The Wichita City Council picked Robert Layton today to be the new city manager. Layton is the current manager in Urbandale, Iowa, and appears to be smart and capable. But in picking Layton, the majority of council members ignored the strong recommendations of top business and labor leaders who supported Sedgwick County Manager Bill Buchanan.
The Bush administration seems to be trying to leave a parting gift for anti-abortion groups by moving quickly to grant new protections to health care providers who oppose abortion, sterilization and other procedures. The proposed rule is opposed by top officials in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission who say it would overturn 40 years of civil rights law and who complain that they weren’t even consulted about the sweeping change. Some doctors, pharmacists, hospitals and others also oppose the new rule.
Meanwhile, a growing number of anti-abortion pastors, conservative academics and activists are taking a different approach. They are “setting aside efforts to outlaw abortion and instead are focusing on building social programs and developing other assistance for pregnant women to reduce the number of abortions,” the Washington Post reported. Such efforts “reflect the political reality that legal challenges to abortion rights will not be successful, especially after Barack Obama’s victory this month in the presidential election and the defeat of several ballot measures that would have restricted access to abortions.”
Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., issued a joint statement after their meeting Monday expressing their hope to work together on such challenges as the financial crisis, the energy economy and national security. Obama could use the help of McCain, who remains a star of the Senate. As he returns to the chamber for the lame-duck session, “I think his credibility and stature has grown,” Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., told Associated Press, predicting his colleagues won’t think any less of McCain for having lost the election amid a financial crisis that began on a Republican administration’s watch. “I think everybody looks at that and says, ‘I’m not sure anybody could have made it through that.’”
With Barack Obama having resigned from his Senate seat Sunday, writing a letter to the people of Illinois expressing “very affectionate thanks,” the White House’s gain has become the U.S. Senate’s loss of sorts. “For all the celebration about a black man in the White House, there is no African-American in the U.S. Senate. That needs to be addressed,” said PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley (in photo) on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Smiley raised the possibility that the Illinois governor may name Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. to the seat.
Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Topeka, is rightly frustrated about all the negative advertising used against her, but she seems to be blaming everyone other than herself for her defeat. She told the Topeka Capital-Journal that her loss to Lynn Jenkins “will be the nationwide case history for why there has to be mudslinging, and the more the better.” Boyda said she deliberately didn’t run any attack ads – even though she had material to do so, including about Jenkins’ marital problems. But Boyda complained that she was the target of radio and television ads and automated telephone calls that made false claims about her. And she faulted voters who “knew that Lynn Jenkins wasn’t telling the truth,” yet voted for Jenkins anyway. “What this race has proven,” she said, “is that if you want to win, you need to tell a bunch of lies about your opponent over and over and over again and get as many third-party outside groups, from outside Kansas, to do the same thing.”
