TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) A former Kansas Court of Appeals research attorney faces a disciplinary hearing for derogatory comments she tweeted during the same kind of hearing last year for former state Attorney General Phill Kline. WIBW-AM reports the hearing for Sarah Peterson Herr was scheduled Tuesday for Dec. 20. Herr posted the comments last Nov. 15 while Kline was appearing before the Kansas Supreme Court in a disciplinary hearing. The court was considering whether to suspend Kline’s law license for his conduct during investigations of abortion providers while he was attorney general and Johnson County district attorney. Herr apologized and…
Author: KMAN Staff
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) Wichita educators and students are mourning the death of a middle school social studies teacher who was killed in a car crash in southwest Missouri. Beth Adamson died Monday in an accident at 11:45 about 10 miles north of Joplin, Mo., after her husband failed to stop at a stop sign and their car was broadsided by a pickup truck on Missouri 43. The 50-year-old Adamson had worked for the Wichita School District for 25 years, most of that time as a fourth-grade teacher at Mueller Elementary School. Last year she became a social studies teacher at…
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) One Kansas man has been sentenced to prison and a second has received three years’ probation in separate cases of Social Security fraud. The U.S. Attorney’s office says L.T. Baker, 54, of Wichita, and Paul David Lieder, 40, of Hillsboro, were both sentenced Tuesday in federal court in Wichita. Both had pleaded guilty to lying to the Social Security Administration to improperly receive disability payments. Besides receiving a one-year prison sentence, Baker was also ordered to repay the more than $66,000 he received in disability benefits. Baker admitted using a slightly altered Social Security number to claim…
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) A Kansas Senate committee has approved Gov. Sam Brownback’s nomination of his chief counsel for an open seat on the state Court of Appeals. The Judiciary Committee’s voice vote sends the nomination of Caleb Stegall to the full Senate. The chamber is expected to debate and vote on the appointment Wednesday. Republicans dominate the committee and the full Senate, so the GOP governor’s nomination of Stegall wasn’t likely to meet much opposition. But he faced questions about comments in 2005 in an online magazine he edited that encouraged “forcible resistance” to court orders in order to save…
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) Critics of a Kansas law requiring new voters to provide proof of their U.S. citizenship when registering want legislators to repeal it during their special session. The American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday that lawmakers must act because more than 15,000 legal residents have their voter registrations on hold because they haven’t provided proof of their citizenship. Joining the ACLU were the NAACP and Equality Kansas, the state’s leading gay-rights group. Those groups already have told Secretary of State Kris Kobach that they might file a federal lawsuit. Kobach contends the law prevents election fraud. Lawmakers were…
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) Butler County Sheriff Kelly Herzet says he believes a man suspected of shooting and wounding of one of his deputies might be headed to Liberal, where he has several friends. Herzet says officers searching for 41-year-old Jan Kilbourne on Tuesday are pursuing tips about the Kilbourne’s location. The sheriff told KWCH Tuesday morning that his department currently is concentrating on contacting Kilbourne’s family and friends. Kilbourne is suspected in the shooting early Monday after a deputy pulled over a car carrying three people on U.S. Highway 54, about 16 miles east of Wichita. The deputy was shot…
GARDEN CITY, Kan. (AP) Boarding numbers at Garden City Regional Airport continue to fly high, about 1.5 years after the airport began offering flights to Dallas/Fort Worth. Airport boardings began to improve soon after American Eagle began offering two daily flights to Dallas/Fort Worth in April 2012. In the first year, the airport recorded 18,000 boardings, compared with 11,690 in all of 2011. The Garden City Telegram reports that in the first seven months of 2013, the airport has recorded 13,726 passengers. Aviation director Rachelle Powell is estimating the airport will have about 23,000 boardings this year. Before the change…
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) The Spencer Museum of Art is planning an exhibit by James Turrell, who’s a sensation in the art world this year. New York City’s Guggenheim museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston are all featuring installations of Turrell’s work this year. On Sept. 15, the Spencer museum at the University of Kansas will open its own Turrell exhibit in the museum’s Central Court. Called “James Turrell: Gard Blue,” the work is a projection of blue light in an enclosed space that appears in a room constructed specifically for…
SALINA, Kan. (AP) Salina police are investigating the theft of more than $1,000 in jet fuel from a fuel business. Police Lt. Scott Siemsen says 144 gallons of fuel were stolen from two trucks at Flower Aviation between June 20 and Aug. 14. The Salina Journal reported the business reported the theft Friday. Siemsen says the fuel costs $7 a gallon; leaving a loss of $1,008.
EMPORIA, Kan. (AP) Bestselling author James Patterson has given $48,000 to pay for scholarships for Emporia State University teaching students. Patterson has funded similar scholarships at several other universities, including Vanderbilt. Patterson said in a news release that his passion is to “get more and more kids excited about reading” and that training teachers is “essential to that mission.” Patterson’s books include the Alex Cross and Woman’s Murder Club series for adults and Maximum Ride, Witch Wizard and Middle School series for young adults. At Emporia State, eight students will receive $6,000 each. The recipients are Michelle Berg of Wichita,…