Prime Minister Tony Blair announced today that in the next few months Britain will withdraw up to 1,600 of its roughly 7,100 British troops, most of whom are stationed in Basra in southern Iraq, the New York Times reported. "What all this means is not that Basra is how we want it to be," Blair said, "but it does mean that the next chapter in Basra’s history can be written by Iraqis."
The Danish prime minister also announced today that all of his country’s 460 troops in Iraq would be out by August, and the Lithuanian government is "seriously considering" withdrawing its 53 soldiers, the Times reported.
A spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council said that President Bush sees the British withdrawal "as a sign of success and what is possible for us once we help the Iraqis deal with the sectarian violence in Baghdad."
It doesn’t seem like success.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
An award-winning children’s novel, "The Higher Power of Lucky," is drawing fire from some librarians because in the opening, a character talks about seeing a rattlesnake bite his dog on the "scrotum."
Some librarians apparently think the word is inappropriate for children. One librarian went so far as to accuse the author, Susan Patron (herself a children’s librarian), of engaging in Howard Stern-like shock tactics.
Please. As one Wichita librarian noted, "it’s not even a dirty word" — "scrotum" is a precise and neutral anatomical term. True, it might occasion a few snickers from the target audience, 9- to 12-year-olds, but beyond that, what’s the fuss?
This isn’t some trashy novel — it won this year’s Newbery Award, the most prestigious prize in children’s books. What’s really shocking is that in 2007, some children’s librarians would try to censor a quality book.
It’s good to hear that Wichita librarians aren’t overreacting. But I’m not as optimistic about the response of certain conservative members of the Kansas State Board of Education.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
It’s a gutsy move for Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Topeka, to tellnational Democratic Party officials that she won’t be using their help in her re-election bid. But is it also politically fatal? "I ran an independent campaign to get here, and I intend to run an independent campaign to get re-elected," she said Tuesday.
This will make 2008 not only a retest of her grassroots campaign style and a referendum on her already controversial record, but also a test of the theory that she didn’t so much win in November as Jim Ryun lost — because his conservative base stayed home.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
“They’re entitled to make these changes for any reason or no reason or even for an idiotic reason,” former U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins said about the Justice Department firing seven U.S. attorneys last year. “But if they are trying to suggest that people have inferior performance to hide whatever their true agenda is, that is wrong. They should retract those statements.”
Cummins is upset that the Justice Department recently said the attorneys were asked to resign because of job performance. All but one of them had good job evaluations, the Washington Post reported. Meanwhile, most of the attorneys had been overseeing significant public-corruption investigations, four of which targeted Republican politicians or their supporters.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
With as many Mardi Gras parades and balls as ever, revelers are bringing much-needed revenue to New Orleans this week, but after that, it’s back to the reality that recovery is still a long way off. Before Hurricane Katrina hit, New Orleans had a population of almost 450,000. Currently its population is just under 200,000 — and may be decreasing.
A recent survey of commercial movers has shown that more people are moving out of New Orleans than in, the New York Times reported. Many people would like to move back to the city they love, but the reasons not to return are numerous and include the lack of jobs and city services, high insurance and taxes and, most important, a growing crime rate.
Post-Katrina New Orleans is such a huge mess on such a grand scale that it is going to take strong leadership and an organized effort to even find the road to recovery. But one has to wonder: If half of Las Vegas, Cleveland, Long Beach or Kansas City (cities of similar size to New Orleans) had been wiped out 18 months ago, would they still be struggling to survive?
Posted by Patrice Hein
The question of what WaterWalk lost when Bass Pro Shops took a pass on the riverfront development has cropped up in the mayoral campaign, with challenger Carl Brewer blaming Mayor Carlos Mayans for trying to renegotiate the deal himself and Mayans pointing to the too-slow approval of Bass Pro’s desired financing mechanism, STAR bonds. Some will see revisiting this issue as pointless and reflecting badly on the runner-up retailer, Gander Mountain. But this Kansas City Star story, about today’s opening of Olathe’s Bass Pro, suggests otherwise. In St. Louis, shoppers lined the block a day early, waiting for the doors to open on a Bass Pro that’s now a major Missouri tourist attraction. “In Macon, Ga., they parked on the highway and climbed a 20-foot dirt embankment,” the story goes. Olathe police have added 14 officers to handle the opening of the 110,000-square-feet, $268 million store, which features a re-created stagecoach stop; outdoor scenes depicting a prairie dog town, a bison herd and Canada geese; and painted maps of Kansas’ hiking trails, camping sites and waterways; as well as a fish restaurant surrounded by a 3-acre lake.
Oh, and the Kansas City area will get a second Bass Pro store next year, in Independence, Mo.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
“Any consumer can choose where he wants to do business, for whatever goofy reasons on which he wants to base that choice. But spewing such utter nonsense about the Constitution, well maybe we should post signs prohibiting that, too. It is probably more dangerous than the guns.”
— A Hutchinson News editorial Sunday reacting to conceal-carry supporters who are boycotting businesses that post no-gun signs because it shows they are “against the Constitution of the United States.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
State lawmakers should support a commonsense bill to make public the names of school bus drivers employed by private companies. These businesses aren’t subject to the Kansas Open Records Act, even though they are doing government work. This is a growing problem as government outsources more and more of its work. A recent New York Times analysis determined that far more people now work under contracts than are employed directly by the federal government. The result is less openness and less accountability.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
