esquire | If it were possible for Congress to place a state into some kind of democratic receivership, Kansas would be a really good candidate. Governor Sam Brownback—excuse me, twice-elected, god help us, Governor Sam Brownback—turned the state into a lab rat for all the worst policy ideas produced by the modern conservative Republican party. The legislature went gleefully along for the ride. The state has cratered and, as it cratered, it sank deeper and deeper into madness. The latest chapter in this sad saga came when the state's Supreme Court began to rule that, all Randian wet-dreams aside, Kansas had an obligation to fund its public schools at a decent level. If you think that the legislature response was to carefully consider what it's been doing over the past few years and pull itself back from a course of action that is so obviously harming so many of the people that put it into office, then you probably live in a state not presided over by the likes of Sam Brownback.
