The George Tiller hearing this week in Wichita has been like a soap opera, complete with adultery, lovers’ fights and possible blackmail. You can get blow-by-blow updates on the testimony via Eagle crime reporter Ron Sylvester’s Twitter site.
The bad news keeps coming. This time it is that Cessna Aircraft may lay off more than 1,000 workers this year. More job cuts were expected, given the global economic downturn. But the size of these possible cuts – and the layoffs likely at other aircraft companies – will be a hard blow to the local and state economies and for many families already struggling to make ends meet.
All Wichitans should be shocked and angered by the recent cross burning in a southwest Wichita front yard, where the perpetrators also burned a path to the front porch. Few crimes are as clear in their intent to intimidate, turning the symbol of Christianity into a blazing threat. Each cross burning harks back to the practice’s history as a cowardly weapon of the Ku Klux Klan during the nation’s civil rights struggle. In this case, the skin color of the targeted couple is white. But the message was clear, underscored by an anonymous phone call the victim said he received demanding that he stop using his house as a haven for young adults in need of second chances. “I didn’t think that still happened,” the targeted man said of cross burnings. They shouldn’t still happen – not in Wichita, not anywhere.
Barack Obama’s puzzling pick of Leon Panetta to be CIA director has top lawmakers expressing concern about the former Clinton chief of staff’s lack of hands-on experience in intelligence matters. But only three recent CIA chiefs (including Robert Gates in George H.W. Bush’s administration) have previously held senior intelligence posts. And Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, offered some bipartisan praise. “This is an important appointment at a critical time in our nation’s history,” Roberts said. “I have had a longtime personal and professional relationship with Leon Panetta dating back to our service together in the House. He has wide and diverse experience in government that will serve him well as director of the CIA.” Roberts told the TPM Election Central blog: “Leon is a fast study.”
State Sen. David Haley, D-Kansas City, is reviving his proposal that the Kansas Turnpike Authority charge tolls based on drivers’ speed. Haley wants to be able to charge drivers more if they speed, based on a time stamp of when they enter and exit the turnpike. But a similar bill that Haley pushed in an earlier session couldn’t even get a committee hearing in the Legislature, and this bill is unlikely to get much further.
The George Tiller hearing this week in Wichita has been like a soap opera, complete with adultery, lovers’ fights and possible blackmail. You can get blow-by-blow updates on the testimony via Eagle crime reporter Ron Sylvester’s Twitter site.
