thekansan.com

Legislature should leave common core alone

Sat, 25 May 2013 1:01:00 +0000

Kansas lawmakers might be unable to agree on how to fund public education, but efforts to influence what is taught in the classroom continue � as does Legislative ignorance.

�Attempts to halt Common Core standards couldn't make it out of committee in either chamber. But Sen. Ty Masterson didn't let the idea die.�The Senate Ways and Means Committee chair attempted to insert a provision into the budget to prevent state money being spent to [...]

Party planners offer thanks

Sat, 25 May 2013 1:01:00 +0000

To honor a 54 year tradition, a group of senior parents organized and hosted a senior all night party at the Newton Recreation Center.�One hundred thirty six�students attended the event May 18. Thanks to the generous contributions of businesses and individuals the Newton High School graduating class of 2013 had the opportunity to receive a variety of prizes, indulge in tasty treats, play both challenging and silly games, dance and create meaningful memories in a safe, [...]

Charles Krauthammer: Redacted truth, subjunctive outrage

By Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post — Sat, 25 May 2013 1:00:00 +0000

Note to GOP re Benghazi: Stop calling it Watergate, Iran-contra, bigger than both, etc. First, it might well be, but we don�t know. History will judge. Second, overhyping will only diminish the importance of the scandal if it doesn�t meet presidency-breaking standards. Third, focusing on the political effects simply plays into the hands of Democrats desperately claiming that this is nothing but partisan politics.
Let the facts speak for themselves. They are damning enough. Let Gregory Hicks, [...]

Kent Bush: Safe rooms better than 'duck and cover'

Kent Bush — Fri, 24 May 2013 18:00:00 +0000

This wasn’t the first tornado that hit an Oklahoma school during class time.

Michael Gerson: Baseless fears of Common Core

By Michael Gerson, Washington Post — Fri, 24 May 2013 1:23:00 +0000

?Modern conservatism comes in two distinct architectural styles. The first seeks to build from scratch, using accurate ideological levels and plumb lines, so every wall is straight and every corner squared. The goal of politics is to apply abstract principles in their purest form. But there is another type of conservatism, often practiced at the state level, which attempts to build out of flawed, existing materials, resulting in some odd angles and incongruous additions. These conservative [...]

Kent Bush: Devastating storms restore perspective

Kent Bush — Thu, 23 May 2013 7:02:05

On Monday afternoon, it was a big deal to me that my third grader has trouble catching pop-ups in baseball.
I was so happy that he had pulled his B+ math grade up to an A- by the end of the school year.
Those things seemed so important. And then a huge tornado ripped through Moore, Okla. wiped out the Plaza Tower Elementary School.
I saw third graders there yelling for their [...]

Support for Walton

Thu, 23 May 2013 1:01:00 +0000

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I was surprised and disappointed by our School Board's decision to take no action in helping Walton Rural Life Center get a modular building. Walton Rural Life Center has been feverishly working to raise funds to expand and meet the needs of our children. As we know, children learn in different ways. Walton Rural Life Center provides a unique project based learning environment for students. As a former educator and parent in the district, I am encouraged by their [...]

An obsolete tirade

Thu, 23 May 2013 1:01:00 +0000

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I read a news report that a friend of Abraham Lincoln's carried GOP zeal to the grave in Harper County, Kansas. It is admirable that Anna Mae Turner stands by her great-grandfather, Nathaniel Grigsby's grave marker. However, his lengthy "epitaph" inscribed on his tombstone is an obsolete tirade. His tombstone has an etching of the deceased man's verbal grievances against the Democratic party, calling it the "party of [...]

E.J. Dionne: Is democracy in trouble?

By E.J. Dionne, Washington Post — Thu, 23 May 2013 1:00:00 +0000

?We know American politics are dysfunctional. But after a week of scandal obsession during which the nation�s capital and the media virtually ignored the problems most voters care about -- jobs, incomes, growth, opportunity, education -- it�s worth asking if there is something especially flawed about our democracy.
Our circumstances certainly have their own particular disabilities: a radicalization of conservative politics, over-the-top mistrust of President Obama on the right, high-tech [...]

Esther Cepeda: Missing school -- for vacation

By Esther Cepeda, Washington Post — Wed, 22 May 2013 1:01:00 +0000

It�s that time. If you�re a teacher in a school with a large concentration of Hispanic students, you�re doing end-of-year reviews and preparing for final exams -- and you have kids trickling up to you to let you know they won�t be around for them.
This also happens at the beginning of the school year and during the holidays as parents take their children out of classes for long family trips. But I can tell you from first-hand experience that there�s nothing worse than getting through the [...]

Kent Bush: Devastating storms restore perspective

Kent Bush — Tue, 21 May 2013 7:35:58

In 20 years of covering news and chasing storms, I have never seen anything like what happened Monday.

Kent Bush: Being different but not feeling different

Kent Bush — Tue, 21 May 2013 6:57:22

I saw a snapshot of reality. Dawit got the same cheers as any other child.

George Will: On immigration, ghosts of Christmas past

By George Will, Washington Post — Sun, 19 May 2013 1:07:00 +0000

Charles Dickens� �A Christmas Carol� is a gooey confection of seasonal sentiment. It also is an economic manifesto that Dickens hoped would hit with �twenty thousand times the force� of a political tract. It concerned a 19th-century debate that is pertinent to today�s argument about immigration.
Last week, a disagreement between two conservative think tanks erupted when the Heritage Foundation excoriated the immigration reform proposed by a bipartisan group of eight senators. Heritage�s [...]

Kathleen Parker: Benghazi redacted

By Kathleen Parker, Washington Post — Sat, 18 May 2013 1:03:00 +0000

Mistakes were made.
This, we are supposed to accept, is the conclusion to be drawn about the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, despite congressional testimony suggesting that significant efforts were made to camouflage those mistakes.
As Democrats and Republicans alike know all too well: It�s always the cover-up.
Yet in this case, where so clearly the State Department and others in the Obama administration took extra steps to mischaracterize what happened the night Ambassador [...]

Kent Bush: Education too important to be used in legislators' tug-of-war

Kent Bush — Fri, 17 May 2013 15:30:00 +0000

One of the best things about the new standards is the way children are encouraged to learn.

Dana Milbank: Asleep at the wheel

By Dana Milbank, Washington Post — Fri, 17 May 2013 1:01:00 +0000

President Passerby needs urgently to become a participant in his presidency.
Late Monday came the breathtaking news of a full-frontal assault on the First Amendment by his administration: word that the Justice Department had gone on a fishing expedition through months of phone records of Associated Press reporters.
And yet President Obama reacted much as he did to the equally astonishing revelation on Friday that the IRS had targeted conservative groups based on their ideology. He [...]

Kent Bush: How far do we allow the government to go?

Kent Bush — Thu, 16 May 2013 7:21:09

I missed the part of the First Amendment where the government grants freedom of the press unless they have a really good reason not to.

Michael Gerson: The IRS needs an audit

By Michael Gerson, Washington Post — Thu, 16 May 2013 1:35:00 +0000

Suppose that the Environmental Protection Agency were to admit offhandedly that the fluoridation of water had only modest communist mind-control effects. Or the United Nations were to concede it has been running fleets of black helicopters over American cities, but only in the course of conducting extensive good will tours.
The IRS has managed a similar confirmation. For years, tea party and patriot groups have breathlessly alleged that federal bureaucrats were conspiring against the [...]

E.J. Dionne: ‘Slow-motion mass murders’

By E.J. Dionne, Washington Post — Wed, 15 May 2013 1:32:00 +0000

Public officials are very selective about when violence and death matter.
Massacres and terrorist incidents cannot be ignored, but the day-to-day toll from gun violence is often swept aside. Politicians who tout themselves as advocates of law and order don�t want to be unmasked as caring even more about their ratings from gun lobbyists.
And opponents of the most moderate gun reforms engage in a shameless game of bait-and-switch. Because measures such as background checks would not stop [...]

The bullying of Kansans with DD

Wed, 15 May 2013 1:01:00 +0000

I am a voter and a Targeted Case Manager in your district and I am very disappointed by the actions of the House Appropriations Committee. The Committee, on a motion by Representative Dave Crum of Augusta, inserted a provison into the House's budget bill that would take away any new waiting list dollars for Kansans with developmental disabilities if I/DD long-term care services are "carved out" of KanCare.

This amounts to bullying and intimidation of our state's most [...]