Opinion Line (Feb. 8)

My optometrist, dentist, lawyer and doctor do not pay Kansas income tax, and they are not adding employees. When will our Legislature and governor wake up?

The state of Kansas blesses guns, gun owners, gun retailers and manufacturers, and to heck with the old, the sick and disabled, the poor, education and the highways.

For advocates of “small government,” Kansas legislators want to control so many things: what drugs you take, what school improvements should be made, access to birth control, school consolidation.

We should be funding the needed 100 state troopers out of the state’s general fund, and not with a higher auto registration fee. Besides, Brownback probably will just steal this new revenue for other purposes.

Columnist Davis Merritt suggested people should misrepresent themselves to be Republican voters in order to manipulate the electoral system in a strongly Republican state to make it more palatable to Democrats (Feb. 2 Opinion). Is it any wonder why the term RINO (Republicans in name only) was created?

Why are there hundreds of thousands of nonessential government employees when a storm hits in Washington, D.C.?

It would be fair to have a Democratic Party debate on Fox News, since Republican candidates are subjecting themselves to liberal networks.

Do you take your children to church, or are you their primary source for learning morals? Do you leave their morality to television, movies, song lyrics, etc.? What future do you see for your children? Let them know that most of what they see around them is not right.

I wish the police in Wichita would start giving tickets to people who throw cigarettes out their car window or on the ground in public places.

A bunch of people seem to believe that all the world’s problems can be fixed with a gun. There have been guns around for centuries. How much longer is it going to take to fix everything?

Executing the Carr brothers would not be revenge. It would be the penalty they pay for the crimes they committed. That’s why it’s called the death penalty. Is it a deterrent to murder? It is a guarantee that they will never commit another crime.

Dillons no longer offers mail metering. What a disservice and an inconvenience for many. I shopped at Dillons countless times solely because I had metered mail to send.

Lose weight while you sleep. Turning the thermostat back lets the body burn more calories, say the National Institutes of Health. Did Oprah know that?

You know you’re getting old when your barber spends as much time trimming the hair in your ears as he does the hair on your head.

This story was originally published February 7, 2016 at 6:04 PM with the headline "Opinion Line (Feb. 8)."