Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald will decide Karl Rove’s fate in the next two to three weeks, The New York Times reported.
And Rove may be more worried than he’s letting on. Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin rounded up up some of the recent reporting on the case, quoting David Shuster of MSNBC:
“While his supporters continue to put a good face on his lengthy grand jury testimony, other sources close to Karl Rove say the presidential adviser is now more worried, not less, that he’s going to get indicted. The sources say Rove was surprised by some of the questions he was asked, and by the fact the session stretched on for three and a half hours.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman says she has voted for John Kerry six times, but her reaction to his recent flurry of commentaries and interviews is this: “Stop him before he kills (the Democrats’ chances) again.” As Kerry acts like he’s warming up for 2008, she writes, “what the Democrats need this time out is not a messenger honed to squeak on the margin of undecideds, but a vision of what’s gone wrong and how to right it.” If Goodman has a visionary picked out, she’s not saying yet.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
It was fine when the anti-pornography group Operation SouthWind gathered enough signatures on petitions last year to convene a grand jury to investigate local sex shops. Porn stores need monitoring. But now that the group has filed petitions (which the Sedgwick County election office recently certified) to convene another grand jury, it’s getting annoying. After all, the first grand jury resulted in one misdemeanor charge to one store for selling one video that is available on the Internet. Is Operation SouthWind going to keep forcing grand jury investigations at taxpayers’ expense until it gets a decision that it likes (which likely would be one that would get tossed out by the courts as unconstitutional)?
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Proof that Hollywood and conservative Republicans can work together in a productive way: Actor and liberal activist George Clooney appeared with Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas Thursday to call for an end to the ongoing genocide in the Darfur area of Sudan, where in recent years hundreds of thousands of people have been killed or displaced by government troops and allied Janjaweed militia.
Clooney reported that in a recent trip to Sudan, a young girl asked him, “When will you come back? When will you stop this?” When he said “soon,” she replied, “That’s what you always say.”
Brownback added, quoting Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel: “What hurts victims the most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.”
It’s time for international action to stop this tragedy.
posted by Randy Scholfield
Even a Harvard Law School professor suggested last week that the two state senators and one Kansas Supreme Court justice who discussed school finance over lunch all should have known better. That goes without saying by now. That said, is rhetoric such as this from Sen. Jim Barnett, R-Emporia, really necessary? “Evil prevails only when good people are silent.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
The Kansas Senate’s three-year, $466 million school funding plan, approved Thursday, is a reasonable response to the Kansas Supreme Court’s order to suitably finance public education. Now, lawmakers need to responsibly reconcile the Sentate bill with the $633 million House plan — not cut the Senate bill by $65 million, as a House committee did Saturday. Once a new finance plan is passed and signed, it then will be up to the high court to decide if it is acceptable (can you really phase in a constitutional requirement?) or if, heaven help us, there will have to be another special session.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
I have no problem with Rush Limbaugh (in mug shot) reaching a dealwith Florida prosecutors to drop a fraud charge after 18 months if Limbaugh continues to undergo treatment for drug addiction and pays $30,000 to offset the cost of the investigation. He didn’t intend to get hooked on painkillers, and sending him to prison serves little purpose. But what irritates many people is that, over the years, Limbaugh hasn’t shown similar compassion to others with drug problems. He’s been a cheerleader for the lock-’em-up mind-set that has filled our nation’s prisons with nonviolent drug offenders who, like Limbaugh, needed treatment, not incarceration.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Not only are high oil prices hurting our economy and household budgets, they are also funding anti-democratic governments. In an article in the latest Foreign Policy magazine, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote that “the price of oil and the pace of freedom always move in opposite directions.” In fact, the magazine attempted to chart how when oil prices are low, governments such as Iran have been much more open to the west and to democracy than when oil prices are high and they no longer have to care.
Instead of pointing fingers and proposing short-term fixes that would have minimal impact on the world oil market and our national security, how about Republican and Democratic leaders, including President Bush, committing this country to freeing itself from its dependence on foreign oil, similar to President Kennedy’s challenge to put an American on the moon by the end of the decade?
As we noted in our editorial Friday: “If the United States is as ‘addicted to oil’ as Bush said it is during the State of the Union address — and it is — what it needs is the leadership to kick the habit, through a moon shot-like initiative on energy independence. As entanglements such as Iraq should have taught us by now, too, finding new ways to power our country also could serve the goal of securing it.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., asked an excellent question this week in proposing to block funding for the National Security Agency’s warrantless spying program unless Congress is better briefed about it: “Where is the outrage?” Since the initial revelations about the program, too many in Congress (including Kansas’ delegation) have been more concerned about the leak that made the program public knowledge than about the program’s legality, accountability and oversight.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Where a lot of Americans see nothing but trouble in the immigration issue, President Bush may see a big chunk of his legacy. After the president’s Tuesday meeting with senators, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., predicted to The Wall Street Journal that Bush “is really going to lean into this one.” Bush urged Brownback to read Nick Kotz’s “Judgment Days,” which recounts how President Johnson bucked his own Southern Democratic base leading to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. “I think this is Bush’s time as far as affecting millions of people,” Brownback said.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Are Americans ready to give Dubai a break? The answer will come soon, with President Bush having approved a deal to allow a Dubai-owned company to control nine U.S. plants that make turbine blades for tanks and military aircraft. The company is Dubai International Capital, which is buying British company Doncasters Group. At least this time, Congress has been briefed and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States appears to have handled the review process with care. Maybe in the weeks since the Dubai ports deal collapsed, the White House has figured out how to close this one without looking soft on terrorism.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
When the trailer for the new movie “United 93” was shown at theaters, some audience members yelled “too soon.” But Cal Thomas argues in a column in Friday’s Eagle that “if anything, this is a film that isn’t too soon; it isn’t soon enough.” Thomas argues that the film about the Sept. 11 hijacking of the plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field “reminds us of what we must never forget” and “is a necessary reality check for those with short memories.” What do you think? Anyone plan to see it?
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Karole Bradford, program director of Safe State Kansas, argued in a commentary in The Eagle that concealed-weapon licenses need to be open records to make sure the permitting system works properly (are only the people who qualify for the permits receiving them?) and to track the impact of the new law (are permit holders committing crimes?). She’s right. Some lawmakers have argued that the records should be closed for safety reasons (so that a criminal won’t know who is carrying and who isn’t). But that seems a big stretch (are muggers going to first do a database search before robbing someone?) and not enough of a reason to close these records. As Bradford wrote: “This is what the Kansas Open Records Act is all about — subjecting governmental decision making to public scrutiny so that Kansans can be sure the law is being followed.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Did Senate President Steve Morris, R-Hugoton, say that he was in contact with an employee of the Kansas Supreme Court who guaranteed he or she could sway the court to accept a school-finance bill? Morris says “no.” So do three other senators. But three more — including Sen. Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, and Sen. Jim Barnett, R-Emporia — claim Morris did say that in a conversation with them. Who is right? Who knows? But at least seven lawmakers have been interviewed by investigators in the attorney general’s office about Morris’ luncheon with Justice Lawton Nuss. Lawmakers should trust the A.G. office — and a separate inquiry into Nuss’ role by the Commission on Judicial Qualifications — to determine if there is any evidence of attempts to influence the court. And in the meantime, the controversy doesn’t change lawmakers’ responsibility to suitably finance public education.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
“The Washington press corps — working in an industry that’s been transformed by talk radio, 24-hour cable news and the Internet — still views the White House briefing room as it was back in the 1950s — or the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s or even early ’90s,” Ari Fleischer, President Bush’s first press secretary, wrote in The Washington Post. “Despite dramatic changes forged by live coverage and instant analysis, the press fondly adheres to the notion that the briefing can be conducted the way it used to be. But as Tony Snow, the new White House press secretary, will soon discover, the briefing is no longer a briefing, it’s a TV show.”
Fleischer said that the briefing participants mostly talk past one another, with reporters playing it up for the cameras and the spokesman trying hard not to say something that he doesn’t want repeatedly endlessly on cable news shows. Fleischer said the more substantive briefings occur in smaller groups when the cameras aren’t rolling.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Congratulations to Optima Bus for landing a highly competitive $178 million contract this week to manufacture 300 Opus buses over five years for Miami-Dade County, with an option for 300 more. Because the contract is 10 times bigger than any other Optima has won, the company plans to add 50 assemblers, 20 engineers and more to its 180 workers, and spend $500,000 to reconfigure the plant at 77th Street North and Hydraulic. “It’s jobs, jobs, jobs, at this point,” CEO Michael Monteferrante said. This is exciting news for the Wichita area, especially given the latest Boeing Wichita layoffs.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Good for House-Senate negotiators for taking a stand against allowing 14- and 15-year-old brides in Kansas, despite the efforts of state Sen. Kay O’Connor, R-Olathe, and others to let younger teens wed with a judge’s permission. Prompted by the appalling case of the 22-year-old Nebraska man who married his 14-year-old pregnant girlfriend in Kansas last year, this is Kansas’ chance not only to set a minimum marriage age, but to set one that aligns with the state’s age of consent for sex (16).
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Maybe there is some political argument for declaring that the Federal Emergency Management Agency “is in shambles and beyond repair,” as senators did in releasing the results of a Senate inquiry Thursday. But many Americans will be skeptical of the call to scrap and reinvent the nation’s emergency response infrastructure, in light of the troubled track record of the new Department of Homeland Security. Especially with tornado season in progress, hurricane season starting June 1 and the threat of further terrorist attacks ongoing, this is one “bumbling bureaucracy” that needs to be fixed as soon as possible, and without closing for business.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
If Congress is going to pass an immigration bill this year, President Bush must take a strong leadership role. To his credit, he began doing so this week. He gave a speech Monday challenging those, primarily from his own party, who are calling for mass deportations. Then Tuesday he met with a bipartisan group of more than a dozen senators. The lawmakers hailed the meeting as a breakthrough that could help the compromise bill — which includes a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship — pass the Senate by the end of May.
The biggest challenge will be reconciling the Senate bill with the House bill, which focuses on border security and would make illegal immigration a felony. That will only happen with presidential leadership.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Travel to New Hampshire and Iowa aside, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., still seems to think it’s too early to say whether he’s running for president in 2008. Not so the Spalding Group’s Republican Source Web site, where you already can buy “Brownback 08” shirts, caps, mugs, buttons, bumper stickers and mouse pads. Of course, you also can buy the same merchandise for 11 other potential GOP contenders. The site urges Republican shoppers: “Pick your favorite from an illustrious field of potential candidates and demonstrate your support. This is your chance to take a stand as we strive to keep the White House!”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
I don’t get the hand-on-hip pose of President Clinton’s presidential portrait. Rather than seeming casual — as Clinton said he wanted — it looks forced and awkward, particularly how his hip extends. Am I missing something? (And, please, keep your comments clean.)
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
It’s great news that Invista is adding 60 new jobs to its corporate headquarters in Wichita — especially given Boeing Wichita’s announcement last week that it was cutting 900 jobs. The Invista jobs will average $85,000 a year, according to the Greater Wichita Economic Development Coalition. Even though Invista is a subsidiary of Wichita’s Koch Industries, it could locate anywhere. Thanks for choosing Wichita.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
The Arena Design Consortium, the architects chosen by Sedgwick County to design the downtown arena, released three exterior designs this morning. Option A (in rendering) is the most traditional, tying in with Old Town and existing brick buildings. Option B is a mix of contemporary curves on the south side and traditional brick on the north. Option C tries to be more unique, with an aviation-inspired roof. None of the three makes your jaw drop. What do you think?
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Tony Snow doesn’t just want to talk for President Bush. He wants to talk to him. The new White House press secretary asked for “guaranteed access to the president’s ear and to an unusually large degree of latitude to reconfigure the (White House) press operation,” according to The National Journal’s Hotline.
Snow is smart and has journalism credentials that extend far beyond Fox News. But will his well-known conservative views make press briefings seem even more like political spin than they do now?
Posted by Melissa Cooley
