Coach Mangino, What Have You Done For Us Lately?
My alma mater, the University of Kansas, has never been a football school. Like most elite basketball schools---North Carolina, Duke, and Kentucky-----football pales in comparison to basketball. Likewise, schools that have traditionally great football programs----Nebraska, Notre Dame, and Penn State---tend to have weak basketball programs. For some reason, at schools with one strong program (football or basketball)---the strong program becomes the "sun" program, and the weaker program becomes the "moon" program, reflecting the light of the better program. When I was a freshman at KU, KU football went 1-10, so KU fired Bud Moore, the head coach. Even though foo

I'm with Joe
This is a piece I've been wanting to write for awhile now, with Joe's name appearing as a possible candidate for the KS-03 race I figured there is no better time to do so. Before I start I want to make it clear that I do not know if Joe will jump into the race or not, I have no 'inside' information on this and think that this is a big decision for him to make with his family. With that being said if Joe is to jump into the race I am completely behind him and I think he would be great. I've wanted to write this because I feel that Kansas City, KS/ Wyandotte County often are left to handle themselves both by state politics and the state party. Candidates in KCK often ru

Parkinson's cuts "have yet to get to the bone of excess spending"
Monday 22 November was a black day for our state and our public education system. Declining tax revenues did what the conservatives in the legislature have been unable to achieve as Gov. Parkinson cut an additional $36 million in funding to the state's public education system and a recommendation not to fund the $155.8 million increase based on revised estimates of property tax revenue and student enrollment. As a result of the Governor's action on Monday, the base state aid per pupil for the current school year has been cut $421 per pupil. Kansas has approximately 455,000 students on our K-12 public education system. You do the math. Education organizations like KNEA

Too Soon to Predict Doom for Kansas Democrats in 2010
GREAT BEND, KS. While some believe the announcement that six-term Democrat Congressman Dennis Moore will not run for reelection is another nail in Kansas' Democrats 2010 coffin, it is far too soon to say anything definitive about next year's election. The only certainty in politics is uncertainty. And with almost a year to go before the election, one must remember that things may look a lot different a year from now. The two wild cards in the equation are, to wit: 1) How will the heavily Republican Kansas legislature handle the budget crisis in the 2010 session, and 2) Will President Obama's be viewed differently a year from now? Regarding the state legislat

Close Encounters of an Undocumented Kind
Next month, the Spanish edition of Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives is coming to bookshelves near you. Edited by Peter Orner, Underground America is the third installment of McSweeney's Voice of Witness series. It consists of 24 first person accounts from one of the most silenced groups in America: undocumented immigrants. According to the 2006-2008 state censuses, 66.1 percent (plus or minus 3,628 people) of the 167,159 foreign-born Kansas residents are not U.S. citizens. Even with Lou Dobbs off the air, undocumented immigrants, who account for four percent of the total Kansas population, are still seen by a large group of people