State Sen. Phil Journey, R-Haysville, complained this week that his bill to provide liability protection for spanking in Kansas schools was the "most misunderstood" of the session — doomed, he said, by newspaper editorials that implied he wanted to spank every kid in the state.
We’d like to take credit for the demise of this legislation. But it wasn’t just editorial writers who thought Journey’s bill was a waste of time. There was little visible support for it from other lawmakers or from parents and teachers. And there was zero support from school districts.
So did everyone misunderstand the bill?
School discipline is a problem. But Kansas school officials don’t think corporal punishment is a needed tool. That’s the bottom line on why this bill went nowhere.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
The Kansas House has approved "Alexa’s Law," which would make it a crime to kill or harm a fetus. It excludes abortion, but many pro-choice supporters believe that the bill — which defines a person as an "unborn child" at "any stage of gestation from fertilization to birth" — is really about laying the legal groundwork for eventually outlawing abortion (though this has yet to occur in other states that have similar laws).
Julie Burkhart, director of the pro-choice ProKanDo political action committee, made the best argument against the bill in a commentary in today’s Eagle: It’s unnecessary. As she noted, the Legislature debated the same issue in 1995 and decided that the best approach was to create separate crimes for harming a pregnant woman, rather than to define a fetus as a separate person, which might have other legal consequences. If the goal is to punish a criminal for harming a fetus, the state already has a law that can do that.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Al-Qaida is alive and doing well on the border of Pakistan, with terror chiefs Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri once again back in operational control of their worldwide network, the New York Times reported.
While we’ve been bogged down in Iraq, al-Qaida has steadily regrouped. What a breathtaking failure of policy.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Bringing back passenger rail service to Wichita is an exciting idea that deserves a closer look.
A local rail group is pushing plans to extend Amtrak’s Heartland Flyer route from Oklahoma City north through Wichita to Kansas City. Proponents argue that it would give travelers more options and boost tourism by reviving the old Union Station depot on the doorstep of Old Town.
It’s possible many more Wichitans would choose rail if they didn’t have to catch the train in Newton in the middle of the night. And shouldn’t a city of Wichita’s size diversify and strengthen its travel infrastructure along this important economic corridor?
It remains unclear whether the route makes sense financially or logistically for our state — but a good first step would be for Kansas lawmakers to ask Amtrak to conduct a feasibility study.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Think the Bush administration has been too quick to use military force? William Kristol argues otherwise in a provocative Time essay, going back even further to dream about what might have been had the United States intervened earlier, more robustly or both in World War I, Nazi Germany and elsewhere, and then in the Balkans, Somalia, Rwanda and Afghanistan. Kristol, whose day job is editor of the Weekly Standard, concludes: “If we revert to timidity in the face of threats and passivity in the face of dictators, we could present to the world the sorry spectacle of a great nation unwilling or unable to draw the sword on behalf of justice.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
