By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill's mischievous streak showed again Tuesday as she made fun of Missouri's state lawmakers, primarily Republicans.

By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

Poor White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. His shot at Sarah Palin Tuesday made not only him but his boss look bad, too.

Gibbs mimicked Palin by writing a few words on his left hand, then showed them off during Tuesday's press briefing.

By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist

Here's something interesting: While Mayor Mark Funkhouser mulls the pros and cons of getting rid of the earnings tax in Kansas City, Mayor Joe Reardon in Wyandotte County says he'd love to have one.

By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board

A leapfrog development proposal pending at City Hall has some serious consequences for Kansas City’s future.

If the City Council responsibly rejects a questionable Northland annexation request on Thursday, the elected officials will prove two things to the public.

By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board

Ukraine’s Orange Revolution looks to be dying in the same manner in which it was born: With a western-leaning candidate claiming vote fraud following a three percentage point victory for pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych.

By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist

Here's Lamar Alexander from Tennessee, the 3rd ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, telling the N.Y. Times that he is skeptical of "grand legislative policy schemes," specifically comprehensive health care reform.

By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

Toyota announced Tuesday it will do the right thin and recall thousands of its Prius model cars. It's another black eye for the automaker.

This one stings, because the Prius is almost universally loved by its buyers as a model of what a "green" car should be: quiet and clean.

By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

The public still doesn't know why Karen Pletz was fired as president and CEO of the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences.

But we do know that both Pletz and the university's board made plenty of mistakes the past few years.

Dean Hubbard, Kansas City Star Editorial Advisory Board Columnist

On the list of “ideas” for saving money Missouri’s Commissioner for Higher Education, Robert Stein, circulated is closing institutions and forcing some state schools to go private. There are good reasons why such draconian suggestions have never gotten off the ground in the past, both in Missouri and elsewhere.

The Star's Tuesday editorial

China has gone into one of its periodic snits over Washington’s support for the democratic, self-governing island of Taiwan.

At issue is a U.S. decision to sell Taiwan $6.4 billion in helicopters, anti-missile systems and other weapons, a deal that was actually set in motion by the Bush administration.

By the Kansas City Star editorial board

The president of a local osteopathic medical school unknown to many Kansas Citians earned nearly $1.2 million a year. A top aide was paid $616,000 in a single year.

Administrative expenditures skyrocketed more than five times as fast as academic expenses. “Miscellaneous” expenses piled up to $1.4 million one year.

By E. Thomas McClanahan, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

Another groundless prediction by the IPCC: First it was the bogus melting-glaciers claim. Now it's the prediction that global warming in North Africa will cut rain-fed crop production by half by 2020. Turns out it had no basis. Reporters, mainly British, are finding that this sort of casual sloppiness seemed the norm for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Walter Russell Mead:

By E. Thomas McClanahan, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

Missouri Democratic Rep. Ike Skelton is facing one of his toughest re-election fights in years, which is not surprising given his votes in favor of the stimulus, TARP and cap and trade. After a year of overreaching by the Dems in Washington, the tide is running strongly against them. Not surprisingly, Skelton, who met Monday with the Star Editorial Board, seems quietly embattled.

By Matthew Schofield, Kansas City Star editorial board columnist

The vote tallies aren't so different from what they were reported to be in 2004, in the days that lead to the Orange Revolution.

By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist

Ike Skelton paid the Star editorial board a visit this morning. Some nuggets from the long-term-but-beleaguered Democrat from Missouri's 4th Congressional district, who has two primary opponents and will be facing his toughest challenge in years this November:

By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist

Ron Thornburgh, the affable and capable Kansas secretary of state, is leaving early to take a private sector job, report our friends at Prime Buzz.

Dean Hubbard, Kansas City Star Editorial Board Advisory Panel Columnist

On January 22 Missouri’s Commissioner for Higher Education, Robert Stein, circulated a list of “ideas” he had been instructed to gather from “education and government leaders” regarding strategies for coping with the state’s looming financial crisis.

By Arturo Mora, Kansas City Star Midwest Voices columnist 2009

Future Tea Party presidential candidate Sarah Palin used some twisted logic to defend conservative shock jock Rush Limbaugh’s repeated use of the word “retard” as “satire.” It’s not so much the word that offends her, I guess, as it is the political affiliation of whoever says it.

By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

The Super Bowl ads were a dull bunch in 2010, with a surprising commercial for Google standing out as the best one broadcast Sunday night.

Yes, Google.

By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

The Tim/Pam Tebow Super Bowl ad was broadcast in the first quarter Sunday. It was a winner.

It didn't contain the hard-sell for the Tebows' pro-life position. So much for all the concerns by the National Organization for Women, which wanted CBS to pull the spot.

By Glen Enloe, Kansas City Star Midwest Voices columnist 2010

“How’s that hope-y, change-y stuff workin’ out for you?” Sarah Palin asked at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, TN, recently.

Posted by Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A gas line exploded [@ 12:20EST] on Sunday at a power plant in Middletown, Connecticut and local media reported dozens of casualties.

By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

Sarah Palin didn't say much new during her appearances Saturday at the Tea Party Convention.
But that's all right.

Palin made a news splash simply by showing up for a keynote speech, and burnishing her ultra-conservative credentials.

By The Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

The Obama administration’s surprising budget for NASA could provide a jump-start for the space program by encouraging greater involvement by commercial aerospace firms.

By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board

Behind the scenes, some politicians and business leaders in Kansas City are discussing intriguing ideas on how to overhaul the city’s cumbersome economic development efforts.

By Lewis Diuguid, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

Kelli Wright thinks “cultural humility” can help people better appreciate America’s rich diversity.

It’s a twist on the better-known and more-widely discussed idea of “cultural competence.”

By Angela Rouse, Kansas City Star Midwest Voices columnist

In this former teacher’s eyes, Forbes.com has committed the ultimate sin. Helen Coster highlights eight millionaires who happen to be high school dropouts in her story, “Millionaire High School Dropouts.”

By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel

Not an environmentalist treatise, but rather the title of a collection of eight of Laura van den Berg’s stories, with water flowing through them. The title comes from story number eight; a message written by a character on a postcard picture of a desert. Eight characters “…duck underneath the surface” of life to sort things out.

By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board

Missouri’s working poor families don’t have easy access to essential services like health care and child care.

But one “service” for the poor is blossoming in the state. Weak regulatory laws have turned Missouri into a magnet for payday loan shops. The state ranks 5th in the nation for the number of payday loans issued per capita.

By Jarid Manos, Special to The Kansas City Star

Ideas, like our last gasping prairies, can be breathed to life.

The Kansas City Star’s call for a million-acre Buffalo Commons National Park in the old Smoky Hill River country of western Kansas is visionary and practical. It’s what our country needs for jobs and healing.