Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., loves to enhance his floor speeches with visual aids. Check out the embryo "chart" he displayed Monday drawn by a 7-year-old named Hannah who was "adopted as an embryo." Brownback told lawmakers one embryo in the drawing was asking the Senate: "What, are you going to kill me?" He added: "I hope people really would think about that."
Other senators did think about it but disagreed, voting 63-37 Tuesday to expand federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. The public also overwhelmingly supports the research. But Brownback has on his side the person who matters most in this political debate — President Bush, who vetoed the bill this afternoon.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Not surprisingly, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd had strong words about President Bush’s behavior at the Group of Eight summit: "No matter what the trappings or the ceremonies require of the leader of the free world, he brings the same DKE bearing and cadences, the same insouciance and smart-alecky attitude, the same simplistic approach — swearing, swaggering, talking to Tony Blair with his mouth full of buttered roll, and giving a startled Angela Merkel an impromptu shoulder rub. He can make even a global summit meeting seem like a kegger."
Posted by Rhonda Holman
True, voters are rolling the dice on many candidates these days, but this is ridiculous: Arizona is considering a proposal to boost voter turnout by awarding $1 million to one lucky voter in every general election.
Voter participation is pathetic in this country. But this hokey gimmick smacks of desperation, not democracy, and it degrades the election process by taking it back to frontier days when politicians bought warm-body votes with beer and grog.
Is that the logical next step?
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Wichita public school kids are having a shorter than normal summer break this year, as USD 259 transitions to an earlier school starting date. But Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute argued in a Washington Post commentary that the summer break concept is outdated. He reported that the origin of the summer breaks was a 19th-century belief that “too much schooling impaired a child’s and a teacher’s health,” and noted that most industrialized nations offer no more than seven consecutive weeks of vacation. “In a long-gone world of plentiful manufacturing jobs and self-contained economies, such comparisons mattered less,” he wrote. “Today, however, our children will find themselves competing with peers from Europe, India, and China for lucrative and rewarding brain-based jobs.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Just when it seemed as if nothing could worsen the circumstances of 14-year-old Chelsea Brooks’ murder last month, something did: As part of his guilty plea agreement, 17-year-old Everett Gentry said the price to kill Chelsea and the baby she was carrying allegedly was $500, payable by her 20-year-old “boyfriend,” Elgin “Ray-Ray” Robinson Jr., to 49-year-old Theodore G. Burnett. Then again, would a price of $5,000 or $500,000 have made the crime seem any less heinous? At least with Gentry’s confession and plea, the state has been spared the cost and Chelsea’s family the emotional toll of one of the three capital cases related to her death.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
More evidence that Wichita needs to stop apologizing as a place to live and do business: In its annual Best Places award, Money magazine ranked Wichita No. 9 on its Top 10 list of “America’s best cities” with a population of 300,000 or more.
The magazine cited Wichita’s “solid economy, low crime for its size and plenty to do.” True, Wichita’s job growth rate is an anemic 1.11 percent, but in other areas (most notably commute time), Wichita looks good compared with other large cities (even edging out No. 10 New York City). And “there are more sunny days in Wichita than in Daytona Beach or Honolulu,” the magazine notes.
Earlier this month, the Kosmont-Rose Institute calculated that Wichita was the seventh-least-taxing large city in the nation.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
