Success in Iraq depends more on Iraqis reaching political agreement than U.S. troops rooting out terrorists. So it was an important breakthrough Saturday when Iraq’s parliament approved a president and speaker, and charged the prime-minister designate, Jawad al-Maliki (in photo), with forming a cabinet. Al-Maliki has 30 days to complete the government, an enormous leadership challenge. But after months of stalemate, Iraq is finally moving forward.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
"A federal judge in Kansas has dealt another blow to the crusade by the state’s attorney general, Phill Kline, to restrict abortions under the phony banner of combating child abuse," a New York Times editorial stated Saturday. It described as a "daft idea" Kline’s opinion that doctors, school counselors and other health professionals had to report to authorities most sexual activity by underage teens. The editorial also said that U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten may have established a potentially important constitutional precedent in finding that "adolescents enjoy a limited right of informational privacy in their communications with health care workers." Kline agrees, which is why he says he is likely to appeal.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
A news article in Thursday’s Eagle highlighted the human side of deportation: A Mexican man who has been living and working in Wichita is being deported, and now his wife must decide what to do with their two small children, who are American citizens. Besides the compassionate concerns about separating families, mass deportation presents logistical and economic problems. Exactly how would we round up an estimated 12 million illegals and bus them all home? And what would be the impact on local, state and federal economies if we did that? Kansas has up to 85,000 illegal immigrants. How could our state lose that many residents? It’s unworkable.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, has a commentary in Sunday’s Opinion pages setting out his views on immigration reform. Tiahrt, who voted for the House plan, strongly supports securing the borders (either with a fence or using technology), but he doesn’t favor making illegal immigration a felony. He does not support amnesty or special access to citizenship. “If an immigrant wants to earn U.S. citizenship, he must get in line by returning to his home country to apply,” he wrote. But Tiahrt doesn’t support mass immigration, which he said is unworkable and “would have a devastating impact on our economy.” Instead, he favors a “temporary job permit program” that would require illegal immigrants to register to continue working for a period of time. “After that,” he wrote, “they must return to their country of origin.”
Unlike Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who said he didn’t think Congress would agree this year on immigration reform, Tiahrt told The Eagle editorial board last week that he thinks reform will happen.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Here’s an idea: Judges should avoid lunching with people who are parties to cases in their courtroom. If that’s just too strict for inbred Topeka, the lunch conversation should not involve those cases. Because Kansas Supreme Court Justice Lawton Nuss talked about school finance during a March 1 lunch with Senate President Steve Morris, R-Hugoton, and Sen. Pete Brungardt, R-Salina, even showing them a related chart he’d made, Nuss is now off the case. That’s appropriate.
What’s not needed is for lawmakers and Attorney General Phill Kline to overblow the incident, either as legislators try to pass a schools plan during this week’s wrap-up session or via other inquiries. Nuss’ ill-advised lunch likely won’t change any future court rulings on the case; it just means one fewer justice will be telling lawmakers to fix school finance.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
The headline on a Planned Parenthood blog Friday caught our eye simply because it’s a sentiment you don’t see every day in the national media: “Kansas Gets It Right.”
As it noted last week’s decision by a federal judge in Wichita that Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline “cannot intrude into the reproductive health care of teenagers by requiring health care workers to report teens who seek health services related to consensual sex,” the posting concluded “that common sense prevailed in Kansas. Phill Kline, as usual, overreached in his obsessive campaign to rid Kansas of all non-procreative sex.”
Of course, as previously noted on this blog, the anti-abortion Web comment is less generous to the judge and the state.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Some of you bloggers have wondered about the traffic WE Blog gets. Well, it got more than 102,000 “hits” last month — an amazing total, and a 21 percent increase from January. Besides getting a lot of traffic, WE Blog is also one of the top blogs for reader responses. As I’ve mentioned before, of all the blogs at Knight Ridder newspapers throughout the country, including those in much bigger markets, WE Blog ranks No. 2 in reader comments (second behind humorist Dave Barry’s blog at The Miami Herald). Thanks, all you bloggers, for reading and posting.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
