Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., defends the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program in an op-ed piece on today’s Opinion pages. Roberts argues that the program is legal and is essential to our national security. “My briefings on this program absolutely convince me it has saved, and will save, American lives,” he writes. Roberts also charges that the criticism of the program by Democrats has been politically motivated, and says that his support of it hasn’t been partisan, as many have alleged. “My actions are not a partisan defense of the president, but are to protect the authority this president, and future presidents, must have to safeguard our nation,” he says.
Roberts concludes: “I will continue to be an advocate for this and other constitutional tools our intelligence community needs to stop national security threats before they get to our shores.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Lots of Kansans were worked up over the governor’s veto of the concealed-carry bill and the Legislature’s override of her veto. But Darrell Wilson, executive director of the Kansas Sheriff’s Association and a former Saline County sheriff, predicts the new law won’t have much impact. “Some people, as soon as they can, they’ll start carrying one,” Wilson told The Salina Journal. “Before long, they’ll find out there aren’t bad guys to shoot every other day, and the newness will wear off. They’ll leave it home one day, then they won’t carry it for a couple of days, and pretty soon they won’t be carrying it at all.” He could be right.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Fascinating news about our universe that boggles the imagination: Results from a NASA satellite program measuring the cosmic afterglow of the big bang suggest that in a trillionth of a second(!), the universe expanded from the size of a marble to billions of light-years in extent.
Try to wrap your mind around that concept.
The research “is telling us that the universe is vastly bigger than we ever imagined — so big that we no longer have any reason to believe that our tiny patch of it is representative of the whole thing,” Stanford University physicist Leonard Susskind told USA Today.
“We, and all we can see, are at most a tiny dot in an unimaginably large sea of space and time,” Susskind said.
Stunning evidence of a universe that is wondrous beyond our imagining.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
The Kansas House vote tally on school finance must have looked strange to many outside the Wichita area: The only votes from Wichita legislators for a bill that would deliver nearly $29 million in new money to Wichita schools next year came from eight Democrats and one Republican, Rep. Dale Swenson. That means eight Wichita legislators, all Republicans, voted “no.” Chief among their reasons was the three-year plan’s price tag, $610 million. Another sticking point was the new inequity it risks with property-rich Johnson County. Rep. Willa DeCastro, R-Wichita, called the bill “totally irresponsible” and said, “I think the big question is, besides gambling, how do you want to pay for it?” It’s an excellent question. But it’s also irresponsible to blow off a Kansas Supreme Court order and a legislative audit that found that Wichita schools are significantly underfunded.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Remember the flap last spring over Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ rescinded invitation as graduation speaker at a prestigious Catholic school in Cincinnati? Joseph T. Devlin, the head of the school, had both invited the Ohio native to speak, then uninvited her after complaints about Sebelius’ pro-choice views and voting record. Well, Devlin has lost that job, after a three-year tenure that saw more trouble than just the Sebelius matter. Meanwhile, the popular governor appears likely to keep her own job for another four years.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
According to a list of travel requests his office presents to hotels, Vice President Dick Cheney asks that all lights in his room be turned on and that all televisions be tuned to Fox News (of course). Among the other demands: a desk with chair, a king- or queen-size bed, a coffeepot, a microwave oven and four cans of Diet Sprite. All in all, those are pretty modest demands for the second-most powerful man in the country.
Posted by Melissa Cooley
