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Court rulings dear to conservatives’ hearts

While most attention is focused on the presidential race and Republican hopes to oust President Obama from office, some significant steps were taken last week on issues dear to the hearts of conservatives.

Fuel tax for highways should stay with states

All roads are toll roads. Somebody paid, or is paying, for every road ever built.

Can America step back from global crisis in 2012?

Every few years, the world grabs the United States by the lapels and shouts, “Pay attention!” Then millions of Americans look around and wonder, “How did this happen?” A few years later, attention wavers again, people get distracted, tired of worrying about what goes on in faraway places. And the cycle begins again.

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Kansas Views (Jan. 16)

Tax plan – Kansas traditionally has had a progressive tax structure, with higher rates on wealthier individuals. An undue reliance on the sales tax would break that mold by forcing the poor to pay a higher percentage of their income on goods and services than middle-class and wealthy Kansans. With the poor getting proportionally smaller income-tax cuts than the rich, and the reality of a sales tax, the tradition of progressive rates will vanish. In fact, Gov. Sam Brownback’s proposed income-tax decrease could lead to an overall tax increase on the poor. Legislators must make this more equitable.

Who will save the triple-A rating?

Remember America’s triple-A credit rating? The benchmark that was eroded during the debt-ceiling standoff last year? The highest-quality measure of creditworthiness matters greatly in this country and beyond. Yet it is still disturbingly unclear who is responsible for safeguarding what remains of this important national attribute.

State needs to review incentives

Boeing’s announcement that its Wichita plant would close, eliminating more than 2,000 Kansas jobs, sent shock waves across the state. Beyond the immediate threat to Kansas’ well-being, the closure shows the challenges of state governments as job recruiters and retainers.

Obama is not angry

I can’t speak for Michelle Obama, but call me an angry white woman.

King’s work across factions still relevant

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. described in one of his later sermons how guards around his Birmingham jail cell sometimes sought out conversations with him about the racial whirlwind swirling around them.

Obama didn’t uphold promise to close prison

During his presidential campaign and the earliest days of his administration, President Obama stressed, in eloquent and sophisticated ways, the urgency of ending so many of the outrages of the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” He specifically put to writing his promise to shutter its most symbolic component – the Guantanamo Bay prison, which opened 10 years ago this week.

Brandon James Smith: Memorial design mocks Eisenhower’s legacy

When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and America was dragged into war, it was Dwight Eisenhower who was tasked with creating a strategy to defeat Japan and Germany. Eventually becoming the Supreme Allied Commander of the European forces, he designed the Normandy D-Day invasion, which led to the fall of Nazi Germany. After the war, he ordered camera crews to document the atrocities at the discovered concentration camps so that justice could be done at Nuremberg. He helped defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, then rebuilt the countries. As president, he brought forward the first civil rights legislation, built our highways and enforced the Brown v. the Topeka Board of Education decision.

What’s for the tea party not to like in Romney?

Dear tea party movement:

Build on No Child law’s success, fix problems

Ten years ago this week, President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act. The law has improved American education in some ways, but it also still has flaws that need to be fixed.

A candidate’s religious beliefs should not be the guide

In the midst of lively public debates over taxes, jobs, the national debt and similarly important questions related to the future vitality of our nation, a different kind of question continues to privately occupy the minds of some prospective voters: Can I vote for a Mormon?

U.S. should declare rebirth of space program

President Obama’s decision in 2010 to cut NASA’s budget and abandon the Constellation program – established by the Bush administration, and charged with returning Americans to the moon by 2020 and creating an “extended human presence on the moon” – has created a vacuum, which China will attempt to fill.

In the long run, it’s still Romney

There’s an old saying that Republicans don’t fall in love, they fall in line. And sooner or later, they’ll probably align for Mitt Romney.

Don’t limit courts’ authority to protect rights

Regrettably, the Iowa caucus process did not rid the presidential race of a set of dangerous ideas about American democracy.

Why New Hampshire still matters most

If the first presidential primary were held in California or Texas, the likes of Tom Rath or Claira Monier wouldn’t exist.

Leonard Pitts: States are waging war on the poor

So here’s how it is:

The reason for Obama’s recess appointments

The general explanation of the Obama administration’s controversial, precedent-setting recess appointments is that they were just another salvo in the ongoing war being waged between the White House and congressional Republicans over nominations. The less obvious, but perhaps more true, interpretation is that last week’s appointments are a salvo in an ongoing war over a controversial tactic that congressional scholar Thomas Mann has dubbed “a modern-day form of nullification.”

Medicaid reform plan worrisome

Kathy is worried – so much so that I’m not using her real name.

Will governor lead with transparency?

A legislator recently asked a League of Women Voters member what we meant by transparency in government. To the legislator and all elected leaders, I would say we demand openness in government and the informed involvement of citizens in decision making – not decisions by executive or legislative fiat.

Boeing offers lesson

Boeing’s plan to shutter its Wichita operations by the end of 2013 is a body blow to the Wichita and Kansas economies.

Edward Wasserman: Media AWOL in exposing Iraq War ineptitude

The U.S. war in Iraq ended just before Christmas, and if you blinked you probably missed it. TV news coaxed some seasonal sentiment out of the troops getting home for the holidays, but the Sunday-morning talk shows – where news of consequence is usually autopsied – barely noticed.

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