As Mitt Romney tightens his grasp on the Republican Party’s nomination, political observers are counseling him to moderate his stance on illegal immigration. He has called Arizona’s tough law a “model” and said “the answer is self-deportation.” Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who helped write the Arizona and Alabama laws, has been an unpaid adviser to Romney. But Romney recently won the endorsement of Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who has said the Arizona law “is not a model for our country” and is working on a GOP version of the DREAM Act to help high-achieving high school students who are illegal immigrants. And if Romney wants Latino votes in the fall, he should separate himself from Kobach, advised Bob Quasius, the founder of Cafe Con Leche Republicans. “Avoid all associations with extremists,” Quasius told ABC News. “Obama will hang Kris Kobach around his neck in the general election.”
The Kansas Attorney General’s Office has paid outside lawyers nearly $597,000 so far to defend various anti-abortion laws enacted last year. But that may be just a drop in the bucket. The cases are still in the courts, so more attorney bills will be coming. And the Legislature seems bent on passing even more constitutionally suspect laws, such as requiring a fetal monitor to “make the embryonic or fetal heartbeat of the unborn child audible for the pregnant woman to hear.” Even though he has given a green light to lawmakers to pass anti-abortion bills, Gov. Sam Brownback has a fiscal responsibility not to sign bills that are sure to get tossed out by the courts.
Untreated mental illness costs Kansas about $1.17 billion annually, according to a study released last week by the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City. Most of these costs are related to higher unemployment rates, lost productive time at work, and permanent disability or premature death. About 1 in 10 adults in Kansas has a serious mental illness – such as major depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder – and about 40 percent of those cases go untreated. Meanwhile, state spending on mental health services has dropped by more than $14 million, or 16.4 percent, in the past three years, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Also, a new inspection report found that in the past five years, the Larned State Hospital “lost more than two-thirds of its medical staff due to budget cuts, turnover related to poor working conditions and other factors,” the Kansas Health Institute News Service reported. As a result, it is now having trouble hiring doctors and nurses.
As Mitt Romney tightens his grasp on the Republican Party’s nomination, political observers are counseling him to moderate his stance on illegal immigration. He has called Arizona’s tough law a “model” and said “the answer is self-deportation.” Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who helped write the Arizona and Alabama laws, has been an unpaid adviser to Romney. But Romney recently won the endorsement of Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who has said the Arizona law “is not a model for our country” and is working on a GOP version of the DREAM Act to help high-achieving high school students who are illegal immigrants. And if Romney wants Latino votes in the fall, he should separate himself from Kobach, advised Bob Quasius, the founder of Cafe Con Leche Republicans. “Avoid all associations with extremists,” Quasius told ABC News. “Obama will hang Kris Kobach around his neck in the general election.”
