It’s interesting, as this Washington Post article points out, that George Bush’s judicial appointments as governor of Texas brought the state’s conservative Supreme Court closer to the center.
“George Bush’s judicial appointments as governor — before he made his pact with the far right — were generally pro-business conservatives who tended to be moderate on some of the social issues,” said Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American Way, which opposes a strongly conservative appointment. “The problem as we see it today is that he later made irrevocable promises to the right to get elected that he would give them the courts.”
When Bush catered to the far right in the Terri Schiavo case, it backfired with the general public. Now the question on everyone’s mind is: Will he keep his pact with the far right this time?
Posted by Melissa Cooley
Even though Sedgwick County decided not to bid on managing city-owned Century II, officials of both governments should start working together toward the commonsense goal of putting all the area’s venues under one management, especially when the downtown arena opens. Forget “the process” or the past; do what will best serve citizens and quality of life.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
The editorial board has had lively and sometimes heated discussions about whether women should fight in combat. Most thought they should be able to if they passed the same qualifying tests as men.
I am sympathetic to the idea, but think the issues involved are more complicated than “women can do the same jobs as men” formulations.
I still have serious qualms about the cultural and physical challenges faced by women in close combat. Is the nation really ready to send 18-year-old girls and potential mothers into brutal hand-to-hand combat, or to see them blown to pieces or maimed by roadside bombs? Or tortured and raped?
And what about unit discipline? The distractions of sexual tension and rivalry would be inevitable.
With American women dying in Iraq, the nation is overdue for a thorough debate of the issue.
We want to put this out for blog discussion: What do you think?
Posted by Randy Scholfield
The Kansas State Board of Education could do its credibility a favor by subjecting members’ travel expenses to the full board for approval — especially after member Connie Morris’ $2,220 hotel bill from a Miami Beach conference. But a subcommittee, including Morris, has decided against recommending changes in travel policies. The status quo satisfies state law, but a show of special accountability shouldn’t be too much to expect of the board, which holds Kansas kids and schools more accountable by the year.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
It’s hard to say whether the more than 90 percent of engineering and professional and technical union members who voted to approve the Mid-Western Aircraft Co. contract did so out of fatigue more than satisfaction. In any case, the overwhelming vote is the latest welcome sign that all parties at the new company are focused on the future. After 18 months of turbulence, it’s time.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
News that a window cover had fallen off the shuttle Discovery and damaged its thermal tiles sparked an unwelcome feeling of deja vu Tuesday.
This sentence, from an Associated Press story, didn’t help: “It was not immediately clear why the cover — which was held by tape — came loose.”
Does the idea that NASA — with, I assume, plenty of space-age materials at hand — uses tape to hold on window covers worry anyone else?
Let’s hope that my fears are proved unfounded at the launch.
Posted by Melissa Cooley
The Wichita Police Department may have some legitimate complaints about KSN, Channel 3. But don’t take it out on the taxpaying public. Yet that is, in effect, what the police and city did in excluding KSN from the BTK briefing last week. As one person who called The Eagle said, they “did it to all of us who look to Channel 3 for our news.”
And where could this lead? Could government start snubbing media that report the real news rather than repeat public officials’ spin?
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
L.R. Pyle argued in this letter to the editor Tuesday that Americans need to adopt the motto of Chinese workers: “Work more, get more, no free lunch.”
And a survey released Monday backs Pyle up. It says that American workers waste two hours a day at work — not including lunch — by socializing, surfing the Web and “spacing out.”
Apparently, some American workers would have to give up their free extended lunches.
Posted by Melissa Cooley
Images matter. If images didn’t matter, most of us cartoonist-types would be out of work. Certainly my critics, and fans (hey, I have one out there somewhere) would be much less emotional when they contact me. I’ve always thought the power of the graphic image gave us cartoonists a way to "short circuit" readers. Images cut to the chase and often avoid all that complicated left-brain intellectualizing that my editorial writing colleagues must deal with.
Well, here’s a short circuit if I ever saw one. It’s one of the stamps Mexico recently issued that are causing a bit of an uproar north of their border. You can read a defense of the stamps as published in the LA Times right here. Click here for the other view, from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. My view:it’s inexcusable.
So why do we accept stereotypes like the Cleveland Indians’ Chief Wahoo???
Seems to me, and to plenty of Native-Americans, to be in the same league, no pun intended, with the Mexican stamp. But folks go ballistic whenever the issue comes up. Somehow you’re trying too hard to be "politically correct" when you disdain goofy demeaning images of American Indians. Looks almost as bad as that stamp to me.
Maybe we Americans could use a dose of what Dr. Seuss is applying to our brains in this cartoon from 1942. Don’t forget to click to enlarge the image. Of course, even the good doctor had his slip-ups now and then. Here’s another of his cartoons from the same era in which he employed a bit of the old stereotyping that still goes on all over.
Hard to avoid being shocked with all this short circuiting going on.
