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By the time Randall Terry situated himself on 95th Street in Overland Park the Wednesday morning rush hour had rushed by.
Sometimes I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the antics of the anti-immigrant lunatic fringe. Lately, it’s been a bit of both. Shawna Forde, a loyalist of the Minuteman movement, which advocates paramilitary policing of the U.S. border with Mexico, was recently charged with orchestrating a “raid” in which an Arizona man and his 9-year-old daughter were shot dead. The terrified wife and mother was shot, and she played dead until she could frantically dial 9-1-1.
My friend owns a burqa, a keepsake from one of her many foreign travels. The garment is a memento that has intrigued her friends for several years now. A few of us have long mused about organizing an all-female get-together with the burqa as the centerpiece.
In cases of murder, the passage of time is crucial. Let too much pass and witnesses disperse, forget details or die. Victims’ families grow despondent as their hope for justice wanes. And worst of all, someone gets away with murder.
Forgive me if I find the travails of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford tedious. I could have been spared his rambling, weird mea culpa of adultery and the media’s inevitable rehashing of the Democrat-versus-Republican scorecard of personal peccadilloes. Can the nation move on from its fascination with the sexual dalliances of officials?
A time-worn rule for conveying a complicated story is to make it personal, full of details of one person’s predicament. So, those pushing to reconfigure the overwhelming complexity of the nation’s health-care systems offer Health Care Stories for America, stories.barackobama.com/healthcare.
The instant connects of today — cell phones and e-mail — surely would have eased the mind of Betty Simpson as she pined for her lost soldier-husband Fred. But this is a love story that must be told as it was documented, in the increasingly rare world of handwritten letters.
Two incongruent images come to mind when I think of my friend Shahrzad’s Iranian father. There is the high-grade caviar and chilled vodka he serves when he visits the U.S. for special family occasions. The treat is akin to his refined nature and worldly, sophisticated views.
America would be hard-pressed to find a truer face of hate than the man Missouri plans to execute. For that reason alone, the state shouldn’t end his sorry life. Joseph Paul Franklin has been convicted in eight murders and is suspected in up to 20.
When influencing politicians, it isn’t so much what is being said as who is saying it. Like the nice lady who serves politicos of all stripes in Jefferson City their caffeine jolts. She’s also delivering a message that unfortunately has fallen on ambivalent ears or become tangled in politics.
The conversation usually goes like this: A worried mother calls, asking for a list of college scholarships for which her budding collegian can apply. Surely there are pools of money available to Hispanic students with good grades. The request is usually a plea, the mother overwhelmed by the prospect of paying tuition and fees. Then she moves to the real dilemma: Her son or daughter is unenthusiastic about — in fact, adamantly opposed to — writing any required essay if race or ethnicity must be discussed.
Logic would say being admitted into a federal prison isn’t a goal for many. Unless, of course, you are among the patient souls who attempt to visit their loved ones at the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth.
The restaurant server predicted her own demise when she posted these words: “Well, here goes suicide by blog. Stay tuned for the fallout.”
A few months back, libertarians, militia supporters and other vilifiers of government got all heated up about a report that some minor functionary in the Missouri Highway Patrol compiled as a primer on militias and the mayhem their followers might cause.
I wish Sonia Sotomayor didn’t have quite so much empathy. I’d like to hear her unleash a sassy tongue-lashing on the oh-so-predictable detractors who are circling as if a weaker species has wandered into their den.
What did you know and when did you know it? Seems a simple enough question. Elected officials owe the American public forthrightness on matters as serious as the use of torture by the U.S. military. And we expect our leaders to have the moral gumption to speak out against such practices, recognizing that they are wrong.
Poets and psychiatrists opine, “Ultimately, we all die alone.” It’s true, both physically and spiritually. Others can join in prayer at death, but only one passes on.
Words that should never appear in a police report: I was working off duty at Kauffman Stadium when I was dispatched to the playground….
Think superintendents get chewed up and spit out by the Kansas City School District? Try being the district’s public relations crew.
Here’s a hint if you want to tackle one of society’s social ills: let the folks closest to the issue in on it.
Has the Voting Rights Act of 1965 served its purpose so well that certain parts of it — namely, Section 5, which called for tight scrutiny of certain parts of the country, mostly in the South — can now be dispensed with? That is a question the U.S. Supreme Court is considering.
The conversation began simply enough, with a forwarded e-mail meant to jab “mainstream media.”
A little ego kick-start from down in Texas could be a welcome thing for Kansas City. A Houston Chronicle columnist will be writing about Kansas City today, thankfully not with the uninspired cliches of Dorothy/Toto and flyover cropland.
President Obama ought to send his immigration brain trust to Postville, Iowa. There they can take in the sights of a small town that’s paying the price for our government’s inhumane and broken policy.
Too bad press secretaries aren’t readily available to step in and clarify all the errant musings that shoot out of people’s mouths.
In hindsight, the day pumpernickel flour was no longer available should have signaled the end was nearing for the New York Bakery & Delicatessen.
Remember grade school? Those first few days when you had to size things up quickly, make a few friends and hope not to be singled out for a good pummeling by the resident bully and his pals on the playground?
The latest pamphlet pushing the idea of decriminalizing drug use arrived in the mail as an interesting piece of propaganda.
“Nobody wants to talk about abortion.” Mary Kay Culp makes the statement with a tired sense of recognition and a large dose of truth. She says it despite spending the previous three hours discussing abortion.
Apparently, women must still remind men to do the right thing. “Honey, take out the trash, pick up milk, include women in the government spending spree, and put down the toilet seat, please.”
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