Liberal activist groups are abuzz about a 1985 memo that U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito wrote arguing that the government “should make clear that we disagree with Roe v. Wade.” But did anybody in America not already think this was Alito’s view? Isn’t that why President Bush picked him? Besides, even as important as abortion is, the Senate should not block a highly qualified and competent nominee based on this one issue.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
“It is hard to believe, but more than four years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress has still not acted to make chemical plants, one of the nation’s greatest terrorist vulnerabilities, safer,” The New York Times wrote in an editorial Tuesday. It is hard to believe.
Instead, we’ve spent billions invading and rebuilding a country that had no link to Sept. 11, and we squandered limited homeland security dollars on low priorities — such as spending them on, say, biohazard suits for North Dakota rather than on safeguarding ports and chemical plants.
Meanwhile, as the Times editorial warned: “If terrorists attacked a chemical plant, the death toll could be enormous. A single breached chlorine tank could, according to the Department of Homeland Security, lead to 17,500 deaths, 10,000 severe injuries and 100,000 hospitalizations.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
The U.S. abortion rate could be cut in half if emergency contraception was available without a prescription, Sarah Johnston, an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita, wrote last week in a commentary on our Opinion pages. But as she noted, the FDA went against the recommendations of its advisory committees and national medical associations, and put the decision on hold.
Johnston argued that Kansans who care about abortion should be outraged. But many pro-lifers oppose the contraception because they think it will encourage promiscuity and because they think it is a chemical abortion — even though a study by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm showed that Plan B prevents ovulation and doesn’t cause a fertilized egg to be expelled.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
The state’s science standards writing committee — which had its work debased by the State Board of Education — is planning to keep meeting on its own, The Topeka Capital-Journal reported. Committee chairman Steve Case said he had been contacted by school districts that didn’t want to base their curricula on the state board’s flawed standards. So the committee plans to start meeting again next month to finalize and clarify its recommended standards — which, you can bet, won’t include a redefinition of science.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Much of the recent discussion related to state legislators’ travel expenses has been about the denial of a request by Rep. Valdenia Winn, D-Kansas City, Kan., for $1,000 to attend an educational conference in Oxford, England, next March. (The nonpartisan reason offered by GOP legislative leaders makes sense — it would have meant she’d miss a week of the 2006 legislative session.)
Of greater concern to Kansans, though, is the steep tab for all lawmakers’ recent travel to state government conventions: $198,483 during fiscal year 2005, up from $114,000 for fiscal year 2004. For 2005, legislative leaders removed a $700-per-trip cap for reimbursement they’d imposed during the budget crunch. But shouldn’t lawmakers travel rarely and spend frugally in all fiscal years?
Posted by Rhonda Holman
New highway data shows Kansas still lagging much of the nation in seat-belt use. Kansans’ use rate of 69 percent was the sixth-lowest rate in the nation, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
There’s a simple solution: Pass a primary seat-belt law.
Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia have passed “primary” belt laws, which allow a law enforcement officer to pull over a driver solely for not wearing a seat belt. Primary laws have a demonstrated track record of boosting seat-belt use by an average of 11 percent.
This is about saving lives. In 2004, 390 people died in Kansas while riding in cars and trucks, and 62 percent were not wearing their seat belts.
An added fiscal incentive: Kansas has a one-time chance to get additional federal transportation dollars — more than $11 million — if it passes a primary seat-belt law.
The Kansas Legislature should get this done next session.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
University of Kansas geography professor Johannes Feddema recently published a paper in the journal Science that lends more credence to the theory of human-caused global climate change. As he told the Lawrence Journal-World, perhaps we shouldn’t wait until all the evidence is in: “We’ll probably never come up with 100 percent proof before it’s way too late to do something about it. So the question is, ‘Do you want to take the chance?’. . . The problem is we only have one planet.”
Posted by Randy Scholfield
