The surprise announcement this week by Senate Minority Whip Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., that he won’t seek re-election adds to an growing wave of GOP retirements — six in the Senate and 17 in the House — that make it increasingly unlikely Republicans will regain majority status next year, notes Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post.
Compare that with Democrats, who have only five House seats up for grabs — none is considered competitive — and no Senate seats opened by retirements in 2008.
Many see the GOP exodus as an acknowledgment that Republicans face an especially bleak election landscape in 2008.
Just consider the huge edge in fundraising at the moment: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had $29 million in the bank at the end of October; its Republican counterpart had a mere $2.5 million.
Lott and others may see the writing on the wall.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take a case challenging Project 100%, a San Diego program that regularly sends deputies out to search all nooks and crannies of houses belonging to welfare applicants, without warrant or suspicion. Should a family or individual resist the search, they can be denied benefits.
The Supreme Court had previously ruled that home visits to verify eligibility for benefits are not considered searches, because they aren’t part of criminal investigation. But the program still shows disregard for the rights of the poor and brushes aside the Fourth Amendment.
Posted by Kristin Mehler
Maybe Hillary Clinton was just tired Sunday in Iowa. Or maybe this is what’s wrong with her as a candidate or even with politics in general:
“I’m leading in all the polls. I’m beating them in state after state after state,†she said, referring to Republican presidential candidates.
“There have been a lot of polls and, frankly, I don’t pay much attention to any of them,†on trailing Barack Obama in a recent Iowa poll.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
The three months that former Kansas Rep. Jim Slattery took deciding not to challenge Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., in 2008 ate up precious fundraising time for any other viable Democratic candidate — not that many such people come to mind, especially considering Roberts’ $2 million in campaign cash. It also was fair to wonder how viable Slattery was: After all, his exit from Kansas politics came in a landslide loss to Bill Graves in the 1994 gubernatorial election (64 to 36 percent). Kansans’ failure to have sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since the 1930s only compounded the challenge.
According to the Kansas City Star’s Prime Buzz blog, the Democratic challenger will be Johnson County businessman Greg Orman.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
“We don’t find any evidence that the gifted kids are harmed, but they are certainly right, the gifted advocates, if they claim there is no evidence that No Child Left Behind is helping the gifted,†said Chicago economist Derek Neal. Teachers are expected to prepare three versions of the same lesson — one for below average, one for average and one for above average. Parents of gifted children worry that, under pressure, teachers are focusing energy on the middle and bottom groups of students, not giving the above-average students the opportunity to excel.
Posted by Kristin Mehler
“One of the great pleasures of running for president has been to go to some tiny town in Iowa and you got some guy in overalls and a seed hat say, ‘What do you think about the situation in Burma?’ And you’re thinking that he’s gonna ask you about corn, but he asks you about Burma. But that happens all the time.†— Barack Obama, speaking Tuesday at a New Hampshire forum on foreign policy
Posted by Rhonda Holman
People have been piling on a silly Santa coach in Australia who advised new Clauses to replace “ho, ho, ho†with “ha, ha, ha†to avoid demeaning women, a la Don Imus. In another holiday skirmish, a task force in Ft. Collins, Colo., recommended the city’s holiday light display stay away from red and green as too religious (the City Council rightly rejected the idea last week).
What gives rise to such madness? As a Chicago Tribune editorial asked: “Who are these people who believe the world would be a better place if Christmas lights were white and Santa Claus said ‘ha, ha, ha’ to small children? If you’re one of them, ask Santa to bring you a life.â€
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Evangelicals have spent the past several months anxiously searching for a candidate to back. Is Mike Huckabee their man?
When asked at the GOP presidential debate Wednesday if the candidates believe every word of the Bible, Huckabee gave the answer evangelicals look for: “Sure. I believe the Bible is exactly what it is. It’s the word of revelation to us from God Himself.â€
Huckabee also showed a deft touch in defusing a question about whether Jesus would support the death penalty. “Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office,†he joked.
But Huckabee also didn’t bash illegal immigrants or gays. Asked whether he would accept money from gay Republican groups, Huckabee said: “I need the support of anybody and everybody I can get.â€
Posted by Kristin Mehler
A new SurveyUSA poll, co-sponsored by KWCH-TV, Channel 12 in Wichita, casts a shadow of a doubt on the idea that Kansas is forever red in presidential elections. In head-to-head possible general election matchups, Republicans Rudy Giuliani and John McCain variously beat Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. But those surveyed preferred Clinton or Obama to GOP choices Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. The breakdown: McCain vs. Clinton, 55 to 38 percent; Giuliani vs. Clinton, 49 to 43 percent; Romney vs. Clinton, 44 to 48 percent; Huckabee vs. Clinton, 43 to 49 percent; McCain vs. Obama, 53 to 37 percent; Giuliani vs. Obama, 47 to 42 percent; Romney vs. Obama, 43 to 46 percent; Huckabee vs. Obama, 41 to 47 percent.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
So much for no one being willing to build a destination casino in Sumner County, as some gaming opponents claimed during the Sedgwick County debate. Four companies have filed proposals, including industry giants Harrah’s Entertainment and MGM Mirage.
Harrah’s wants to build a $500 million resort at the Mulvane exit of the Kansas Turnpike. It would include 275 hotel rooms, a championship golf course, and 30,000 square feet of convention space. And that’s just for the first phase of its development plan.
Harrah’s estimates that its project would annually provide Sumner County $5.5 million in revenue sharing and $12 million in property taxes, plus increased sales tax revenue.
Other proposals project similar revenues. So unless the Kansas Supreme Court rules that the state’s gaming law is unconstitutional, Sumner County will be hitting the jackpot.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
The Wichita City Council showed good sense Tuesday in opting not to spend $225,000 to buy a $60,000 piece of property, at least not yet. South Wichita needs a new fire station — no question. And maybe the site at Denker and Hydraulic, owned by the Indian Southern Baptist Church, will best serve public safety. But leaders are right to take their time and make sure this deal is as good as it gets. Still, the last thing City Hall needs is a big legal fight over Indian-owned land.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
I’ve been seeing quite a few campaign signs at Wichita intersections for Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning GOP presidential candidate who has been setting Internet fundraising records. Though his campaign is still a long shot, it’s clear that there are a sizable number of citizens who, as the Washington Post described them, “are increasingly disillusioned with the two major political parties’ soft consensus on making government ever more intrusive at all levels, whether it’s listening to phone calls without a warrant, imposing fines of half a million dollars for broadcast ‘obscenities’ or jailing grandmothers for buying prescribed marijuana from legal dispensaries.â€
What would Paul think of Wichita’s efforts to force sexually oriented businesses to relocate?
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
The ever-ambitious Internet mammoth Google has its sights set on the development of renewable energies. The company says it’s tired of its own hypocrisy and wants to invest in the energies so that it will have options in the years to come. It hopes to produce a gigawatt of renewable energy, cheaper than coal, to power its facilities, which are now running on traditional energy.
Some worry that the company is spreading itself too thin. But maybe it can’t afford not to make this investment now.
Posted by Kristin Mehler
Paul Davies, a physicist and professor at Arizona State University, isn’t anti-evolution or pro-intelligent design. But he argues in a New York Times commentary that both religion and science are based on faith. In science’s case, he says, it “proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way†— an assumption he says that so far “has been justified.†For example, he argues that physicists “have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws of an unspecified origin.†He contends that both “monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence,†and that “until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.â€
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
The Citizens’ Utility Ratepayer Board does not oppose the development of wind energy in Kansas. Nor is it accusing Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of wrongdoing.
But it is correct in wanting to make sure that utility regulators are independent after obtaining an e-mail in which a former Westar executive said that Sebelius told utilities that they would be “fully compensated†if they developed wind power.
Sebelius spokeswoman Nicole Corcoran denies that the governor issued any promise other than to generally agree that “electric utilities need to be compensated for costs of energy they develop.†And the governor’s office said in a statement that Sebelius never advised the KCC on how it should set rates or what rates should be.
But CURB wants assurances that the KCC will be independent on Westar’s rate hike request, which CURB doesn’t think is justified.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
To those who doubt Oprah Winfrey’s potential impact as a campaigner for Barack Obama, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson points out what the television guru did for Leo Tolstoy’s century-old “Anna Karenina.†Its addition to Oprah’s Book Club instantly bumped the book, and others like it, to best-seller status.
Early polls by the Pew Research Center predict that Winfrey’s support of Obama won’t make that much of a splash. Still, she has millions of faithful viewers, mostly women, who have spent millions of dollars to read what she recommends.
Posted by Kristin Mehler
The Wichita City Council — at the urging of some dog groups and owners — has resisted breed-specific dog laws. It’s not the breed, it’s the owner or the particular dog, the advocates say. But after yet another person was mauled by what was considered a friendly pit bull — this time, a 1-year-old boy who had his scalp torn off last week by a pit bull-boxer mix — it is tough not to conclude that certain breeds are high risk and justify stricter regulations.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Granted, you don’t have to be in the office to be working. But a Kansas City television station’s report that Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline averages only 29 hours per week at the office — based on a review of Kline’s parking key data — supports complaints that he isn’t doing much to earn his $143,000-a-year salary.
The station also questioned whether Kline really lives in Johnson County, as required by law. During a several-week period, the TV station watched the apartment that Kline claims is his residence and never saw him arriving or leaving. But it did see him at his home in Topeka.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Kudos to GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee for his straight talk on America’s sick relationship with its “ally†in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia.
Huckabee blasted a Saudi court’s outrageous decision to punish a woman who was gang-raped by giving her six months in jail and 200 lashes.
He also suggested that America’s willingness to look the other way on such human rights abuses was the direct result of our dependence on Saudi oil.
“America has allowed itself to become enslaved to Saudi oil. It’s absurd. It’s embarrassing,†he said.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
If Hillary Clinton wants to be assessed in part on her eight-year record as first lady, the nation ought to be able to access that record. Yet as the Chicago Tribune reported, the only item released by the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library involving Hillary Clinton is a condolence letter she wrote. Among the unavailable items are 3 million pages of documents relating to her health care task force. The glacial pace of government archivists is partly to blame, but both Clintons should do more to expedite the release of the first lady’s papers.
And among the items being withheld by federal archivists for stated reasons of confidentiality, the Los Angeles Times reported, is a May 1993 memo to Clinton about a meeting with then-Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, R-Kan., and then-Rep. Dan Glickman (in photo), D-Wichita. Glickman told the Times that Clinton was in “listening mode†during the meeting, which occurred when he and Kassebaum were pushing their own health care proposal: “I don’t think there was anything in the proposal that Sen. Kassebaum and I had that was particularly secret. It was not anything that I would call of national import.â€
Posted by Rhonda Holman
If you have ever worried about whether doctors have too cozy of a relationship with pharmaceutical companies, a long commentary by a Massachusetts psychiatrist in the New York Times magazine won’t ease those fears. He recounts how even conscientious doctors can be lured (with plenty of cash) into becoming de facto sales representatives for the drug companies.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
