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Daily Archives: Jan. 3, 2012
A sad start to the new year
Jan. 3, 20121:06 p.m.
It’s sad that Wichita began the new year with two homicides early Sunday morning. But it is especially sad that, according to police, one of the victims was a Good Samaritan. Police said that Bradley J. Wellbrock saw a man and woman arguing and asked the man to ease off, before more than half a dozen of the man’s friends showed up and Wellbrock ended up being stabbed. What a waste.
Too many noncandidates in presidential race
Jan. 3, 20126:01 a.m.
The worst part of the pre-primary phase of the GOP presidential race has been all the people “running for president not to be president but as a branding exercise, to sell books and get a cable contract and be a public figure,” Peggy Noonan wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “In an endeavor like this you have nothing to lose and everything to gain,” Noonan said. “You’re not held back by any sense of realism as to your positions, you don’t have to worry about them being used against you down the road because there won’t be a down the road. You can say anything. And because you do you seem refreshing. People start to like you — you’re not like all the others, who are so careful. You rise, run your mouth for a month and fall.”
How Sebelius is helping her boss
Jan. 3, 20126:00 a.m.
“When the history of the 2012 campaign is written, a special place may be reserved for Kathleen Sebelius, health and human services secretary and former governor of Kansas, who is doing her best to make the Affordable Care Act – aka Obamacare – disappear as a political liability for the president,” wrote Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson. The main evidence he cited was Sebelius’ move to “delegate to states the final decision on defining ‘essential health benefits’ for minimum health insurance coverage,” which undermines Republicans’ criticism of the health reform as a “one-size-fits-all” straitjacket. As policy rather than politics, though, “Sebelius’ approach is dubious,” he wrote. That’s because “states can’t cure uncontrolled health costs. It’s a national problem that only the national government can solve.”
