Four days after Hurricane Katrina hit, President Bush said, “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.” The statement did not hold up at the time, it being clear that many had anticipated the threat. And now, with the release of video footage from the day before Katrina struck, it is clear that Bush himself knew of the danger. The “We did not know” excuse that the administration employed in the days after the hurricane is disturbing. But what is more disturbing is that federal, state and local officials — even with the luxury of advance warning — still failed miserably in their response.
Posted by Melissa Cooley
Rep. Nile Dillmore (in photo), D-Wichita, advocates getting tougher on Kansas employers of illegal immigrants. But he made an important distinction Wednesday as his colleagues on a House committee voted to repeal the law allowing children of such immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates at state colleges: The 221 students who can newly afford college because of the 2004 law are not in Kansas of their own choosing but because they were brought here by adult relatives seeking jobs. With the repeal, Dillmore said, “We are simply going around beating the innocent and ignoring the guilty.” Legislators also need to be aware that Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has shown no interest in the repeal. She said Wednesday: “Punishing children and making education more difficult for talented children of immigrants is probably a lose-lose situation.” It is — no probably about it.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is featured in an op-ed piece by Washington Post columnist David Broder in today’s Eagle. Sebelius was in Washington, D.C., this week for a meeting of the National Governors Association. She spoke on the bipartisan effort at the Kansas Statehouse this session to find a school finance solution. Broder used this as an example of cooperation that Washington politicians should model. It’s great that Kansas and Sebelius were praised in his column. But this positive effort — which was forced by a court order and a state audit — does not a bipartisan, solutions-oriented state government make. In fact, what makes the school finance progress this year so amazing is that it is such an aberration from past sessions.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
“Frankly, senior officials simply weren’t ready to pay attention to analysis that didn’t conform to their own optimistic scenarios.”
– Robert Hutchings (in photo), chairman from 2003 to 2005 of the National Intelligence Council, on the Bush administration’s unwillingness to listen to intelligence warnings about the growing strength of the Iraqi insurgency.
Sen. Pat Roberts: Take note of this for your “phase two” investigation of how intelligence was misused or ignored. . . .
Posted by Randy Scholfield
About the move in many state legislatures (surprisingly, not in Kansas, yet) to restrict emergency contraception on moral grounds:
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation fact sheet, “Researchers estimate that widespread use of EC (emergency contraception) could potentially prevent up to half of the approximately 3 million unintended pregnancies that occur annually in the U.S., and one study has suggested that broader use could help prevent as many as 700,000 pregnancies that now result in abortion.”
So the activists should explain: Are they anti-abortion or anti-contraception? By blurring the lines between contraception and abortion, they are trying to have it both ways — and actually aiding and abetting higher abortion rates.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
With Kansas Senate leaders set to introduce proposals on school funding and gambling today, Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt, R-Independence, has a caution for those colleagues who’d like to keep putting off the casino question: “I’m telling my fellow senators that it’s decision-making time,” he told The Iola Register. “If they don’t want to use gambling, fine, we’ll explore other avenues. But the decision must be made this year, because gambling doesn’t produce instant revenue. The casinos must be built, the slot machines ordered. It all takes time.” Legislators know they can fund the first year of the various school plans with existing revenue, but they need to decide now where the money will come for the second and third years.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Bill Clinton is emerging as a welcome leader on the crisis of obesity. The former president, whose own weight problems led to heart bypass surgery, told the nation’s governors this week that obesity accounts for 27 percent of the nation’s soaring health-care costs since 1987. With rising childhood obesity and diabetes rates, “Today’s generation of young people,” he warned, “could be the first generation of Americans to have shorter life expectancies than their parents.”
Clinton rightly argued that putting a few heart-friendly items on fast-food menus isn’t enough. “You’ve got to consume less and burn more. There is no other alternative. And to do that, you’ve got to change the culture.”
It will take a great communicator like Clinton to help move our fat-friendly culture off the couch.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
