Eideard

Dipshit self-righteous governor — high school student Emma Sullivan

A high school senior, who faces a Monday morning deadline to apologize to Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback for a disparaging tweet, has said she will not write the apology letter…

Sullivan said her parents and many of her peers support her decision…

Bravo! And kudos to your parents for backing you up.

During a Kansas Youth in Government field trip to the state Capitol on November 21, Sullivan wrote: “Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot.” The Shawnee Mission East senior said she did not actually talk to Brownback, and the post referenced a joke she had with a student on the trip.

The next day, she was called into high school principal Karl Krawitz’s office. A Brownback staffer had notified the principal, she said.

“My principal told me he needed to do damage control and was really upset,” Sullivan said. “He said I was an embarrassment to the school and the school district and that I had been disrespectful.”

The principal then asked her to write a letter of apology to Brownback and his staff. He set Monday as the due date for the letter.

Sullivan said she did not know what will happen when she does not turn in the letter Monday. But she hopes the tweet will bring attention to the issue of free speech.

“I hope there won’t be any consequences and that my principal and the governor’s office can move on,” she said. “The issue is relevant and, if anything, is a starting point of dialog with the governor about his policies and how our First Amendment rights can be taken away…”

Brownback – and the school principal – are egregious, reactionary cowards. They have no respect for freedom of speech. Brownback is notorious for his misogynistic politics in the first place. That a young woman voiced her opinion of his dolthood makes it all the worse in the peabrain of this political fossil.

Emma Sullivan is standing up for her right to have an opinion. One she voiced via her personal Twitter account – not anything that officially represents some jerkwater Kansas school that probably is still arguing over whether or not evolution can be taught.

A Kansas company has recalled more than 14,000 pounds of ground beef due to possible E. coli contamination, federal authorities have announced.

The recalled meat, sold in large packages and distributed in numerous states, comes from Creekstone Farms Premium Beef of Arkansas City, Kansas. Some 14,158 pounds of beef, in a handful of varieties, are subject to the recall, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said Tuesday in a press release.

A “third-party” inspector — not Creekstone Farms or the USDA — determined the presence of E. coli 0157:H7, according to the federal agency. The USDA classifies the recall as “Class 1,” having determined “this is a health hazard situation where there is a reasonable probability that the use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death…”

That kind of makes the point.

All branded “EST. 27″ inside the USDA inspection mark, the recalled products were processed on February 22, then shipped to firms in Arizona, California, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington for “further processing and/or distribution.”

The beef’s final destinations remain unclear since they may have been repackaged into smaller packages for sale to individual consumers and sold under different brand names…

E. coli can cause bloody diarrhea, dehydration and, in severe cases, kidney failure. Babies, seniors and people with weak immune systems are most susceptible to the infection.

We would only buy ground beef from a couple of retailers – I wouldn’t trust most of the rest any further than I might throw a cow.

In some corners of the country, people seem to have grown so grumpy about the tangle of government rules and regulations that it may be easier for politicians to promise not what they will do, but what they will undo.

Take Senator Sam Brownback, the Republican from Kansas who is hoping to become governor. In his journeys in this region lately, he has proposed a new Kansas entity, the State Office of the Repealer, whose job it would be to start disposing of all the silly, needless, over-the-top regulations that state officials have dreamed up…

In Missouri, lawmakers passed legislation this spring that repealed more than 200 sections of statutes, including some dusty ones pertaining to the regulation of steamboats, steam engines, pool halls and margarine. In Michigan, lawmakers did likewise, agreeing, for instance, to repeal statutes that had designated as crimes prizefighting and dueling.

The thought of an official designated repealer draws nods (if mildly puzzled ones) from Kansans, but aides to Tom Holland, a Democratic state senator who is also running for governor this year, sound dismissive.

“This is the same empty sloganeering Sam Brownback and Newt Gingrich did 16 years ago,” said Dana Houle, Mr. Holland’s campaign manager…

Mr. Brownback, who said he came up with the idea after traveling around Kansas with a former state lawmaker, said he had grown increasing frustrated with the sense, in government, that “it’s always, ‘Well, we need this, we need that, we need this.’ Nothing is ever subtracted in the system…”

Still uncertain, he acknowledged, is what the new position might cost or where it would fit, exactly, into the existing layers of government in Topeka, the state capital.

Americans avoid responsibility whenever possible. Climate change can’t involve human beings. We aren’t responsible for wars our elected scumbag politicians vote for. Republican forms of government delegate responsibility – as long as no one is charged with that responsibility.

Brownback and his lust for teabagger votes might just consider getting off his rusty dusty and using some of that staff Kansas voters pay for – searching out useless laws and fight to have them remaindered. After he checks to see whether or not he’s offending any bible-thumping loyal members of the couple hundred fundamentalist sects he relies on to keep him in office in the first place.

President Barack Obama today warned that exempting auto dealers from a new consumer protection agency would hurt buyers and let dealers continue “deceptive practices.”

The nation’s 20,000 new-car dealers have blitzed Capitol Hill over the past two weeks seeking to be cut free from the agency that would oversee consumer lending, part of a package of financial reforms expected to move through the Senate over the next several days. They’re backing an amendment by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., that would exempt auto dealers’ lending from new oversight that would still apply to banks and finance companies like Ally Bank, the former GMAC.

In his statement, Obama said leaving dealers out of the bill would let them “inflate rates, insert hidden fees into the fine print of paperwork, and include expensive add-ons that catch purchasers by surprise.

“This amendment guts provisions that empower consumers with clear information that allows them to make the financial decisions that work best for them and simply encourages misleading sales tactics that hurt American consumers,” Obama said…

Bailey Wood, a spokesman for the National Automobile Dealers Association, said the new rules would hurt loans to less-creditworthy customers, either forcing them to pay higher rates or not get financing at all…

The financial reform bill that passed the House last year excluded auto dealers after a similar lobbying push.

But a growing coalition of consumer advocates, community banks and the Defense Department has pushed back in recent days against the auto dealers’ efforts, saying dealers who craft loans for consumers should face the same kind of oversight that mortgage brokers, who make similar offers.

That these creeps muscled their way through the House last year speaks volumes about lobbying and corruption in Congress. Protection for consumers continues to take 2nd place – or lower – in the priorities of elected scumbags.

Car dealers already have the reputation of bottom-feeding parasites. Do you trust them to bring integrity to American business?

Dr. George Tiller
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Scott Roeder, the man convicted of killing a Kansas doctor in May 2009, was sentenced Thursday to life in prison with no parole eligibility for 50 years…

Roeder was convicted in January of murdering Dr. George Tiller, who operated a clinic in Wichita, Kansas, where late-term abortions were performed. Tiller was shot to death in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas, as Sunday services began.

RTFA if you think you need to know the religious babble the killer used to justify the murder.

Earlier in the sentencing, Tiller’s attorney, Lee Thompson, spoke on behalf of the slain doctor’s family, saying that Tiller’s killing was “domestic terrorism” that robbed a family of a husband, father and grandfather.

“This man was devoted to his family. … He was very important, and they are desperately sorry and grieving over his loss,” Thompson told the court. Tiller was shot to death in May 2009 in the foyer of the Wichita, Kansas, church he attended…

“I believe he should be given the longest sentence possible,” District Attorney Nola Foulston said Thursday…

Tiller’s family said in January that the jury reached a just verdict.

“At this time we hope that George can be remembered for his legacy of service to women, the help he provided for those who needed it and the love and happiness he provided us as a husband, father and grandfather,” the family said in a statement.

Throw away the key!

There’s a “Wizard of Oz” joke to be made here: The city of Topeka, Kansas has unofficially changed its name to “Google” in an attempt to get on the Mountain View tech giant’s radar as a test bed for new fiber-optic technology that would bring it Internet connections at top speed.

The Topeka Capital-Journal wrote that Mayor Bill Bunten signed a proclamation Monday that designates the town as “Google” for the duration of March, in an attempt to make it a more palatable choice for a test market than some of the other cities in the running–like Grand Rapids, Mich., and Baton Rouge, La. It’s not intended to be as permanent as the Oregon town that actually renamed itself Half.com in exchange for some cash, free stuff, and mockery.

The town can’t legally change its name if it intends to change it back, and then there’s the fact that Google owns all sorts of intellectual property pertaining to its brand name. But the Capital-Journal says that there is technically no legal barrier to the issuance of a proclamation gently encouraging people to refer to Topeka as “Google.” You know, it’s sort of like when you’re a little kid and you wish your name were cooler so you start telling everyone to call you by a new one of your choice, and the blitheness of childhood prevents you from noticing the smirks that ensue every time you politely ask an adult to start referring to you as “Jethro Skywalker…”

But hey, if this campaign actually gets the city a super-fast Internet connection, I’ll stop laughing.

Folks outside New Mexico may not know about it; but, the fashion of changing a town’s name for fun and profit got it’s first real boost here.

Next time you’re driving south from Albuquerque down to the new SpacePort outside Las Cruces, stop and have lunch in the town that was called Hot Springs up till it won Ralph Edwards’ 1950 radio contest. When it became Truth or Consequences, NM.

Critter probably looked like this Nurse Shark – but BIGGER

The fossilised remains of a gigantic 10m-long predatory shark have been unearthed in Kansas.

Scientists dug up a gigantic jawbone, teeth and scales belonging to the shark which lived 89 million years ago.

The bottom-dwelling predator had huge tooth plates, which it likely used to crush large shelled animals such as giant clams.

Palaeontologists already knew about the shark, but the new specimen suggests it was far bigger than previously thought…

Dr Kenshu Shimada of DePaul university in Chicago, Illinois, US found the fossilized remains of the shark in rocks known as the Fort Hays Limestone in Kansas.

“Kansas back then was smack in the middle of an inland sea known as the Western Interior Seaway that extended in a north-south direction across North America,” says Dr Shimada…

“Although it represents a fraction of the entire body of the shark, the jaw fragment is gigantic. The estimated jaw length was almost 1m long, and that would suggest that the shark was likely at least 10m in length,” says Dr Shimada.

No doubt, our flat-Earth and creationist cousins in Kansas presume this is just leftover from the last catfish fry.

The jury did the right thing Friday in Wichita: It found Scott Roeder guilty of first-degree murder in the death of abortion doctor George Tiller.

The verdict sends the message loudly and clearly: The pro-life/anti-abortion crowd can’t go around killing doctors who provide legal abortions, then throw themselves on the mercy of the court and claim they were only trying to prevent the deaths of innocent babies.

Roeder should serve the maximum sentence of life in prison (with a chance of parole after 25 years) for the premeditated death of Tiller.

Roeder admitted he bought the gun used to kill Tiller. He admitted he went to Tiller’s church to kill him. And he admitted that he shot Tiller on May 31, 2009.

Case closed.

And another too-rabid, pro-life believer will go to prison, where he belongs.

It took the jury a half-hour to sort out a guilty verdict for this miserable, superstitious criminal.

We all have to continue the day-to-day fight for a rule of law versus the context of holier-than-thou nutballs who presume the whole nation must follow whatever invisible critter they kneel before. Nice to see justice prevail.

Aftermath of tornado in Manhattan, Kansas – last year

The Department of Homeland Security relied on a rushed, flawed study to justify its decision to locate a $700 million research facility for highly infectious pathogens in a tornado-prone section of Kansas, according to a government report.

The department’s analysis was not “scientifically defensible” in concluding that it could safely handle dangerous animal diseases in Kansas — or any other location on the U.S. mainland, according to a Government Accountability Office draft report obtained by The Washington Post. The GAO said DHS greatly underestimated the chance of accidental release and major contamination from such research, which has been conducted only on a remote island off the United States…

“Drawing conclusions about relocating research with highly infectious exotic animal pathogens from questionable methodology could result in regrettable consequences,” the GAO warned in its draft report. DHS’s review was too “limited” and “inadequate” to decide that any mainland labs were safe, the report found. GAO officials declined to comment on the findings…

The DHS lab would replace and expand upon the mission of a federal research facility on a remote island on the northern tip of Long Island, N.Y. Critics of moving the operation to the mainland argue that a release could lead to widespread contamination that could kill livestock, devastate a farm economy and endanger humans. Along with the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease, NBAF researchers plan to study African swine fever, Japanese encephalitis, Rift Valley fever and other viruses.

This project must have been designed by the same clowns who thought up the TSA for airport security.

Of course, the only howls about pork were from the Congress-critters who didn’t succeed in getting the facility for their own state.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission