It’s been almost two years since Phill Kline was Kansas attorney general, but the state is still paying for it. Last week the state agreed to pay $475,000 to settle a lawsuit over Kline’s 2003 opinion that medical providers, including school nurses, must report to authorities all sexual activity by teens 15 and under, regardless of whether it’s between consenting teens. During the resulting 2006 court case that tossed out that opinion, Kline made the remarkable pronouncement that boy-on-girl oral sex must be reported, but girl-on-boy oral sex doesn’t have to be.
Stephen Colbert’s serial Canton-bashing has moved northward. Colbert’s inevitable official apology Tuesday to Canton, Kan., for his unkind remarks last week on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” kicked off an assault on Canton, S.D., including a song calling it “North Dakota’s dirty ashtray.” A CNN report on the reaction in the Kansas Canton, which is near McPherson, featured one woman who said she’d like to “hit him in the nose.”
The stalking claim filed by a woman against Wichita State University baseball coach Gene Stephenson has been settled out of court. But the unresolved questions in the case likely leave many Wichitans and Shocker fans with lingering feelings of unease — and doubts about whether WSU has done enough to address this matter, our editorial Wednesday said.
WSU athletic director Eric Sexton has offered no comment on the Stephenson case and settlement except to call it a “personal issue.”
But it’s not merely personal. Stephenson is a highly paid, high-profile public figure whose reputation and conduct are closely associated with the WSU athletic program. That makes it a personnel issue.
There’s a good argument to be made that Wichita should just get over the Pat Salerno debacle already, but it was hard not to feel further insulted over Salerno’s decision to pass on becoming Wichita’s city manager in light of this: Salerno is now among 56 applicants for the job of city manager in Deltona, Fla., a planned retirement community of 84,000 and home to one of Florida’s largest sinkholes. Then again, it’s further affirmation that Salerno wasn’t right for Wichita.
Bruce E. Ivins, the scientist who committed suicide as the FBI prepared to charge him with the 2001 anthrax attacks, could not have been the killer, according to a commentary by Richard Spertzel, a top government microbiologist.
Regarding the anthrax mailed to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, “The spores could not have been produced at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, where Ivins worked, without many other people being aware of it,” he writes. “Furthermore, the equipment to make such a product does not exist at the institute.”
Daschle this week also expressed doubts about the FBI investigation.
But FBI officials released documents Wednesday that they say conclusively fingers Ivins as the killer. The Army scientist, they said, was the only person to have access to a pure strain of anthrax spores that had “certain genetic mutations identical” to the anthrax used to kill five people. And the envelopes used were also traced back to Ivins’ lab.
Let’s hope the government’s evidence is strong enough to settle this dispute and put the case to rest.
In the wake of several recent bar-related shootings, it’s good to hear that the Wichita Police Department is getting tough on problem bars.
The Eagle editorial board and neighborhood groups called for a crackdown in the wake of a July 27 shooting death at Big Chub’s at 31st Street South and Seneca, the scene of numerous late-night problems such as parking lot brawls and shootings.
Over the weekend, police shot and seriously wounded a man in the parking lot of Max’s Club on South Rock Road. Wichita Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz told The Eagle that both Chub’s and Max’s are among half a dozen clubs that are “on our radar” because of frequent violence and problems at closing time.
Stolz said the police would look at an ordinance change to tighten licensing requirements and provide an “accountability mechanism” for bars.
About time. Residents shouldn’t have to put up with these bad neighbors. And as Stolz pointed out, “to send, consistently, 10 and 15 officers to shut down a nightclub is not a wise use of resources and not a good way to spend tax dollars.”
It’s been almost two years since Phill Kline was Kansas attorney general, but the state is still paying for it. Last week the state agreed to pay $475,000 to settle a lawsuit over Kline’s 2003 opinion that medical providers, including school nurses, must report to authorities all sexual activity by teens 15 and under, regardless of whether it’s between consenting teens. During the resulting 2006 court case that tossed out that opinion, Kline made the remarkable pronouncement that boy-on-girl oral sex must be reported, but girl-on-boy oral sex doesn’t have to be.
