KC Buzz Blog

Art, politics collide

  Sometimes you can find politics in strange places.

  In a New York Times profile, actress Patricia Heaton claims she was unaware her statements about embryonic stem cell research would be used in a Missouri political commercial critical of Amendment 2.

  She also claims she was unaware the ad, which included baseball players Mike Sweeney and Jeff Suppan, would be seen as a response ad to the Michael J. Fox ad supporting Claire McCaskill.

  The story says Heaton and Fox have exchanged letters, but still hold different views about embryonic stem cell research, which Heaton opposes.

  The same Arts section of the Times includes a story about Steven Holl, the architect, focusing on his design for the Nelson-Atkins addition, which the Times thinks is pretty cool.

   Posted by Dave Helling

Sunday buzz

In The Star:

• McClatchy's Matthew Schofield and Nancy A. Youssef analyze the possible effects of Saddam Hussein's hanging.
• Rick Montgomery looks at the "truthiness" of 2006.
• Steve Kraske's Sunday column lists memorable quotes from area politicians and such.

Elsewhere:

• John F. Burns of The New York Times has a must-read on Hussein headlined: "Feared and Pitiless; Fearful and Pitiable."
• The Washington Post reports that frustrated by poor federal cooperation, U.S. states and cities are building their own network of intelligence centers led by police to help detect and disrupt terrorist plots.
• The Post also has a story starting: President Bush's legacy is sure to be defined by his wielding of U.S. military power in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is another, much softer and less-noticed effort by his administration in foreign affairs: a dramatic increase in U.S. aid to Africa. The president has tripled direct humanitarian and development aid to the world's most impoverished continent since taking office and recently vowed to double that increased amount by 2010 -- to nearly $9 billion.

Posted by Keith Chrostowski

Saturday buzz

In The Star:

• Rick Montgomery has a Saddam Hussein obit.
• Kevin Collison writes that now light rail has passed, civic leaders are jumping on the train, and some are even beginning to push it.

Elsewhere:

From the Los Angeles Times:

Hussein refused to wear a hood.

The charged silence that settled over the execution chamber was broken by an exchange between Hussein and four guards, who were apparently followers of Muqtada Sadr, the militant Shiite cleric whose father was killed by Hussein.

"Muqtada Sadr!" they cried out.

Hussein scoffed in reply.

His last word was a sarcastic "Muqtada," Iraqi High Tribunal Judge Munir Haddad. "And then he was hanged."

UPDATE: The New York Times has a second-by-second reconstruction of the hanging that says Hussein's last words were:

“Down with the traitors, the Americans, the spies and the Persians.”

It's a riveting story.

Posted by Keith Chrostowski

Hussein executed

     "Criminal Saddam was hanged to death," state-run Iraqiya television said in an announcement. The station played patriotic music and showed images of national monuments and other landmarks.

    The execution was carried out about 6 a.m. Saturday in Baghdad, or 9 p.m. Friday CST.

     More here and here. And here's a Los Angeles Times analysis.

Posted by Keith Chrostowski

KC's Erdman named to Missouri Board of Curators

   Warren Erdman, a prominent Kansas City businessman and former aid to Republican Sen. Kit Bond, was appointed Friday to the University of Missouri Board of Curators. Erdman, 48, is senior vice president of corporate affairs for the railway firm Kansas City Southern. He previously served as Bond's chief of staff and more recently served as co-chairman of Gov. Matt Blunt's Missouri State Government Review Commission that recommended ways to make state government more efficient.

Posted by Keith Chrostowski

What does Matt Blunt have against psychiatry?

   Fired Up! Missouri notes that the Matt Blunt administration has booked a Church of Scientology traveling museum into the Capitol Jan. 18 and 19.  The museum, called "Psychiatry: An Industry of Death", will set up shop next to the venerable Missouri State Museum on the Capitol's first floor.

Posted by Keith Chrostowski

This weekend in The Star's Ed pages

Editorial topics

• On MoHELA.
• On Kansas City's new trash pickup system.
• On the Missouri legislature's 2007 session.
• The Reader Advisory Panel's hopes and goals for 2007.
• On the Kansas City police academy.
• On trade restrictions.

Local columnists

• Saturday: Midwest Voices columnist Teresa Williams on mass transit.
• Sunday: Rhonda Chriss Lokeman on 2006, the Year of the Angry Man.
• Sunday: E. Thomas McClanahan with a look ahead to 2007.
• Tuesday: Mary Sanchez on abortion protests.

Friday's hanging thread

   Saddam Hussein's lawyers just said the former leader has been handed over to the Iraqis, the last step before he is to be hanged.
   Thoughts?

It was a big year for the FEC

   The Federal Election Commission more than doubled its civil penalties in 2006, imposing $6.2 million in fines for campaign-law violations. More than half — $3.8 million — came from penalties against Freddie Mac.

Posted by Keith Chrostowski

Top homeland security official from Missouri quits

   Philip Dine of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Tracy Henke, the Missourian who stirred controversy in a top homeland security job, has left the government to join her former boss, John Ashcroft, at The Ashcroft Group. When President Bush appointed Henke to coordinate U.S. national-disaster and anti-terrorist efforts with state and local officials, lawmakers of both parties questioned her experience, as well as Bush's bypassing of the Senate confirmation process.
    But that criticism was nothing compared to the uproar when Henke, from Moscow Mills, Mo., decreased homeland security grants for New York and Washington, while increasing them for some smaller cities and towns.
   "SHE GAVE US THE AX: New York's money cut by a woman from the sticks," complained a headline in the New York Daily News.

Posted by Keith Chrostowski