Sedgwick County District Judge Tony Powell’s high-profile past as an anti-abortion lawmaker makes him the wrong person to sit in judgment of the George Tiller abortion case. He should recuse himself, we argue in today’s editorial.
The issue isn’t just that Powell helped write the legislation he must now rule on; it’s not unusual for former lawmakers to become judges. But this legislation specifically targeted Tiller and his Wichita clinic. And Powell made negative statements at the time directed at Tiller, who is now the defendant in his court.
Presumably these are among the reasons why Tiller’s attorneys formally asked Monday for a new presiding judge.
Powell is capable of putting aside his personal and political views and ruling on the merits of the case. But why, in such a high-profile, emotional case, would the court system invite public doubt about judicial objectivity?
Posted by Randy Scholfield
After 119 years, the International Association of Machinists has decided to endorse a Republican presidential candidate as well as a Democratic presidential candidate during the primary process. The move rightly acknowledges that 35 percent of the union’s 410,000 members vote with the Republicans. It also finds the union facing up to the reality of what happens when the GOP’s guy wins: "We’ve been completely closed out from having any relationship with this president, this White House, this administration," Rick Sloan, the union’s communications director, told the New York Times.
Candidates hoping to win the union’s endorsement must show up at a conference later this month in Florida.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., was upbeat about his third-place finish in Saturday’s Iowa Republican straw poll. “We’re still in it, and I think we’re still in a position to win,” he said Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week.” But other political observers saw the results as a significant setback, given that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee came in second while spending less effort and money than Brownback on the GOP fundraiser. “Brownback invested a lot into the straw poll and got little return,” Chris Cillizza wrote on his Washington Post blog. “Finishing third behind Huckabee makes it tough for the Kansas senator to make the argument that he is the most viable social conservative candidate in the field. This is a major setback for Brownback and could well lead to his departure from the race in the near future.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
“There is a growing body of evidence that, by an array of pertinent yardsticks, the United States is a laggard not a leader in providing good medical care,” a New York Times editorial argued. “Seven years ago, the World Health Organization made the first major effort to rank the health systems of 191 nations. France and Italy took the top two spots; the United States was a dismal 37th. More recently, the highly regarded Commonwealth Fund has pioneered in comparing the United States with other advanced nations through surveys of patients and doctors and analysis of other data. Its latest report, issued in May, ranked the United States last or next-to-last compared with five other nations — Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom — on most measures of performance, including quality of care and access to it. Other comparative studies also put the United States in a relatively bad light.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
The defeat of gambling in Sedgwick County last week seems to have confirmed Wichita’s conservative stereotype in Kansas politics.
“Most of us are probably thinking had the Rapture been Monday, this sucker woulda gone,” Capitol watcher Martin Hawver said on public television’s “Kansas Week” over the weekend. “But right now, people are a little surprised that bankers and civic leaders really jumped out on this. They tend not to do that, although it was kind of impressive the voter turnout you had. It was better than the turnout on the gay marriage vote, and everything we heard from here was that people were disconnecting from life support to go vote against gay marriage down in Sedgwick County.”
On the south-central Kansas’ casino likely landing in Sumner County, Hawver added: “The nice thing about a casino is, wherever you put it, people will come.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
