Richard’s cartoon (click to enlarge) is a Thanksgiving Day prayer for all who have family members in the military who couldn’t be with them today. Blessings on the soldiers and their families.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
You think your family is dysfunctional? Ponder this roundup of prominent families most at risk of broken crockery or strained silences at dinner today, including the Bhuttos, Craigs, Vitters and Giulianis. In the last case, “the former New York mayor’s son is not speaking to him, and his daughter is working for Obama. Even the Keriks might not stop by this year.â€
Posted by Rhonda Holman
As the Missouri-Kansas rivalry plays out in an epic football game Saturday, most Americans — and perhaps some Kansans — won’t realize it also goes deep into the nation’s history of abolition. Kansas’ anti-slavery border warriors even gave KU a name for its mascot, the Jayhawkers. The fear and loathing go way back but fit the mood this week, as the Wall Street Journal found, describing a Tigers fan wearing a University of Missouri football jersey with the name “Quantrill†(named for William Quantrill, whose 1863 guerrilla raid on Lawrence left 150 dead), then a University of Kansas shirt featuring an image of John Brown and the words “Kansas: Keeping America safe from Missouri since 1854.â€
There is room for argument about the better football team, but picking the better state history is no contest (even though the bloody incursions went both ways). We’re with Heather Knox, a KU alumna and accountant in Kansas City, Mo., who told the Journal: “They’re the slave state. We’re the free state. Look who won out in the end.â€
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Congratulations to Mayor Carl Brewer for being among 23 leaders newly elected to the board of directors of the National League of Cities during the group’s recent New Orleans convention. That position, which follows former Mayor Bob Knight’s presidency of the group in 1999, puts Brewer on the forefront of the issues facing the league’s 19,000 member communities. And many of those issues are tough: In a recent survey by the group, nearly half of Midwestern cities reported being less able to meet their budgetary needs this year than last.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
