As he labeled Arizona’s new immigration law “racist, arbitrary, oppressive, mean-spirited, unjust,” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wondered why tea partiers aren’t up in arms. “It seems to me that a law allowing individuals to be detained and interrogated on a whim — and requiring legal residents to carry identification documents, as in a police state — would send the tea partiers into apoplexy,” Robinson wrote. “Or is there some kind of exception if the people whose freedoms are being taken away happen to have brown skin and might speak Spanish?”
The state legislators preparing to reconvene in Topeka Wednesday to try to close a $400 million-plus budget gap have a lot to think about, thanks to input received at packed forums and otherwise. The closing question at a meeting of area county officials last week in Colby put it especially bluntly: “I just want to compliment you gentlemen for coming out and having the courage to show your faces in public,” Gove County Commissioner Mahlon Tuttle told the panel of lawmakers. “You got the state broke. You got schools broke. You decimated mental health and developmental services. I really haven’t heard you say what you’re doing to do about it. Or what you want us to do.” The lawmakers pointed to the global recession and county leaders’ own responsibility to respond to it. But the mood is tense this session, acknowledged state Sen. Ralph Ostmeyer, R-Grinnell, in the Hays Daily News. “This is the first year I’ve gotten e-mails — I don’t want to say they’re threatening, but they’re impolite. They don’t trust my judgment.”
Monday’s news that the city of Wichita is waiving all parking tickets given to the April 15 tea party participants who used the city-owned Rounds and Porter Building lot was a nice surprise for those ticketed. But now it looks like the city is showing favoritism to a group with political connections, because at least two City Council members and several conservative GOP candidates attended. At least there may be consistency going forward, if the city follows through on a new plan to open the lot to free public parking on weekends and after 5 p.m. weekdays.
