Former Bush administration officials and top conservative attorneys, including Ken Starr, are decrying as “shameful” a smear campaign against U.S. Justice Department attorneys who either represented Guantanamo Bay detainees or advocated for policy changes before joining the administration. A group called Keep America Safe — which is headed by Liz Cheney (in photo), the daughter of the former vice president, and includes pundit William Kristol — produced an attack video that questions the “values” of the attorneys. Columnist Eugene Robinson wrote that “the smear campaign by Cheney, et al., has nothing to do with keeping America safe. It can only be an attempt to inflict political damage on the Obama administration by portraying the Justice Department as somehow ‘soft’ on terrorism. Even by Washington’s low standards, this is unbelievably dishonest and dishonorable.”
“While the nation is desperate for jobs, jobs, jobs, the Democrats have spent most of the Obama era chanting health care, health care, health care,” columnist Bob Herbert wrote in frustration. He concluded: “There are now six people in the employment market for every available job. There is a staggering backlog of discouraged workers who would show up tomorrow if there were a job to be had. The many millions of new jobs needed to make a real dent in the employment crisis are not going to materialize by themselves. Mr. Obama and the Democrats don’t seem to understand that.”
State Rep. Joe McLeland, R-Wichita, said at a forum Saturday that USD 259 had $252 million in fund balances as of December. “Schools have a lot of money,” McLeland claimed. But more than $242 million of that total, or 96 percent, is school bond and capital outlay money that can’t be used for other purposes. The remaining $10 million consists of student fees for textbooks and grants — which also can’t be used elsewhere. Either McLeland, chairman of the House Education Budget Committee, doesn’t know what these funds are for, or he was being deliberately misleading. Which is worse?
McLeland also said at the forum that he would introduce a bill this week to prevent districts from transferring general fund money into restricted funds. Most such transfers go to special education funds. State and federal statutes mandate that districts provide special education services, but neither government adequately funds them. As a result, districts are forced to transfer money in order to cover the shortfall.
