City Hall fence, Eric Schmitt, Josh Hawley: You gotta laugh at Kansas City’s news week

File photos

City Hall fence in downtown KC

Kansas City recently installed a massive chain-link fence around the City Hall building at 12th and Oak. We assume it’s meant to keep protesters off the grounds, but it may send a different message: Sure, it keeps the people locked out, but it keeps the mayor, the City Council and city manager locked in.

Eric Schmitt, Donald Trump versus the FBI

Where Texas goes, Missouri follows? Or more precisely, where Ken Paxton, the scandal-plagued and under-indictment Texas attorney general, goes, soon follows Eric Schmitt. Missouri’s attorney general signed onto an amicus brief written by Paxton in support of Donald Trump in the ongoing battle over classified documents found by the FBI when it raided his Mar-a-Lago compound earlier this year. Schmitt’s spokesman said his boss is proud to join the effort, and as for the merits? “The arguments in the amicus speak for themselves.”

They sure do. They come down to one claim: Under President Joe Biden, the FBI can’t be trusted. And here we thought the folks with the credibility problem were those who signed on to far-fetched legal arguments, such as the absurd case Paxton brought challenging the 2020 election. Schmitt joined that one, too. You would think being laughed out of court once would be enough. On Wednesday night, the 11th Circuit — a three-judge panel, including two judges appointed by Trump — rejected team Trump’s arguments and told the DOJ it can have access to the classified documents as the case proceeds.

Chick-fil-A and KCI Airport

This week, the Kansas City Aviation Department released a map of the 50 or vendors at the new single terminal for Kansas City International Airport. And Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley lamented the year-old news that Chick-fil-A wasn’t among them.

“Are you serious?’‘ Missouri’s junior senator wrote on Twitter. “No @ChickfilA at the new KCI because the company is too conservative…”

How about no Chick-Fil-A because the concessions operator — Vantage Airport Group — was wise enough to avoid sending a message of intolerance when it had plenty of other options for adding good eats to the new terminal. The Kansas City’s LGBTQ commission had pushed back on Chick-Fil-A because owner Dan Cathy’s has invested so much in anti-LGBTQ issues over the years. And since when is supporting discrimination a baked-in element of conservatism, anyway?

Hawley’s faux outrage notwithstanding, Cathy has the right to spend his money as he chooses. But then, Vantage Airport Group had the right to leave his company off its plans, too.

Josh Hawley’s confused about gender(s)

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, had a curious question for Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson back during her confirmation hearings. “What makes a woman a woman?” Blackburn asked. We suppose it was just one more attempt by the GOP to stir up the polarizing issue of gender identity, something that the party keeps doing, and sometimes with unintentionally humorous results.

Take Sen. Josh Hawley’s campaign email from this past week. Outraged over the “socialists lies” supposedly being spread through public schools, the senator asks supporters to take a stand on an urgent question: “YES — Keep transgender propaganda OUT” or “No — Teach young children there is more than one gender.”

We didn’t realize anyone was arguing there is just one gender, but we get it: It’s hard to keep even basic ideas straight when you’re spending every day stirring the pot from dawn to dusk.

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