This may be the year that Kansans get the right to carry concealed handguns, now that the Senate has passed such a bill with a veto-proof majority. Stay tuned.
Our editorial today notes that “for all the hyperbolic rhetoric on both sides, other states’ experience suggests that allowing concealed handguns in Kansas for those who meet the criteria and get safety training is unlikely to significantly hurt or help public safety.”
But the same cannot be said for the other major gun-related bill this session — a “stand your ground” bill like Florida’s intended to protect somebody who shoots in self-defense against later civil lawsuits and criminal prosecution. This is another effort by the NRA to get states to pass gun-rights bills whether they’re needed or not. As we said today, “Kansas lawmakers should be in no hurry to pass a law with the potential to make some Kansans think they’re free to use deadly force whenever and wherever they decide it’s warranted, no judge or jury or accountability required.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Of all the online blogs at Knight Ridder newspapers, only Dave Barry’s blog at The Miami Herald receives more reader comments than our editorial department blog. That’s an amazing accomplishment, especially given the smaller size of our market compared with many of those other newspapers.
Of course, the credit for this success goes to you readers. Thanks for not being shy about expressing your opinions. And, please, keep those comments coming — we’d love to beat Barry.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Check out the pro/con debate on today’s opinion pages about whether Kansas should make Wal-Mart provide health care benefits of at least 8 percent of its total payroll, as a Maryland law requires. Rep. Geraldine Flaharty, D-Wichita, who is backing this legislation, argues that it’s not fair that Wal-Mart off-loads its health-care costs on taxpayers. “Wal-Mart has about 20,000 employees in Kansas, and these employees have about 3,000 children covered by HealthWave,” she wrote. “On average, each child covered costs state and federal taxpayers $1,368.” But Lewis Ebert, president of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, responds that more mandates aren’t the answer to rising health care costs. “Singling out even one large employer for government mandates, as this legislation would, is simply bad public policy and patently unfair,” he wrote.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Thanks to a blogger, yet another unqualified Bush appointee has resigned. This time it was George Deutsch of NASA’s public affairs department, who was part of the reported campaign to silence the agency’s top climate specialist from speaking out about the problem. The NASA employee stepped down after a blogger discovered that the 24-year-old did not graduate from Texas A&M, as his resume said. He didn’t graduate from college at all. But as The New York Times editorial board points out:
“The shocker was not NASA’s failure to vet Mr. Deutsch’s credentials, but that this young politico with no qualifications was able to impose his ideology on other agency employees. At one point, he told a Web designer to add the word ‘theory’ after every mention of the Big Bang.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten expects to issue a ruling this week on whether Attorney General Phill Kline’s legal opinion is correct that doctors, counselors and school nurses must report to state authorities most sexual activity by teens under age 16, regardless of whether it is consensual. But making sense of the confusing, surreal testimony won’t be easy.
During the course of the trial, Kline said that, as far as reporting rules, it is probably OK for teen girls to perform oral sex on boys but not for boys to perform it on girls. One of his "expert" witnesses said that boys should be able to buy condoms but girls shouldn’t have access to birth control, and another said that it mattered whether a boy is black or white. Marten criticised them both for their "holier-than-thou approach" in saying that Kansas should report sexual activity that they don’t report in their own practices. And Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston went further than Kline, saying that fondling of female breasts must be reported — which caused Marten to note that even two of the state’s top law-enforcement officials don’t agree on what should be reported.
But, as Marten observed, one thing has become obvious about Kline’s opinion: “It is now clear that it is unclear.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Today is the 197th anniversary of biologist Charles Darwin’s birth, and according to this article, people around the country are planning Darwin birthday celebrations, which could include cake and, weather permitting, some badminton, one of Darwin’s favorite pursuits.
Scientists should also start using the occasion as a teach-in to spread more knowledge about evolutionary theory and dispel the gross distortions and shoddy science perpetrated by the intelligent design folks.
As Richard Leventhal, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, told Associated Press, “Evolution is the model that drives science. It’s time to recognize that.”
Posted by Randy Scholfield
