It was good of President Bush to tour Greensburg today and spend so much time visiting with and encouraging residents. The federal government’s response to the disaster has been prompt, effective and much appreciated.
Meanwhile, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ complaints to the White House about National Guard readiness have been portrayed in some quarters as a cheap-shot partisan sniping. But as a New York Times article points out, all 50 governors signed a letter last year expressing concern about the loss of Guard resources diverted to Iraq and Afghanistan and asking for state units to be reequipped. And two reviews, including one by the Government Accountability Office, raised similar concerns earlier this year.
The Times’ reporting also pointed to a delayed response time in the Greensburg tornado’s aftermath: "For nearly two days after the storm, there was an unmistakable emptiness in Greensburg, a lack of heavy machinery and an army of responders. By Sunday afternoon, more than a day and a half after the tornado, only about half of the Guard troops who would ultimately respond were in place. It was not until Sunday night that significant numbers of military vehicles started to arrive, many streaming in a long caravan from Wichita about 100 miles away."
As we said in today’s editorial, the equipment shortfall in Greensburg hasn’t added up to a crisis. But Sebelius and the other governors are on target in their concerns.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
The State Board of Education corrected a mistake Wednesday by hiring Alexa Posny as Kansas education commissioner. The board’s previous conservative majority had passed over Posny, who was deputy education commissioner, when it hired Bob Corkins — a terrible decision, given Posny’s experience in education and Corkins’ lack of it. Posny later left the state to direct the Office of Special Education at the U.S. Department of Education. Now that the new moderate majority is back in control, it was fortunate to be able to bring Posny back.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Some liberal law professors have been especially influential in the gun-rights debate, the New York Times reported. It used to be that the legal community was nearly universal in interpreting the Second Amendment as referring to a collective right to bear arms, not guaranteeing an individual right — and that remains the majority view. But professors such as Laurence Tribe of Harvard University, Akhil Reed Amar of Yale University and Sanford Levinson of the University of Texas have argued against this interpretation. Their scholarship helped lead to a federal appeals court decision in March that struck down a gun-control law on Second Amendment grounds — the first such decision in our nation’s history.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
It’s hard to understand the GOP swooning over the prospect of a Fred Thompson presidential candidacy, as this Slate column argues.
Thompson was a very undistinguished two-term senator who had a reputation for not wanting to work very hard. His accomplishments were thin to nonexistent.
Moreover, he’s a bad actor whose emotional range runs the gamut from A to B. But that Reaganesque quality doesn’t make him Reagan.
He’s a good communicator, say his supporters, but the question is, does he have anything to communicate? Other people in the race have real accomplishments and credentials.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Greensburg has shaken the conventional Kansas wisdom that a basement is guaranteed to protect you in a tornado. The survivors’ harrowing stories make it clear that if the twister is big enough, it can rip apart the structure above and imperil those in the basement with winds and debris. Still, it was hard to argue with Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ statement to NPR while in Greensburg that “there shouldn’t be a structure in a community like this without a basement.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
A new contender in the presidential race is a fictional 10-year-old named Susie Flynn. According to the National Journal, she’s the spokesgirl for the Children’s Defense Fund’s Healthy Child campaign. The campaign is an attempt to stimulate more interest in providing health insurance for the 9 million American children who have none.
Char Roseblade, the real spokeswoman for CDF media consultant Fallon Worldwide, explained in a release: “Adults and politicians should feel embarrassed that it takes a child to drive awareness and encourage involvement to solve this problem.”
Posted by Patrice Hein
