right, not on spinning. I'd like to point to some of my own research, but gosh that feels awfully self-serving. And while you're right that good people leave ... is it fair to assume that they're replaced by lesser people? Would you prefer a world where all the analysts at Heritage stayed forever? Turnover is dynamic, Virgina, and no one should have to remind you of that!

The real issue is that think tank analysts - unlike most university scholars - put a premium on policy formation. So does the media, and so does Congress, but they have very different incentives. And who watches the watchmen? It is challenging enough to shame Congress away from its instinct for comfy incumbency, but harder still to puncture the myths of the MSM. And it would be nice if academic institutions took on that role, but they don't. Period. (even if you were patient enough to wait for a generation for good research to become conventional wisdom). Watching the watchmen is the role of think tanks.

For example, the MSM continues to peddle the myth that enlistees in the Army are underprivileged. There are no facts to back this claim, but it goes out unchallenged simply because it was asserted and never disproven. Where are the academic studies on this one (or isn't that a tenurable topic, perhaps)? You see, there are holes in the academic community as well, and gaps on what it studies due to its own institutional limitations. But I can tell you that we are about to publish a major study on troop demographics, and guess what? The MSM is dead wrong. Not only is the Army not disproportionately underprivileged, it is in fact disproportionately overprivileged.

Will I go on TV and radio to promote the finding? Absolutely. Especially if our excellent media team comes to work next month. But understand that I could never get media attention as a young academic, all by myself. I wrote op-eds as an assistant professor, and I didn't have the capacity to get them to the right editors anywhere. A few weeks after I joined Heritage, thanks to the media relations team, I was published in the New York Times. The Foundation is a force multiplier, true, but the NYT published the op-ed only because it was based on solid and compelling research.

One way to think about think tanks is from the perspective of a young scholar who faces the choice: (1) academic career or (2) policy career. For me at least, I didn't have confidence that I would be happy at Big Megaversity economics dept., let alone Southwestern State Smalltown College -- writing dry papers for dusty journals (and there are many). I loved teaching, and I loved policy talking points ... two things that don't matter for tenure. And I didn't have confidence that those institutions reward activism, and may even punish it. Drezner should know this, given his musing about blogging and tenure. So that's the choice.

It seems quite an error to suggest the think tanks are hollow of genuine scholarship, when they seem to be rather inspiring as one of the few institutions where free inquiry is still rewarded. And you shouldn't presume the academics own the moral high ground on thoughtful research. I mean, isn't it funny that Krugman skewered policy scholars (entrepreneurs, he called them) in a book a few years ago, and now is one of the most intellectually dishonest ideologues in the arena?

I will have further thoughts later, but now I must go do some real work.

A greedy corporation is more caring and efficient than the government? Has Bob Herbert become some kind of libertarian fundamentalist?

I think Virginia Postrel only gets one side of the story correct when she writes about think tanks. Of course, Postrel is correct in saying that many think tanks are media driven entities. They do specialize in producing ideologically driven "research" designed for op-eds, TV, and donors. However, you and Postrel focus on the most visible types of think tanks. The world of "think tanks" is extremely diverse, ranging from the Rand Corporation to the Cato Institute. Like any industry, think tanks – defined as intellectual organizations trying to develop policy proposals for politicians and bureaucrats – are a complex group. Here’s my take on things:

1. Highly partisan & media-oriented think tanks – These are large, high profile organizations that have strong partisan and ideological identifications. Their goal is to support intellectuals whowill promote a particular agenda or ideology. They depend on private donor and occasional pubic grants, but aim to selectively distill academic and government research into items that can be easily disseminated into the mass media. If they are large enough, they might support some original research, like Brookings. These organizations produce very little that is taken seriously by practitioners and academics.

2. Industry or Public Sector ThinkTanks – These are organizations that adopt a rational, scientific stance towards pubic policy or industry issues. Their job is to serve their sector by conducting serious studies on behalf of a benefactor using accepted research techniques, or occasionally supporting basic science. Some of these organizations actually avoid publicity, as it might compromise their ability to conduct research on sensitive topics. The Rand Corporation is a good example. Some are industry specific – think of the American Bar Foundation. Since these organizations don’t depend on publicity, but on reputable research, they are much more likely to have individuals with close ties to academia and reputable government agencies or private laboratories.

3> Broker Think Tank – This is a fairly obscure sector most people don’t know about. Individuals, universities, corporations, interest groups, and other think tanks produce so much knowledge and ideas that it is impossible for political elites and partisan think tank people to sort through it all. There are think tanks that specialize in sorting through complex policy debates and give a succinct summary to politicians and their aids. Some of the smaller "neocon" think tanks fit this mold – they commission reports and books where policy intellectuals compress years of debate into an easy to read format for other conservatives. These folks rarely make it to the op-ed page or Fox News, but they write articles in policy journals and opinion journals. You might say broker think tanks support "policy" intellectuals who provide the academic ammunition for more visible fights in the media, and for more refined discussion in movement forums.

To answer Dan’s question – what’s the value added? Media oriented think tanks specialize in publicity for ideas – as long as they easily fit into a particular political agenda. Sector think tanks specialize in producing knowledge for consumption among professionals. The brokers are the intellectual middle men & women of the policy world. With respect to Virginia Postrel’s post, yes, the partisan think tanks are so dominated by media that they barely produce any thing that might be considered a contribution to knowledge, but remember there is a vast network of other think tanks that do many other things.

Maybe my brain has been warped by too many years in the think tank world, but I think this is an important discussion to have--and one that's unlikely to occur publicly except on blogs. Tyler Cowen has posted some thoughts. More to come here, as well.

Predictably, local government and redevelopment officials reacted with alarm that eminent domain could be severely restricted. The California Redevelopment Association and other advocates geared up to kill the measures and in the closing days of the legislative session, Democratic leaders ginned up a strategy to cool off the anti-eminent domain fervor. They unveiled legislation that would place a two-year moratorium on the seizure of private homes (but not commercial property), and authorize a study of the practice, thus giving their members a chance, or so it seemed, to side with the anti-eminent domain sentiment without doing any real damage to redevelopment agencies.

Quietly, however, the moratorium bills were themselves put on the shelf as the session ended - with Democrats blaming Republicans. "With every vote, they tried to derail this prudent response," said Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, who carried one of the moratorium bills.

Kehoe's finger-pointing, however, was more than a little disingenuous since the stalled bills required only simple majority votes and thus needed no Republicans to go along. Clearly, this was a Democratic action, not a Republican one, perhaps just a feint to pretend to do something about eminent domain without actually doing anything to upset the apple cart.

Ironically, the only eminent domain-related bill to reach Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk was a measure that allows the Rumsey Band of Wintun Indians, which operates the Cache Creek Casino in Yolo County, to join a joint powers consortium with local governments and the University of California to manage the 17,300-acre Conaway Ranch. While the county would purchase the land - or acquire it through eminent domain - the Rumsey Band has agreed to help finance the transaction.

Whether the tribe's interest in the Conaway Ranch is just an expression of civic involvement, or it has some other, more commercial interest is yet to be discovered. But allowing a casino-owning tribe to even indirectly participate in an eminent domain action sets a potentially worrisome precedent.

Somehow I'm not surprised.

In the nine months I’ve been at Cato I’ve written a piece on evolutionary psychology & capitalism; a long paper that is, I believe, the only work on social security to discuss at length Rawlsian standards of public reason; a review of Douglass North’s latest book, focusing on his philosophy of mind; and now I’m working on a long methodological critique of work that attempts to bend happiness research toward paternalist conclusions. Now, I don’t know which donors in particular are demanding my somewhat recondite products, but my supervisors seem to think that they’re worthwhile, even if over the head of most donors and not exactly talk-radio fodder. Yes, I have written some op-eds, in which I attempted to advance some serious points. To my chagrin, no one has asked me to be on TV. But I spend most of my time reading the latest research on happiness and behavioral economics, and writing what I hope will be an original and intellectually rigorous paper. I spent much of my time at Mercatus synthesizing the views of Nobel Prize winners into reports on institutions and economic development for USAID subcontractors.

Will was hired at Cato by Brink Lindsey, whose work I greatly admire, as part of an initiative to build long-term (i.e., non-news cycle) intellectual research there. One of the good things about think tanks is that they do have nooks and crannies for this sort of work. I wish there were more incentive for them to brag about it.

What's really sad is that the system obscures the interesting work that does go on in think tanks, including the high-profile ones. Good work suffers from the think tank stigma, which then leads good people to leave think tanks or not to go to them in the first place, which leads to a higher proportion of bad work, and so on.

Well, Dan, let me tell you the way of the world. For the most part, think tank donors (especially individuals, as opposed to foundations or corporations) are completely uninterested in original research and unable to evaluate its quality. On the whole, individuals give to think tanks for the same reason they give to religious organizations--to demonstrate commitment to a belief system and to support the people they believe will spread the word. They want to hear the same messages over and over and over again, and they financially reward those who give them what they want. While generally nice, generous people, donors are on the whole indifferent to originality, bored by wonky policy proposals, and annoyed by any think tank employee who challenges their political cathechisms. Boards of trustees tend to reward executives not for doing or supporting important work but for raising money.

Since you can't do the work without money anyway, think tankers who want to do good, significant work eventually either flee or give in to the system's preference for superficiality. Making the system even worse are media bookers who want predictable, preferably partisan views. Dan worries about op-eds. Op-eds are philosophy tomes compared to TV, and as Nicole Kidman aptly observed in To Die For, you're nobody in America if you're not on TV. That goes double for public policy circles.

Think tanks, unlike universities, are supposed to influence public policy, not to produce knowledge for its own sake. Donors and boards want hard evidence that their money is working, that it's influencing the public debate. The easiest, flashiest way to measure that influence--especially since 501(c)3 think tanks aren't allowed to lobby--is to count media appearances. (Most media counts don't even differentiate by the quality of the appearance, except perhaps in raw audience numbers.) Even successful books reach few readers, compared to a TV appearance. And the best way to sell political books is, of course, to get on TV, preferably with an easily digested, highly partisan message.

I should also mention that, outside of a few foreign policy shops, there is a huge intellectual stigma attached to association with a think tank. Too many people, including reviewers, don't read what you actually write. They read what they imagine the work from that think tank will say. And that's in the happy event that your work actually gets reviewed, rather than tossed unread on the trash heap as more think tank crap. I say that as a tosser as well as a tossee.

In short, think tanks are well into their decadent phase. They're giving their donors what they want--simple sound bites--but they aren't producing many new ideas.

Go to the main blog page for more on this subject.

In Japan, what we're told is this: A disaster may render you unreachable. It may cut you off from communication networks and utilities. The appropriate government agencies (starting at the neighborhood level and moving upward depending on the magnitude of the damage) will respond as quickly as they can, but you may be on your own for days until they do. Prepare supplies. Learn escape routes. Then learn alternate escape routes. Know what your region's points of vulnerability are. Get to know your neighbors (especially the elderly or infirm) so you can help each other out and account for each other. Follow directions if you're told to evacuate. Stay put if you aren't. Participate in the earthquake preparation drills in your neighborhood.

If that's the attitude of people in collectivist, obedient, welfare-state Japan, it is beyond the wit of man why any American should be sitting around entertaining the idea that Washington should be the first (or second or fifteenth) entity to step in and keep the nasty wind and rain and shaky-shaky from hurting you. Sheesh.

They say the same thing about being cut off in L.A., but in a less organized fashion (no earthquake drills). Of course, in an earthquake, you have no warning--not a couple of days to get out of town (assuming you have transportation, of course). And there's always that question of where to store the earthquake supplies, since the house could collapse on them, making them inaccessible.

This Modesto Bee article reports on the left-right congressional alliance against the property-taking establishment:

Conservative Tracy Rep. Richard Pombo has joined some of the House of Representatives' most liberal firebrands in an effort to curb state and local eminent domain powers.

The strange-bedfellows alliance pits valley ranchers and property owners against cities and counties....

Pombo and at least 40 other House members are backing legislation meant to deter state and local governments from using the eminent domain powers extended by the court. The bill would not overturn the Kelo decision. Instead, the bill would cut off federal funds to any state or local agency that uses eminent domain for private commercial development.

Meanwhile in the San Diego area, local shenanigans are feeding the backlash, as the Union Tribune editorializes:

First came a report on the San Diego Model School Development Agency's push to seize and demolish 188 homes in the thriving City Heights neighborhood to build up to 509 town houses, condos and apartments more to its liking. The 30-acre site is far from the decaying neighborhood normally targeted in redevelopment, but blithe agency bureaucrats from the Soviet school of central planning--knowing they could call the area "blighted" if they chose--didn't care.

Then came yesterday's jaw-dropping story about National City's plan to use its powers of eminent domain to force the Daily family to sell a parcel the family leases to the Mossy family for one of its thriving car dealerships. After the two sides couldn't agree on a sales price, Mossy representatives made plain they would move their Nissan dealership--and the $1 million in annual sales and property taxes it generates for National City--unless the city helped close the deal. The City Council promptly caved in to Mossy's unsavory hardball tactics and, in its role as the city redevelopment board, began looking into seizing the land--after a mysterious epiphany in which members suddenly realized the site suffered from a heretofore undetected case of "visual blight."

What these stories have in common is a challenge to the argument made by eminent domain advocates: that California already protects property from Kelo-type seizures by requiring cities to find an area "blighted" first. Blight is a bit too easy to declare and, besides, one person's blight is another person's neighborhood. If an area is truly blighted, one might think property would be cheap enough to acquire profitably without local government's help. But then, of course, a developer might do something like build apartment buildings that don't generate big local taxes.

Q: What's the difference between you and the other housing projects ?

A: Our site is keeps your information private. We think that letting someone come and live in your home is a very, very big deal, and at the same time we don't think that everyone should be plastering their names, phone numbers, and addresses all over the internet and gulf coast. It's a somewhat difficult issue, because on one hand everyone really wants to open their homes, yet on the other hand, they want to be a little selective of who they are letting live with them. At this point, we are asking people who don't mind sharing all of their personal information to sign up at the larger housing sites as they have a little more open distribution of lists. However, the open house project seems to be the only one that introduces a one-way privacy approach and you should use this site if you want to initiate contact instead of people initiating contact with you.

City officials feared Katrina evacuees would overflow the space available in Reunion Arena and the convention center. Instead, there's room to spare. Refugees have indeed shown up by the thousands, but fewer than expected have had to stay in the city's massive shelters, because small shelters, churches, hotels, and local residents have taken them in. "Downtown volunteers served Sunday dinner to about 10,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees, but at bedtime at Reunion Arena and the Dallas Convention Center fewer than 1,800 of the approximately 8,200 prepared beds were occupied," reports the DMN.

The response has been so hospitable that one displaced couple even named their newborn baby Dallas.

Tom Foster of CompuNex Corp., which did the programming, sent me an email asking blog readers in Dallas (and presumably other cities with a lot of refugees) "to take their portable laptops and wireless air cards and put them to work." I'm not exactly sure of the best way to connect readers' wi-fi cards with displaced hurricane victims, but consider this a solicitation. Check out I'm OK's site for more background.

So I went to Reunion Arena, where I joined a long line of cars and trucks of every make, model, and condition--from beater to high-end Mercedes--you can imagine. A flushed and sweating police officer (it's a relatively cool 95 degrees today) directed me to Parking Lot E, where the Salvation Army--and an army of volunteer sorters--was accepting donations: huge stacks of bottled water cases, a wall of disposable diapers, and untold numbers of clothing piles. Somewhere in the distance they were sorting housewares. Around the arena, there were TV trucks from as far away as Las Vegas.

The Red Cross is asking people not to bring donations to Reunion Arena, because it has an "equal treatment" policy for the people it serves and donations are necessarily heterogeneous. I guess the Salvation Army's role is to sort and distribute to people who aren't under Red Cross auspices. But that's just speculation.

According to this DMN report the Arena and adjacent convention center will soon overflow their 10,000-refugee capacity, and the city is expecting at least 25,000. Dallas officials are looking for help from surrounding communities. Tarrant County, home of Fort Worth, has taken 500. So far, according to this DMN report the arena is proving surprisingly comfortable--at least in contrast to refugees' expectations, and their experiences of the past few days. (Locals looking for an alternative dropoff site, go here.)

Attorney General Mike Beebe said Tuesday that Arkansas property owners are adequately protected — much better than residents of most states — against the government taking their land for use by private developers.

Beebe, who is also a Democratic candidate for governor, said in a legal opinion that the Arkansas Constitution and numerous Supreme Court decisions make it clear that condemnation is only an option when property will be taken for public use. State courts historically have narrowly defined that type of use, he said.

Beebe’s opinion was issued in his official capacity as attorney general, but it became immediate political fodder in the 2006 governor’s race. A potential Republican opponent, Asa Hutchinson, declared that Beebe’s approach was "passive."

Hutchinson said Beebe is suggesting that the state "doesn’t need to do anything to protect people’s property" even after a U.S. Supreme court ruling this summer opened the door for condemnations for private development. "It doesn’t make sense to wait for somebody’s land to be seized and then wait for the courts to decide the issue," Hutchinson said. "We have an opportunity to prevent potential abuses."

Hutchinson's press release on the subject is here.

Meanwhile, the Texas legislature has passed a bill strengthening property rights protections--but including provisions to protect the soon-to-be Arlington Cowboys in seizing land for a stadium.

As Michele Catalano noted on A Small Victory, Kevin and Paul from Wizbang are doing essentially that. They've got a PayPal button, Paul's in the thick of it , and donations cover his family, yes, but especially those around them worse off. Much more detailed post from him here.

I gave, and I appreciate the PayPal button. I wish more organized charities would use PayPal.