Free Republic

Two-term Republican U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner is not running for reelection this year in his GOP-leaning eastern Kansas district so that he can spend more time with his four young children, he announced Thursday. LaTurner is among nearly two dozen Republicans in the U.S. House who are not running again or seeking another office. "The unrepeatable season of life we are in, where our kids are still young and at home, is something I want to be more present for,” LaTurner said. LaTurner's announcement leaves Republicans with no declared candidates in a district he likely would have had little trouble...

WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) - Congressman Jake LaTurner, who represents Kansas’ second district in the U.S. House, said he will not run for re-election. The Republican lawmaker released the following statement on Thursday: “I will proudly serve the remainder of the 118th Congress, but after much prayer and consideration, I will not seek reelection this Fall. The people of Kansas who elected me to serve in the United States House of Representatives have given me the professional honor of my life, but it is time to pursue other opportunities and have the benefit of spending more time with my family. Suzanne...

On Thursday, the U.S. government sold the Federal Helium Reserve, a massive underground stockpile based in Amarillo, Texas, that supplies up to 30% of the country’s helium. Once the deal is finalized, the buyer — which will likely be the highest bidder, the industrial gas company Messer — will claim some 425 miles of pipelines spanning Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma, plus about 1 billion cubic feet of the only element on Earth cold enough to make an MRI machine work. Regulatory and logistical issues with the facility threaten a temporary shutdown as it passes from public to private ownership, and...

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The most populous county in Kansas has rejected demands from the local sheriff and the state’s attorney general to preserve old ballots and records longer than legally allowed, shredding materials sought for an election fraud investigation that has yet to result in any criminal charges. Johnson County in the Kansas City area issued a statement Thursday that its election office finished Wednesday destroying ballots and other records from 2019, 2020 and 2021, under the direction of the secretary of state, the top elections official in Kansas. State law directed local election officials to shred such materials...

Get rid of the guns.Change the U.S. Constitution, which we as a nation have managed 27 times already in this evolving democracy. Restore the Second Amendment to its original meaning — ensuring a well-regulated militia — and get rid of the guns.Take deadly arsenals out of private hands, no matter the firearm. No assault weapons. No handguns. No rifles. Melt them down and throw them somewhere deep in the ocean.Protect ourselves and our futures.People will break the law, you say. That may be. But we continue to make crack cocaine and recreational fentanyl illegal. Republicans claim they want to bomb...

On Thursday’s broadcast of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas (D) said that if you don’t have metal detectors, “then how can we ever fully be safe in a city, a state, and, perhaps, a country where we know that people are freely walking around with AR-15s, with modified handguns with switches, with any number of issues, or frankly, even just your old classic revolver?” And “If we know that one can act with impunity with that, then it’s hard to say we’ll ever be fully as safe as I think we’d like to idealize ourselves to...

Shots were fired at the end of the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl celebration parade Wednesday in Kansas City, Missouri, leaving at least ten people shot and two armed individuals in custody. CNN reported police saying, “Anyone nearby needs to leave the area as quickly and safely as possible to facilitate treatment of the shooting victims. Please avoid the Union Station parking garage area to allow first responders through.”

Super Bowl LVIII: Live Thread Your home for all things Fool's Ball! In Memoriam Danny Lee (BENDER2)

A statue erected to honor MLB star Jackie Robinson was broken off at the feet and stolen from outside a Kansas youth baseball park Thursday.

The Kansas Highway Patrol must stop using a tactic known as the “Kansas Two-Step” to detain out-of-state drivers long enough to find a reason to search their vehicles for illegal drugs, a federal judge has ruled. U.S. District Judge Kathryn H. Vratil on Monday granted a permanent injunction. The injunction was not unexpected. It follows Vratil's ruling in July that determined that the tactic violated drivers' constitutional rights against unreasonable searches. KHP spokeswoman Candice Breshears said the order is being reviewed by the state attorney general's office and declined further comment. A message left Tuesday with the office of Attorney...

Every day millions of patients receiving legitimate medical care get informed consent. They’re told about the risks and alternatives of a procedure or they hear advertisements that spell out potential side effects associated with medication. But a judge in Kansas just ruled that Planned Parenthood and other abortion companies don’t have to tell women the risks of abortion or the alternatives. Never mind that abortions kill or injure women – like the one that killed a Nevada woman late last year. District Judge K. Christopher Jayaram issued an order blocking this law and another one today. “The Court has great...

Closed door testimony by former Pittsburgh US Attorney Scott Brady to the Judiciary Committee last week is a chilling case study of how credible corruption allegations against Joe Biden and his family were covered up by the FBI and DOJ — before and after the 2020 election. Brady’s testimony fits a pattern revealed by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley last week, in which over 40 confidential human sources gave information to the FBI, over several years, about potential criminal activity involving the president, his brother James and son Hunter. In a blistering letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland Wednesday, Grassley alleged...

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has reportedly obtained information indicating that more than 40 confidential human sources have provided information to federal law enforcement about “criminal” activity involving President Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and his brother James. Fox News reported that FBI field offices across the U.S. were “provided criminal information to the FBI relating to Joe Biden, James Biden, and Hunter Biden.” Grassley said that an FBI task force inside the Washington Field Office shut down “reporting and information from those sources by falsely discrediting the information as foreign disinformation,” the report said. The result was that a lot...

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, a lack of farms throughout the country impacts families in more ways than one. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Illinois, and others discussed the state of farming in Illinois and elsewhere Monday in Kankakee. Vilsack told an agricultural panel that the country is losing farms in large quantities. "I was surprised to learn that we've lost 438,000 farms since 1981," Vilsack said. "Just to give you a sense of how many farms that is, it is every farm in Iowa today, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, South Dekota, Nebraska and...

(LifeSiteNews) — The sponsor of a Kansas law requiring basic medical care for newborns who survive botched abortions says he knows such legislation is necessary because, contrary to the the abortion lobby’s narratives, he personally witnessed a baby survive an abortion attempt. Earlier this year, the Kansas legislature enacted HB 2313 over a veto from Democrat Gov. Laura Kelly. The law requires that, in the event of an infant being delivered alive after an attempted abortion, the abortionist must “[e]xercise the same degree of professional skill, care and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as a...

A 25-year-old man in Kansas is facing the steepest possible legal penalties for allegedly sexually assaulting and killing a 5-year-old girl. Mickel Wayne Cherry was taken into custody on Tuesday and charged with one count of first-degree murder in the commission of a felony and one count of raping a victim under the age of 14 in the horrific slaying of Zoey Felix, jail records reviewed by Law&Crime show. Officers with the Topeka Police Department on Monday at about 6 p.m. responded to a call about a young girl — later identified as Zoey — suffering from life-threatening injuries at...

The police chief who oversaw a controversial raid on a small Kansas newspaper has been suspended. The raid, carried out on the Marion County Record on August 11, was personally led by Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody . Another raid was enacted on the home of the newspaper's publisher' 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, who subsequently died. The police chief who led a highly criticized raid of a small Kansas newspaper, that saw its 98-year-old owner die the following day, has been suspended. ... The August 11 raids of the Marion County Record office and the homes of its publisher and...

In his tenure in office, Patton has been seen as a moderating force among Kansas Republicans Party, even if the public hasn't seen the rest of the party that way. He has served as the chairman of the House K-12 Budget Committee and will step down next month as chair of the chamber's Judiciary Committee. He said that in his experience, the Statehouse has been mostly the same over the past eight years, and that the Legislature is not as divided as is often claimed. "I certainly think there are fewer moderates in the Legislature than when I got there,...

On August 1, 2023, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas unveiled two gun control proposals that he believes will reduce gun violence during a time when crime has been on the rise in the city. One of the measures would ban minors from buying ammunition without the consent of a parent. The other measure would prohibit “switches,” devices that can convert handguns into automatic weapons. Lucas’s intention here is to undermine Missouri’s preemption laws, which bar local governments from crafting their own gun control measures. “I say clearly and unambiguously, guns and ammunition being given to minors; guns in the hands...

A $4 billion Panasonic electric vehicle battery factory in De Soto, Kansas, will help satisfy the Biden administration’s efforts to get everyone into an EV. It also will help extend the life of a coal-fired power plant. Resource Adequacy Panasonic broke ground on the facility last year. The Japanese company was slated to receive $6.8 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, which has been pouring billions into electric vehicles and battery factories as part of its effort to transition America away from fossil fuels. The Kansas City Star reports that the factory will require between 200 and 250 megawatts of...