Per a New York Times article: “According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been ‘massively scaled back this year.’ Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007.”
A pro/con on Wednesday’s Opinion pages debated why this is happening. Cal Thomas blamed the decline in coverage on the liberal media not wanting to report good news. But Frank Rich noted that there isn’t much reporting on the bad news either, and he argued that the public has made up its mind on Iraq and is more interested in “Cindy versus Michelle, not Shiites versus Sunnis.”
Concluding that “ownership and operation are flexible concepts,” the Kansas Supreme Court today gave the green light to the 2007 expanded gambling law and the four destination casinos planned around the state. That will be a huge relief to developers and locals in Sumner County and elsewhere who’ve been proceeding under the assumption that the law was constitutional. It also should be some comfort to state lawmakers looking for a cash source to offset declining state revenue. But even the court acknowledged the ambiguity of the setup: Under the state constitution, the state must control the “ownership and operation” of the casinos, yet they will be managed by private contractors.
In addition to offshore drilling, another energy issue that John McCain and Barack Obama differ sharply on is ethanol. McCain wants to eliminate the multibillion-dollar government subsidies that the ethanol industry receives, and he wants to remove the tariff imposed on imported ethanol made from sugarcane. But Obama supports the subsidies and the tariff. Obama says that ethanol production “helps our national security.†It also helps Archer Daniels Midland, the nation’s largest ethanol producer, which is based in Obama’s home state of Illinois.
The mocking “I’m Voting Republican†video was designed to provoke by its British-born writer and director, and it certainly has, topping 2.5 million views in its two weeks on YouTube. Among the so-called testimonials: “I’m voting Republican because I think new drugs should be made available immediately, whether they’ve been properly tested or not. If the major pharmaceutical companies’ bottom lines are healthy, then I feel healthy, too.†“We need more minorities in prison.†“Because sometimes the Constitution is just one big inconvenient headache.â€
On the Web site of the conservative newspaper Human Events, L. Brent Bozell III counted the video among liberal smears: “This video clearly isn’t meant to be factual, just vicious.â€
Don’t waste time trying to reimburse Sedgwick County’s general fund for any bit of time someone on the county payroll spent related to the downtown arena, as County Commissioner Kelly Parks wants. Of course county employees — including commissioners — are involved in the massive project. Who expected otherwise? But the time is not excessive and is not worth haggling over. As Commissioner Tim Norton noted, regardless of which budget is charged, it’s all taxpayer money.
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board did good work identifying the causes of the explosion last year at the Barton Solvents chemical storage unit in Valley Center and in making safety recommendations to the industry and government regulators. The board determined that the explosion resulted from a buildup of flammable vapor-air mixture inside a storage tank that was ignited by a spark from a measuring float inside the tank. The tank explosion then set off a chain reaction of explosions in other tanks, which likely could have been prevented if the tanks hadn’t been so close together and had been better ventilated.
Though this explosion was large and required widespread evacuations, it was fortunate that no one died and that the chemical plume went straight up instead of spreading out over the town, lead investigator Randy McClure told The Eagle editorial board. Here’s hoping that the lessons learned in this accident can help prevent other explosions and the loss of life in the future.
Per a New York Times article: “According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been ‘massively scaled back this year.’ Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007.”
