You have to love the concept: A Kansas license plate with a buffalo in the middle of it. Finally. A design we can all get excited about. Granted, it’s only available as a vanity plate, but it’s a great improvement and a step forward as we "brand" our state. Trouble is, from a distance — say, about one car length away — it looks like an old rusty plate. Maybe there’s just no pleasing us, but perhaps a different, less rusty-looking color choice would have been better.
Kansas keeps going with these faint images on our tags that aren’t really visible from a few feet away. Our Capitol building with the cloud above it just looks sort of like a big mushroom cloud from a short distance. Wait. Maybe that’s appropriate. Let’s see how the Legislature’s special session turns out.
Posted by Richard Crowson
Intelligence chief Porter Goss recently told Time magazine that he has an “excellent idea” where Osama bin Laden is. “What’s the next question?” he then asked.
Well, the next question is: What are we waiting for? Get out there and catch him, for crying out loud.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
“We on the science side of things strong-armed the Kansas hearings because we realized this was not a scientific exchange, it was a political show trial,” Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, told The New York Times this week for this article about the hearings. “We are never going to solve it by throwing science at it.”
Considering that the conservative members of the board took almost all of the evolution critics’ suggestions, Scott was right about it being a show trial. But by rightly refusing to appear, scientists do risk being told to “put up or shut up,” as one evolution critic said in the article.
Posted by Melissa Cooley
In reporting on Saturday’s Statehouse rally against the Kansas Supreme Court’s school finance order, the Lawrence Journal-World made an excellent point about one rallier’s sign reading, “Stop the Activist Sebelius Court.”
Of the six members of the current court, only one, Justice Carol Beier, was appointed by Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. For the record: Chief Justice Kay McFarland was appointed by Republican Gov. Robert Bennett. Justices Donald Allegrucci and Robert Davis were appointed by Democratic Gov. John Carlin. Justices Lawton Nuss and Marla Luckert were appointed by Republican Gov. Bill Graves.
That breakdown makes the roots of the state’s highest court a model in partisan balance. That said, good judges rule on the law, without regard to which party happened to put them on the bench.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
The Pawnee Nation plans to build a tribal casino just across the state line south of Arkansas City, reported The Ark City Traveler. Plus, the Tonkawa tribe is building its own casino that will be adjacent to the Pawnee facility.
So expanded gaming is coming to this area. The question is whether Wichita and Kansas will benefit.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Despite confusion across America, we’re not Wichita Falls, Texas, but we do have our falls in downtown Wichita, adjacent to the Hyatt and the river. Send your snaps and comments to rcrowson@wichitaeagle.com.
Posted by Lou Heldman
The nine members of the arena sales-tax oversight committee up for appointment today by the Sedgwick County Commission are probably all great guys. But therein lies a problem: They are all guys. Given that it’s 2005 and all, surely it’s not too much to expect a board of any size and purpose appointed by a local government to have some women on it.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Good for Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline for ordering an audit of the state’s registered offender registry. In order to be helpful to citizens, the registry’s information has to be accurate. And the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, which maintains the listing, estimates that about 10 percent of offenders have the wrong home addresses.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
All this business about waiting for Kansas Congressman Jerry Moran to make up his mind concerning the governor’s race has gotten some of us to thinking. Wouldn’t you hate to be behind this guy at the Mcdonald’s drive-through? Sheesh.
Posted by Richard Crowson
Are we picking on Kansas Board of Education member Connie Morris too much? Well, maybe. But I can’t help but add one more item here. Ms. Morris has proved herself to be someone who can dish it out, so she ought to be able to take it as well. She certainly dished it out to her fellow board members in her recent Kansas taxpayer-funded newsletter. I use the term newsletter loosely, of course. It really reads and looks more like a gospel tract. Lots of words in upper case, lots of underlines, lots of references to God and prayer. My favorite is this line: "Sue Gamble is continually most disruptive and rude (that was underlined) as she repeatedly ignores statements made moments before as she’s vexed for ways to entangle a discussion or make it about religion and in her view – therefore a fowl." Really, Ms. Morris. A fowl??? Sue Gamble is turning discussions into chickens? One would hope that members of the Board of Education could compose sentences that are a little more, ahem, intelligently designed, shall we say…
Click on the image and see the part of Ms. Morris’ newsletter to which I refer.
Posted by Richard Crowson
