BOGUE, Kan. - Full disclosure. It's been a long time since I was pregnant. In fact, I can't remember when. But I was bedside at my oldest daughter's arrival at Doc Limes' home-town maternity clinic.

I claim only to have been an amazed (and nervous) spectator, but I think I began to appreciate more the courage, strength, and miracle of women. Whatever men say, the best of us haven't a clue beyond that. Bill Cosby once asked Carol Burnett what birth pains were like.

"'Grab your lower lip," she said. "Now pull it over your head." Men know little about pregnancy or childbirth beyond the mechanics instigating the fact (and I've heard they're often klutzes there, too.).

Despite that, a gritty bunch of self-assured males in priestly vestment are confident artificial birth control is a sin. Whether they think it's a mortal or a venial sin is hard to pin down. However, their missionary position is this: sex for fun is agin' God's rules. It grates on God's nerves. Good women should wrestle in the hay strictly to procreate and bear children to fill pews today, coffers tomorrow. Otherwise, as Hamlet would advise, "Get thee to a nunnery."

BOGUE, Kan. - Fellow Kansas Free Press contributor and an Ogallala irrigator and I have had an interesting exchange over whether reducing appropriated water "rights" would constitute a "taking" as per the U.S. Constitution 4th Amendment.

As I believe I have reported, then KS Attorney General Carla Stovall was asked about that as one part of a question carried on my behalf by then KS Sen. Stan Clark. In essence, Stovall declined to answer plainly, but said it would depend on the circumstances. In the Cheyenne Bottoms case, both junior and senior water rights were reduced by the DWR without awarding a taking to senior right holders. To summarize, it was a voluntary settlement that avoided the courts. That could--but almost assuredly won't--happen on the scale necessary to end the mining of the Ogallala. What then, can be done?

In March of 2003, John C. Peck, highly respected law professor at KU School of Law, presented a paper in Kyoto, Japan, to the 3rd World Water Forum entitled: Property Rights in Groundwater--Some Lessons from the Kansas Experience.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am enclosing a statement I made nearly 12 years ago to the assembled Kansas Water Authority and Kansas Water Office as chairperson of the Solomon River Basin Advisory Committee. I believe it was enough of an embarrassment at the time to cause then Governor Bill Graves to assemble a task force to try to deal with the issue. That, of course, failed -- as have other efforts. Governor Brownback's approach is standard fare, and will amount to the same "pious rhetoric," as I have learned to call it, with meager results. The current approach is more "local" control, which I have perhaps impolitely termed "the drunks running the liquor store." In effect, a tiny minority has been in control, even though they do live "locally." It is past time for a more honest effort. That will amount to establishing IGUCAs, reducing water appropriation rights over a realistic time frame without compensation for a "taking" since (1) nothing in a water appropriation right guarantees the initial amount of water permitted forever, (2) the statutes clearly say an appropriation right does not constitute ownership of water, and (3) the broad philosophy of Kansas water law is one of a public trust. It is long past time the "takings" argument has been challenged, even if that requires going to the courts.

If you agree, I encourage you to send the link to this KansasFreePress.com article to your state senators and representatives -- and to any others you think would be interested. (The original full statement follows as presented in the year 2000)

BOGUE, Kan. - A Jan.11 writer to Reader Forum [Hays Daily News] blustered about "non-factual distortion" by the Obama administration and supporters, then made his own claims.

[CLAIM: "All the money from the richest 400 Americans wouldn't pay our bills for a week."] In 2011 the richest 400 were together worth $1.5 trillion. (Forbes Magazine) Current annual federal spending is estimated at $3.6 trillion; state at $1.43; local, $1.63 trillion. So, the 400's wealth would fund all federal spending for 5 months, state for one year, local for 11 months. All federal, state, and local spending for about 3 months.

Incidentally, the richest 400 gained 12 percent. from 2010 to 2011. Since 2006, their net worth increased by $250 billion, about 17 percent. On the other hand, "Over the past five years Americans, on average, have seen no disposable income growth if you adjust for population and inflation. This also explains why they're spending like it's 2006 -- because they don't have more money to spend. No wonder the recovery continues to feel like a recession: that's an awfully long time to go without a raise."

BOGUE, Kan. - In his speech last December at Osawatomie KS High School, President Obama cited Theodore Roosevelt's remarks there a century earlier.

Republican President Theodore Roosevelt served from 1901 to 1909. In 1912, representing the Bull Moose Party, he lost to Woodrow Wilson--the only time a 3rd Party candidate has finished as high as second. Every place I looked, Theodore Roosevelt ranks in the top 10 US Presidents, and in none lower than 6th.

In 2010, 238 participating presidential scholars at Siena College Research Institute concluded: "Teddy Roosevelt had, more than any other president, the 'right stuff,' and tops the collective ranking of a cluster of personal qualities including imagination, integrity, intelligence, luck, background and being willing to take risks." He is one of the four U.S. Presidents honored on Mt. Rushmore.

Roosevelt was an environmentalist. He led in establishing 5 national parks, 18 national monuments, and 150 National Forests. I have little doubt as President today he would work with climate scientists to deal with the reality of global warming. As governor of Kansas, he would demand something beyond pious rhetoric to end mining of the Ogallala. But...

BOGUE, Kan. - Here's a three-part essay about gifts: wildly exaggerated, sadly expensive, and stupid.

Part I

You probably won't remember, but a couple of columns back I wrote that estimates of new jobs promised by the Keystone XL pipeline carrying tar sands oil varied wildly. Last week, Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) claimed 20,000. So where'd he get that?
CNNMoney took a closer look. The 20,000 estimate comes from TransCanada, the corporation who would build the pipeline. They figured 13,000 construction jobs plus 7,000 manufacturing jobs making pipe, etc. But, whoa.

In 'TransCanada-speak' 20,000 means 10,000 jobs lasting for the two years of construction. Using the same formula, one job lasting 5 years would be 5 jobs.

BOGUE, Kan. - Today, piles. No, not the physiological kind. Although the comparison will be useful.

What prompted this column was an unsolicited, anonymously authored email forwarded from an Ellis deep thinker. Well, maybe not so much. It goes like this --

A kindly (or smug, your choice) man accosts his neighbors' "little girl." Both parents, "liberal Democrats," stand by. He asks her what her goal in life is. Wants to be President, she says. Okay, the kindly-smug man asks her what she'd do. Give food and shelter to the homeless, she says. Her parents nod approvingly.

Kindly-smug man says, 'Wow. What a worthy goal. You don't have to wait until you're President to do that!" She can mow his lawn and pull weeds for $50 bucks. Then, he says he'll escort her to where the "homeless guy hangs out," so she can give him the $50 for "food and a new house."

Little girl thinks it over. "Well, why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do
the work, and you can just pay him the $50?"

Kindly-smug man says, "Welcome to the Republican Party."

Hoo boy, gotcha!

See, it's just that simple, right? Homeless and hungry people are all alike. Lazy bums won't work. Democrats (aka liberals, progressives, socialists, commies) don't get it. Right?

This article is a continuation and the third in a series of three. To read Part 1, click here, and Part II, click here.

BOGUE, Kan. - I had hoped the opinion we sought from Stovall would also deal with the problem of irrigation lobby dominance of water politics. I sought a one-person, one vote representational scheme but unfortunately the Kansas State Attorney General disagreed. "The definition of an eligible voter found in K.S.A. 82a-1021 does not violate the one man, one vote rule of the United States Constitution." Unfortunately, only a tiny fraction of the people living in the area directly affected by GMD policies, the thousands who have stake in the future and an opinion about what should be done and when, have any vote in GMD decisions. That ought to change.

As to takings, the AG essentially ducked the question: "Whether a reduction of a water right constitutes a compensable taking depends upon the purpose for which the reduction is made. Without consideration of the purpose for which the reduction is made, no balancing test can be applied to determine whether the taking is compensable."

In other words, a critical issue -- whether private disputes over water appropriation rights takes precedence over the Chief Engineer acting in the broader long term stewardship of the resource -- was not, and hasn't been, addressed, either by the Attorney General or by the courts. It must.

Kansas Groundwater Management Districts once argued that they, not the Chief Engineer, had primary authority to regulate water withdrawals in their respective districts. Some may believe that today. The following should clarify the matter.

BOGUE, Kan. - It is true that an appropriation permit may be sold, but the Chief Engineer at the Division of Water Resources (often called the Czar) is not legally obligated to approve the original amount appropriated.

I assume Kansas Administrative Regulation 5-3-9 approved in 1994 (which has the full force and effect of law) is still in force. In pertinent part it says that "unless otherwise provided by regulation, it shall be considered in the public interest that only the safe yield of any source or water supply ... shall be appropriated.

Authorization of the regulation can also be found in KSA 82a-706a -- which dates to 1957! In other words, as I have written before in a statement to the gathered Kansas Water Authority in July of 2000, the Chief Engineer has had the responsibility to enforce safe-yield in the public interest but has never really lived up to his responsibility by declaring intensive groundwater use areas (IGUCA) and reducing water use.

This set of articles is my extended, three-installment comment on Diane Wahto's earlier and elucidating remarks (Water Shortages, the High Plains Aquifer, and the Governor's Summit) about the hydrology and the overall scenario concerning a vital and disappearing resource: the Ogallala Aquifer. Much of what I will have to say comes from the days of my earlier, and more hopeful involvement at the lowest bureaucratic level of Kansas water governance -- the Basin Advisory Committee. Since one cannot reliably predict the future, logically speaking, we do not know where Governor Brownback's initiative will lead. In some sense, it will be like locking the barn door after too many of the horses have left. To put it bluntly, I see little in what the Governor has proposed so far that differs from the pious rhetoric of the past several decades by those who could have actually done something to bring genuine stewardship.

BOGUE, Kan. - The disappearing Ogallala Aquifer. Well, where to begin. For nearly 18 years, I served on the Solomon River Basin Advisory Committee (BAC), the last few years as chair.

In Kansas, and I suspect elsewhere, the Ogallala depletion problem is basically -- as un-politically correct as it may be to say it -- that 'the drunks are running the liquor store.'