The next round of Kansas’ coal war began today, as Gov. Kathleen Sebelius vetoed the bill meant to let Sunflower Electric Power Corp. add two coal-fired power plants to its operation near Holcomb. The bill also would undermine the authority of Kansas Secretary of Health and Environment Rod Bremby, who had angered many lawmakers by denying Sunflower’s air permit based on its anticipated carbon emissions. “Instead of building two new coal plants, which would produce 11 million new tons of carbon dioxide each year, I support pursuing other, more promising energy and economic development alternatives,†Sebelius said in her veto statement. The Senate is expected to override her veto, but it remains in doubt whether the necessary two-thirds majority can be reached in the House.
As Congress moves toward mandatory controls on greenhouse-gas emissions and Wall Street frowns on new coal plants, do Kansas lawmakers really want to stake their reputations on forcing through these plants, which would pollute Kansas and mostly power other states?
The courtship of former presidential candidate and current superdelegate New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is over, and Barack Obama won. “I believe he is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime leader that can bring our nation together and restore America’s moral leadership in the world,†Richardson said in a statement obtained by the Associated Press, in advance of an expected personal endorsement today in Oregon. “As a presidential candidate, I know full well Sen. Obama’s unique moral ability to inspire the American people to confront our urgent challenges at home and abroad in a spirit of bipartisanship and reconciliation.†This has got to irk the Clintons, after Bill Clinton gave Richardson two jobs in his administration — ambassador to the United Nations and as secretary of the Energy Department. But will it help Obama?
Many are to blame for the Abu Ghraib prison debacle, which continues to haunt U.S. foreign relations and sent 11 soldiers to jail. But the media? So says Lynndie England, the former U.S. Army private who posed with a naked prisoner on a leash and with a pyramid of naked prisoners. “If the media hadn’t exposed the pictures to that extent, then thousands of lives would have been saved,†she told the German magazine Stern.
England also claimed that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush had to know what was going on at the prison. “How could he (Rumsfeld) have not known? And Bush? He’s the headman,†England said.
Don’t include columnist Bob Ray Sanders among those condemning or marginalizing Barack Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Sanders wrote that Wright’s liberation theology isn’t new to the black church, and that it was a key part of the Rev. Martin Luther King’s preaching and speeches.
“I find it interesting today that many whites who couldn’t stand the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. when he was alive embrace him primarily because of that passage in the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in which he longed for the day when his children ‘will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,’†Sanders wrote. “That line is most quoted today by those opposed to affirmative action.
“But people forget how defiant that speech was, and how it spoke to an America that had failed many people, especially this country’s people of color.â€
Good for the House Education Committee for shelving a Senate-passed provision to require teachers to submit materials that might be considered obscene to school boards for prior review. On the rare occasions when challenges to classroom materials come up, administrators and school boards can deal with them. But the proposal distrusted teachers and could have had a chilling effect on classroom creativity.
The 2009 budget passed by the Kansas House this week would deliver on some important priorities for Wichita, including aviation research and training. But among the items deferred for the wrap-up session is one of huge benefit to the whole state as well as Wichita — a proposed $50 million bond issue for an expansion of the University of Kansas pharmacy school. To its credit, the House has approved $1 million to get the planning started for the expansion. But time is short: Seven counties in the state have no pharmacy, and another 30 have only one each. KU now has more applicants than places in its pharmacy school, which would grow by 45 students at the Lawrence campus and by 40 in Wichita under the expansion. “This is a priority not just for KU, Lawrence and Wichita, but for the whole state,†said state Rep. Raj Goyle, D-Wichita.
The next round of Kansas’ coal war began today, as Gov. Kathleen Sebelius vetoed the bill meant to let Sunflower Electric Power Corp. add two coal-fired power plants to its operation near Holcomb. The bill also would undermine the authority of Kansas Secretary of Health and Environment Rod Bremby, who had angered many lawmakers by denying Sunflower’s air permit based on its anticipated carbon emissions. “Instead of building two new coal plants, which would produce 11 million new tons of carbon dioxide each year, I support pursuing other, more promising energy and economic development alternatives,†Sebelius said in her veto statement. The Senate is expected to override her veto, but it remains in doubt whether the necessary two-thirds majority can be reached in the House.
