Kansas was No. 5 in “conscientiousness,” according to the listing. And we scored high in values of discipline, duty and faith.

OK, maybe we’re not the life of the party. But Kansas deserves credit for being a place of hardworking, down-to-earth, dependable folks who will do what they say they’re going to do.
Still, we might want to loosen up a bit: Kansas is No. 38 in “openness” — traits such as intellectual curiosity and artistic creativity.

It was an easy, cynical applause line. But Obama called out Palin on substance, telling a rally that the rights of captured suspects were “the foundation of Anglo-American law,” and arguing that the principle “says very simply: If the government grabs you, then you have the right to at least ask, ‘Why was I grabbed?’ And say, ‘Maybe you’ve got the wrong person.’”

He went on: “The reason that you have this principle is not to be soft on terrorism. It’s because that’s who we are. That’s what we’re protecting. Don’t mock the Constitution. Don’t make fun of it. Don’t suggest that it’s not American to abide by what the Founding Fathers set up. It’s worked pretty well for over 200 years.”

The Illinois bill in question was about “age-appropriate” K-12 sex education that warned kids about inappropriate touching and sex predators.

A McClatchy newspaper fact-check of the McCain ad calls it “out of bounds” and “deliberately misleading.”
Time columnist Joe Klein calls it “one of the sleaziest ads I’ve ever seen in presidential politics.”
Meanwhile, McCain and Sarah Palin continue to claim that Palin said “thanks but no thanks” to the “Bridge to Nowhere,” even after that claim has been thoroughly debunked in the media as a falsehood.
McCain is clearly ready to say anything to win.

But political pundit Walter Shapiro of Salon.com said that youth turnout, which Barack Obama tapped in the primaries, could play the crucial role.

“Every day an Archie Bunker is leaving the planet and a new 18-year-old, who grew up in an America that preached the virtues of tolerance and is surrounded by tolerance, is able to vote,” he said.

By choosing Palin, who supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (McCain has opposed it, although he’s now reconsidering) and doesn’t believe in human-caused global warming (McCain does), McCain “has completed his makeover from the greenest Republican to run for president to just another representative of Big Oil.”

And Friedman notes that for all of McCain’s stump talk about boosting clean renewables, he has studiously avoided supporting eight different votes to extend crucial tax credits for wind and solar.

Tiahrt told a group at the GOP convention last week, “The price of gasoline hit $4 and we were told to inflate our tires.” But he later acknowledged that, yes, inflating tires works: “We can all conserve . . . and we can inflate our tires. That’s part of it, too.”

John McCain, too, was against tire inflation before he was for it.

Make up your minds, Republicans: Do you want Americans to keep their tires inflated or not?

Yes, the networks picked out individual African-American or Hispanic faces here and there, but the broader crowd scans told the story: Diversity isn’t exactly a GOP value.

Contrast that with the Democratic convention crowd, which showed people of every hue and ethnicity. The visuals were telling about the parties’ very different base demographics.

Is it any wonder that kids get antsy and out of control? They need to run and play and burn off excess energy.

The same holds for middle school kids. So it’s encouraging that some Wichita middle school principals are bringing back recess.

“Even prisoners get yard time,” said Truesdell principal Jennifer Sinclair. She is reinstating lunchtime recess at the middle school this fall in the form of 20-minute breaks in which students walk laps or do other activities.

OK, it does sounds a lot like a prison recess, but at least kids are getting some fresh air and exercise. They need it to perform at their best.

Fluhr comes with high praise from his Baton Rouge colleagues, who say he was a key player in revitalizing their downtown business district and waterfront — and that he sees similar challenges in Wichita’s riverfront and arena district.

We hope he hits the ground running as an effective champion for downtown.

“The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America — they have served the United States of America.”

He’s not going to let McCain get away with questioning his patriotism.

As this blog notes, John Kerry — in his strong speech, which didn’t get as much attention as it deserved — also said important things about the meaning of patriotism, and he challenged those who, four years ago, turned his Vietnam protest into something un-American:

“Years ago when we protested a war, people would weigh in against us, saying, ‘My country right or wrong.’ Our answer? Absolutely, my country right or wrong. When right, keep it right. When wrong, make it right. Sometimes loving your country demands you must tell the truth to power.”

Amen.

For more than a quarter century, residents of the 100 block of North Broadview have transformed their street into a Halloween extravaganza for kids, with streets festooned with lights and elaborate yard decorations and spooky sound effects. It’s a must-see experience.

But the event has grown so large in recent years — an estimated 3,500 people visited in 2007 — that it’s become a safety concern, and police say about $1,800 is needed to help pay for barricades and officers to work the event.

This is a wonderful neighborhood tradition that has become a community tradition. It’s well worth saving.
Let’s hope city officials and College Hill leaders work something out that will both keep the event going and enhance the safety of participants.

“I want to do it,” he said. “But I don’t want to do it stupid.”

If Brownback wants a smart way to do home wind in Kansas, then he should support a net metering law, which allows residential wind users to sell their excess energy back to the utility and makes residential wind much more economically feasible.

Kansas is one of only six states without some kind of residential net metering for wind. And we’re supposed to be a leader in wind power?

The policy change is intended to thwart school shootings, such as the one that occurred Thursday at a school in Tennessee.

But as a Dallas Morning News editorial argued, the district is courting disaster: “Injecting firearms into a school setting opens the door to tragic but avoidable accidents. And there are no certain safeguards to prevent an angry student — or teacher — from getting hold of a gun that was carried into the classroom.
“Parents depend on educators to provide a safe learning environment for their children. Allowing teachers to be armed and potentially dangerous is a frightening prospect.”

The shout-down happened at a tournament at Wichita State University earlier this year, and a video clip ended up on YouTube this month, where it quickly became a hit.

It seemed to me a pretty pathetic spectacle, and in keeping with the creeping lack of civility and restraint in our public discourse.

On Friday, Fort Hays State fired Shanahan over the incident. University president Edward Hammond said in a written statement, “Everyone has the right to freedom of speech, but these actions are not acceptable for someone who is representing our university.”

Shanahan told an interviewer: “Obviously it got out of control, but to be honest I thought I was in a safe house. I thought I was part of a community that handled its problems internally and that recognized the dangers of exposing ourselves — no pun intended — to the rest of the country. It is so difficult as a nonparticipant to understand what is going on in the debate round.”

Maybe that’s part of the problem?