Free Republic

For better or worse, through sickness and health, a Kansas gubernatorial candidate has picked his wife as his mate -- for life and for lieutenant governor. Republican Jim Barnett has selected his wife, Rosie Hansen, as his running mate as he runs for governor. The pair married in September, according to The Wichita Eagle. “I’ve met and talked with people from all walks of life, from all over the state,” Barnett, a former state senator, said in a statement. “Many were qualified in some areas. Only a few were qualified in all three areas. It became clear that the one...

U.S. Rep. Ron Estes has a Republican primary opponent. His name is Ron Estes. Ron Estes — not the congressman, the other one — said Thursday he plans to run against the better-known Estes. The nonelected Estes, who filed as Ron M. Estes, lives in Wichita and is a first-time candidate. He said in a statement he is running because “our status quo elected leaders” refuse to represent the congressional district by avoiding town halls and constituents. His campaign website calls him “The Real Ron Estes.”

A World War II-era plane crash-landed in Kansas after just completing flyovers for Memorial Day, officials said. The Kansas State Highway Patrol said in a crash report the pilot ran out of fuel while approaching the runway at Westport Airport in Wichita around 12:10 p.m. and attempted to restart the engine. The aircraft's engine failed to start, and the plane went down in a nearby neighborhood, police said. The 1943 Fairchild PT-23 was part of the Commemorative Air Force-Jayhawk Wing doing flyovers across the state, according to KWCH. The PT-23 was a trainer plane for the U.S. Army Air Force.

A new city has emerged as a possible site for NBA expansion. One league executive told SEC Network's Jarrett Sutton that Kansas City will inevitably be awarded a franchise, as it's viewed as the NBA's most valuable market for league expansion, alongside Seattle. The Kings called Kansas City home from 1972 to 1985 before moving on to Sacramento. The state of Kansas is well-represented on the college circuit, boasting the powerhouse University of Kansas, but the addition of an NBA franchise would come as a surprise with other notable options being discussed far more. The city has an arena which...

VINITA — Eighteen years after two teenagers from Welch disappeared, police have arrested one of three men they say tortured and held the girls for days before strangling them to death. The killers bragged that the bodies of Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible, both 16, are “in a pit in Picher,” according to an affidavit released at a news conference Monday. Ronnie Dean Busick, 66, of Wichita, Kansas, faces a host of charges in the 1999 deaths of the girls and Freeman’s parents, Kathy and Danny Freeman. He is in custody at the Harvey County, Kansas, jail. Two other suspects...

Authorities say convicted murderer roamed the country, remorselessly taking lives Convicted killer Jeremy Bryan Jones is a remorseless "monster" who roamed America for more than a decade, killing as many as 25 men, women and children, law enforcement authorities said Wednesday. Jones, 32, of Miami, Okla., was convicted of four counts of capital murder last week in a Mobile County courtroom in connection with the September 2004 slaying of Lisa Marie Nichols. The jury recommended that he be put to death by lethal injection. A Mobile County Sheriff's Office investigator said during a Wednesday afternoon news conference that Jones enjoyed...

In the year and a half since Donald Trump’s unexpected election to the presidency, a prevailing theory has emerged: It was “economic anxiety” that led disillusioned, working-class white voters to cast their ballots for the New York real-estate mogul. A recent study out of the University of Kansas suggests otherwise. Drawing from American National Elections Studies data, KU sociologist David Smith found that theory to be an inaccurate stereotype, albeit a “well-intentioned” one, that ignores the millions of white, working-class voters who he says voted against Trump because they opposed his attitudes toward minorities, Muslims, immigrants and women. “The election...

A new Kansas law makes it a crime for police to have sex with people they pull over for traffic violations or detain in criminal investigations. The new law bans sexual relations "during the course of a traffic stop, a custodial interrogation, an interview in connection with an investigation, or while the law enforcement officer has such person detained." Now, you may be asking, wasn't that illegal already? Actually, it wasn't. Kansas was one of 33 states where consensual sex between police and people in their custody wasn't a crime. That came as a surprise to members of the House...

The Red Guards is a Maoist group that has chapters throughout the United States, including Los Angeles, where members on May Day burned an effigy of President Trump and called for "revolutionary violence" against "the capitalist state." The group identifies as "antifascist" and aims to duplicate in the United States the anarchy and terror Chairman Mao's Red Guards inflicted on China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Donning masks, the Red Guards of Kansas City marched in the middle of the street without a permit, burned an American flag, waved communist flags, and carried a large banner...

The Trump administration announced Monday that it is rejecting Kansas’s request to impose lifetime limits on Medicaid benefits, drawing a line against a new level of conservative changes to the program. The administration has already approved work requirements in Medicaid, a controversial move in itself, but Monday’s decision indicates that time limits on Medicaid coverage are going too far for the Trump administration. “We have determined that we will not approve Kansas’ recent request to place a lifetime limit on Medicaid benefits for some beneficiaries,” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma said Monday in a speech to...

Jewish group calls on Republican state lawmaker from Kansas to refrain from comparing abortions to Nazi genocide of Jews in World War II. JTA - A group of rabbis is urging a Republican politician from Kansas City to stop comparing abortion to the Holocaust. The Rabbinical Association of Kansas City wrote a letter to State Sen. Steve Fitzgerald saying his words “abuse the memory of the murdered victims of the Nazi regime,” the Kansas City Star reported Thursday. MainAll NewsUS & CanadaRabbis urge Kansas lawmaker not to compare abortion to Holocaust Rabbis urge Kansas lawmaker not to compare abortion to...

Accountability is sorely lacking in the administrative state. Unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats make decisions significantly affecting our daily lives with too little involvement from our elected officials. The Congressional Review Act was intended to restore at least some degree of democratic accountability to the administrative process. It requires agencies to submit to Congress every rule they wish to impose on you, giving the people you elected an opportunity to oversee what federal bureaucrats are up to. That’s the theory, at least. In practice, agencies have failed to comply with their obligations under the statute, withholding rules from Congress and thereby avoiding...

The Beach Museum of Art welcomed artist Fidencio Fifield-Perez to discuss his commitment to activism and art to commemorate the last day of his exhibit’s display Thursday. During his lecture, titled “Legalities of Being,” Fifield-Perez said he struggled to retain his humanity in the eyes of those who only saw him as a DACA recipient. “I ceased to be my own person and became a statistic,” Fifield-Perez said. “My narrative didn’t matter to [the government.]” Through his work, Fifield-Perez said he wanted to share his experience as an undocumented citizen with others. Melanie Johnson, junior in criminology, said she pondered...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday he plans to confirm three of President Trump’s judicial nominees by the end of the week, continuing to fulfill the president’s promise to remake the federal bench with conservative jurists. If all three of his picks are cleared this week, it will bring the total number of Mr. Trump’s district court picks to 17 that have been confirmed since the president took office. Claria Horn Boom, who was nominated more than 300 days ago...

72-year-old John Schooley has been charged with second-degree murder in the tragic death of a child on the water slide he co-designed. Schooley was arrested at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport on Monday, just after returning from China. In addition to murder, Schooley also faces charges of aggravated battery and aggravated endangerment of a child. A Kansas grand jury has indicted all three men involved in the incident that resulted in the decapitation of Caleb Schwab, son of Kansas State Representative Scott Schwab. The boy’s raft lost control on the 17-foot slide, and he was killed as he hit...

[snip] According to the U.S. Marshals Service, the North Texas Fugitive Task Force took John Schooley into custody at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport after the designer returned from China. Schooley, 72, was indicted last week on charges of second-degree murder, aggravated battery and aggravated endangering of a child. His lawyer, J. Justin Johnston, told ABC News last week his client was out of the country when the charges were filed and was "working with counsel to coordinate his prompt return to the United States" and that Schooley intended "to voluntarily surrender and defend the charges against him." The U.S. Marshals...

As the nation commemorates the life of Linda Brown Thompson – the public face of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case – Brown is being celebrated as a heroic young girl from Topeka who “brought a case that ended segregation in public schools in America.” But the story behind the historic Supreme Court case, as I plan to show in my forthcoming book, “Blacks Against Brown: The Black Anti-Integration Movement in Topeka, Kansas, 1941-1954,” is much more complex than the highly inaccurate but often-repeated tale about the case.

Two GOP-held congressional seats in Kansas are up for grabs this election, according to a national website that tracks races. Democrats, who have not won a congressional race in Kansas in a decade, could prevail in the 3rd District, which covers the Kansas City suburbs, or the 2nd District, which includes Lawrence and Topeka. RealClearPolitics, a site that aggregates polling data, shifted both races Wednesday from “leans Republican” to “tossup” in its electoral map for the 2018 election.

In 2015, Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security released an intelligence assessment on alleged right-wing terrorism. Said CNN about the report, “Some federal and local law-enforcement groups view the domestic terror threat from sovereign citizen groups as equal to – and in some cases greater than – the threat from foreign Islamic terror groups, such as ISIS, that garner more public attention.” When President Trump shifted the DHS focus away from domestic terror, the media were quick to turn to the professional race-baiters at the Southern Poverty Law Center for an instant denunciation.

Earlier this month, we noted that California faced a lawsuit from the Department of Justice over its new status as a “Sanctuary State“. Several red and purple states have now boarded this particular “Trump Train”. Texas and more than a dozen other states led by Republican governors got behind the Trump administration on Monday in its lawsuit over California’s so-called sanctuary laws that protect people in the U.S. illegally. California’s laws are designed to interfere with or block federal immigration enforcement but the state does not have that authority, the other states said in a court filing in the U.S....