Opinion Line Extra (Feb. 3)

Having lived much of my life in a place that received big snows, I’m surprised that Wichitans, who get so little snow, are so scared of even the possibility of it. Every time a snow misses the area it’s good news, whether or not we’re in a drought.

It should be apparent to everyone now why the governor’s father wouldn’t allow Sam to drive the combine. He knew that Sam would wreck it. Just like he is doing to Kansas. Please, governor, take your cronies and leave before you total the state.

As a male, I can be denied a seat in a court of law if I refuse to tie a silk rag around my neck. According to Wikipedia, it’s because Louis XIV thought it was pretty. This would be an “appropriate” problem for the Legislature to address.

Have standards of propriety fallen so low that it’s unconscionable to ask women to dress appropriately? Where is decency? Where is honor? Is there any semblance of personal modesty left? Dressing like a street walker does not make you a liberated woman.

In the Sunday Eagle, the connection was made between more opioid painkiller prescriptions and the path to more heroin addiction. But there was no connection made between the increased number of guns in our culture and the increase in violent crime. Duh?

Punxsutawney Phil wandered into Iowa during the caucuses and predicted six more weeks of political cow patties.

In the debate, Ted Cruz was extremely calculating and obviously speaking his own mind. But he was far more frightening than a Marco Rubio saying what he had been told to say. Heaven help us all if any of these Republican candidates somehow gains the White House.

It has been suggested a businessperson should not be elected president. From what I see, he or she could not make any bigger mess than what the politicians have done.

Clearly freedom must be earned. We can provide a recipe but not the ingredients or the lives. Each time we intervene in the Middle East and take out dictators, the people there end up much worse. They must work this out on their own or we will end up bankrupting ourselves.

We are borrowing money that we don’t have to pay our kids’ expenses that they can’t afford to train them for jobs that were sent to Mexico and China. Go figure.

As a Vietnam era veteran, I deeply resent Sarah Palin’s accusation that somehow Obama caused her son’s post-traumatic stress disorder. First, he volunteered for the service; he was not drafted. Second, the reason he was in a danger zone was because George W. Bush started an unjustified war, not Obama.

This story was originally published February 2, 2016 at 6:02 PM with the headline "Opinion Line Extra (Feb. 3)."