(AP) — History professors from Kansas and Missouri will be among panelists this month at the Dole Institute of Politics at a conference focused on the bloodiest
battle of the Civil War.

Military experts from Fort Leavenworth’s Command and General Staff College also will be part of the institute’s “Gettysburg 150” event June 20 at the University of Kansas.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports  the daylong conference will mark the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Professors from KU and Park University in Parkville, Mo., will be among those speaking.

The free event’s afternoon session will take an in-depth look at each of the battle’s three days. It will conclude with an evening session looking at the entire battle and decisions that led to a victory for Union forces.

(AP) — A former Kansas lawman on trial for the death of his wife says she had mixed feelings about asking him for a divorce.

Brett Seacat testified Thursday at his first-degree murder trial about his work as a police instructor and former deputy. He talked about the day he was served with divorce papers.

And he recounted his last day working at a law enforcement academy before the April 2011 shooting death of his wife, 34-year-old Vashti Seacat.

Brett Seacat is also charged with aggravated arson and two counts of child endangerment for allegedly setting fire to the couple’s Kingman home. He and the couple’s two young sons escaped the fire.

The defense contends Vashti Seacat set the fire, then committed suicide by shooting herself.

Today, U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) confirmed with Acting U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Secretary Seth Harris that the Obama Administration will not reintroduce farm labor rules originally proposed in April 2012. Acting Secretary Harris made it clear that the farm labor rules will not be proposed again during the remainder of the Obama Administration.

Sen. Moran had serious concerns about the previously proposed rules which would have disrupted the education of the next generation of farmers and ranchers. The DOL proposed doing away with successful farm safety training and certification programs like cooperative extension, 4-H and FFA. These organizations play a critical role in training and certifying young people to safely carry out farm activities. The Department ignored research that shows such programs improve safety habits of young people and instead criticized these training programs for being too locally driven and lacking federal direction. Agriculture is regionally diverse, but DOL proposed subjecting farmers and ranchers to a national standard that would have weakened these important training programs.

Additionally, the DOL recommended rules that would have resulted in children being unable to perform common farm tasks like rounding up cattle on horseback, operating a tractor, or cleaning out stalls with a shovel and wheelbarrow.

In October 2011, Sen. Moran requested a 60-day extension of the comment period on the proposed rules because the original comment period fell during the fall harvest season. After fully reviewing the proposed rules, Sen. Moran led 29 of his colleagues in requesting that former DOL Secretary Hilda Solis withdraw them. The senator also provided Kansans with an opportunity to share their stories about the value of working on a farm through the Keep Families Farming initiative, and invited Secretary Solis to Kansas so she could personally see how the proposed rules threaten the future of farming and ranching.

(AP) — The Sedgwick County Sheriff says inmates are wasting too much toilet paper, so he’s reduced their supply.

Sheriff Jeff Easter is limiting inmates to one roll a week. He says that will cut the amount his office is spending on toilet paper from $100,000 to $50,000 a year.

Inmates are allowed to buy extra toilet paper. Exceptions will be made for those who are indigent, or inmates who are sick.

Easter says inmates plug toilets and cover vents and doors with the toilet paper to absorb the smell when they are illegally smoking tobacco or marijuana.

Several inmates wrote letters complaining about the rationing, saying it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Tim Huelskamp (R-Kansas) made the following statement in response to the UK Guardian newspaper’s shocking revelations

https://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order

Huelskamp said, “While some members of Congress were made aware of and approved of this secret, blanket, domestic surveillance program, I was never briefed on it and never approved it. The use of this indiscriminate, data-mining practice against U.S. citizens on U.S. soil without probably cause infringes upon the fundamental constitutional rights of tens of millions of unsuspecting, law-abiding Americans.

Americans were wrong to rely on the veracity of candidate Obama’s promise that this spying would stop. Indeed, it has apparently been expanded under the Obama Administration. Numerous colleagues and I are sending a strong letter to the President demanding a full explanation of this invasion of privacy and apparent violation of the 4th Amendment.

Together with the revelations of the misuse and abuse of power at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), this raises even more distrust and fundamental concern about President Obama’s willingness to trample on the privacy rights of American citizens.

(AP) — The Kansas Corporation Commission will not ask an independent consultant to investigate the executive director’s complaints about the agency’s staff.

On Wednesday, commissioner Tom Wright proposed a review of director Patti Petersen-Klein’s remarks to an auditor that the agency was overstaffed, inefficient and had no accountability.

The motion died after another commissioner declined to support it. The third commissioner was not at the meeting.

Patti Petersen-Klein told the consultant the agency’s employees were lazy and the agency was dysfunctional.

The agency’s employees complained to the auditor that Petersen-Klein’s management style was ruining staff morale and prompting many employees to leave.

The consultants concluded in the report that it was unlikely that Petersen-Klein could mend her relationship with the KCC staff.