What was up with BTK suspect Dennis Rader referring to himself in the third person during his phone interview with KSN, Channel 3? “Rader needs to know what’s going on,” Rader said.
So does Brownlee, Phillip Brownlee posted.
I didn’t support tax breaks for Genesis Health Clubs when the Wichita City Council originally approved them last year. But having made that commitment, the council should have honored it, rather than backtrack as it did Tuesday. Companies and their financial lenders need to know that they can count on the city to fulfill its written promises.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Some readers were on target in saying I should have included Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., in my recent column about apologies that were in order. Durbin rightly apologized Tuesday for his false and demeaning rhetoric on the Senate floor comparing U.S. soldiers’ mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo to Soviet gulags, Nazis and Pol Pot.
His unfortunate choice of words, however, shouldn’t negate the larger valid point he was trying to make: That Americans shouldn’t countenance the torture techniques used at Guantanamo, or the Bush administration’s abandonment of the Geneva Conventions.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Wichita City Council member Sharon Fearey was justifiably irritated that city staff didn’t give the council enough time to study the state’s new gun law before it goes into effect July 1. “This has put us all in a tough position,” she said at Tuesday’s meeting.
The new law standardized gun transportation rules throughout a the state, which is a good idea. But it goes too far in also wiping out all other local gun laws, including Wichita’s ordinance that voters upheld in 1994.
Mayor Carlos Mayans warned council members not to snub local lawmakers by contesting the new law. After considerable discussion, the council agreed. But what about the lawmakers snubbing the will of local voters and the principle of local control?
And was there any reason other than political calculation that caused Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to sign this law?
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, is taking heat from Democratic lawmakers — 16 of whom called on President Bush to fire him Tuesday.
The corporation’s inspector general is investigating Tomlinson regarding several issues, one of which involves Fred Mann, whom Tomlinson hired (without the board knowing) to monitor the PBS program “Now” for political bias. It turns out that Mann had worked for 20 years at a journalism center founded by conservatives, as reported in this New York Times article.
Mann’s reports on the show appear to reflect a bias of his own, calling Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., a “liberal” because he challenged Bush policy in Iraq. Hagel is known for questioning Bush, but he is far from “liberal.”
Eliminating bias is always a good goal, but it goes both ways.
Posted by Melissa Cooley
Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts is right: President Bush shouldn’t try to make a so-called “recess appointment” of John Bolton, his controversial nominee for United Nations ambassador, during the upcoming Senate break. “That would not be in our best interest,” Roberts said of the recess maneuver, which could send a politically compromised Bolton to the United Nations until January 2007, when he would again face confirmation.
For now, Bush is saying he still wants an up-or-down Senate vote, but Democrats vow to prevent that until the White House agrees to release documents they suspect will show Bolton misused intelligence about Syria’s weapons capability.
Bush needs to provide more information about Bolton, and Senate Democrats need to not let partisan politics poison the confirmation process. If not, a pox on both their houses.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
“It’s Johnson County versus the world.”
— Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Jean Schodorf, R-Wichita, on the role of geography in the crafting of a legislative answer to the school funding ruling. It’s also why our local delegation needs to make sure Wichita gets its proper share of the additional education spending.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
With the number of people Jon Stewart offends on Comedy Central’s "The Daily Show," "lactivists" are probably the least of his worries. But maybe they shouldn’t be.
Stewart could be the lactivists’ next target, after a crack he made about a breast-feeding woman on Tuesday’s show. Granted, the woman was caught on camera breast-feeding one row behind lawmakers during C-Span’s coverage of the Downing Street memo hearing. And Stewart’s remark — calling the incident a "nutritious wardrobe malfunction" — was funny.
But no celebrity is safe from the lactivists. Barbara Walters learned that lesson when her remark prompted a rally outside ABC studios.
Posted by Melissa Cooley
Mississippi showed the world this week that justice delayed is not justice denied with the conviction of 80-year-old ex-Ku Klux Klan member Edgar Ray Killen, who helped organize the brutal murders of three civil rights workers in 1964 (the historical basis for the movie “Mississippi Burning”). In 1994, Mississippi finally convicted another racist killer, Byron de la Beckwith, for the 1963 sniper killing of Medgar Evers.
Here’s hoping Killen spends the rest of his days in prison — it’s a lot more than he gave the young men whose lives he snuffed out.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
