We should have seen this coming when Phil Ruffin appeared briefly on “The Apprentice: Los Angeles” — a possible Wichita casino involving The Donald, who partners with Ruffin in several Las Vegas ventures. The gambling expansion that passed the Kansas Legislature would seem to prohibit Ruffin from being involved in any area casino because he owns Wichita Greyhound Park, where he plans to add slot machines and a Gilley’s. Still, Ruffin told The Eagle he’s thinking about some kind of downtown casino involving both his famously coiffed partner and his property at Broadway and Douglas. It’s way too early to name a front-runner in the local casino sweepstakes (voters have to approve the idea first). But a Wichita high-rise casino bearing the Trump name and opulence certainly would attract regional attention and, presumably, gamblers. Just don’t expect Rosie O’Donnell to perform opening night.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
At $400 billion and counting, and four years after President Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech, the Iraq war and rebuilding ought to be amounting to something substantive and permanent and positive. The latest audit by Inspector General Stuart Bowen Jr. paints a depressing picture of corruption, destruction and poor maintenance of reconstruction projects. All of which means more U.S. tax dollars — and more fuel for Democrats’ fire in opposing the war.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
What the “D.C. Madam” says are 46 pounds of phone records involving 10,000 clients are beginning to hit the fan. Randall Tobias, head of foreign aid programs for President Bush, resigned Friday after acknowledging to ABC News that he used the escort service owned by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, though he said it was “to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage,” not for sex. Palfrey denies that her employees were prostitutes, saying she was in the sexual fantasy business. But as she faces criminal charges, she said: “I’m sure as heck not going to be going to federal prison for one day, let alone four to eight years, because I’m shy about bringing in the deputy secretary of whatever.” Hypocrisy alert: Tobias’ responsibilities included coordinating global AIDS relief, which he did by favoring abstinence over condom use and by requiring aid recipients to swear their opposition to prostitution and sex trafficking.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
President Bush said that pulling out of Iraq “could unleash chaos in Iraq that could spread across the entire region. It would be an invitation to the enemy to attack America and our friends around the world.” But some of his senior aides think that such doomsday predictions are exaggerated, Newsweek reported. They say that the likelihood of a regional war is low, and they note that Osama bin Laden already has a safe haven in Pakistan for planning attacks.
Posted by Patrice Hein
Suggesting it’s time for American education to stop “adding spaceship wings to pioneer wagons,” Josh Anderson, the language arts teacher at Olathe Northwest High School who is Kansas’ 2007 Teacher of the Year, offers this three-point plan for reforming K-12 education to fit the 21st century:
– Provide every child with preschool education.
– Scale back elementary school curriculum to core information.
– Require exit exams at sixth, eighth and 10th grades, and don’t let kids move on until they pass.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
The Hatch Act of 1939 prohibits federal employees from participating in partisan political activities during taxpayer-paid office hours. Yet there have been numerous instances in which White House officials have conducted political activities at federal agencies. “How many government agencies might have been despoiled by the White House’s substitution of political machinations for honorable service?” a New York Times editorial asked. “Taxpayers deserve answers.”
Posted by Patrice Hein
Like many Kansans, many Americans apparently think there ought to be a law against "robocalls," those automated and sometimes deceptive political phone calls that were received last fall by nearly two-thirds of registered voters nationally. The calls currently are exempt from laws establishing no-call lists. Kansas’ legislators opted only to mandate that the messages identify the calls’ sponsor. And any attempt to limit campaign messages risks trampling the First Amendment, but Nebraska and Missouri are among the states ready to go further. “People said they didn’t want calls in the middle of the night,” said Christy Abraham, legal counsel for a committee in the Nebraska Legislature. “They said we don’t want 17 calls in a row. And they said we want to know who’s calling.” She added: “The courts seem to be upholding these as far as permissible restrictions. We’re going to try it and see what happens.”
Posted by Rhonda Holma
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., is interested in joining with fellow presidential hopeful Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., to introduce legislation related to Biden’s “unity through autonomy” idea for allowing Iraq’s Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds to each have a state within one Iraq. Under a “three-state, one country” solution, Brownback thinks Baghdad neighborhoods could be divided between Sunnis and Shiites. “I wish it didn’t have to be that way,” Brownback told ABC News. “But it’s the nature of human history.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Complaints from sexual predators about inhumane conditions at Larned State Hospital led to inspections by the state and a national accreditation organization, to Eagle stories and to legislative scrutiny. All of that, patients say, led to retaliation, including the covering up of windows. It was up to state lawmakers to do something. But the Legislature sent a measure to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius last week that further curtails patients’ rights, including their ability to communicate with the media and other outsiders. In the process, it sent a bad message to the public. Lawmakers’ first priority should have been to safeguard these individuals’ rights and ensure their living conditions are humane.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
The longer those accused of drunken driving go without being charged by prosecutors, the more risk they pose to public safety. KWCH Eyewitness News 12 found this out firsthand when reporter Alana Rocha was struck in February by a driver police say was drunk — and who’d been arrested but never charged for a hit-and-run DUI last summer. Last week, KWCH reported on more cases, including one in which a year and a half passed before the man was charged. Clearly, the system needs to work more quickly. Kim Parker, chief deputy district attorney for Sedgwick County, told KWCH she’s working “to try to streamline those processes” for charging DUIs. But as she noted, state lawmakers could be more mindful of the local consequences of the tough-on-crime bills they love to pass. If justice is to be swift as well as tough, it needs more money.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
The response to climate change doesn’t have to be doom and gloom — the crisis is an opportunity for Kansas and the country to unleash a renaissance of innovation and jobs by developing clean, green technology, as we argued in an Earth Day editorial.
In a related story that underscores the possibilities, Kansas Agriculture Secretary Adrian Polansky announced that 12 Midwestern states have joined forces in a consortium to develop biofuels, bioenergy and bioproducts as the basis of a new 21st-century economy that moves away from fossil fuels.
Polansky points to countless opportunities for innovation in everything from bioplastics to cellulosic ethanol, which uses sustainable sources such as switchgrass.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
“Something’s got to give” is the sentiment around Washington, columnist David Ignatius wrote. He quoted one Republican senator who said, “This is the most incompetent White House I’ve seen since I came to Washington.”
President Bush’s summation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ recent testimony as a “very candid assessment” had to make even his most loyal followers cringe. The stubbornness exhibited by Bush appears to be exasperating government officials and lawmakers, no matter what their party affiliation.
Posted by Patrice Hein
Egypt will be hosting a meeting on Iraq next week. The topic of discussion: how to end the violence. High-level representatives from Syria, Turkey and the United States are planning to attend. According to a Reuters report, Iran has not yet decided whether Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki will participate.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who attended the first Iraq neighbors’ conference in March, said, “We’ll have a chance to, in a sense, test the proposition that Iraq’s neighbors have more to lose from an unstable Iraq than to gain from it.”
The summit will also be a test of the Bush administration’s interest in diplomacy.
Posted by Patrice Hein
Kids know how to call 911 in case of emergency. But some area adults apparently don’t — or won’t. Two recent Eagle stories have shown what can happen when nobody calls for help: They can get stabbed (trying to break up a fight). Or they can lose their lives or property (if they ignore a wailing smoke detector).
“When people see disturbances at these parties,” Sgt. Steve Yarberry told The Eagle, “call 911 and let us handle it.”
And “if you smell smoke in your house, call 911,” said Fire Marshal Ed Bricknell.
Let’s hope the reluctance to call in fights is an aberration and not some local manifestation of what Anderson Cooper reported on Sunday on “60 Minutes” — the hip-hop “Stop snitchin’” code that effectively means, “don’t cooperate with the police, no matter who you are.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Former CIA Director George Tenet writes in a new book that Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials never conducted a "serious debate" about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat, the New York Times reported. Nor "was there ever a significant discussion" about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion, he writes. He describes Cheney and others as hell-bent on going to war with Iraq following the Sept. 11 attacks. So what about Tenet’s infamous "slam dunk" comment? He claims, not very convincingly, that he was talking about whether the administration could make a better public case for war, not about whether the intelligence evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was a slam dunk.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
At a fundraising event last week in Missouri, security officers kept Gov. Kathleen Sebelius in a safe room for several minutes after reports that a person in attendance might be carrying a gun.
He wasn’t, but the incident shows how the prospect of citizens carrying concealed guns in public can lead to fear and confusion, not safety.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
The local NAACP last week asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate an African-American woman’s complaint that she was kicked, beaten and stunned with a Taser by a Wichita police officer after being pulled over for a burned-out taillight.
It’s unclear whether the woman, who sported a bruised face, is telling the truth — she has a record of previous arrests and claims of excessive force.
But this seems a textbook example of the kind of “he said, she said” case that a video camera in the police officer’s car could help resolve — or perhaps prevent in the first place by its mere presence.
It’s puzzling why Wichita police have been resistant to a tool that could help confirm their professionalism and enhance public trust.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
The New Hampshire legislature has passed a bill that legalizes civil unions for homosexuals — the first time civil unions have been legalized in a state without a court order or the threat of one. Gov. John Lynch plans to sign it.
“To me this legislation is a credit to our state. We’re making this move not because some court someplace is telling us that we must,” Democratic Sen. Joe Foster said. “We do so today because it is the right thing to do.”
Posted by Ross Stewart
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (in photo) doesn’t mention Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, by name in this Newsweek commentary about cities and illegal guns, but he clearly is aiming at Tiahrt’s 2003 gun data legislation in stating that “Congress is undermining our local efforts by handcuffing our police departments. Hard as it is to believe, right now federal law prevents our police officers from looking at all the data on guns used in crimes in our region. Where and when were they bought — and by whom? These are questions that we can’t ask. That means we can’t easily identify crooked dealers and illegal trafficking patterns. We can’t connect the dots.”
For his part, Tiahrt has a commentary in Friday’s Opinion pages arguing that the “Tiahrt amendment does not prohibit law enforcement authorities from receiving the information they need to investigate crimes in their communities” and promising to work with the mayor and others to improve the situation.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is the Democrat’s version of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — “a continuing embarrassment thanks to his amateurish performance,” David Broder wrote in a column in Thursday’s Opinion pages. Reid has stuck his foot in his mouth many more times than just when he said that “the war in Iraq is lost.” “The Democrats deserve better and the country needs more than Reid has offered as Senate majority leader,” Broder wrote.
Posted by Patrice Hein
Everybody talks about the need to do something about health care. This week, the Legislature did something, unanimously approving a bipartisan plan that will, among other things, bring 24,000 Kansans off the rolls of the uninsured, help small businesses cover employees and get the Kansas Health Policy Authority to work toward long-term reform. “There is unanimous support for change,” said House Minority Leader Jim Ward, D-Wichita. “We have to do it differently.” Few Kansans would disagree with that, even as they’d argue about how.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
