Parked outside of Paul Porter’s 140-year-old building is his electric car.  Not that I expected a horse and buggy. But the contrast reminded me of the challenge of bridging the physical and philosophical divides between…

Two years ago I wrote an opinion piece for the Kansas Reflector in which I argued that the Legislature should be celebrating Kansas public schools, rather than trying to tear them apart through voucher plans.…

The new year has once again been marked with numerous acts of gun violence, including multiple mass shootings.  The scale of gun violence our country faces is overwhelming — and it feels like with each…

On Jan. 1, 2023, Kansas’ state sales tax on food items in the supermarket lowered from 6.5% (the second-highest rates in the country) to 4%. Most Kansans saw immediate savings; however, it is complicated and…

For the first 40 years that Iola Industries owned the land surrounding the old Lehigh quarry, “we wondered what could possibly happen here that would be good,” John McRae, president of Iola Industries, is quoted…

When NPR correspondent John Burnett retired recently after 36 years, Weekend Edition host Scott Simon asked him what lesson he would take away from his years of covering global events. “If I could wave my…

Next week, the diversity in school debate returns to neighboring state Missouri via House Bill 952, its anti-1619 Project bill, joining the earlier proposed Parent’s Bill of Rights, SB 776.  Missouri, a bellwether for policymaking…

The Kansas Legislature now has its first abortion bill on the docket of the post-Roe v. Wade era — and the first since Kansans voted to protect abortion rights by defeating the “Value Them Both”…

One of the simplest ways to define politics is as a struggle for power. This power struggle has flared up again. The legislature began their 2023 session by introducing a bill that would further disrupt…

The roots of my love for Kansas Day were planted deep many years ago in Mrs. Garrett’s second-grade class at Jefferson Elementary School in Iola. The simple act of coloring my own version of the…