If GOP secretary of state candidate Kris Kobach (in photo) wanted to highlight a case of a dead man voting, he should have made sure his facts were right. Instead, Kobach focused Thursday on the case of the allegedly dead Alfred K. Brewer, whom The Eagle found to be alive, 78 and raking leaves in Wichita. Kobach is right that some deceased Kansans remain among the 1.7 million registered voters — an ongoing and acknowledged challenge for all election officials complicated by federal law. But as is his habit, Kobach overstates the threat that such deceased voters pose to the integrity of Kansas elections. And the remedies he proposes to address the overblown threat sound costly, complicated — and, frankly, designed to deter legitimate voters rather than encourage more to participate.
In a magazine interview headlined “Meet the woman who’s changing your life,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that the single most important thing women should know about the health care reform law is that “being a woman will no longer be a ‘pre-existing condition.’” That’s because as of 2014, she said, health insurers can’t deny coverage to pregnant women or charge women more than men. Asked whether she’ll ever run for president, the former Kansas governor said: “I love what I’m doing. I’m really up to my eyeballs in trying to do one of the most exciting jobs I’ve ever had.”
“You can train a parrot to tell you they’re for smaller government and low taxes. But at the end of the day, all you’ve got is a talking parrot.” — Kansas Attorney General Steve Six, meeting with The Eagle editorial board
“DQ Blizzards with Heath bars.” — Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, revealing her guilty pleasure to Marie Claire magazine
“Government cake was pretty good at Wichita’s National Center for Aviation Training ribbon-cutting ceremony.” — Wichita free-market blogger Bob Weeks, via Twitter
“Kansas Prop 4: Closes so-called ‘book-fair loophole’ in state’s mandatory five-day waiting period to purchase literature.” — Fake election tweet from the Onion
“A video uploaded by Democratic Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson about flu prevention gathered 17 views in the year it was online,” noted a USA Today article on the 38 governors who are using YouTube. A flu-fighting audio public service spot with Elmo was the Parkinson channel’s most popular last week, with more than 1,200 views. Parkinson spokeswoman Rachel Reeves said: “Social media in general really helps in getting your message out directly to constituents, unfiltered, without any sort of press sort of narrowing it down to a couple of quotes he may have used.”
