Wichitan Bernie Mermis, one of 1,300 people swabbed during the BTK investigation, began contacting local authorities in December to make sure that his DNA sample had been destroyed, as per District Judge Gregory Waller’s order in October. What he got was a lot of runaround, he said. And as it turns out, The Eagle learned, none of the samples has been destroyed yet.
Police officials blamed this inaction on missing paperwork. And they say they hope to have the samples all destroyed by June.
Many citizens were understandably uncomfortable submitting to a DNA swabbing. But they agreed to allow it because they wanted to help with the investigation (and they were afraid of what might happen if they resisted). Now that BTK has been caught and is spending the rest of his life in jail, the police need to thank these citizens by destroying their DNA as quickly as possible.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
“The main elements of the national debate are here, just somewhat hidden beneath the surface: the mutually dependent relationship of employers and immigrant workers, the financial benefits and setbacks an influx of immigrants brings to a community, and the awkward question of who is legal and how much it should matter,” The New York Times reported in an article Tuesday about Liberal, Kan.
It noted that due to the growth of Liberal’s meatpacking industry, Latinos’ share of the Liberal population was 43 percent in 2000, up from 10 percent in 1980. And children of immigrants make up nearly two-thirds of the public school enrollment.
There has been some resentment about social costs and culture changes, the Times reported. But for the most part, Liberal residents have recognized that their economy has needed the workers, so the town has taken a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to immigration.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Judges should not discuss pending cases outside of court proceedings. In fact, doing so can be a violation of judicial conduct. So it was correct for Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Kay McFarland to ask an ethics panel Monday to investigate a lunch discussion by one of her fellow justices and two state senators.
Justice Lawton Nuss acknowledged meeting for lunch with Senate President Steve Morris, R-Hugoton, and Sen. Pete Brungardt, R-Salina, and briefly discussing school finance legislation, including showing them a chart Nuss made about various funding proposals. As a result, he removed himself from the state’s school finance case, as was appropriate.
But the Commission on Judicial Qualifications needs to examine the matter to see if there was an ethics violation and, if so, to determine the appropriate punishment. What’s not needed, at this point, is for lawmakers to further politicize the issue by holding their own hearings, as the Senate Elections and Local Government Committee did Tuesday, and using it as an excuse to not adequately fund public schools.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
With whopping 100-25 and 35-2 votes in the House and Senate, respectively, state lawmakers have already approved spending $5 million a year for five years to help Wichita Mid-Continent Airport keep and expand low-fare service. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius signed the bill last week. So what’s the problem?
Well, as the Legislature’s wrap-up session starts today, the airfares program remains unfunded and at risk of being inappropriately linked to a last effort to leverage votes to expand gambling. Casinos are a worthy issue, but in their own bill. On its own merits, this bill already won passage and Sebelius’ signature. Now, deliver the dollars.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
“This is a tough year,” Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, told The Eagle editorial board last week, referring to GOP prospects in November. He predicted that Republicans would retain control of the U.S. House. But he said that two keys would be for GOP lawmakers to start demonstrating fiscal conservatism and for there to be some success in Iraq (which he defined in part as fewer casualties). One factor that Tiahrt didn’t mention is gas prices. If gasoline is $3 or more per gallon, incumbents, and particularly Republicans, may feel voter ire, fairly or not.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
GOP PUSHES BAN ON MARRIAGE BETWEEN GAY ILLEGAL ALIENS; Election-year Effort ‘Helps Motivate the Base,’ Says Lawmaker
KANSAS CHIEF JUSTICE ADMITS TALKING TO LEGISLATORS ON MYSPACE.COM; McFarland Says They Discussed Favorite Boy Bands, Not School Finance Plan
KANSAS HUMAN RIGHTS PANEL JAILED FOR TURN-SIGNAL VIOLATIONS; Police Chief Williams Angrily Denies Profiling Occurred
Posted by Randy Scholfield
British Prime Minister Tony Blair takes a beating from Englishman Geoffrey Wheatcroft in this piece, in which he criticizes Blair for his rationale that "it would be more damaging to long-term world peace and security if the Americans alone defeated Saddam Hussein than if they had international support to do so."
Wheatcroft writes: "The harder these arguments are looked at, the more curious they seem. You don’t say: ‘My big brother is a crazy kind of guy. On Saturday night he likes to get blind drunk and drive through town at 90. It would be more damaging to peace and security if he acted alone than if he had my support, so I’ll go along with him for the ride.’ Either Washington was doing something wise and virtuous, in which case it should have been supported for that reason, or not, in which case should have been restrained and, if necessary, opposed."
Posted by Melissa Cooley
If Mary McCarthy (in photo) leaked to the media classified information about secret CIA prisons, she deserved to be fired, some top Democrats said. But they also are wonderingabout a double standard: It’s wrong for a CIA officer to blow the whistle on a possible illegal operation, but OK for the White House to leak classified information to undermine its critics? My concern is that there has been more attention spent on finding the CIA leaker than on examining whether and why we have the secret prisons, and what type of interrogation has occurred there.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
President Bush deserves credit for speaking out Monday against the idea of mass deportation of illegal immigrants in the United States. "Massive deportation of the people here is not going to work," he said. "It’s just not going to work."
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dismissed the idea Sunday: "It would cost $500 billion. Who’s going to pay for that?" he asked.
Good question. Unless someone has a serious answer, Congress should move on to practical solutions that balance enforcement and opportunity.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Sedgwick County Deputy District Attorney Kevin O’Connor last week criticized state corrections officials for giving BTK serial killer Dennis Rader some modest privileges, such as being able to watch TV and listen to the radio, based on good behavior. "We’re having a hard time understanding why somebody like this is allowed to earn privileges when all the evidence was presented as to how he can turn what most people would consider to be innocent into something that is evil," said O’Connor.
To be sure, Rader’s reading material should be closely monitored and controlled. But it’s pointless to start second-guessing what might feed his fantasies. Beyond the obvious, who knows? And who cares?
Corrections officials are in a position to determine how best to dole out Rader’s punishment — and incentives for good behavior are an established, proven method of controlling the inmate population.
The important point: Rader is in lockup, in an 8-by-10 isolated cell, and he’s never getting out.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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
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
If the five teens in southeast Kansas hoped to evoke memories of Columbine with their own massacre at Riverton High School, they succeeded without firing a shot. Their pre-emptive arrest Thursday, after a warning about the alleged plot turned up on the Web site MySpace.com, again had people wondering how other students could know what was going on but parents and authorities apparently didn’t, and whether these kids, described as “different,” were seeking revenge for being bullied. Much remains to be sorted out about this shocking story. But you have to wonder whether the Columbine anniversary, April 20, will ever stop being a day to worry about.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been on the offensive, dismissing the generals who have criticized him as being opposed to change. But as this New York Times news analysis points out, that’s actually the same charge that several of the generals are leveling at Rumsfeld. They say that Rumsfeld has been so wedded to his quick-strike approach to fighting wars that he wouldn’t make the needed adjustments in Iraq when it became clear that more boots were needed on the ground to secure the peace.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
