Have you read about the flag controversy in Meade? Seems that J.R. and Robin Knight, who operate a bed and breakfast in the small town, are being widely criticized by residents for displaying a rainbow flag (a symbol of gay pride) in front of their business.
The couple says it was just a gift from their 12-year-old son, and they thought it was colorful and pretty.
But some in Meade say the flag sends the wrong message. "It’s hard enough to keep your kids on the straight and narrow without outside influences like that," complained one local waitress.
The Knights say they’re not gay activists, although they believe in tolerance. And they say they’re not backing down, especially not after someone recently cut down the flag. They plan to order several more rainbow flags and keep putting them up. Good for them.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
The new 6-4 moderate majority on the Kansas State Board of Education — guaranteed after the Aug. 1 primary — is likely to overturn the conservative faction’s decisions on more than evolution and science standards.
One likely switch, moderate board member Janet Waugh told the Lawrence Journal-World, will be on the conservatives’ new policy requiring a parental opt-in note for kids in sex education; expect that to go back to opt-out.
Current conservative Education Commissioner Bob Corkins (in photo) also might want to start floating his resume out there. Waugh said his job performance "will probably be a priority" of the new board. In other words, don’t expect vouchers anytime soon.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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Many in the United States are afraid to connect the dots between what’s going on in Iraq and Lebanon. Not Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. He warned on CBS’ "Face the Nation" Sunday that Islamic extremists throughout the region are using the Israeli-Palestinian issue "for unholy purposes," and he noted that our strongest allies in the region — Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt — have been telling the Bush administration that this is a regional conflict. The connections were clear in Friday’s pro-Hezbollah demonstrations in Baghdad. Hagel said Iran and Syria can’t be viewed separately either. "That means engagement, that means direct talks, and put all of it on the table," he said. Most remarkably, Hagel called for President Bush to get his father and Bill Clinton involved and "try to impanel a regional security conference, a regional diplomatic conference."
Posted by Rhonda Holman
President Bush’s approval rating among 18- to 24-year-olds is a rock-bottom 20 percent, according to a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll — compared with about 40 percent among adults in the same poll. That’s not an encouraging sign for GOP elders hoping to attract a new generation of voters.
"The very cultural issues the president wants to use to rally his party’s base are exactly the issues that are alienating younger voters," said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "Across a broad swath of social issues, younger Americans see the administration as being out of line with what they believe."
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez often gets the punch-line treatment in the United States. But some of his recent comments, and the places in which he made them, are deadly serious. As Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl noted, Chavez took an eight-nation tour that included Russia, Belarus, Mali and Vietnam. Of most concern, Chavez visited Iran and referred to Israelis as "murderers" and "cowards," adding that "their fate has been sealed, from the depths of the people’s soul" and calling on God to "throw the lightning bolts at the monsters." Diehl made a good point: "In a week during which a movie star was pilloried for a somewhat milder anti-Semitic outburst (and Mel Gibson at least could say he was drunk), no one seemed to care about the hate speech of the president of a large South American country and one of the world’s biggest oil exporters — a man who has been conducting a frenetic campaign to win his government a two-year term on the United Nations Security Council." Why not? For his part, President Bush said of Chavez: "I don’t view him as a threat."
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Remember the days when razors began having two blades? Gillette’s new Fusion razor, with its "breakthrough technology," has five blades on the front and one blade on the back. That’s six blades on one razor. When will this madness end?
Meanwhile, Burger King launched its BK Quad Stacker last month. It has four pieces of meat, four slices of cheese and eight pieces of bacon. But that’s not all: Burger King has a coupon with which, if you buy one quadruple-bypass burger — er, Quad Stacker — you get one free. It ought to come with a coupon for a free angioplasty.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
