For longer than I can remember, there's been some terrified white person telling me that the immigrant hordes would come to this country, breed, and take over our democracy with either a repressive religious doctrine (Muslims) or their willingness to do hard labor for little pay (everyone who is brown). So, with this story about the Amish, I'm sure the local tea partiers will be including a talk about the "Butter Churning Menace" at their next meeting.
Apparently, while you were all watching the border, you should have been watching the undeveloped farming communities in your own backyard. Missouri now has the fourth-highest Amish population growth in the country, with 41 settlements and more than 10,000 Amish living in the state.
We're through the looking glass, KC.
Insult comic Ann Coulter put Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach on her team of "stunning Republican talent" during an interview with ABC News. Coulter really wants New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to run for president. But she's excited by a GOP "farm team" that includes the immigration-fixated Kobach.
But do you know who doesn't think Kobach is so swell? People who can write about politics without mentioning prison rape.
Kris Kobach's one-man war against illegal immigration took another hit yesterday, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to rule on a case that he was handling in California. The state has a law that gives discounted college tuition to kids who have spent three years of high school in the state and graduated. It's a pretty sweet deal.
But the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based anti-illegal-immigration group, thought it was too sweet because the law doesn't take into account the legal status of students receiving the benefits. And they did what any group with two nickels to rub together, trying to kick illegal immigrants out of the country, would do: They hired Kobach.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is lecturing tonight at the Lied Center at the University of Kansas. But he won't be getting a warm welcome. A "peaceful protest" is being organized in opposition to Kobach and his lecture, titled "State and Local Laws Discouraging Illegal Immigration: Their Economic
and Security Impact."
The protest is scheduled for 6 p.m. in the southeast parking lot of the Lied Center. Kobach is slated to speak at 7 as part of the KU School of Business Annual J.A. Vickers Sr. and Robert F. Vickers
Memorial Lecture. If you're interested in hearing him out, the lecture is free.
Kris Kobach's latest pet project -- bringing Arizona's controversial immigration law to Kansas -- was dealt a major blow on Tuesday when a committee sat on it, making it unlikely that the bill will resurface during this legislative session.
But Lance Kinzer -- the Olathe Republican whose lifework is presently devoted to rounding up Mexicans, killing strip clubs and making sure gays still feel alienated and discriminated against -- has vowed to not let the bill be dead, like, forever.
Kansas state Rep. Virgil Peck (R-Racistville) is a stupid, stupid man. He has to be to even joke about using hunters in helicopters to kill illegal immigrants. Murder is soooooooo hilarious.
According to The Kansas City Star, during a House Appropriations Committee discussion of controlling feral swine, a committee member discussed how hunters in helicopters are used to control the hog population. Here's what Peck said: "Looks like to me, if shooting these immigrating feral hogs works, maybe
we have found a (solution) to our illegal immigration problem." Zing!
Scary Missouri state Sen. Brian Nieves is in the "Dirty Dozen." But this list isn't one to be proud of. Nieves is one of 12 state legislators featured in the Southern Poverty Law Center's reported Attacking
the Constitution: State Legislators for Legal Immigration & the
Anti-Immigrant Movement.
Nieves made the cut for his members in State Legislators for Legal Immigration, a group that works closely with the Federation
for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), "which the SPLC has
designated as an anti-immigrant hate group because of its white
nationalist agenda and ties to racist groups." But what really landed Nieves on the list is his backing of a repeal of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship for all children born in the United States.
Kansas state Rep. Connie O'Brien (R-Tonganoxie) has really good eyesight. Like, so good, she can eyeball a person's immigration status from across the room. It's a neat party trick, but you probably shouldn't trot it out during debate over repealing a state law that allows the children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates. Because then you just look racist.
O'Brien recently told the House Federal and State Affairs Committee a story that she thought would bolster the position of those trying to repeal the bill. She recalled watching a Kansas City Community College student attempt to get financial aid without the identification she needed to do so. O'Brien said it was an example of an illegal trying to get aid. But how did she know this? By her skin color, that's how!
Well, that didn't take long at all: Less than two months into his tenure as Kansas secretary of state, illegal-immigration crusader Kris Kobach has already helped state lawmakers draft a knockoff of Arizona's controversial immigration bill.
Remember yesterday, when we told you how the Republicans' stronghold in Topeka meant certain and swift death for the recently introduced medical-marijuana bill? This is just like that, only the exact opposite.
Locally, everybody knows Kris Kobach. He's the granite-jawed savior of states struggling with large illegal-immigration populations that the federal government is too sheepish or ham-fisted to properly handle. Or he's the evil, scheming, nativist brown-people hater fixated on getting damnable aliens out of America's backyard. Whatever you think of him, you know who he is.
Nationally, however, Kobach isn't quite a household name. Folks in Chicago and Bangor probably aren't discussing Kobach's "papers, please" philosophy and shadowboxing with Kansas' nonexistent voter-fraud problems. But thanks to a solid profile in Newsweek, Kobach might be ready to make the jump to national anti-illegal celebrity. Maybe his handprints will be immortalized on the sidewalk outside FAIR's headquarters.
Kansas City is not a top-five beer city
Why you shouldn't eat the snow cones at Minute Maid Park
Soundgarden's sludgy sound, last night at The Midland (review)
Voltaire - the saloon, not the philosopher - opens tonight
Potbelly Sandwich Shop opens June 4 on the Plaza
So is Kansas City International a convenient airport or not?
Big Rip Brewing Co. expands the Northland's beer universe
Rob Zombie is coming to Cricket Wireless Amphitheater