The Hutch News is pretty bad. Mary Rintoul is one of the more sensible of the bunch. She was the only one who believed that Sadamn needed to go. The rest just hate conservatives.
It seemed to me like they were *trying* to provoke threats against Connie Morris. In this one they basically called her a Nazi without coming right out and doing so. They are very good at that sort of thing.
I think they should publish a compilation of some of their better hit-pieces. Sort of a coffee table book for liberals. They could call it "Fear and Loathing at The Hutchinson News". Or "Race-Baiting for Dummies."
http://www.hutchnews.com/past/05-04-2003/opinion/opinion2.html Cinco de Mayo
Hispanic holiday takes on sense of urgency
Last May, Connie Morris was a storm cloud on the Colorado border, the National Socialist Movement a rumble in the northern Plains.
Not this May.
Communities across Kansas celebrate Cinco de Mayo this weekend. But this year, the festival takes on a sense of urgency.
Because after years of growth and integration, Kansas Hispanics suddenly find themselves under attack from the right.
Few people gave Morris, a St. Francis Republican, much of a chance in her State Board of Education primary last summer against incumbent I.B. "Sonny" Rundell. But Morris found a message that appealed to aging western Kansas whites - stop educating the children of illegal immigrants.
A 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling found it illegal for public schools to deny education to the children of undocumented aliens. Morris said that she was aware of the ruling, but in the end, she didn't care; she wanted to play on the region's fear of Hispanics and Asians, and it worked. She knocked Rundell out of the election.
Hispanic advocates expressed outrage, but too late. No Democrats filed for the Western Kansas seat on the board, and Rundell lost badly in a November write-in campaign.
Now a woman who believes immigrant children should only be given one year in school to learn English holds a seat on the State Board of Education.
But those views appear mild compared to the tenets of the Nationalist Socialist Movement, which showed up on the Statehouse steps for a summer rally.
A neo-Nazi group from Minneapolis, Minn., the NSM advocates "nothing less than the absolute domination of the white, civilized areas of the earth by the Aryan white man." On a sweltering August day, a group of 21 Nazis attracted about 50 sympathizers and 500 protesters at the Capitol.
The state's minority leaders responded quickly and firmly to the National Socialist Movement, but the threat continues. As one Nazi leader put it, "Kansas is a good environment for us and our message."
Kansas Hispanics celebrate their heritage this weekend, and well they should. They contribute to the vitality of this state.
But they also need to begin planning for their future in Kansas - a state where Connie Morris and neo-Nazis no longer rumble in the distance; they're upon us, and they see the state's growing racial diversity as a problem, not an asset.