University of Kansas professor Paul Mirecki’s reported beating comes as a shock, suggesting he was targeted by thugs for his controversial e-mailed criticisms of Christian fundamentalists and Catholics. The absence of verifiable facts calls for caution, but is tolerance in such short supply in Kansas these days that you have to worry about getting beaten up for your beliefs? Surely not.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Of the 1,000 executions in the United States since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the ultimate punishment in 1976, 150 were carried out in Texas on the watch of then-Gov. George W. Bush. He said back in 2000 that he was “confident that every person that has been put to death in Texas under my watch has been guilty of the crime charged, and has had full access to the courts.” Never mind the tales of the lousy defense lawyers that some of the condemned have had, and the mounting fears that a San Antonio man named Ruben Cantu was wrongly executed in 1993.
You have to wonder why more conservatives and Americans generally don’t view this issue as columnist George Will does. Here’s what he said on Sunday’s “This Week”: “The death penalty is a government program in that it’s apt to be not done very well.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
In war, words matter as much as weapons. And Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, writes in this Washington Post commentary that he’s concerned about President Bush’s increasing tendency to use phrases such as the “murderous ideology of Islamic radicalism” and to liken that ideology of communism.
As the president furthers what Brzezinski calls “Islamophobia” with such language, he said, “Bush is implicitly elevating Osama bin Laden’s stature and historic significance to the level of figures such as Lenin, Stalin or Mao. And that suggests, in turn, that the fugitive Saudi dissident hiding in some cave (or perhaps even deceased) has been articulating a doctrine of universal significance.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Congratulations to Raytheon Aircraft Co. for crowning its year with a billion-dollar order for 50 Hawker 4000 midsize jets from NetJets, Warren Buffett’s fleet of fractionally owned business jets based in New Jersey. This is a credit to more than Raytheon’s planemaking, too, because NetJets signed on for 10 years of guaranteed maintenance. As the deal “fills up the order book and builds the backlog,” in the words of Raytheon Aircraft chairman and chief executive Jim Schuster, it bodes well for Wichita’s aircraft manufacturing generally. After general aviation’s slump of the early ’00s, Wichita just can’t get enough of this kind of good news.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Waiting for Japan to reopen its borders to U.S. beef is beginning to seem like some existentialist play titled “Waiting for Koizumi.”
Japan, once the biggest importer of U.S. beef, imposed a ban in 2003 after mad cow disease was discovered in Washington state. After two years of frustrating negotiations, Japan appears to be finally moving toward lifting the ban.
Then again, Kansas ranchers shouldn’t hold their breath: That’s how it looked about this time last year.
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and other farm-state senators are talking tough, threatening to back tariffs against Japan if it doesn’t lift the ban by the end of the year.
They’re right to put on the pressure. But even if Japan soon reopens its market, U.S. producers will have a big job convincing wary Japanese consumers that American beef is safe. They’re demanding country-of-origin labels. And better testing. It still comes down to reassuring consumers about safety.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
The Washington Post noted in this article about Bush impersonators that George W. Bush “is easy to mimic.” But don’t think that those who are paid to mimic him have an easy job.
Steve Bridges, who impersonates Bush on “The Tonight Show,” spends 2½ hours having prosthetic makeup applied before an appearance. And the impersonators spend countless hours refining the president’s many moods.
Mike O’Meara of radio’s “The Don & Mike Show” describes them: “There is the overconfident George Bush, which is one of my favorites, like the day he introduced ‘the architect of the campaign,’ Karl Rove. There’s the smug, arrogant Bush I like more than any of them. And there’s another one most of us love — the struggling George Bush, trying to find the right words.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
With all the bad press Kansas has been receiving lately, I guess we can be thankful for this mention in Garrison Keillor’s column for Salon (even if it does discount the effort of twine rollers in Cawker City):
“We occupy a bountiful country of great civility (yes, really) and robustness and freedom, and if not the No. 1 Country in the World, nonetheless it has some great stuff, including Lake Superior, the Supreme Court, the Greatest Show on Earth, the Four Tops (“Baby, I Need Your Loving”) and the World’s Largest Ball of Twine Ever Rolled by One Man (12 feet in diameter) in Darwin, Minn. Cawker City, Kan,, claims a bigger one, but it’s more oblong and was done by committee.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
