Americans have mostly shrugged off recent allegations that the CIA is interrogating terror suspects in secret prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Not so the Europeans, whose demand for answers is part of why Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is meeting Tuesday with new German Prime Minister Angela Merkel. Europeans aren’t just upset at the existence of the prisons in retooled Soviet-era facilities and their reported interrogation techniques. They’re upset about the use of their airspace at all, including for what Spiegel Online counted as 437 flights since 2001. Rice can’t say much about any of it, other than to stress, as she did Monday, that the United States doesn’t transport suspects “for the purpose of interrogation using torture.” But Rice’s diplomatic skills will be tested on this trip, which underscores how the Bush White House’s credibility on prewar intelligence now goes to its credibility on many other international issues.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
The idea of preventing Kansas gays and lesbians from adopting children hasn’t gotten much traction in Topeka leading up to the 2006 legislative session. That’s mostly because it would be difficult to do without a ban on all single-parent adoptions — which would dramatically reduce the pool of adoptive parents and leave more children languishing in foster care. But a gay-adoption ban is unlikely to go away quietly as an issue for the social conservatives who successfully championed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage last spring. One sobering new item on their to-do list, as attributed by the Lawrence Journal-World to the Rev. Terry Fox, pastor of Wichita’s Immanuel Baptist Church: also prohibiting gays and lesbians from providing child care.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said last week that Hurricane Katrina was a “big-time lesson learned.” It was big time, all right, as are the consequences for thousands of survivors. But seeing the images of the evacuees of New Orleans’ devastated Lower Ninth Ward being allowed back in Thursday for the first time since the storm struck Aug. 29, you had to wonder what has changed in the capacity of authorities to respond immediately or to ease the suffering and rebuilding afterward. The federal government ignores Katrina’s lesson and neglects its promises to that region at the risk of public trust — and the next region hit by a natural or unnatural threat.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Those who’ve seen an early screening say that in the upcoming “American Dreamz,” Dennis Quaid does a George Bush impersonation as a sheltered president who decides to read a newspaper one day — to the consternation of the controlling vice president played by a balding and lumpy Willem Dafoe. At one point, the president agrees to be a judge on an “American Idol”-like show being targeted by terrorists. “It’s going to be pretty funny,” insisted co-star Chris Klein. Quaid has said the send-up is neither pro-Democrat nor pro-Republican, but he acknowledges there’s some Bush and Reagan in his role. And to think people said the success of “The Passion of the Christ” blew a lasting hole through Hollywood’s liberalism.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
It’s still legal to paddle public schoolkids in Kansas and 21 other states. But to its credit, Kansas at least uses the punishment sparingly. New U.S. Education Department data indicates that 46 Kansas kids were spanked in the 2002-03 school year. Leading the nation was — why is this no surprise? — Texas, accounting for 57,000 of the 301,000 student paddlings nationally that year. The only thing more shocking than those last two numbers is the fact that corporal punishment remains accepted at all.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
If schools do paddle (see above post), they may have much bigger targets these days. Did you see the news report about medical needles needing to be longer because people’s butts are getting bigger?
Arena planners, take note. They’re considering how wide the seats need to be in the new downtown arena. As an Eagle article pointed out last week, the spread in existing local venue seats is from a medieval 16 inches at Koch Arena (see photo) to a sprawling 21 inches in the Warren Theatre.
I vote for supersized comfort — no ifs, ands or butts.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
