The University of Kansas will install FieldTurf as the playing surface at Memorial Stadium in time for the Sept. 5 football season opener against Northern Iowa.
In making the announcement with KU athletic director Lew Perkins on Tuesday, FieldTurf CEO Joe Fields said the Jayhawks will become the sixth Big 12 university to play on the state-of-the-art surface. Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska, Texas and Texas Tech also have it.
KMBC:
(Sports Network) - Kansas City’s outstanding road record in interleague play last year included great success in St. Louis. The Royals return to the Gateway City tonight to start a three-game series with the Cardinals at Busch Stadium.The Royals won 13 of their 18 games versus the National League last season, going 7-2 on the road. That record was helped by a three-game sweep in St. Louis in which Kansas City won three close games by holding the Cardinals to just four runs. Kyle Davies turned in one of those pitching gems, beating the Cards in St. Louis on June 17 by allowing just one earned run in seven innings. However, he did lose a home start versus St. Louis last year as well and is 3-5 with a 6.24 earned run average in 10 career interleague starts.
KMBC:
TEHRAN, Iran — A soccer game between the United States and Iran this fall could be in the works. The possibility exists after the head of Iran’s soccer federation said Monday he received a proposal from his U.S. counterpart about an exhibtion game in October or November. The U.S. Soccer Federation would say only that “it’s normal for multiple federations to contact each other about the possibility of playing a match on available international dates.”
KMBC:
PARIS — Venus Williams has won her opening round match at the French Open by beating Bethanie Mattek-Sands 6-1, 4-6, 6-2. The seven-time Grand Slam champion won the match’s first five games Monday, while Mattek asked for a medical time-out during the first set so a trainer could look at her right wrist.
KMBC:
ARLINGTON, Texas — Alex Rodriguez was heartily booed Monday when introduced before his first game in Texas since his admission earlier this year that he used steroids while playing for the Rangers. Rodriguez played for the Rangers from 2001-03, when he first became baseball’s highest-paid player with a then-record $252 million, 10-year contract. He was traded to the New York Yankees before spring training in 2004.
Kansas First Student Drivers Unite for Better Working Conditions
WASHINGTON, May 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The men and women who transport students in Gardner, Kansas, have voted to join Teamsters Local 838, standing united in their quest to achieve fair pay, affordable benefits and a voice on the job. There are 65 drivers in the bargaining unit. (more…)
Now the consensus from the campaign trail has dissolved, leaving Congressional Democrats and Republicans alike at odds with the White House. The conflagration has been fanned by the determined focus of Republican leaders, fed by the alarms of talk-show populists and aided by the miscalculation of a new president who set a date for a closing without announcing a detailed plan for the inmates. The debate now threatens to make it much harder for Mr. Obama to keep his campaign promise.
Armed with polling data that show a narrow majority of support for keeping the prison open and deep fear about the detainees, Republicans in Congress started laying plans even before the inauguration to make the debate over Guantánamo Bay a question of local community safety instead of one about national character and principles.
More than 100 artists from across the country will have works in the juried art show. More than 600 artists submitted entries to participate.
Exhibit hours are 5 to 9 p.m. May 29, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. May 30 and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. May 31.
“I” before “e” except after … Doesn’t matter. Meredith Foulke, a soon-to-be eighth-grader from Overbrook, won’t waste time with that rule.
“I-e. E-i. I couldn’t keep it straight, but that was before I learned to spell,” the 13-year-old said. “Now, I ignore that rule because it’s broken so much.”
The strategy seems to be working for her. Meredith and her family leave today for Washington, D.C., to represent The Topeka Capital-Journal in the National Spelling Bee.
She earned the trip by beating out almost 15 spellers in the Osage County Bee and then almost 50 competitors at the regional bee, which took place in March in Topeka.
Gregory D. Crosby, 44, of Kansas City, was later arrested and was charged in federal court with attempted bank robbery, authorities said. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 20 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
Kansas State University students could pay up to 3.9 percent more in tuition next year if a proposal presented to the Kansas Board of Regents Thursday is adopted.
University officials submitted a proposal calling for a fall tuition that would amount to $3,093 per semester for a full-time, in-state undergraduate student. The same student paid about $2,977 per semester during the just-concluded school year.
Farmers may be another story.
Lykins is also a member of the board of directors for the Kansas State University Research Foundation, which is one of the plaintiffs that filed suit in federal court last month against some Rooks County farmers who they allege violated restrictions on seed developed by Kansas State University.
Ron Prince did a poor job coaching the Kansas State University football team, but he sure picked a good way to go:
A $4.4 million contract buyout, including $3.2 million that was allegedly secretly negotiated with the school’s former athletic director.
As reported Thursday in The Star, neither Kansas State President Jon Wefald nor the state board of trustees knew about this deal.
While Prince’s lawyer said his client has a valid contract, the university has sued to void the “secret” agreement.
OKLAHOMA CITY | Kansas State came up one game short in its bid to play in the Big 12 Baseball Championship game for a second straight year.
The Wildcats fell to Texas 4-2 on Saturday in what amounted to tournament semifinal game. The Longhorns, who won the regular season, will advance to Sunday’s title game.
KSN:
WICHITA, Kansas - The so-called Craigslist rapist learned his fate Thursday in a Sedgwick County courtroom. David Gage will spend 29 years behind bars for raping women he met using the popular Web site.
Gage was a man of few words before being sentenced. The former law enforcement officer portrayed himself as somewhat of a victim for getting involved with prostitution.
“I should have never taken matters into my own hands in pursuing this underworld activity of prostitution, of which I also became a victim of,” said Gage during his sentencing.
Gage showed a bit of remorse toward his victims - a few of whom were on hand for the sentencing.
“I apologize for dragging these women into a situation that they themselves exposed themselves to,” he said. “I have to apologize for that.”
Gage met his three victims, who are admitted prostitutes, on the ‘erotic services’ section of Craigslist.
The Jayhawks left Oklahoma City, meanwhile, having suffered three straight losses, the most recent coming in the form of Saturday morning’s 8-4 loss to eighth-seeded Baylor - a setback that concluded a miserable week of baseball for the Jayhawks and raised questions about whether the team’s regular-season resume is enough to warrant an NCAA regional Tournament bid.
“This is one of the most unforgiving conferences in America,” Kansas coach Ritch Price said afterward. “If you can’t handle adversity during the course of a 56-game season, this league will bury you.”
Willie Pless came to the University of Kansas from a small town in Northeast Alabama, at the Southern edge of the Appalachian Mountain chain. Anniston was established as a mill town after the civil war to provide a ready source of labor for the cotton mills. Originally it was known as Annie’s town, but quickly was shortened to Anniston. The scenic east side of town was built into the mountain, and was separated from the West Side by scenic Quentard Boulevard. There were arching oak trees that were planted at the time of its founding which now span the street, cradling it in boughs of follege. The railroad is on the West Side, along with the chemical plant which lends a chemical odor to the neighborhood. All blacks and minorities live on the West side, and the downtown district splits the town into its two parts. Up on the mountain lived the wealthy founders and their ancestors, and out west were a few factories, along with bars and crack houses, and run down houses that begged for attention.
OKLAHOMA CITY | In one of the strongest measures of Kansas State’s baseball progress, the Wildcats’ games with Texas feel like a rivalry.
This is the Longhorns program of six national championships and a K-State program that’s never played in the NCAA Tournament.
That piece of history will change on Monday as the Wildcats are all but assured of seeing their name on the bracket despite Saturday’s 4-2 loss to Texas in the Big 12 baseball tournament.
They have a big fan in Texas coach Augie Garrido.
“They are a good team, a very fine Division I baseball team,” Garrido said.
Video from TheFoxNation.com. The Washington Times editorial regarding this video interview with William Ayers is here; in part:
Bill Ayers has kept a low profile since President Obama took office, so we thought he might have gone underground again. That was until we ran into him in Baltimore on Thursday and he lobbed a bomb at one of our editorial writers. When questioned by The Washington Times during a lecture on racism, Mr. Ayers went ballistic. “Did you drink the kool-aid over at The Times or are you okay?” he asked. “What I’m saying is … do you actually have a mind of your own?”
While waiting for America’s publishers to find their nerve, I had put my research into the authorship of Barack Obama’s 1995 memoir Dreams From My Father on the back shelf. But then I heard Chris Matthews.
The Hardball host was weighing in on the subject of Sarah Palin’s new book deal. “Sarah Palin - now don’t laugh - is writing a book,” sneered Matthews. “Not just reading a book, writing a book.”
“Actually in the word of the publisher she’s “collaborating” on a book,” Matthews continued. “What an embarrassment! It’s one of these ‘I told you,’ books that jocks do. You know she’s already declared, I mean, why they do it like this? ‘She can’t write, we got a collaborator for her.’”
I dedicate what follows to Matthews and those willfully blind souls like him. It is a work in progress, a collective one at that, aided and abetted by nearly a score of volunteer co-conspirators from Hawaii to Ohio to Israel to Australia. The thesis is simple enough: Barack Obama needed substantial help to write his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father. Moreover, unlike Sarah Palin, Obama chose to conceal the identity of his collaborator and not without good reason. To admit that he needed a collaborator would have undercut his campaign for president and to reveal the name of that collaborator would have ended it.
WASHINGTON-U.S. Congressman Todd Tiahrt (pronounced TEE-hart), R-KS, today pushed for an open public debate on his amendment to prevent the Obama administration from bringing terrorists to the United States. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, and other Democrat leaders opposed efforts to allow an up or down vote on the Tiahrt amendment that would have barred the administration from transferring or releasing in the United States terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay. The Democrat Majority chose to hide behind a closed rule preventing any Republicans from offering amendments to the FY2009 Supplemental Appropriations bill. Tiahrt is a senior Republican on the House Appropriations Committee and spoke from the House floor on this issue. (more…)
Federal stimulus dollars will be turning human waste and restaurant grease into electricity within the next two years at a large sewage treatment plant in Overland Park.
The project, which will cost $15.6 million, is the largest shovel-ready, environmentally green project in Kansas funded by those federal dollars.
Solid waste will flow into the plant from area toilets and will be combined with restaurant fats, oils and grease. That concoction will create enough methane gas to run two electric generators producing one megawatt of power each. (By contrast, the coal-fired plant just authorized for western Kansas would produce 895 megawatts.)
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Russell Hogan enlisted in the Air Force Reserve as a high school senior in 1988. Four years later he went to work for United Parcel Service.
Eleven years after that, the United States invaded Iraq. Hogan and hundreds of thousands in the National Guard and Reserve went into uniform and off to war.
He returned to civilian life the next year, but not to his old job driving a tractor-trailer truck out of a UPS outpost in Sedalia, Mo. That job had disappeared.
Topeka has moved a little closer to getting some river levee repairs done with the completion of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study.
Eric Lynn, with the Kansas City district of the Corps of Engineers, met Monday with the Topeka and Shawnee County Riverfront Authority to provide an update on the process.
He said the study identified the needs for improvement to the levee system through Topeka. It just needs to be approved by the corps’ chief of engineers.
The next step would be an agreement between the city and the corps to proceed with the design phase of the work. Design work likely would take two years and cost $2 million, he said.
Joining Fitch and Moody’s, Standard & Poors today downgraded McClatchy deeper into junk territory.
Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services on Friday slashed its corporate credit rating on newspaper publisher McClatchy Co. four notches deeper into junk territory after the company offered to buy back $1.15 billion in debt at a fraction of face value.
The ratings agency cut the corporate credit rating and secured debt rating to CC from CCC+, a four-level downgrade to just three steps away from a default rating. The outlook for the corporate credit rating is negative.
…Moody’s said the offer amounted to a distressed debt exchange, a default under its rating definitions. Credit raters not only don’t like the offer to pay far less than face value on the notes, they also say it amounts to coercion because holders who don’t exchange the old notes will have to get in line behind holders of the new notes if McClatchy were to go bankrupt or trigger some other default event.
From Rep. Kinzer:
A Thank You and An Invitation From Rep. Kinzer: I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to all of you who took the time to contact me with your thoughts and opinions during the recent legislative session. I always enjoy receiving your e-mails (even if I’m not quite as quick responding as I know I should be!!). This year I particularly benefited from the information shared by those who participated in the online surveys I sent out during the session. We had a great response, and for those who might be wondering I do indeed read every comment. Like every legislative session this one had its ups and downs. (more…)
From Tim Huelskamp:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 22, 2009
Contact: Senator Tim Huelskamp 620-646-5413
Huelskamp Responds to Governor Parkinson’s Veto of ‘Huelskamp Amendment’
With this veto pen today, Governor Parkinson has taken money away from local health departments, hospitals, and safety net clinics struggling to meet the health care needs of impoverished Kansans. Instead, he has created a taxpayer-funded entitlement to Planned Parenthood, an entity shrouded in controversy and under investigation for more than 100 violations of our state abortion laws. Additionally, it has been recently revealed that Planned Parenthood is likely failing to report to the authorities hundreds of cases of suspected child sexual abuse every year. (more…)
Understanding ModerateSpeak
When I accepted an invite to lunch at a leadership summit sponsored by the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, one of America’s better chambers, I had no idea I would hear a veritable Gettysburg Address of passive-aggressive “moderation.”
The speaker was David Dillon, the CEO of the Kroger Company, America’s second largest retailer. His listed topic–”Winning Management Styles In Today’s Challenging Economy”-gave no hint of the provocation to come. (more…)
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the U.S. budget deficit will reach $1.85 trillion this year and $1.38 trillion in 2010, 13.1% and 9.6% of gross domestic product respectively. Much more worrying is that they project deficits averaging over $1 trillion a year for the next 10 years, which will raise the U.S. public debt-to-GDP ratio to over 80% by 2019. (more…)
From American Solutions:
After much hard work, we just launched the brand new American Solutions website.
The goal of the new AmericanSolutions.com is to be a one-stop shop for you to learn, stay updated about important issues, and take action, to ensure that America remains the safest, freest and most prosperous nation in the world. (more…)
Tom Ridge, on CNN, said this of Rush Limbaugh:
“Rush articulates his point of view in ways that offend very many… let’s be less shrill… let’s not attack other individuals. Let’s attack their ideas.”
Since when has Rush attacked individuals? I listen to the show regularly. He certainly pokes fun at some of them, but he highlights absurdities of character, etc. in pointing out the fallacies of positions on the left.
For example - the President of the United States wants us all to stop breathing to save the environment, but his administration sends Air Force One on a joy ride to take pictures.
Is that an attack on Obama? No. It is pointing out the inconsistencies in Barack Obama’s policies.
The problem is Tom Ridge knows, were he to get into politics again, what he says and what he does would be two different things - much like Obama. So he is building up a straw man to protect himself should Rush Limbaugh ever point out that Ridge likes to pretend to be tough on security, but voted against every single strategic and national security initiative Ronald Reagan ever proposed when he was in the House of Representatives.
Folks, the GOP has not moved right in the past twenty years. You cannot tell me that the GOP is more conservative now than it was during the Reagan years.
More ominously, Glick reports (likely from sources high up in the Israeli government) that the Obama administration has all but accepted as irreversible and unavoidable fact that Iran will soon develop nuclear weapons. She writes, “…we have learned that the [Obama] administration has made its peace with Iran’s nuclear aspirations. Senior administration officials acknowledge as much in off-record briefings. It is true, they say, that Iran may exploit its future talks with the US to run down the clock before they test a nuclear weapon. But, they add, if that happens, the US will simply have to live with a nuclear-armed mullocracy.”
She goes on to write that the Obama administration is desperate to stop Israel from attacking Iran writing that “as far as the [Obama] administration is concerned, if Israel could just leave Iran’s nuclear installations alone, Iran would behave itself.” She notes that American officials would regard any harm to American interests that flowed from an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities as Israel’s doing, not Iran’s.
In classic Stockholm Syndrome fashion, the Obama administration is empathizing more with the Iranian leaders who are holding Israel hostage than with the nation that may be wiped off the map if Iran acquires the bomb.
As the nation prepares to celebrate Memorial Day honoring those who lost their lives in military service, 75% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the U.S. military.
Only 11% view the military unfavorably, and 14% are undecided in a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
These figures are virtually unchanged from last year.
Eighty-five percent (85%) of Republicans have a favorable view of the U.S. military, compared to 68% of Democrats and 73% of adults not affiliated with either major political party.
(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates also available on Twitter.
Just 17% of Americans say they have served in the military, and of this group, 84% regard the military favorably.
Poll:
Forty-four percent (44%) of Americans say Memorial Day, which honors those who gave their lives for our country, is one of the nation’s most important holidays.
Just seven percent (7%) rate it as one of the least important holidays, while 47% say it’s somewhere in between the two, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. These figures are largely the same as last year’s.
For nearly four-out-of-five U.S. voters, the problem is not their unwillingness to pay taxes. It’s their elected representatives’ refusal to cut the size of government.
Seventy-seven percent (77%) of voters say the bigger problem in the United States is the unwillingness of politicians to control government spending. Just 14% say the problem is that voters are unwilling to pay enough in taxes, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Vilna’i briefed the committee on the state-wide drill, scheduled to begin on May 31. The threat of missiles hitting mainland Israel “is not unrealistic,” Vilna’i continued. “If a war breaks out, that is probably what would happen.”
According to Vilna’i, “In conducting this national
home front drill we aren’t looking to scare anyone, but rather prepare ourselves for a threat which has its writing on the wall.”
The United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain said in April they would invite Iran to a meeting to try and find a diplomatic solution to the nuclear row.
The West accuses Iran of secretly developing atomic weapons. Iran, the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter, denies the charge and says it only wants nuclear power to generate electricity.
May 25 (Bloomberg) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who faces re-election next month, said he considers the dispute over his country’s nuclear program “over.”
The Iranian people “won’t allow negotiations to take place outside the framework of the IAEA” the United Nations atomic energy watchdog, Ahmadinejad said today at a Tehran press conference when asked about talks with world powers seeking a suspension of Iran’s uranium enrichment program.
