Even Kansans mad about the approval of a coal-fired plant in western Kansas should be pleased by the deal reached to build ultra high-voltage power lines from Wichita to Dodge City by 2013. Both Prairie Wind Transmission and ITC Great Plains, which had been competing for the $800 million project, have agreed to work on the 765 kilovolt transmission lines, which would be the first west of the Mississippi River. “We absolutely must have a way to move the great wind energy source that we have in western Kansas to eastern Kansas and beyond,” said Gov. Mark Parkinson, in announcing the deal. Regulatory and cost hurdles remain, but the deal further demonstrates that Kansas is ready to get on with its goal of becoming a wind energy powerhouse.
Meanwhile, a new government climate status report released Tuesday warned that global warming’s serious effects are already here and getting worse.
David Letterman apologized for his joke about Sarah Palin’s daughter, but that didn’t stop him from poking fun at his protesters. His top 10 list Tuesday was on “things overheard at the ‘Fire David Letterman’ rally.” It included:
“Isn’t there always a crowd demanding Letterman be fired?”
“Can we also get CBS to bring back ‘Gunsmoke’?”
“When does Cheney get here with the waterboarding gear?”
“He should apologize for that hairpiece.”
“James W. von Brunn was quickly segregated from the American mainstream and designated the crackpot he is,” columnist Richard Cohen wrote about the alleged U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum shooter. “In the Middle East, though, he would be no such thing — not some sort of reptilian vestige of the past but an ordinary man and therefore an extraordinary threat to the future.” Cohen noted how “in vast parts of the Islamic world, too many people not only deny the Holocaust but embrace the thinking that made it possible.” He argued that “if Arab leaders do not attempt to rebut and eliminate the hatred of Jews that is poisoning their societies, they will find that the peace that most of them undoubtedly want will not be possible.”
In the beginning, the Roe v. Wade decision “was more about protecting doctors than empowering women,” Kansas City Star columnist Barbara Shelly wrote. She noted how Justice Harry A. Blackmun, who wrote the 1973 opinion, was concerned that physicians not face criminal charges for acting in the best interests of their patients. “The decision vindicates the right of the physician to administer medical treatment according to his professional judgment,” Blackmun wrote in his opinion. But, Shelly wrote, the decision “has not protected physicians from determined protest groups, overzealous prosecutors and cold-blooded killers.”
With the state’s university system facing a repair backlog and dollars limited, it seemed worth a try in 2007 for the Legislature to offer tax credits to those wishing to donate money for campus repairs. But in the tax credit’s first year, it generated $862,000 — nice but not enough to address a list of $825 million in projects. The problem is the economy, but it’s also the idea of contributing toward repairs. “It’s hard to make a tax credit for a boiler,” state Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka, said at a recent meeting of the Joint Committee on State Building Construction. Other funding sources, including bonding, have enabled the universities to do $26.2 million in deferred maintenance, according to the Lawrence Journal-World.
