Many Kansans upset over the State Board of Education’s vote on science standards see next year’s election as the remedy — a chance for four of the six board conservatives to be ousted at the ballot box. A similar 1999 board evolution vote prompted a re-election shake-up and a rewriting of standards. But board chairman Steve Abrams (in photo) predicts the latest decision will be a "winning campaign issue" for the conservative incumbents: "It’s not only good science, it’s good for the election. National polls tell us this is what the public wants."
National polls? What the public wants? Those hardly seem like appropriate foundations on which to base Kansas’ science curriculum.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
It takes some nerve for a guy under a legal cloud to address a crowd of lawyers, but then nobody ever accused Karl Rove of lacking nerve. The White House deputy chief of staff, who is not yet free and clear in the CIA leak investigation, predictably lashed out at "judicial imperialism" and "legislating from the bench" during a Thursday night speech to the Federalist Society. More revealing and troubling was a joke he made about the society, which he said has so "thoroughly infiltrated the White House" that Chief of Staff Andrew Card had asked him to announce a staff meeting after dinner. Is it appropriate for any one group, whatever its ideology or special interest, to accrue such power in a presidential administration?
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Having taken a beating from the left over the prewar intelligence probe’s second phase, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., is now hearing it from the right over his urging that Congress let the Justice Department first investigate the leak of classified documents that led to The Washington Post story about secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh and others are demanding that Congress take a bicameral look at the leak immediately. But Roberts’ reticence is prudent and consistent with his preferred order of probes into the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s name. The unfair attacks on Roberts also miss the point: The real potential for outrage isn’t that the prisons’ existence was leaked. It’s that the prisons apparently exist.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Having suggested the bombing of the U.S. State Department and the assassination of the Venezuelan president, Pat Robertson shouldn’t be able to surprise us so easily anymore. But his reaction to the pro-evolution results of Tuesday’s school board election in Dover, Pa., was absurd: "I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God. You just rejected him from your city." Speaking on his "700 Club" TV show, Robertson also said, "If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them."
Following Robertson’s train of illogic, Kansans are in good with God right now, as of our state school board’s vote this week. But if Kansas voters should change the balance of power on the board next year, we’re all doomed. What a guy.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
"Long gone are the days when the Sunflower State mattered in presidential races," said John B. Anderson, former member of Congress and chairman of FairVote, a voter advocacy group. Kansas received none of the TV advertising spent by the two campaigns during the last five weeks of the 2004 presidential campaign and only 0.34 percent of the presidential and vice presidential campaign visits, according to a new FairVote report. "Kansas is completely ignored," Anderson said. The reason, of course, is that Kansas is so predictably Republican that neither party feels any need to campaign here.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
There is no justification for any official surprise regarding the proximity of the planned downtown arena to the Kansas Department of Corrections’ work-release center: The center opened at Emporia and Waterman in 1990, long before the arena project was proposed and, as of last week, sited kitty-corner to it. The arrangement isn’t ideal, but moving the center now would be costly and politically difficult — as is all siting of correctional facilities. With the right design, especially regarding the arena’s entrance, surely the 250-bed center and the 15,000-seat arena can peacefully co-exist. The pressure is on planners to make it work for both the attraction’s success and the public’s safety.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
