Category Archives: Politics

Another Look at the Second Amendment

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Topeka Capital-Journal
Dec. 16, 1992

The Second Amendment to the US Constitution, one of the original 10 known as the Bill of Rights, says: “Right to keep and bear arms. A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

That’s all it says. It became law toward the end of 1791, when an armed and ready militia was necessary, because the security of the newly-created country was shaky. There was a real need for every able-bodied man to be armed and prepared to defend the nation against the British, French, the Indians or whomever.

But that was then, and this is now. The amendment qualifies the right of the people to keep and bear arms by saying armed citizens are needed to make up the militia that protects our security from the possible threats of outsiders.

Now, we don’t need militia, or a citizen Army, and it’s a good thing, because we are exactly 180 degrees away from having well-regulated armed citizens protecting our security.

In terms of physical security, what this country needs more than anything else is protection from the people who have the guns. Continue reading →

Handguns Have Gotten out of Hand

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Topeka Capital-Journal
Dec. 2, 1992

It would be great if everyone in the country decided the handgun homicides coast to coast last week, like the double slaying in Lawrence, were the last straw. There would be such a demand for gun control that Congress would get the message and do something about it.

Our representatives in Washington would be hammered so hard by constituents they would become more afraid of them than they are of the National Rifle Association now. They would do what they know to be the morally right thing, and they would pass laws making it very difficult to legally buy a handgun.

True, this would work a hardship on a lot of people, from schoolchildren to career criminals. The young thugs would have to settle grudges and impress peers with mere knives or baseball bats, or something like that. But there would be fewer of them killed.

Dedicated gun-carrying criminals might decide to get out of the business if they one day found themselves without a gun and no easy way to get one. Continue reading →

Gentler Mud in 1990 Kansas

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Topeka Capital Journal
May 14, 1990

It already is beginning to appear that mild-mannered minister Fred Phelps will be at a big disadvantage in the race for governor. The campaign is going to be down and dirty, as in muck and slime, and that’s hardly the place for a soft spoken man of the cloth.

Republican incumbents Mike Hayden and Democrat comeback hopeful John Carlin have started the mudslinging, and they seem to have enough of it to last until November. More than just a race between leaders of the two parties, this is a fight between two men who really don’t like each other.

On the side, sort of, is the shy and retiring Phelps, who would like to get into the thick of the battle, but probably won’t make it. He says he’s an old time Democrat. What does that mean? He explains: Continue reading →

FBI Good Guys and the NRA Plague

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Topeka Capital-Journal
May 12, 1995

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents once were hailed as heroes, but now they’re often hooted at for their blunders, real and imagined. They also are frequently criticized for their high-handedness in dealing with state and local police agencies. They never are idolized as they once were.

However the truth of the matter is that the FBI still is one of the premier police forces in the world. Their agents do thousands of things right for every one thing they do wrong. Nobody, and no organization, is perfect.

Even if FBI agents were only one-tenth as good as they are, I would vastly prefer to entrust the security of the nation and my personal freedom to them than I would some self-anointed militia.

I’d rather count on state police, county cops or the Podunk Police Department to protect me and my family than I would a bunch of men who dress up in combat gear, take assault weapons into the woods and play like they are preparing for the day they’ll have to take over the country. Continue reading →

Whatever It Does, Legislature is Predictable

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Topeka Capital-Journal
March 3, 1999

At approximately the halfway point in this session, the situation is normal in the Kansas Legislature. There is a lot of huffing and puffing going on, there is some name-calling, the Republican religious right-wingers are bent on doing God’s work rather than the state’s work, and whether by design or by accident the lawmakers seem once again to be headed for overtime.

In the midst of all this, Gov. Bill Graves said he will support Texas Gov. George Bush for president in 2000, a move many interpret as a clear indication that Liddy Dole is running for vice president, and that a Bush-Dole ticket is more than just a possibility. If nothing else, Bush-Dole fits well in a headline.

Probably due more to personalities than assessing the needs of the state, most legislators these days are found in one of three camps – the transportation people, the budget cutters and those wanting to fund all the social programs.

The transportation plan, which is the biggest gorilla in the Statehouse zoo, is getting a lot of attention, but that doesn’t mean it will ever make its way out of the place. It started when a task force developed a plan, just as it was asked to do, but then the governor changed it and it became his plan.

Now the House has passed its own version of the plan and sent it to the Senate, but it’s a foregone conclusion that when the Senate gets through with it the House won’t recognize it. This probably is the buildup for passing some kind of plan in the frenzy of the final minutes of double overtime, known as the veto session.

What will come out then is anybody’s guess, but it probably will have amendments in small print calling for a legislative pay raise with automatic pension increases, and stricter abortion laws. Continue reading →

Maybe This Will Be the Year

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Topeka Capital-Joural
Jan. 1, 1996

The new year holds some promise, even though the Czars exhibit is gone and there will be no downtown building to blow up. My crystal ball says one big story will be Glen Mason winning the Republican primary for Senate, but then changing his mind and deciding to remain as KU football coach because he just can’s bear to leave all those wonderful folks in Lawrence.

But will those wonderful folks in Lawrence say, “Oh, go ahead, Glen. Don’t let us keep you.” Some day. Maybe.

The early news spotlight also will be focused on another one of your favorite newsmakers. You want to guess who? Fred Phelps will be heard demanding that the police officer who called his gang a “cult” be reprimanded. Continue reading →

The NRA’s Disarming Deception

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Topeka Capital-Journal – 2001

The National Rifle Association whooped it up at its national convention in Kansas City over the weekend. Members all but danced in the aisles as President Charlton Heston told them they saved the American way of life by helping elect George W. Bush, and executive director Wayne LaPierre, who really runs the NRA, declared threats to the nation’s freedom still exist.

The hootin’ and hollerin’ gun owners have reason to party right now, because everything is going their way. Membership may be at an all-time high, even without counting the dead members. There is only one major anti-gun bill in Congress, and it isn’t expected to pass.

Heston was elected to a fourth one-year term as president. He was presented a mint-condition colonial musket by the gunmen’s group, and he spoke for all of them when he held it aloft and said he would give it up only when it is taken “from my cold, dead hands.”

LaPierre and other speakers ripped the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill that would limit political ads by the NRA and similar groups two months before an election, calling it an effort to destroy First Amendment rights to free speech, thus endangering the Second Amendment’s imagined rights to own guns.

All this is so much baloney. Continue reading →

Columnist Dick Snider dies at 83

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With Will Snider

By Rick Dean, Topeka Capital-Journal

It once was said that the mark of a good newspaper columnist was the ability to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

By that criteria alone, as well as several others, Dick Snider was a great newspaper columnist.

Snider, the longtime Topeka Capital-Journal columnist and former sports editor, died Saturday after a short battle with cancer. He was 83.

A former oil industry executive, he worked briefly in the Kennedy administration before producing “College Football” — a long- running highlights show for the ABC network in the 1960s.

A man who walked comfortably in the world of sports, politics and business, Snider’s ability to apply a sharply pointed needle to people in power, as well as to himself and those he loved, made him as popular with readers as he was pilloried by politicians. Continue reading →