Still no comment from Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts about reports that he is leaving the Senate Intelligence Committee. His spokesperson told me today that Roberts would have a statement when the committee assignments are made official, which should be in a few weeks.
Roberts has been in the center of a storm since becoming chairman of the committee in 2003. But he particularly became a lightning rod after his committee’s report on how the White House used prewar intelligence information kept getting delayed, and it still isn’t done.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
My column today talks about a recent lecture in Wichita by Donald Worster, a distinguished historian at the University of Kansas who wrote a landmark history of the Dust Bowl. He warns that history could repeat itself unless Kansas gets serious about tackling global warming. And the issue staring Kansas in the face is the proposed Holcomb electric power complex.
By the way, I would highly recommend a book I’m reading now, “Coal: A Human History,” by Barbara Freese, a fascinating and evenhanded account of how coal unleashed the Industrial Revolution and its material benefits but also poses a darker, increasingly dangerous threat to our civilization.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Here is the stark choice in Iraq, according to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman:
“10 months or 10 years. Either we just get out of Iraq in a phased withdrawal over 10 months, and try to stabilize it some other way, or we accept the fact that the only way it will not be a failed state is if we start over and rebuild it from the ground up, which would take 10 years. This would require reinvading Iraq, with at least 150,000 more troops, crushing the Sunni and Shiite militias, controlling borders, and building Iraq’s institutions and political culture from scratch.”
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Now that the infamous Phelps family of Topeka is starring in a movie, can a reality TV show be far behind?
According to a story in the Topeka Capital-Journal, members of the Westboro Baptist Church had a festive time screening the documentary “Fall From Grace,” which examines the church’s virulent crusade against all things gay. It was made by KU film student Ryan Jones.
About 30 church members, arrayed in their trademark GodHatesFags.com T-shirts, alternately cheered, sang and hurled invective at the screen — not unlike a “Rocky Horror” audience, except for the costumes.
Church spokeswoman Shirley Phelps-Roper later gave the film what amounted to two thumbs-up: “Anytime we get the word out there that we are a doomed country, it’s a good thing.”
(UPDATE: KU filmmaker Ryan Jones called to make the point that his film is an unbiased look at the controversy engendered by the Phelps family, and is in no way intended as a sympathetic portrayal of their actions.)
Posted by Dave Knadler
On this World AIDS Day, more people need to do as Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., will do at Rick Warren’s Global Summit on AIDS and the Church in California. Not just get tested for the disease, which they will, but set aside politics and preconceptions to help chart a common course for countering a disease now on track to become the No. 3 cause of death worldwide within the next 25 years. New drugs have turned AIDS and HIV into a manageable chronic disease for some, especially for Americans. But with 39.5 million people now infected with HIV globally and a record 4.3 million new infections and 2.9 million AIDS deaths already in 2006, this is no time for prevention and treatment efforts to falter. As Brownback said, “To win the fight against AIDS we must each set aside our differences and join together as human beings from all political, religious and nonreligious walks of life, fighting for the lives of people who are suffering and dying.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s decision not to run for president leaves even more elbow room in the right of the field for the likes of Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Blame Frist’s flip-flop on embryonic stem-cell research and bizarre involvement in the Terri Schiavo case, among other pockmarks on his Senate leadership record. Meanwhile, Brownback was urged to run by fiscal conservative pundit Larry Kudlow this week on National Review Online: “He is an uncommonly moral person, who can make an uncommonly good contribution to the uncommonly sagging postelection Republican fortunes.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Speaking of Mitt Romney, a Rasmussen poll dumps cold water on the GOP presidential aspirations of the Massachusetts governor: A full 43 percent of Americans said they wouldn’t even consider voting for a Mormon candidate; only 38 percent said they’d consider it.
And more than half of evangelical Christians, whose support is often key in GOP primaries, said they’d never vote for a Mormon. Then again, it’s possible voters who see and like Romney might overcome such religious objections.
It could be worse: Atheists and Muslims face even more daunting odds, with about 60 percent of Americans saying they’d never vote for either.
What do you think — are Americans ready for a Mormon president?
Posted by Randy Scholfield
