The majority of Republicans are wingnuts, according to a new Harris Interactive poll. Of Republicans surveyed, 67 percent think President Obama is a socialist; 61 percent think he wants to take away Americans’ right to own guns; 57 percent think he is a Muslim; and 51 percent think he wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one-world government. Not a majority but still scary: 45 percent of Republicans surveyed think Obama wasn’t born in the United States and therefore is ineligible to be president; 38 percent think he is doing many of the things that Adolf Hitler did; 24 percent believe he may be the anti-Christ; and 22 percent believe he wants the terrorists to win. These survey results can’t be even close to accurate, can they?
The Kansas House thumbed its nose at state and federal courts by passing a bill that would eliminate mental health as an allowable exception for a late-term abortion. It did so even though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that exceptions must include mental health. And even though the Kansas Supreme Court said that “the mental health of the pregnant woman remains a consideration necessary to assure the constitutionality of the Kansas criminal abortion statute.” And even though, after the murder last year of Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller, late-term abortions are no longer performed in Kansas. But many lawmakers don’t seem to care what is constitutional or necessary during an election year.
The deaths of 13-year-old Regan Wheeler, 9-year-old Seo Won Choi and 17-year-old Yuna Choi — Regan in a golf cart accident; the Choi siblings in a wrong-way Kansas Turnpike crash that also killed their mother and critically injured their sister — can’t help but deeply affect their classmates at Allison Traditional Magnet Middle School, Price-Harris Communications Magnet Elementary School and East High School. The impact on the Wichita district is magnified because Regan’s father is Rick Wheeler, athletic director and football coach at Heights High School. As Price-Harris students released 100 white balloons to remember their friend Seo Won, a fellow third-grader asked the questions that always attend such loss: Why did this have to happen? Why now?
“A lot of upsets over the weekend. Kansas lost to Northern Iowa. Georgetown lost to Ohio. Republicans lost to the Democrats.” — Jay Leno
“In Washington, D.C., history was made. Congress actually worked on a Sunday.” — David Letterman
President Obama “won health care reform approval to extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans or, as the Republicans are calling it, ‘Armageddon.’” — Jimmy Kimmel
