Opinion
Lawrence Journal-World l LJWorld.com l Sunday, February 1, 2015
EDITORIALS
Closed again The closed process Gov. Brownback is using to fill vacancies on the Kansas Court of Appeals should serve as a warning to Kansans.
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ov. Sam Brownback has made his second appointment to the Kansas Court of Appeals under a new law that eliminated the role of the Supreme Court Nomination Commission in the selection process. The new process, under which the governor nominates a judge who then must be confirmed by the Kansas Senate, was touted as a more democratic and open way to appoint judges. However, at least the way it is being used by this governor, the process seems anything but open. The governor invited Kansans to nominate themselves or others for the Court of Appeals position but revealed no information about who was nominated, how many names he received or what their qualifications were. He also failed to respond — at least before announcing his choice on Thursday — to an open records request from the Associated Press seeking applications, letters or emails from people making nominations for the Court of Appeals vacancy. The process was completely closed. Brownback’s selection of Kathryn Gardner of Topeka may have been a stellar choice, but it’s difficult for Kansans to assess that choice without having any information on the other nominees. It at least gives the appearance that the governor has something to hide. In announcing the nomination, Brownback noted Gardner’s experience as a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Sam Crow and as an assistant Kansas attorney general. He also noted that she has been a finalist in statewide cowboy poetry contests three times in the past four years. Hopefully, he was joking when he said the poetry connection “sealed the deal for me.” Interestingly, Gardner shares some educational credentials with Supreme Court Justice Caleb Stegall, whose spot she is filling on the Court of Appeals. Both received their law degrees from Kansas University and both graduated from Geneva College, which indicates on its website that it is a “four-year comprehensive Christian college” in Beaver Falls, Pa., with a current undergraduate enrollment of 1,335 traditional students. The Kansas Senate now will have an opportunity to review Gardner’s credentials as part of the confirmation process, but the Senate’s large Republican majority almost certainly will agree with Brownback’s choice. If the governor had his way, the same system would be used to appoint Kansas Supreme Court justices, but that would require both the Legislature and the voters of Kansas to approve a constitutional amendment. When advocates try to sell that amendment as a more democratic and open way to select state judges, Kansans should remember the closed process Brownback has instituted for Court of Appeals appointments.
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Deflategate part of wretched excess Washington — Beer, Benjamin Franklin supposedly said but almost certainly didn’t, is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Without cannonballing into deep theological waters, perhaps Deflategate proves the same thing. This scrumptious NFL pratfall — think of someone insufferably self-important stepping on a banana peel; hello, Donald Trump — has come to lighten the mood of America’s annual Wretched Excess Season. It consists of the days — this year, 12 of them — between the State of the Union address and the final merciful tick of the clock of the Super Bowl. The State of the Union has become, under presi-
George Will
georgewill@washpost.com
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But let us not allow fallen humanity’s sins to spoil today’s fun.” dents of both parties, a political pep rally degrading to everyone. The judiciary and uniformed military should never attend. And Congress, by hosting a spectacle so monarchical in structure (which is why Thomas Jefferson sent his thoughts to Congress in writing) deepens the diminishment of the legislative branch as a mostly reactive servant of an overbearing executive. Catching the State of the Union’s rising wave of choreographed spontaneity and synthetic earnestness, the nation then surfs into the long run-up to the Super Bowl. This storm before the storm delivers hurricane-force gusts of anticipatory analysis forecasting the minute nuances of enormous people throw-
ing their weight around. The chatter culminates in 60 minutes of actual football — men risking concussions and other crippling injuries for our amusement. And for selling beer (see above) and other stuff. Anyway, this year the tedium of Wretched Excess Season has been relieved by Deflategate, itself a permutation of wretched excess. Unless you have allowed yourself to be distracted by the dismemberment of Ukraine, Islamic State beheadings and counting the U.S. military personnel in Iraq that are not wearing real boots that are actually on the ground, you know this: When the New England Patriots won a Super Bowl berth by defeating the Indianapolis Colts 45-7, 11 footballs in the Patriots’ custody, and for the team’s use on offense, were filled with less air than NFL rules require, making them easier to pass and catch. Perhaps the 11 balls spontaneously lost exactly the same amount of air in the 2 hours or so between when the officials checked
them and kickoff. Religions have been founded on less startling occurrences, but judge not lest ye be judged to be judgmental. The Patriots’ head coach, Bill Belichick, a detail-obsessed martinet of Prussian severity but without even a Junker’s flair for jollity, says he is stumped. Perhaps a rogue equipment manager decided on his own to put deflated balls into the famously and exquisitely sensitive hands of the Patriots’ $27 million quarterback, Tom Brady, who never noticed. There has not been such an unmysterious mystery since an 18-anda-half-minute gap occurred in President Nixon’s White House tapes of a conversation between Nixon and his chief of staff in the Oval Office three days after the Watergate break-in. Concerning cheating, let the sport that is without sin cast the first scuffed baseball. Baseball players have tampered with themselves (e.g., performanceenhancing drugs) and their equipment (e.g., corked bats). Teams with creative
Out of jail, but not yet free Marissa Alexander got out of jail last week, but she is not free. At best, she enjoys only a species of freedom, a defective freedom that imperfectly resembles the real thing. After a cumulative total of three years behind bars, she will now spend two years on house arrest, monitored by a GPS ankle bracelet. The monitoring, for which she must pay $105 a week, was agreed to by a judge over the objection of prosecutors who wanted her to do two more years in jail. All this, for firing a gun into the air. Alexander, a 34-year-old Jacksonville, Fla., woman, has endured a nightmarish odyssey through the Florida injustice system ever since the day in August of 2010 that she got into a fight with her husband, Rico Gray. She said Gray, whom she and other women describe as a serial woman beater, started strangling her when he found text messages from her first husband on her phone. Alexander managed to escape to her garage, intending to flee in her truck. Realizing she had left her keys in the house, she said, she armed herself with a gun and went back inside. When her husband came at her again, she fired a warning shot and he fled. In his deposition, Gray largely corroborated her story. “I told her if she ever cheated on me, I would kill her,” he said. Had she not had the gun, he added, he would have “probably hit her. I got five baby mamas and I put my hands on every last one of them, except for one.” But when Alexander’s at torney filed for dismissal under Florida’s Stand Your
Leonard Pitts Jr. lpitts@miamiherald.com
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How is it, they want to know, that George Zimmerman was only standing his ground when he stalked and killed an unarmed black boy, but Marissa Alexander committed aggravated assault when she shot a wall?”
Ground statute, this sterling example of humanity changed his story. In the new version, he never threatened to kill Alexander and “begged and pleaded” for his life when she produced the gun. When CNN asked for an interview about all this, Gray agreed. Then declined. Then asked for money. CNN passed. Prosecutors offered Alexander a plea bargain — three years against a possible 20 for aggravated assault. Alexander declined, reasoning that surely no jury would convict her under these circumstances. They convicted her in 12 minutes. Awarded a new trial because of a procedural error, she was again offered a deal, except that this time, the stakes were higher: a possible 60-year prison sentence. Again, this is for shooting into the air — in Florida, yet, a gun-happy state where you can legally erect a shooting
range in your own backyard and blaze away. Wisely, Alexander took the deal. Some observers see a racial double-standard in all of this. How is it, they want to know, that George Zimmerman was only standing his ground when he stalked and killed an unarmed black boy, but Marissa Alexander committed aggravated assault when she shot a wall? Some see a gender-based unfairness, a stony lack of compassion for women facing domestic violence. And some see a fresh example of how mandatory sentencing guidelines imposed by politicians wanting to seem “tough on crime” have instead made our courts tough on common sense. Note that the judge who first sentenced Alexander had no leeway under the law. Even he said his 20-year sentence “may be legal, but it is wrong.” So what we have here, then, is a convergence of multiple unfairnesses that leaves Alexander, a mother of three who had never been in trouble before, a convicted felon, a designation that will deprive her of the right to vote and shadow her throughout her life from now forward. That is both travesty and tragedy. This is a case that cries out for gubernatorial clemency or presidential pardon. It ought to make decent people sick — sick enough to demand reform. Because, it’s all well and good Marissa Alexander is finally home, but make no mistake. What she has now is only a kind of freedom. And no kind of justice at all. — Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald.
groundskeepers have given an outward tilt to infield foul lines when a team adept at bunting comes to town. And on at least one occasion a gifted base stealer has reached first base only to find himself standing in a muddy swamp on an otherwise dry infield. But let us not allow fallen humanity’s sins to spoil today’s fun. On the secondhighest calorie-consumption day of every year (second to Thanksgiving), we celebrate the end of Wretched Excess Season by gathering around our televisions, as around a continental campfire. In this communal experience we say: Take the day off, better angels of our nature, because nothing says America like football played indoors in air conditioning on grass in the desert. Tomorrow, we will still not be sure who or what blew up the USS Maine in Havana harbor on Feb. 15, 1898. But it would be good to know the whereabouts of the Patriots’ equipment manager that day. — George Will is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.
OLD HOME TOWN
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From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Feb. 1, 1915: years “The telephone ago and telegraph IN 1915 companies are experiencing considerable trouble with the sleet on the wires. For the past few days the wires have been so heavy that some of them were broken with the weight. The sleet on the wires makes connections on the lines impossible.” “‘Hun’ Woods was again taken by the police yesterday on a charge of drunkenness. He has been a frequent visitor at the police station. He pleaded guilty and was fined $6.50. Judge Albach has promised Wood that his fine would be doubled each time he is brought in on a charge of drunkenness. Charles Brown was also arrested on a charge of drunkenness Saturday night. Brown was very anxious to go home and take care of his stock. He promised that he would appear at the court Monday morning for trial and the police permitted him to go. He was picked up about an hour later in the bottoms in a drunken condition.” — Compiled by Sarah St. John
Read more Old Home Town at LJWorld.com/news/lawrence/ history/old_home_town.
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