Opinion

GUEST COLUMN, Dane Hicks, Kansas Informer (kaninfo.com)

If you happen to be in a grocery store or gas station in Kansas the next few days, get a good look at the person at the checkout ahead of you. You –  and probably your yet-to-be born grandkids – may be paying off that person’s federal student loan.

President Biden again mocked a U.S. Supreme Court ruling yesterday and approved loan forgiveness for another 2,550 student loan borrowers in Kansas, bringing the total now to more than 26,000 Kansans who’ve been exempted from repaying the money they borrowed for their college educations. Biden’s actions nationwide yesterday sent the loans of another 277,000 borrowers –$7.4 billion – to the heaping pile of U.S. national debt.

L&T Publisher Earl Watt

Now an adult, former child actress Raven Symone raised eyebrows when she said she was not an African American but an American.

As expected, the race baiters chimed in, and she clarified her statement, but in a rare show of boldness, she didn’t cave.

“When I say that ‘African-American’ doesn’t align with me, that label, it doesn’t mean that I’m negating my Blackness or I’m not Black,” she said. “It means I am from this country. I was born here.”

She was born here. She is American.

GUEST COLUMN, Kim Baldwin, Kansas Farm Bureau

We adopted him from a nearby city animal shelter’s barn cat adoption program. They adopted him out to us because he was deemed “too bite-y” to be a house cat.

An expert mouser with some serious cattitude, he rotated his time between our shop, farm office and barn.

He viciously clawed my office chair one afternoon when I turned off his Netflix. He’d let you know when he was annoyed with you with his loud meow or his claws to the back of your leg. He also let you know when he wanted your affection when he’d sneak up behind you and bite you before flopping down by your feet expecting a belly rub.

GUEST COLUMN, David Folkenflik, National Public Radio (kaninfo.com)

NPR’s top news executive defended its journalism and its commitment to reflecting a diverse array of views on Tuesday after a senior NPR editor wrote a broad critique of how the network has covered some of the most important stories of the age.

“An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America,” writes Uri Berliner.

A strategic emphasis on diversity and inclusion on the basis of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation, promoted by NPR’s former CEO, John Lansing, has fed “the absence of viewpoint diversity,” Berliner writes.