Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline isn’t defending only our state’s death penalty law Tuesday before the U.S. Supreme Court, in a rehearing of the case of Wichita murderer Michael Marsh. As a Christian Science Monitor article noted Monday, the case "could force as many as a dozen states to rewrite their death-penalty statutes and make it more difficult to impose a capital sentence." That’s because of the wording that has snagged the Kansas law on the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, by seeming to tilt a jury’s decision toward execution when the factors that favor and disfavor a death sentence balance out.
With another Kansas jury sentenced a ninth man to death in recent days — Sidney Gleason in Great Bend — all Kansans can hope that today’s arguments will at last determine the fate of the state’s unused 12-year-old death penalty law.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Writer Jesse Zerger Nathan argues why Gov. Kathleen Sebelius would be a good vice presidential nominee in BeyondChron.org, a San Francisco online alternative publication, suggesting "rumors of her potential place on the 2008 Democratic Presidential ticket as a Vice Presidential nominee are flying like bats." The supporting evidence presented include Sebelius’ waste cutting and education advocacy, and her recent vetoes of gun and workers’ comp bills. Mostly, though, it’s her uncanny ability to get elected as a Democrat in a Republican state. Of the pro-choice Catholic, Nathan writes: "She has managed to get elected without hiding any of this, here in the same state that houses right-wing nutcase Fred Phelps. Moreover, with the Hillary train gathering steam (something of a Casey Jones suicide run to many party strategists), a Sebelius presence on the Democratic ticket could divert voters eager for a woman to get elected (a worthy cause, no doubt) into a more winnable proposition."
Posted by Rhonda Holman
“The political system seems almost on the verge of a breakdown,” Washington Post columnist David Broder said at the Kansas Press Association convention in Wichita last week. The problems are many, he noted, including extreme partisanship, the inability of many baby boomer politicians to compromise for the common good, and the fact that Congress is spending very little time in session, typically only a couple days a week. “Oversight has diminished because Congress doesn’t have time to do it,” he said. Broder faults both parties. Democrats are as incapable of forming alternatives as Republicans have been unable to find agreement, he said.
When asked specifically about the Democratic Party, Broder was especially critical of the top three leaders — Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic National Party chairman Howard Dean. “I cannot recall three less effective party spokesmen in my lifetime,” he said.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
President Bush’s bold second-term agenda — which promised to usher in an era of conservatism — is so dead that it is questionable if conservatives can even usher in midterm victories. That’s why Karl Rove will now focus on the less glorifying but all-important task of winning elections.
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne predicts that “Rove’s recipe this year, as in 2004, is likely to include a heavy dollop of attacks on the Democrats. Hold on for the new Swift Boaters, coming soon to your swing state. It’s not the politics dreams are made of, but it often works.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
The historic 2 percent decrease in annual U.S. deaths recorded in 2004 sounds like an amazing victory for modern medicine, and it is — officials credit declining death rates for heart disease, cancer and stroke. That’s great news for those living longer, of course. But consider what such a trend, if that’s what this turns out to be, might mean long term, especially as the boomers age — more elderly people needing long-term care and other health services, and more and higher costs to sustain Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Why is there so much talk about how to stave off disease and death, and so little about how society is going to handle the consequences?
Posted by Rhonda Holman
As Time columnist Joe Klein suggested last week, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich continues to be a lot more interesting out of office than he was in, generating novel ideas about health care, immigration, presidential primaries and what President Bush should be doing (vetoing porky bills, for one thing). Of special note to Kansans is what Gingrich said when asked about intelligent design: “It’s a perfectly fine philosophy, but it has nothing to do with science and shouldn’t be taught in science courses.” As Klein concluded, Gingrich probably has too much baggage to win the White House, but having him part of the debate would be both fun and a “boon to democracy.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
