Serial killer appeal. Legislators and showmanship. Cancelling Mark Twain?

By Morgan Chilson | senior reporter

By Mark McCormick

Mark Twain once said of the praise he’d received: “I do love compliments, yet I’m often embarrassed to say what I think to the person when I get a compliment, I so often feel that they somehow, have not gone far enough.”

Twain just may be correct. Earnest Hemingway once said of Twain that “all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called 'Huckleberry Finn.'” Twain created the nation’s plainspoken, irreverent, and quintessential voice.

Critics consider "Huckleberry Finn" one of the most resounding antiracist novels by an American, and as such, Twain poses a conundrum for people trying to hide elements of the nation’s racial past and present. Namely, will they have to cancel this archetypal American?

TOPEKA — The Kansas Supreme Court took up the latest appeal of serial killer John Robinson Sr. a quarter century after he was sentenced to death and a decade after the state’s highest court upheld his capital murder sentence in the slaying of a woman found in a barrel on Robinson’s farm near La Cygne.

In one of the longest trials in Kansas history, a Johnson County jury in 2002 convicted Robinson of killing three women. The jury recommended that he be put to death and District Judge John Anderson III, the son of a former governor, imposed the sentence in 2003. In Missouri, Robinson subsequently entered pleas in the deaths of five other women that resulted in a series of life sentences.

HUTCHINSON — Rep. Brooklynne Mosley stepped into the Prairie Pavilion arena at the Kansas State Fair Saturday, leading a heifer around the ring while smiling broadly. 

Mosley, a Lawrence Democrat, had never spent time with cattle until she began working with two 4-H participants, Genayla Warnken of Manhattan and Makenzie Fishburn of Lawrence to learn about how to show a halter-broken heifer. 

Mosley and four other Kansas legislators participated in the fair’s annual Legislative Showmanship competition. 

Declining birth rates mean fewer students, and that means more districts grappling with whether to close or merge schools.

Driven largely by declining birth rates but worsened by several other factors, district and school board decisions to close and consolidate schools can draw anger and anxiety from parents and students. Many states are stopping short of forcing mergers, but taking a variety of steps to encourage them. 

The cost of U.S. military operations in Iran has exceeded $40 billion and the war will continue to cost taxpayers between $2 billion and $3 billion per month, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The ongoing bombing campaign, which President Donald Trump launched alongside the Israeli government in February, has also significantly reduced American military weapons stockpiles, according to the analysis.

FBI Director Kash Patel sidestepped questions about FBI agents at polling places in the midterm elections at a U.S. Senate hearing Tuesday that also featured a tense exchange between GOP Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey.

Several Democratic senators wanted assurance from Patel, under oath, that the FBI would not send agents into polling places.

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