BLUE SPRINGS, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man is charged with second-degree murder in the death of a Kansas man outside a restaurant.
Jackson County prosecutors charged 24-year-old John Dewayne Jeffries of Raytown on Thursday in the death of Clinton Peckman, of Paola, Kansas, who had gone to the area to work.
Investigators say Peckman was shot while he was inside a work van parked near the Bethlehem Cafe in Blue Springs.
Jeffries also is charged with first-degree robbery and two counts of armed criminal action. He allegedly tried to carjack a vehicle from another couple before he was found and arrested.
Kansas Senate President Susan Wagle photo by Stephen Koranda
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The leader of the Kansas Senate says the state Supreme Court timed a recent decision on school finance to help Democrats elect a governor.
Republican Susan Wagle on Friday denounced the court’s October ruling that found the state’s school funding formula is unconstitutional. The justices ordered the Legislature to show how it plans to respond by April 30.
Wagle says the justices want to elect a Democratic governor in order to have more Democrats appointed to the court.
Wagle also says Kansas is headed toward a constitutional crisis over education funding. She suggested considering an amendment to the Kansas Constitution to remove a requirement that the Legislature provide “suitable” provision for school funding.
A court spokeswoman said justices don’t comment on pending cases.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Jail records show that Kansas City Chiefs defensive tackle Roy Miller has been arrested in Florida on a domestic battery charge.
The records show Miller was jailed shortly before 5 a.m. Saturday by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. There are no details immediately available about the alleged battery or who was involved. The records do show that it involved a minor injury.
Court records show Miller has an initial appearance before a judge later Saturday. The records do not show whether he has a lawyer.
Miller, 30, played for the Jacksonville Jaguars from 2013 to 2017, when he signed with the Chiefs. The 6-foot-1, 320-pound lineman was originally drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2009 out of the University of Texas.
KANSAS CITY (AP) – Kansas City police say two people were killed and another was injured in a wrong-way collision on an interstate in Kansas City.
Police say the accident happened early Saturday when a car was driving south in the northbound lanes of interstate 49. The car collided head-on with a Jeep.
The driver and a passenger in the Jeep died. The driver of the car is hospitalized in critical condition.
The two people in the Jeep were a 31-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman, both from Kansas City.
Carolyn Lukensmeyer, executive director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse, says the war of words in politics is a threat to American democracy. She spoke this week at the University of Kansas. COURTESY SUNFLOWER FOUNDATION
Progressives deride supporters of President Donald Trump as willfully ignorant reactionaries, even racists.
Fans of the president respond in kind, dismissing liberals as snowflakes and worse.
The escalating war of words is a clear and president danger to American democracy, said Carolyn Lukensmeyer, executive director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse, in a presentation sponsored by the Topeka-based Sunflower Foundation’s Advocacy in Health speaker series.
“Civility is an essential ingredient in a free democracy,” Lukensmeyer said Wednesday to an audience at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. “Our system is dependent on the capacity to absorb, assimilate and productively deal with difference.”
Incivility leads to certain groups of people being treated as “others to the point we don’t respect them as human beings,” she said.
Lukensmeyer, who holds a doctorate in organizational behavior, is a former White House consultant and chief of staff to former Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste, a Democrat who served from 1983 to 1991.
The current level of hostility in the nation’s political discourse rivals that of the Civil War era, Lukensmeyer said, warning that it will take decades to rebuild the social norms being destroyed in the wake of Trump’s election.
“Seventy-five percent of Americans believe that incivility is now a crisis, and about the same number believe it’s lowering our stature around the world,” Lukensmeyer said.
The ocean of special interest money in American politics and the gerrymandering of congressional districts have created structural barriers to solving the incivility crisis at the national level, Lukensmeyer said. But, she said, individuals and communities can and must start tackling the problem on their own.
“The one thing we all can control is how we behave in our own lives,” Lukensmeyer said, noting that in addition to providing civility training to state lawmakers across the country, the institute she heads has developed toolkits to help individuals and groups engage more productively.
One of the “conversation kits” available on the institute’s website is designed to help families navigate potentially fraught discussions at the Thanksgiving table. Called “Setting the Table for Civility,” the kit aims to promote respect over the upcoming holiday season by helping people with disparate views talk and, more importantly, listen to one another.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A Lawrence man who molested a girl for more than two years has been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 25 years.
Thirty-five-year-old James Fletcher was sentenced Thursday for five counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child. Prosecutors said he repeatedly fondled the girl’s breasts, starting when she was 11.
The Lawrence Journal-World reports about 30 people who supported Fletcher attended the sentencing. His attorneys had filed nearly 30 letters backing Fletcher, who had no previous criminal record.
The judge said the community support was admirable but was not sufficient reason to depart from sentencing guidelines mandating life in prison for the crimes.
Fletcher’s attorney, Sarah Swain, said she planned to immediately appeal the sentence.
ARKANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — The Department of Homeland Security is planning to conduct chemical and biological tests near the border between Kansas and Oklahoma.
The department officials plan to execute a “low level outdoor release” of inert chemical and biological simulant materials at the old Chilocco Indian School in January and again in June. The campus is in Oklahoma, just 6 miles (9.6 kilometers) south of Arkansas City, Kansas.
The department says the test is to determine how protected people would be when staying inside if biological agents are used in a terror attack.
Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Estes of Kansas said Thursday he has “numerous questions” about the tests. He says federal agencies “need to be 100 percent certain this test is safe for the residents of south-central Kansas.”
David Jordan, director of the Alliance for a Healthy Kansas, and other Medicaid expansion advocates see promise in election results this week in Maine and Virginia. They plan to press lawmakers to expand KanCare during the 2018 session. FILE PHOTO / KANSAS NEWS SERVICE
Medicaid expansion advocates say Kansas policymakers should take notice of elections this week in Maine and Virginia.
In Maine, lawmakers sent five expansion bills to Republican Gov. Paul LePage in recent years. He vetoed them all. So Maine voters took matters into their own hands Tuesday by overwhelmingly approving a ballot initiative authorizing expansion.
In the Virginia governor’s race, Ralph Northam, a Democrat who supported expansion, handily defeated Ed Gillespie, a Republican who didn’t, in a race where nearly 40 percent of voters cited health care as a top issue.
Kansas doesn’t have an initiative and referendum process, so expansion advocates can’t force a statewide vote on the issue. But they will continue their efforts to win legislative approval of an expansion bill, said David Jordan, director of the pro-expansion Alliance for a Healthy Kansas.
“We’re going to strongly push for expanding KanCare in the upcoming session,” Jordan said, referring to the state’s privatized Medicaid program.
“It’s clear from our polling that over three-quarters of Kansans support expanding KanCare,” Jordan said, adding that this week’s election results show that voters will “reward candidates” who support expansion.
Republican Gov. Sam Brownback vetoed an expansion bill in March that would have made approximately 150,000 low-income adults eligible for KanCare coverage. Lawmakers attempted to override the veto but fell a few votes short.
When the 2018 session convenes in January, advocates may attempt to gain support among lawmakers concerned about the cost of expansion by proposing an increase in the state’s tobacco tax to pay for it, Jordan said.
Brownback’s expected departure for a State Department post in the Trump administration would put the issue in the hands of Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, who also has been a strong opponent of KanCare expansion.
Even so, advocates hope that Colyer’s perceived need to differentiate himself from the unpopular Brownback ahead of the 2018 election might prompt him to reconsider.
If that is a possibility, Colyer gave no indication of it during a recent interview. When asked about polls showing broad support for expansion among Kansas voters, he said, “It depends on how you ask Kansans the question.”
“What Kansans have made clear is that they don’t want more government, they want smaller government,” Colyer said. “But they want results.”
STAFFORD COUNTY — A Kansas man was injured in an accident just after 5:30 a.m. Friday in Stafford County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2014 Kenworth semi driven by Toby Jon. Butcher, 53, Lubbock, TX., was eastbound on Kansas 19 just west of the U.S. 281 Junction.
The semi drifted into the westbound lane and sideswiped a 2012 Chevy passenger car driven by Johnny J. Long, 54, Hudson, entered the north ditch hit a power pole, traveled into a field where and caught fire.
Long was transported to the hospital in Great Bend. Butcher was not injured. Both drivers were properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.
