With Kansas’ gubernatorial primary less than a year away, the Republicans still lack a marquee candidate who could guarantee that Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is a one-termer. Human Events Online says the name of Gen. Richard Myers, outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a proud Kansas State University graduate, came up during a Wichita meeting last week at which nine GOP donors also tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., to run for governor. That was before, however, Myers became one of the Bush administration officials playing post-Katrina defense. Of the military response, Myers said Tuesday: “Not only was there no delay. I think we anticipated in most cases — not in all cases, but in most cases — the support that was required. And we were pushing support before we were formally asked for it.”
Meanwhile, failed 3rd District congressional challenger Kris Kobach told Harris News Service that he’s doing polling to test the waters for a gubernatorial run. “Some people think I would be the strongest candidate,” said Kobach, who teaches constitutional law at the University of Missouri at Kansas City and spearheaded the recent (unsuccessful) challenge to the in-state tuition law for undocumented immigrants. Current and former Kansas House Speakers Doug Mays and Robin Jennison are in; so are lesser-known candidates Dennis Hawver and Richard Rodewald. Lots of candidates still doesn’t guarantee one winner, though.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman — no left-wing nut — let it rip today. He said that the Bush administration was well-suited to respond to Sept. 11 and to conduct a war on terror, but not to deal with Katrina. “These are people so much better at inflicting pain than feeling it, so much better at taking things apart than putting them together, so much better at defending ‘intelligent design’ as a theology than practicing it as a policy,” he wrote.
And here’s what he said about their budget priorities and about Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist, who visited Kansas earlier this summer: “An administration whose tax policy has been dominated by the toweringly selfish Grover Norquist — who has been quoted as saying: ‘I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub’ — doesn’t have the instincts for this moment. Mr. Norquist is the only person about whom I would say this: I hope he owns property around the New Orleans levee that was never properly finished because of a lack of tax dollars. I hope his basement got flooded. And I hope that he was busy drowning government in his bathtub when the levee broke and that he had to wait for a U.S. Army helicopter to get out of town.”
Now say what you really think.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is getting a deserved bipartisan butt kicking for its slow and, in some cases, inept response to Hurricane Katrina. But it’s likely that there is plenty of blame to spread between local, state and national leaders. For example, this Associated Press photo making the e-mail rounds shows rows of New Orleans school buses in a flooded parking lot. Why weren’t these and other buses used to help evacuate some of the citizens who didn’t have transportation?
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
It’s good that Kansas Supreme Court will finally hear the challenge Thursday to whether Attorney General Phill Kline should be able to obtain the medical records of women who received abortions. Kline initially claimed that this was an investigation into child rapes. But that never added up, as most of the records that he sought were of adult women, and he didn’t appear to be subpoenaing hospitals for records of underage children who give birth. His office now acknowledges that the investigation is also about late-term abortions. The two targeted abortion clinics, including George Tiller’s clinic in Wichita, argue this is a fishing expedition. It sure looks that way.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Barbara Bush’s ability to shoot from the lip made her more endearing than her brittle husband when she was first lady, but she scored no such points with this observation after her Astrodome tour Monday: Calling it “sort of scary” how many of the evacuees from New Orleans want to stay in Texas, she added, “and so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Americans doubtful that the world would lift a finger to help victims of Hurricane Katrina are getting more evidence to the contrary by the day: Kuwait is in for $500 million, Qatar for $100 million, and even Venezuela for 1 million barrels of gasoline and $5 million. The European Union and NATO are stepping up, as are countries such as Spain, Belgium, Britain, Germany and Italy. It’s something. Is it enough?
Posted by Rhonda Holman
