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A black Kansas man has admitted he put racist graffiti on his own car as a Halloween prank that got out of hand, police said Monday. Photographs posted on social media Wednesday showed the car covered with racial slurs against blacks and messages that included “Go Home,” ”Date your own kind,” and “Die.” The vehicle, covered in graffiti scrawled with washable paint, was parked Wednesday at an apartment complex near Kansas State University and the incident fueled racial tensions at the university and in the community.

An incident in which racist slurs were painted on a car near the Kansas State University campus last week was a hoax, and the man who painted the slurs has apologized. Riley County Police reported Monday afternoon that the owner of the car, Dauntarius Williams...

Thomas Frank, the author best-known for "What's the Matter with Kansas?" who's also a Washington political journalist, places the blame for the election of President Donald Trump squarely on the back of the Democratic Party and its abandonment of working-class Americans. "They love it when unions work hard for them and give them campaign funds," Frank said in a telephone interview. "But they aren't deeply concerned with the problems faced by working-class people," he said. "They need to stop taking those people for granted." What they got in exchange for that neglect was Trump, he said. Frank will be in...

Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-KS) used an October 5 press release to announce his support for gun control for bump stocks. His announcement was tweeted by KCTV’s Emily Sinovic with the hashtag #GunControl

A 16-year-old boy has become the second teenager to announce his campaign for governor of the US state of Kansas. Tyler Ruzich, who identities as a moderate Republican, said he was inspired by another teenager who has already filed to run as a Democrat. Jack Bergeson, also 16, whose campaign launch last month received national attention, persuaded him to try. If both teenagers win their party nominations they will face off in the 2018 general election. But they join a crowded field of 16 candidates, including Lieutenant Governor Jeff Colyer and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Tyler says he...

About 100 young people gathered on the lawn of East High School in Wichita on Friday for a student-led rally in support of a program that protects children who were brought to the United States illegally from being deported. Carrying signs and shouting “Build more bridges, not more walls,” the high-schoolers said they wanted to show support for the legal shield known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced it would end the program, leaving Congress a six-month window of time to try to save it. “We are here because we have...

A suspect was arrested and charged Tuesday in the Sunday attack at a Shawnee Wal-Mart in which two Good Samaritans intervened. Shawnee police said 27-year-old Arthur Fred Wyatt III of Overland Park was charged in Johnson County District Court with attempted first-degree murder, attempted aggravated kidnapping and attempted aggravated robbery. A 39-year-old Kansas City, Kan., woman who had been shopping at the Wal-Mart at Shawnee Mission Parkway and Maurer Road was attacked in the parking lot about 1:30 p.m. Sunday. Two men approached her while she was putting her child in a safety seat, police said. She was struck in...

Strange as it may seem, the Kansas Supreme Court has recently decreed that it is all but impossible for state or local authorities to arrest or prosecute an illegal alien for identity theft. This is not “fake news.” It merely sounds like fake news, but it could not be more real. The headline of the Lawrence Journal World sums up the verdict, “Kansas Supreme Court blocks state prosecution of undocumented immigrants.”

How public acceptance of climate change increases after viewing scientific information was the topic of the latest lecture given by Michael Ranney, professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. “The whole world doesn’t want climate change to be true, but climate scientists are banding together saying this is true — this should tell people something,” Ranney said. Ranney and his colleagues have been able to prove that the acceptance of global climate change can increase, no matter the person, with the presence of data. Aida Farough, assistant professor of geology, said as a scientist, she has no doubt...

New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner defended both his role on President Donald Trump’s election fraud commission and the panel’s existence Tuesday as it began its second meeting amid persistent criticism that its ultimate goal is voter suppression. Gardner, a Democrat, has faced calls to resign from the commission since last week, when its vice chairman, Republican Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, alleged that thousands voted illegally in New Hampshire last year because they registered using out-of-state driver’s licenses. Kobach argued that the numbers are “proof” that voter fraud helped elect Democrat Maggie Hassan to the U.S. Senate,...

The NFL opened the 2017 season Thursday night to its lowest television ratings in eight years. NBC’s broadcast of the Kansas City Chiefs’ stunning 42-27 upset of the New England Patriots drew an overnight rating of 14.6. That’s down nearly 12% from the 16.5 posted by the Denver Broncos-Carolina Panthers season kickoff from a year ago. That’s bad news for the NFL since the ratings had also dropped for the 2016 opener, down approximately 7% from the 17.7 rating posted the previous year, when the Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers played in the first game of the season.

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Once a customer has barked their order into the microphone at the Popeyes drive-thru on Prospect Avenue, Kansas City, the clock starts. Staff have a company-mandated 180 seconds to take the order, cook the order, bag the order and deliver it to the drive-thru window. The restaurant is on “short shift” at the moment, which means it has about half the usual staff, so Fran Marion often has to do all those jobs herself. On the day we met, she estimates she processed 187 orders – roughly one every two minutes. Those orders grossed about $950 for the company. Marion...

A case just decided by the Tenth Circuit shows how utterly absurd the “war on drugs” has become, how petty and power-mad the police can be, and how blindly deferential some of our federal judges are. The case, Harte v. Johnson County Board of Commissioners, arose out of an idiotic, military-style raid by Kansas police on the home of Robert and Adlynn Harte in 2012. They were not in any way involved with drugs (particularly marijuana), but a few officers came to the conclusion that they might be. Here’s how. One August day in 2011, Mr. Harte and his two...

The police report would claim it all kicked off at 7:38 a.m., but Bob Harte later thought it had to be earlier. His 7:20 a.m. alarm had just yanked him awake. Got to get the kids — a boy in seventh grade, a girl in kindergarten — ready for school. Then he heard, like a starter's pistol setting everything into motion, the first pounding on the front door of his home in Leawood, Kansas, a bedroom suburb south of Kansas City. It was thunderous. It didn't stop. Should I get up? Bob thought. Should I not? Sounded like the house...

Wichita makeup artist Gypsy Freeman was very excited to win the Kat Von D Instagram makeup contest. The winner and her guest would be flown to California to attend the launch party of a new makeup line. But after Kat Von D discovered she was a Trump supporter they disqualified her. -video- Kansas.com reported: An Instagram post showing support for President Donald Trump apparently disqualified a local makeup artist from a national contest. Gypsy Freeman, who splits time between Wichita and Florida, last month was declared the winner of an Instagram contest sponsored by Kat Von D Beauty, according to...

In baseball, it’s three strikes, you’re out. But there’s unfortunately no such guaranteed result in Kansas for an abortionist who has now lost her state medical license for the third time and could appeal the ruling again. In a quiet release online July 7th, the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts issued its third order revoking the license of Ann Kristin Neuhaus, who was issuing “second opinions” approving post-viability abortions in Kansas from 1999-2006. The Board also maintained its demand for her to pay approximately $31,000 in legal expenses–which is only a fraction of the costs accrued in pursuing this...

Since we started reporting on it last year, Trump Derangement Syndrome has, if anything, surpassed epidemic proportions, starting in the Faculty Lounge. Speaking of which, in our faculty lounge blog roll, we have shown reports from Campus Reform that in the past two months: • Subini Annamma, a professor at the University of Kansas, tweeted that Trump supporters are "deeply invested in white supremacy;" • After a Bernie Sanders supporter shot U. S. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., Central Connecticut State University professor Jerold Duquette argued that "mentally unstable people drawn to political extremism" would be motivated to do "horrible things"...

Federal immigration officials negligently allowed a Kansas City, Kan., man to remain in the country illegally before he allegedly killed five men in a 2016 shooting spree, according to a recently filed lawsuit. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan., by the families of two of the five men who Pablo Serrano-Vitorino is now charged with killing. Serrano-Vitorino had previously been deported after he was convicted of a felony in 2003. But according to the suit, Serrano-Vitorino re-entered the country illegally and had several brushes with local law enforcement agencies before March 2016, when he...

The vice chair of President Trump's voter fraud commission took aim Wednesday at media reports of a mass boycott of the ongoing probe, dismissing it as "more 'fake news.'" Kris Kobach, who also serves as secretary of state in Kansas, said "despite media distortions and obstruction by a handful of state politicians," the committee will "continue its work to gather the facts through public records requests." "While there are news reports that 44 states have "refused" to provide voter information to the Commission, these reports are patently false, more "fake news," he said in a statement. "At present, only 14...