Phill Kline filed today to run for Johnson County district attorney – the position that the county Republican Party gave him in late 2006 after he lost his re-election campaign for Kansas attorney general. Kline said last year that he wouldn’t seek the job but changed his mind.
Kline likely will face a tough challenge, even in the GOP primary. Many Johnson County Republicans were mad when Kline was chosen to fill the district attorney position, given how badly he lost in the attorney general race. They may prefer GOP candidate Steve Howe, one of the prosecutors Kline dismissed when he became district attorney. Howe has been endorsed by Sens. Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts and former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker.
The winner of that primary will face Rick Guinn, the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., drew the eye of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” Monday night for Roberts’ long-ago promises, when he chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee, to fast-track the “Phase II” reports examining the Bush administration’s use of prewar intelligence on Iraq. “I’ve got tennis shoes and track shoes on, on Phase II,” Roberts was shown saying in a clip from November 2005. Stewart saved his ire, though, for the media’s neglect of the Phase II report’s eventual release last week — in favor of stories about kissing lesbians, Web gossip and a French daredevil who climbs buildings. “Yes, he was climbing the New York Times building, perhaps looking to read the story about the administration misleading us into a war that you didn’t cover at all,” Stewart responded to one ABC News clip.
“Only one thing ever makes me feel ashamed — citizens who pay taxes buy me . . . and U.S. senators health insurance, and they can’t pay for health insurance for their own families. If the government can buy me insurance, we ought to be able to be active in trying to help solve this huge problem of access for 47 million largely working people.†— Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, touting Barack Obama’s health care plan on “Fox News Sundayâ€
The Wichita City Council will consider today whether to proceed with the purchase and installation of eight in-car video cameras for the Police Department, the next step in a pilot program approved last year to be focused on cars used in traffic enforcement. The proposed $75,000 contract with Lenexa-based ICOP Digital Inc. has been long in coming to Wichita, but the cameras are a law enforcement best practice in other communities. Once installed, the cameras should shed light on what happens in public-police interactions and protect both officers and citizens from false charges.
“The selling point of Mr. Obama’s vision of change is not doctrinaire liberalism or Bush-bashing but an inclusiveness that he believes can start to relieve Washington’s gridlock much as it animated his campaign,†wrote New York Times columnist Frank Rich, arguing that the Obama/McCain race (as was the Obama/Clinton race) is a battle between an optimistic future and an entrenched past. “Some of that inclusiveness is racial, ethnic and generational, in the casual, what’s-the-big-deal manner of post-boomer Americans already swimming in our country’s rapidly expanding demographic pool. Some of it is post-partisan: he acknowledges that Republicans, Ronald Reagan included, can have ideas.
“Opponents who dismiss this as wussy naivete do so at their own risk. They at once call attention to the expiring shelf life of their own Clinton-Bush-vintage panaceas and lull themselves into underestimating Mr. Obama’s political killer instincts.â€
Phill Kline filed today to run for Johnson County district attorney – the position that the county Republican Party gave him in late 2006 after he lost his re-election campaign for Kansas attorney general. Kline said last year that he wouldn’t seek the job but changed his mind.
