Daily Archives: May 11, 2012

Does it matter if Romney used to be a bully?

May 11, 20124:05 p.m.

Does it matter if Mitt Romney bullied gay students when he was in high school, including by holding one student down and cutting his hair? Not really, said Daniel Foster of the National Review. “Just about all of us were picked on at some point or another, and just about all of us have done something cruel in our younger years,” he wrote. “The former doesn’t give us any unique insight, and the latter doesn’t define us as people.” Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen agrees, but he thinks what does matter is Romney’s response, or lack there of. “Romney admitted nothing, confessed to nothing – except youth,” Cohen wrote. “He occasionally ‘might have gone too far’ with certain unspecified pranks. Nothing more.”

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Gay rights, Presidential race | Comments Off

Brownback administration pleased with O’Neal; others aren’t

May 11, 20126:00 a.m.

Democratic and moderate GOP state lawmakers are still steaming over how House Speaker Mike O’Neal (in photo), R-Hutchinson, rammed through a tax-cut plan that could result in multibillion-dollar budget deficits. Rep. Sean Gatewood, D-Topeka, called O’Neal’s actions “completely undemocratic.” Rep. Geraldine Flaharty, D-Wichita, said that she’d been on the losing side many times in 17 years in the Legislature but this was the first time she’d ever been ashamed of the process. But the Brownback administration, which directed the House to pass the plan, is pleased with O’Neal. “We really appreciate that,” Steve Anderson, Brownback’s budget director, told O’Neal after the vote. “We’ll always remember it.”

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Kansas government, Sam Brownback, taxes | Comments Off