Even pro-immigrant President Bush came out against singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in Spanish, as a star-studded version began airing on Spanish-language radio stations last week. He added, “I think people who want to be citizens of this country ought to learn English.” But when the issue came up Sunday on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek International made a worthy point:
“I actually do not think the great problem in the United States with regard to language is that not enough Americans speak English. I think the great problem in the United States is that we speak no other languages.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
It’s an old pol gimmick: Putting a check in voters’ hands in an election year dramatically improves the odds that they’ll vote for you. But apparently few voters are buying the lame $100 gas rebate idea floated by Senate Republicans, according to a New York Times article. Aides are fielding phone calls from angry constituents, and conservative talk show hosts came down hard:
“What kind of insult is this?” fumed Rush Limbaugh on his radio program. “Instead of buying us off and treating us like we’re a bunch of whores, just solve the problem.”
Give voters some credit for recognizing pandering when they see it.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer argues in this column that investigations into oil companies’ profits will reveal nothing more than this: Supply is up and demand is down.
Michael Kinsley points out in this column that searching for “misdeeds” or wrongdoing by oil companies misses the point. He writes:
“Taxes are not a form of punishment. And you don’t need to find wrongdoing to justify a special tax on their profits. You only need a pocket calculator — to figure out how much they owe.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
Dahlia Lithwick of Slate took a look at Kansas’ death penalty law and whether putting someone to death can be reduced to a sort of algebra problem:
“It’s awfully rare to hear a Supreme Court argument in which the word ‘moral’ comes up as often as it does today. And in the end, this decision will turn on what ‘moral’ really means to each justice. Scalia thinks it’s moral for the people of Kansas to decide that equipoise equals death. Souter says that a moral judgment that leads to the death penalty should have the clarity of an either/or decision, not a tie. Breyer, Breyer-like, suggests that you can either see it one way, or the other. But Roberts is right, I think, when he says that all this painstaking counting and measuring of aggravating and mitigating beans simply complicates the hard, messy work of putting someone to death.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
Some Wichita residents are complaining about the noise and odor of a Mexican-flavored rodeo held weekly near 37th Street North and Broadway. City Council members Tuesday should approve a proposed short-term moratorium on rodeos, from July 9 to November, to give them time to wrestle with new regulations.
Beyond the “noise, odors and other nuisances” related to the events, a city briefing cites “significant health and safety concerns to participants, spectators and adjacent neighborhoods.”
City officials should ensure they have fair, adequate rules in place that shield nearby residents from undue suffering without running rodeo lovers out of town.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
It’s always fun to see the associations that can be made with the word “Kansas.” Here’s one a national story about the odd new law passed by the Nebraska Legislature to divide the Omaha school district into three racially identifiable districts, white, black and Hispanic: “Kansas and evolution. South Dakota and abortion. Now it’s school segregation in Nebraska. Bing, bing, bing. . . . Flyover country,” said Luanne Mainelli Nelson, Omaha schools’ information director.
The issue driving the law is pertinent to other communities, though, including Wichita. A pushback to an effort by the Omaha district to absorb largely white schools just inside the city’s borders from their suburban districts, the new law not only protects the outlying districts’ boundaries but invites legal challenges by breaking up Omaha into seemingly resegregated districts just seven years after mandatory busing ended.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
