Andanh.com

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama promises to remove barriers preventing homosexual men and women from serving in the armed forces.

Paving the way for this change, the House Armed Services Committee's Military Personnel Subcommittee held a recent hearing on the military's controversial "don't ask, don't tell" policy that allows gay men and lesbians to serve if they keep their sexual orientations private.

The "don't ask, don't tell" policy discourages the military from asking service members about sexual orientation, even though overt homosexual behavior remains grounds for removal from the military.

If elected, perhaps Obama will have more success than Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton, who made the same promise to voters in 1992.

Clinton repeated his promise only days before he took office. No doubt Clinton fully intended to keep his promise to overturn the ban on gays and lesbians serving in the military.

A couple of studies under way are addressing the future of transportation in Kansas. A key component of those studies involves resurgent passenger rail service, as more and more decision-makers recognize the role that high-speed passenger trains might play in these days of $4-a-gallon gasoline, high airfares and congested airways.

The Kansas Department of Transportation has asked Amtrak, the federally subsidized national railway company, to investigate the costs of state-sponsored rail service between Kansas City, Mo., and Fort Worth. This study is examining an extension of Amtrak's current Heartland Flyer route (from Fort Worth to Oklahoma City) on to Newton, where the route would connect with the Southwest Chief route, Amtrak's daily trains operating between Chicago and Los Angeles. The proposal would bring passenger rail service to Wichita for the first time since 1979, as well as to Emporia, which has not been served by Amtrak trains since the stop was eliminated in 1997. Other Kansas cities, including Strong City and Winfield, have petitioned KDOT in support of the route extension.

The National Association of Railroad Passengers deserves credit for obtaining the Amtrak/KDOT study, a monumental achievement.

Additionally, Senate President Steve Morris, R-Hugoton, has initiated a legislative economic impact study of a new transportation plan with specific emphasis on the "multiplier" of individual projects -- once again, emphasizing the importance of economic development in Kansas.

In 1987, I formed Economic Lifelines for a statewide lobbying effort in support of Gov. Mike Hayden's comprehensive highway program, an effort that paid off two years later in the passage of the $3.3 billion legislation. In the renewal of the program, now scheduled for the 2009 legislative session, a broader comprehensive study of our state's transportation system will seek the appropriate blend of capacity for highway, air and rail. Today we face challenges far greater than those of two decades ago.

"I don't think it's statistically possible to have a Democrat represent this district."

-- State Treasurer Lynn Jenkins, seeking the 2nd Congressional District seat nevertheless held by Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Topeka

"Get the heck out of my race."

-- Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Topeka, to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's interest in spending $1.2 million to help her re-election

"We expected negative ads, venom and blood. But so far it's been all quiet on the eastern front."

So who's the better foreign policy choice -- the Arizona senator who hung tough on Iraq, or the Illinois senator who says we should leave by 2010?

An unwavering supporter of the Iraq war, John McCain long called for more U.S. troops there. Back in 2006-07 he made a lonely stand in favor of a "surge" of 20,000 forces.

Barack Obama's supporters argue that what turned things around in Iraq was not the surge, but the decision by Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province to turn against al-Qaida.

That is hairsplitting. What turned things around was the counterinsurgency strategy of Gen. David Petraeus, aided by the surge.

So McCain is right that extra troops played a key role. But the real shift came when the White House belatedly adopted the Petraeus strategy after five years of Iraq disasters.

Between 1956 and 1991, Kansas motorists willingly paid "temporary" hikes in the federal gasoline tax knowing the money was being used to build the 42,000-mile interstate highway system. In 1991, Congress declared the highway system completed -- but the tax lived on and on, growing bigger and bigger.

No longer needed to build the interstate, the current federal gas tax of 18.4 cents per gallon -- double what it was in 1990 -- now funds a highway trust fund shell game that shifts about $323 million a year, and control over highways, from Kansas to Washington, D.C.

Kansas motorists would be better served by convincing Congress to repeal the obsolete federal gas tax and return control over highways to state and local governments.

Road building is historically a responsibility of state and local officials who are in a better position than Uncle Sam to determine the transportation needs of their motorists.

But as long as Washington holds the purse strings, Kansas and the other states will be denied control over their own affairs.