I would like to clarify a point from a recent column authored by me that stated how Kansas Supreme Court Justices are selected. After explaining the make-up and purpose of the nominating committee, I wrote that Kansas was the only state with this unique type of selection committee. I was referring to the fact that it is the only state with a selection process dominated by the state bar. I regret that this was portrayed as intentional misinformation, when it was an unintentional omission. I believe both the proposed change and the current system have merit. My accuser’s assumption that everyone campaigning in a system where the people vote, including for judicial vacancies, would automatically accept ‘dark’ partian money is absurd. We could easily use the same system that 14 of the 2614 states whose judges are elected by popular vote without an affiliated party designation.
The main crux of my piece centered around Planned Parenthood’s curious interest in keeping the status quo in Kansas. I then posited reasons why that might be so. In the end, I left the decision with the voters.
As far as the comments about my not being an impartial or unbiased columnist, I submitted my remarks as a letter to the editor. Length most likely factored into the paper’s decision to run it in a guest column.
I take umbrage with plausible- sounding rhetoric meant to imply that an attorney is the only one “in the know.” My detractor should know that I, as a concerned citizen of Kansas, and a registered voter, am also concerned about the integrity of our judicial system. And that makes me plenty qualified to weigh in and research these matters without the need to flash credentials, or seek to belittle someone with a differing opinion.
I personally feel that we, the people, have surrendered too much of our freedoms to politicians, bureaucrats, and judges. Limiting the citizenry in its ability to govern by consent in handing that right over to a select few, is an example of that loss. My purpose was not to TELL people how to vote, but to give them information to help them make informed decisions. Respectfully submitted, Jan Koepke On Saturday early in the morning, as I am raising the flag in celebration of 250 years of American independence, I will say a prayer of thanks to God for having brought the light of wisdom to a majority of our U.S. Supreme Court justices, who on June 30th decided in favor of the plaintiffs in Trump, President of the United States et al. v Barbara et al. We are blessed and it is an even greater cause for celebration given the challenges our nation faces on nearly a daily basis from those who would divide this beautifully diverse society and who seem at times to have a blatant disregard for human rights and civic duty. In her concurring opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson quoted the writer Isabel Wilkerson, who in the year 2020 said: “Throughout human history... three caste systems have stood out to this day. The tragically accelerated, chilling, and officially vanquished caste system of Nazi Germany. The lingering, millennia-long caste system of India. And the shape-shifting, unspoken, race-based caste pyramid in the United States.”
Justice John Roberts, who wrote the Court’s opinion, explained that “Under the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, ‘all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside’.”
Justice Jackson concurred, adding that “in the aftermath of the Civil War, those who championed the Fourteenth Amendment...understood the assignment. Their work product... [quoting Eric Foner, 1988] ‘changed and broadened the meaning of freedom for all Americans’.”
I will raise the Stars and Stripes on this Fourth of July, contemplating Justice Jackson’s observation that “Black Americans [who] erected the political and intellectual scaffolding for the Fourteenth Amendment and, later, for the Black Civil Rights Movement more generally.... [were] visionaries [who] already understood themselves to be American citizens [by birth].”
I am inspired by her insightful words enshrining and paying homage to the Fourteen Amendment: “With this recognition, the U.S. Constitution finally got an anticaste engine. And with it the Nation gained a new font of legitimacy and vitality.”
I am thankful that God’s grace shone on America so brightly this week as this Supreme Court opinion was unveiled. Their decision is a welcome reminder that “liberty and justice for all” are not just words in our Pledge of Allegiance, but have a deep and fundamental reality and relevance still today 250 years after our founding fathers and mothers won the Revolutionary War. Sincerely, Robb Scott Council Grove