There are sound reasons for limiting the legal rights of public schoolchildren, and for banning prescription and even over-the-counter drugs at school. But it was a relief to see the U.S. Supreme Court draw the line today at strip-searching 13-year-old girls in search of ibuprofen — and with a strong 8-1 majority, leaving only Justice Clarence Thomas to defend the authorities at an Arizona middle school.
Even though the Senate seat he’s leaving next year has sparked a GOP family feud, Sam Brownback appears to have broken a cycle of GOP gubernatorial primaries going back at least six elections. The Kansas City Star’s Steve Kraske hands it to the two-term senator in a column on today’s Opinion page: “Brownback has salted his conservatism with just enough pragmatism to give pause to even die-hard skeptics,” Kraske writes. He concludes: “Brownback is off to Cedar Crest. Here’s betting that with a few years of executive experience, he’ll try one more time for residence in another mansion — that big, white one in Washington, D.C.”
Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, hasn’t wasted opportunities to cast himself as preferable to his rival for the GOP Senate nomination next year, Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Hays. But Tiahrt’s first statewide TV ad in the race suggests he isn’t running against Moran but against President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the “so-called stimulus plan.” The ad ends: “Help Todd Tiahrt stop Obama and Pelosi now.”
The Kansas Board of Regents had help in deciding to do the right thing and release the results of its audit of questionable financial transactions at Kansas State University. The release came after the Manhattan Mercury filed an open-records complaint with Attorney General Steve Six (in photo), whose office decided the audit should be public. “Shedding light on the transactions outlined in the audit helps to inform the public about the practices employed by the athletic department and will help Kansas State improve in the future,” Six’s spokeswoman, Ashley Anstaett, told the Kansas City Star. It shouldn’t take another open-records complaint to convince the regents to release the similar audits of the University of Kansas and Pittsburg State University under way.
Declaring that “The Star-Spangled Banner” has “got to go” as the national anthem because of its two-octave range, melodic leaps, bloody lyrics and lack of places to breathe, columnist Michael Kinsley suggests some replacements, including “America,” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “America the Beautiful,” “God Bless America” and “This Land Is Your Land” (despite its communist roots). Or, Kinsley writes: “How about Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’? A bit dark for a national anthem, I suppose. The Shaker hymn ‘Simple Gifts’ (turned by Aaron Copland into a theme in ‘Appalachian Spring’)? . . . Anything would be better than those ‘bombs bursting in air.’”
