There is almost no chance that the Kansas State Board of Education’s six controlling conservatives won’t approve new science standards hostile to evolution theory and other time-tested concepts. If the vote doesn’t happen this week, it surely will happen as soon as legally possible, in the wake of two national science groups’ refusal of the use of their copyrighted material. In injecting religiously motivated criticism of evolution theory into science standards, the state board is only inviting more criticism of itself.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
I don’t look forward to an ugly fight about Samuel Alito’s nomination. But I agree with columnist George Will that our country is overdue for a debate about the role of the courts and our expectations of judges. Here is Will’s partisan take:
“This is the debate the country has needed for several generations: Should the Constitution be treated as so plastic, so changeable that it enables justices to reach whatever social outcomes — ‘results’ — they, like the result-oriented senators who confirm them, consider desirable? If so, in what sense does the Constitution still constitute the nation?
“This is a debate that the president, who needs a victory, should relish. Will it, as Democrats mournfully say, ‘divide’ the country? Yes. Debates about serious subjects do that. The real reason those Democrats are mournful is that they correctly suspect they are on the losing side of the divide.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Johnson County District Attorney Paul Morrison’s switch to the Democratic Party to run for attorney general looks to us like a singular act of strategy. It’s a moderate Republican’s pragmatic way of trying to beat a conservative Republican incumbent, given that conservative voters tend to decide GOP primaries in Kansas. But others, perhaps thinking wishfully, see Morrison’s move as the start of something big for Kansas Democrats. Columnist Steve Kraske argued in The Kansas City Star: “A new political paradigm is in the works. How can moderate Republicans regain their footing in Kansas? Well, run as Democrats.” And The Salina Journal editorialized: “Moderates are watching the public’s reaction to Morrison’s move. If there is no backlash then others will follow his lead, and Democrats will find their rolls swelling with Republicans.” More likely, Morrison doesn’t want to be a Democrat so much as he really, really wants to spare the state another four years of Attorney General Phill Kline’s narrow agenda.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
When citizens blasted the city of Wichita for calling the subject of its December 2004 lighting ceremony the “community’s tree,” Mayor Carlos Mayans said 2005 would be different, declaring, “God is God, and a Christmas tree is a Christmas tree.” And sure enough, the street-closures item on Tuesday’s City Council agenda is for a Dec. 8 event labeled, “Christmas Tree Lighting and Night of Santa.” The city meant well in trying to make the tree-lighting and Winterfest events inclusive of all faiths. But Wichita’s municipal Christmas tree tradition dates to 1914, and Mayans and other officials are right to want to go back to calling it what it is.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
In a Washington, D.C., seemingly more partisan than ever, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., is making an admirable effort to transcend partisanship on behalf of human rights related to human trafficking, slavery, genocide, religious persecution and other global horrors. He and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright convened a conference last week at Georgetown University to push for bipartisan foreign policy, getting such divergent figures as Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Southern Baptist leader Richard Land around the table to brainstorm about what were called the “top five worst places to wake up in the morning” — the Darfur region of Sudan, North Korea, Burma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Northern Uganda. “Leave uncomfortable and act,” Brownback told the more than 500 participants in the conference. To Brownback’s credit, he can be counted on to keep acting on these important issues.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Having been inexplicably interested in what’s in Karl Rove’s garage a couple of weeks back, I naturally jumped at this story about what’s in George W. Bush’s pockets. He revealed all — a white handkerchief — Tuesday in response to a question by a reporter from the Argentine newspaper La Nacion, during a group interview in advance of Bush’s Latin America trip. “No dinero, no mas. No wallet,” the president said. What about a watch? “Si, Timex,” Bush said, showing that his sports his middle initial on its face. “But I’m not supposed to be endorsing products.”
Jay Leno joked that reporters also asked Vice President Dick Cheney to empty his pockets, and two oil lobbyists fell out.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
