Include Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., in the bipartisan chorus of lawmakers calling on the Bush administration to declassify the latest National Intelligence Estimate. Doing so would enable the American people to “see the material for themselves and come to their own conclusions,” the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman told the Washington Post, adding: “There is a false impression that the NIE focuses solely on Iraq and terrorism. That is not true. This NIE examines global terrorism in its totality.” Meanwhile, Democrats want the estimate declassified because they believe it shows that the war on Iraq has hurt the war on terror, as leaked reports have indicated.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Good for a federal judge for ruling that a jury should decide if tens of millions of smokers should be awarded up to $200 billion in damages related to the unethical marketing scheme of pitching “light” cigarettes as a more healthful alternative to regular brands. For more than 30 years, Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds and other tobacco companies duped smokers into thinking they were inhaling a more health-conscious alternative. In reality, the tobacco giants’ own internal documents revealed the truth — a “light” cigarette is no more healthy an option than the original Camels handed out for free during World War II.
Smoking is a personal decision, and most smokers are aware of the risks. But the “personal choice” argument may not fly as a credible defense when the “light” cigarette market was created out of demand for a healthier product.
Posted by Angie Holladay
Coverage was hard to come by of Sunday’s fifth debate of Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline and Democratic challenger Paul Morrison in Overland Park. (Are we already tired of these guys?) But as described by the Lawrence Journal-World, the subject matter sounded familiar, including Kline’s pursuit of abortion clinic records and Morrison’s hand in drafting a 6-year-old sentencing reform. One new twist, though: Kline defended his 2003 hiring of Bryan Brown to head his office’s consumer affairs division, despite Brown’s anti-abortion activities and failure to pay a $61,000 court judgment in Indiana, by saying Brown “expressed his faith and his opposition to abortion,” just as Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks had used civil disobedience to protest laws they opposed. That drew groans and laughter from Morrison supporters.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
By publicly naming President Bush as “the devil,” maybe Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has started a fad. Now the Rev. Jerry Falwell is likening Hillary Clinton to the prince of darkness.
Falwell told a gathering of pastors and activists Friday that the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency would galvanize evangelical Christian voters like no one else — not even the devil.
“I hope she’s the candidate. Because nothing will energize my (constituency) like Hillary Clinton,” said the founder of the once-powerful Moral Majority. “If Lucifer ran, he wouldn’t.”
For the record, Satan has not formally announced his candidacy.
Posted by Dave Knadler
Ric Anderson of the Topeka Capital-Journal was inspired by State Board of Education member Connie Morris’ pre-Christmas junket to Washington, D.C., to rewrite some Christmas carols. Here’s his version of “Winter Wonderland”:
Cash drawers ring, can you hear them?
Connie Morris is near them
At Macy’s and Zale’s
and at Bloomingdale’s
Shopping in a winter wonderland
Morris claims she’ll be working
Skeptics say she’ll be jerking
The taxpayers’ chains
For eight carefree days
Shopping in a winter wonderland
Will this trip be good for education?
That’s what Kansans really want to know
Or is it a camouflaged vacation?
A final chance to spend some of our dough?
Kansans say why’ll we get stuck
With the bill from this lame duck?
Can’t somebody get
This madness in check?
Shopping in a winter wonderland
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
The FBI remains optimistic that it will find those behind the anthrax attacks following Sept. 11, the Washington Post reported. But law enforcement officials are admitting that much of the conventional wisdom about the attacks was wrong, which makes finding the attackers even more difficult.
The Post writes: “Specifically, law enforcement authorities have refuted the widely reported claim that the anthrax spores had been ‘weaponized’ — specially treated or processed to allow them to disperse more easily. They also have rejected reports that the powder was milled, or ground, to create finer particles that can penetrate deeply into the lungs.”
That means the anthrax didn’t have to be produced by scientists with access to specialized equipment and classified recipes for biological weapons. As a result, the Post reported, “investigators face the daunting prospect of an almost endless list of possible suspects in scores of countries around the globe.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Our country’s stated reasons for invading Iraq — Saddam Hussein is stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and has ties to al-Qaida — have been debunked by government investigations, most recently by a Senate Intelligence Committee report. Now the latest National Intelligence Estimate has debunked our results. Rather than make the United States safer, as President Bush has claimed, the war in Iraq has fueled Islamic extremism and created a training ground for terrorists.
Now that we understand the past and the current reality, this country needs to have a forthright debate on what should happen next. Do we need more troops or fewer? Is our strategy of training Iraqi troops likely to succeed? (Some of our soldiers are complaining that the Iraqis troops are among the worst they’ve ever seen, and are more loyal to militias than to the government.) Is there a better strategy? Is there reason for hope?
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
What got into former President Clinton during his debut interview on “Fox News Sunday”? Host Chris Wallace mentioned the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” episode in Somalia and al-Qaida’s later bombings of U.S. interests and asked, “Why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?” Clinton worked himself into a finger-wagging tantrum about Wallace’s “nice little conservative hit job on me” and the “false pretenses” of the interview, half of which was to be about his Clinton Global Initiative.
Clinton still seemed upset about that ABC docudrama and kept referring to former anti-terrorism chief Richard Clarke’s book. His spokesman later told the Washington Post that Clinton “came in prepared to respond to any attack on his record.” OK, but if he can’t calmly handle one question about how his White House handled terrorism now, how would he and his wife handle countless questions about that and other aspects of his record during a “Hillary Clinton for president” campaign?
And as Wallace told the Post, the surprise is not that he asked the terrorism question, but that no other TV interviewer asked it of Clinton during last week’s media blitz.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
OK. Not my strongest effort. Click on the cartoon to enlarge. And after drawing it I was filled with remorse and dread that the entries would be equally weak. Surprise! Readers rose to the occasion and sent in some pretty funny captions. The numbers were a bit down this week but the quality of the submissions seemed higher than normal. Thanks for saving my butt. It was a tough decision but in the end we had to go with the, ahem, stand-out caption from Jim Holler, a repeat winner. Here are some of the other close contenders: Dale Martin of Lawrence sent "I bet he wouldn’t be so thirsty if they’d allowed beer sales at this show!" From Randy Carriker of Wichita came "It’s a Shocker Kieth Richard still has a pulse!" Also from Wichita, Karen Wallace sent "Wait a minute. Is Mabeline one of the corporate sponsors?" Belle Plaine’s Richard Julius said "He’s just lip syncing!" Runner up Bruce Cole had another good entry with "Hey (hey) Wu (Wu) get out of my seat!" Ruth Allen, from Wichita, submitted "It leaves a bad taste in our mouths too." Roger Neugent of Haysville got pessimistic with "Wu just realized that it the Stones barely filled the stadium, there isn’t a glimmer of hope for football!" Brad Allen made a reference I didn’t get, but someone else clued me in to the fact that this guy’s a DJ: "Boy, Ronnie Taylor has really let himself go." So that’s it for this contest. I’m still wondering if I should choose topics that are more national in scope to see if responses increase. Any thoughts, dear bloggers? (Forget it, Santiago. I’m not drawing about Zionist plots to implant pro-Israel chips in our city council’s skulls.)
Friends and family gathered Thursday in Hutchinson to memorialize Baby Annabelle — the name given to the remains found by a man on rural Reno County land he shared with the infant’s grandmother and 15-year-old mother. Two autopsies couldn’t determine if the badly decomposed baby was born alive or dead, so the most the mother has been charged with is three felony crimes of unlawful voluntary sexual relations; the grandmother faces a count of aiding a felon. If a live birth could be confirmed, the mother could face murder charges.
Rep. Peggy Mast, R-Emporia (in photo), has worked the past two years on legislation that would make it a felony if a health care provider isn’t notified under similar conditions. Discarding a baby’s remains should be considered a serious offense.
Posted by Angie Holladay
Patricia Dunn (in photo) is stepping down in January as chairman of Hewlett-Packard as a result of the ongoing criminal investigation (and a congressional hearing) about the company spying on its board members, their spouses and newspaper reporters. But the company’s ethics director and several other top executives may need to follow. According to the Washington Post, the executives received a confidential report about the spying — so they can’t claim ignorance.
The spying techniques used by Security Outsourcing Solutions included sending spyware through e-mail messages on Blackberries that could track each keystroke of the target, and illegally obtaining personal phone records.
Posted by Angie Holladay
At the request of prescient author Joel Rosenberg, polling firm McLaughlin and Associates asked 1,000 adults whether recent world events are evidence of the approaching end times: “Yes,” said 42 percent overall, half of women, 75 percent of blacks and 57 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds. Rosenberg is pushing his new book on the Middle East crisis, “Epicenter.” Maybe this is why so few Americans are saving for retirement.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Another reason for educators and political leaders to find more ways to keep kids in school: It turns out that those who drop out of high school tend to drop out of civic life, too. According to a new report by the National Conference on Citizenship, a nonprofit group created by Congress, only 31 percent of high school dropouts voted in 2004, compared with 62 percent of college graduates. A similar gap in “civic health” among those with and without high school diplomas was evident on the issues of trusting government, doing volunteer work, attending church and even perceiving others as honest.
The good news? That volunteerism is on the rise, especially among those ages 18 to 25, and that more people are politically involved than in the late 1990s. But regrettably, Sept. 11, two wars and Hurricane Katrina have not led to “the deeper civic transformation for which many had hoped.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
A relaxed, confident Gov. Kathleen Sebelius offered her case to The Eagle editorial board last week for why she deserves re-election. (We’ll hear from GOP challenger Jim Barnett again next month.) She remains well-positioned to win, but the meeting left the editorial board wanting more from the popular incumbent in the way of big ideas for a second term, along with more substance in the race generally.
Surely one of Time magazine’s “five best governors” in 2005 should be laying out an agenda for something more bold and enduring, even considering the difficulty in seeing her proposals through a GOP-controlled Legislature.
That said, as we ask in our editorial on today’s opinion page, is it somehow too much to expect big ideas and detailed agendas in a Kansas gubernatorial race? Do Kansans prefer their governors to be competent caretakers rather than trailblazers?
FYI: Check out the video excerpts of our interview that are posted on our Opinion page.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Attorney General Phill Kline’s “church effort” memo came up in a New York Times article primarily about Wichita-based Operation Rescue West’s loss of its tax-exempt status, specifically the question of whether Kline was advocating that churches do anything illegal that could risk their own status with the Internal Revenue Service. Sherriene Jones, Kline’s communications director, suggested to the Times that Kline was referring in the memo to the churches’ pastors, not the churches themselves, and to the need to recruit volunteers for his receptions, not for his campaign. “The attorney general would never ask a church to do anything illegal,” Jones told the Times. But to many, Jones’ explanation will sound a lot like a distinction without a difference.
Meanwhile, a national religious organization responded to Kline’s memo by sending a letter last week to the Republican and Democratic national parties asking candidates to stop using churches for campaign purposes, the Lawrence Journal-World reported. “Congregations look to their religious leaders for guidance — spiritual, moral and otherwise — not manipulation on behalf of political organizations with a partisan agenda,” said C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance and a pastor at Northminster (Baptist) Church in Monroe, La.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Frustrating as it is for Sedgwick County voters to judge which judicial candidates are best, the answer is not for candidates and sitting judges to declare positions on hot-button social and political issues during the campaign. So it’s disturbing that Sedgwick County District Judge Eric Yost recently asked to join the other plaintiffs, including incoming Judge Robb Rumsey, in the federal lawsuit challenging the state’s judicial ethics canon, which limits what candidates for judge can say during campaigns.
Part of a national effort in reaction to a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision in a Minnesota case, the push to let judges and judicial candidates speak freely sounds great on its face. “There are two sets of rights involved here — the right of the judge to speak and the right of the people to know,” Richard Peckham, the Andover attorney who chairs the statewide Kansas Judicial Watch group, told the Kansas City Star.
But the questions on the group’s candidate questionnaire reveal a narrower goal: to pin down candidates on the school-finance lawsuit, same-sex marriage, assisted suicide and abortion. Such opinions are irrelevant to a judge’s decision making, which should be based on the law. The expression of such opinions also jeopardizes impartiality and the ability to do the job once on the bench, forcing the judge to recuse himself from cases related to his stated opinions. How does that serve justice?
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Americans for Prosperity Kansas issued a press release last week arguing that the Kansas economy is struggling, despite rising revenue collections. It said that from January 2006 to August 2006, Kansas ranked No. 50 in private job growth, losing 3,800 jobs. Meanwhile, during the same time period, Kansas ranked No. 1 in government job growth, gaining 15,800 jobs.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
As Congress debates a 2007 farm bill, will pro-agriculture lawmakers be able to persuade their urban colleagues to give farmers what they want? “It will be a difficult sell,” Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Hays, said last week. “Ag is the minority. Those who care about these issues are fewer than those who don’t.” According to the Hutchinson News, Moran said there is strong congressional support for conservation programs, including the goal of having 25 percent of U.S. energy sources from renewable fuels by 2025.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
It’s appropriate for Kansans to try to stop the hateful Phelps clan’s ghoulish harassment of grieving families at military funerals.
The Eagle editorial board supports efforts by Attorney General Phill Kline and several Kansas lawmakers to revive a state funeral protest bill, as long as the measure carefully balances the free speech rights of protesters with the privacy rights of mourners.
A related federal measure proposed by Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, would prevent the Phelpses or anyone else who successfully challenges such funeral protest laws from recovering attorney fees, as stipulated by federal civil rights law.
As today’s editorial argues, that goes too far. Even the Phelpses have legal rights.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
The number of accidents in Kansas reportedly caused by the use of cell phones increased by 50 percent between 2003 and 2005, from 198 to 292. So will the Legislature take action to ban or restrict using cell phones while driving, as New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and now California have done? Not if House Transportation Committee Chairman Gary Hayzlett, R-Lakin, has his way. “We keep passing laws, but yet we’ve got them on the books and we can’t enforce what we’ve got,” Hayzlett told The Eagle. “Where does it all stop?” On the other hand, can the state keep ignoring a hazard that Jim Hanni, executive vice president of public affairs for AAA Kansas, says is “as detrimental as 0.08 alcohol content”?
Posted by Angie Holladay
The Sept. 11 speeches. Lower gas prices. No hurricanes or Harriet Miers this year. And a better guy at the mike? Pondering possible reasons for President Bush’s recent bounce in the polls, the Washington Times’ Joseph Curl mentioned Tony Snow, the former Fox News anchor who took over as White House press secretary four months ago. “If there is an operative philosophy for me, it’s ‘flood the zone,’” Snow says, meaning to overwhelm the opposition.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales responded to the “renditioning” of an innocent Canadian citizen to Syria by claiming that “we were not responsible for his removal to Syria.” Well, turns out we were. What Gonzales had intended to say, a Justice Department representative backtracked Wednesday, was that deportations are handled by the Department of Homeland Security, not the Department of Justice. However, at the time Maher Arar was sent to Syria, deportations were still handled by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was part of the Department of Justice.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
