Hawver's Capitol Report Online


. . . reporting the politics and
government of Kansas.
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Here’s a quick rundown on just what Hawver’s Capitol Report Online is about:

It’s basically a sales tool for Hawver’s Capitol Report, the only news service focusing on Kansas government and politics. Owned by by Hawver News Company, HCR delivers news via newsletters and e-mail news flashes/updates.

So, we’re going to show you some of what HCR contains, including some Sample HCR Articles that have run in previous editions.

Read about our HCR Flash e-mail news service; it's all the buzz among folks in the know!

Note availability of a Free Trial Subscription, which we hope will interest you in subscribing to the state’s leading political/state government newsletter.

About Martin Hawver, well, tells you nearly everything there is worthwhile knowing about Martin Hawver, save for weight, and why his background has made HCR the “must read” of Kansas politics.

About Vickie Hawver, well, that tells you about the co-owner and managing partner of Hawver News Company and her role on HCR.

Subscribe...well, that’s pretty simple, isn’t it.

Check out What Subscribers Say--comments from an honor roll of leading Kansans who depend on HCR.

Oh, but Martin Hawver also turns out to be an entertaining, informative, and pretty well-known public speaker, and if your Kansas-based group is interested in political humor, government humor, or even just understanding the landscape in the ever-more-confusing world of splinter group politics, you’ll want to see the page called Speaker Availability.

What? You didn’t know that Hawver also produces a weekly column that is published by many Kansas newspapers? Well, jump right to Newspaper Syndicated Columns, and see what you’ve missed, or, if you happen to own a newspaper, see what you can get for your readers–before they appear in this category.

Look around, kick the tires, contact us for a free trial subscription. We think we can get you hooked...

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Martin Hawver

July 2, 2009
(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers on June 29, 2009)


When it just doesn’t feel right

We’re all Americans, and Kansans here, right?

You know how sometimes you read about something happening that…just doesn’t feel right. It’s just not how we do things in America and in Kansas.

It’s probably one of the beauties of the Constitution. You really don’t’ have to have studied it at length; you can tell if something is unconstitutional by the way it feels in your stomach. It’s that “this doesn’t feel right” sense that we Americans and Kansans have.

The Kansas Supreme Court apparently has that sense, and at least on one occasion, the Kansas Legislature didn’t.

The case was a guy in Emporia, who on July 6, 2006, was called out of the passenger seat of a car in a parking lot at an Emporia convenience store by an officer who learned that there was an outstanding warrant for the passenger’s arrest.

Nothing fancy here, the guy was wanted by police, he was arrested. But, because some legislators were interested in “getting tough on crime” in the 2006 session, they had enacted a law, which went into effect July 1, 2006, that allowed officers to search a vehicle for just about anything they could think of. The Emporia officer searched the car and subsequently arrested the guy for possession of drug paraphernalia. What was the officer looking for? “I don’t know until I find it,” he testified at the trial.

The law change had been simple, from searching for evidence of “the” crime to evidence of “a” crime of any sort.

Basically if you can think of a reason to arrest someone for anything, you can search the car for…well, whatever it might turn up. Get the suspect back to the stationhouse and find out that he/she isn’t a missing 9-11 terrorist or isn’t the person who robbed the liquor store, and you apologize, release him/her…except if you have found anything in the search of  his/her vehicle that justifies an arrest.

The actual arrest might be just a diversion to get to search a car of someone who looks suspicious to a law enforcement officer for reasons of race, haircut, maybe even wearing a University of Kansas T-shirt in Manhattan.

Stemming from the Emporia case, the Supreme Court last week struck down the “a” crime law, so that searches of a vehicle are related to the reason for which a person is arrested. That sounds pretty fair.  Vehicle searches won’t turn into just hunting expeditions.

Not anything that is going to affect most of us…but it doesn’t upset our stomachs… And that’s a good thing.

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 Contact Information

Telephone: (785) 267-5500 and (785) 233-9888
FAX: (785) 267-1099
Mailing Address: 3823 SW Wood Valley Drive,
Topeka, Kansas 66610
Electronic Mail: politics@hawvernews.com