The Kansas House was one vote short today of passing a new coal-plant bill with the 84 votes needed to override another veto by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. Rep. Sheryl Spalding, R-Overland Park, was absent, though she voted against the earlier coal bill. The close vote means that the plant supporters are in striking distance and that the issue isn’t likely to be over this session until the closing gavel.
Since his assassination 40 years ago today, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s stature has grown and his message has gone mainstream, our editorial today notes. His words have inspired people of all races and religions and backgrounds, serving as beacons of liberty, economic justice and racial harmony. So accepted and revered is the man that the full measure of his views — especially against senseless, unjust wars and against his country, as he judged it to deserve criticism — has been subject to sanitation and selective memory.
This anniversary of a national tragedy finds progress that would make King proud, but also much work left to do. We can best mark it by not only admiring the man but also by speaking out, stepping up and coming together to realize his imagined America.
Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, recently told an Arkansas City audience that the Holcomb coal-plant denial was “a political decision, not an energy decision,” and said he’s still not convinced that human-caused carbon dioxide is responsible for global warming, the Arkansas City Traveler reported. If so, he’s ignoring a host of inconvenient facts, starting with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.
As Robert Watson, former chairman of the panel, said back in 2001, “The overwhelming majority of scientific experts, whilst recognizing that scientific uncertainties exist, nonetheless believe that human-induced climate change is already occurring and that future change is inevitable.”
That 2001 consensus has only become more certain. Tiahrt’s refusal to acknowledge the science or the need for action is uninformed and irresponsible. His constituents should call him on it.
“A 34-nation study found Americans less likely to believe in evolution than citizens of any of the countries polled except Turkey,” columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote. He argues that this is one example of the anti-intellectualism that is hurting our ability to solve serious problems and could harm our competitiveness as a nation in coming decades.
“There’s no simple solution, but the complex and incomplete solution is a greater emphasis on education at every level,” he wrote. “And maybe, just maybe, this cycle has run its course, for the past seven years perhaps have discredited the anti-intellectualism movement.”
Is Kristof correct, or is this just another case of a liberal accusing those who disagree with him of being dumb?
Gov. Kathleen Sebelius will miss the 22nd annual Governor’s One-Shot Turkey Hunt next weekend in El Dorado, sending Attorney General Stephen Six in her place. “Good God, every opportunity she gets to leave Kansas, she takes. This is starting to get ridiculous,” responded Christian Morgan, executive director of the Kansas Republican Party. Never mind that it’s the first hunt she’s missed since taking office, and that many a Kansas Republican would like to be in the Democrat’s shoes that weekend — watching Tiger Woods and the rest of the best of the best at the Masters golf tournament in Georgia.
Watch a video produced by The Eagle Opinion staff that has fun with the animosity some KU fans still feel toward former Jayhawk coach Roy Williams. Here is a sample of the lyrics (sung to tune of the Dixie Chicks’ “Not Ready to Make Nice”):
I’m not ready to make nice
To that two-timing Williams
I’m still mad as hell
At that dirty Chapel-Hillian.
The Kansas House was one vote short today of passing a new coal-plant bill with the 84 votes needed to override another veto by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. Rep. Sheryl Spalding, R-Overland Park, was absent, though she voted against the earlier coal bill. The close vote means that the plant supporters are in striking distance and that the issue isn’t likely to be over this session until the closing gavel.
