We all have our milestones.
But you know you’re getting up there when your kids realize they are now viewed as an older generation.
A popular site travelling the Internet circuit among 30-year-olds is called “30 signs you’re almost 30.”
Significant events include getting “carded” to purchase alcohol, wild party pictures have been replaced by photos of your children and your marathon times on your Facebook page, you’ve gone to a bar and left because it’s too loud, you’ve become a “sunscreen Nazi” to avoid sun damage and you get excited about “lame” things such as low interest rates.
Fair enough.
But from this side, maturity has its advantages, including a lot fewer opportunities to publicly embarrass ourselves.
However, no age is truly without its worries.
A recent release by the Alzheimer’s Association lists the top 10 warning signs of the impending disease.
The good thing about the report is that it balances “normal” signs of aging against the dreaded disease.
It’s normal to forget a person’s name, but it’s a bad sign if it never pops up in your memory bank.
It’s normal to forget where your purse or sunglasses were last placed, but if you are unable to retrace your steps, that’s a sign something may be misfiring. Same goes for blaming someone for taking the misplaced items.
It’s normal to feel a need to chill out and let others carry the weight of an activity, but it’s a warning if you truly want to withdraw from work or social activities. By design, we are meant to be social creatures.
Young or old, we each have our challenges and milestones to reach; they just change with age.
-— Susan Lynn

Edward Snowden remains a man without a country.
His second request for asylum to Russia seems to be gaining more traction this time around, although its president, Vladimir Putin, is playing coy by insisting the U.S. citizen should cease and desist leaking top-secret memos about the United States.
The United States, meanwhile, is biting its tongue to have Russia lecture one of its own.
Snowden, 29, has been accused of espionage for sharing classified documents from the National Security Agency. Snowden worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a technology-consulting firm and was under contract with the NSA. He is thought to have leaked classified national defense information, including that of a far-reaching phone surveillance program.
Snowden is not without supporters, who view him as a whistle-blower of a government that has overreached its boundaries. He alleges the United States has a treasure trove of phone and Internet data from not only U.S. citizens but also from those around the world.
U.S. officials don’t deny the tracking systems, saying they are legal and have thwarted many a terrorist plot.
Civil libertarians respond that such surveillance without probable cause is not OK.
THE LAW is not on Snowden’s side. Today’s Patriot Act has emasculated our civil liberties. Ever since 2001, the U.S. government has had the open-ended authority to view our private and business affairs without our knowledge.
The United States would appreciate Snowden returned to face charges of espionage and other very serious charges. We are not looking kindly at countries sympathetic to his plight. Most allies do not wish to incur the wrath of the United States, and regard him as a “hot potato.”
Once home, Snowden would face a maximum sentence of 30 years, for now. The longer he remains in exile, the greater the chances the charges against him will find a way to multiply.
He’s certainly painted himself into a corner.
— Susan Lynn

If a single party controls the governorship and both legislative chambers, it loses incentive to act in a bipartisan manner.
That’s the deduction of the American Judicature Society, which studies open government, and recently commented on the way Kansas will now appoint its appellate judges.
State Democrats, especially, are up in arms over Gov. Brownback’s decision to not only personally appoint nominees to the state Court of Appeals, but also to keep their names secret until they are up for Senate confirmation.
This usurpation of power should have every Kansan concerned.
For the last 32 years, nominees to the appellate court were made by consensus of a nonpartisan panel. Members of the panel represented both the Democrat and Republican party. Of the nine panel members, four were lay members appointed by the governor. Another four were  attorneys appointed by their peers in each of the state’s Congressional districts. The chair was elected by attorneys statewide.
The process proved effective because the attorneys, especially, tended to be harshest in judging their peers.
The panel disclosed applicants’ names and gave their biographies and, in recent years, interviewed them in a public format.
In other words, they bent over backward to ensure the public had every opportunity to know who would be sitting on the bench.
This open-style of government was done away with by the state legislature this spring. As chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Jeff King, R-Independence, was quick to give his seal of approval.
It was one of many decisions this year that bore evidence King has “drunk the tea” of the ultra-conservative movement.
Though he often speaks like a moderate — “I think openness is preferred” — King has voted as an ultra-conservative. This session King voted for banning federal enforcement of firearm regulations, to prohibit local government from having to pay union-level wages, to give health clubs a property tax exemption, to lower income tax rates, to require drug testing for welfare recipients, to give the secretary of state power to prosecute election fraud cases, and egregious of all, considering he comes from a family of teachers,  to give the legislature sole authority to decide school funding.
King, in fact, also voted to give the governor full authority in appointing judges to the Supreme Court. That motion failed to get the necessary two-thirds approval in the House, but did so readily in the Senate.
That the Senate has to approve Brownback’s nominee to the Court of Appeals is of little solace knowing that Republicans have a 32-8 majority and are increasingly of the same mindset as our ultraconservative governor.

AN UPSHOT of the new power granted to Brownback is zero public input, zero transparency for how the selection will be made, and total control by a select few.
That’s a sure recipe for cronyism. And we’re letting it happen.

— Susan Lynn

By and large, conservative Republicans see the food stamp program as enabling “moochers” to freeload off the government.
Never mind that unemployment continues to hover at 7.6 percent -— for those actively seeking work. That equates to 4.6 million adults.
No, we have not bounced back from the recession. Not even close.
So for the Republican majority in the House of Representatives to strip the food stamp program from the farm bill says we as a country are not our brother’s keeper.
Since the year 2000, the number of U.S. citizens in need of assistance to put food on the table has increased five-fold. In Kansas, 300,000 citizens now rely on food stamps, formally called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
About 15 percent of Allen Countians rely on food stamps, averaging $86 per individual per month. Of those, the majority are elderly. Yes, 59 percent of our children receive free and reduced-price lunches at school, but by and large Allen County is an aging demographic. Of our 13,319 citizens, almost 20 percent are 65 and older while those 5 and younger comprise only 6 percent of our population. Still, it’s a sad commentary that of those 6 percent, more than half come from low-income homes.
Conservatives rail the food stamp program is an “enabler.” That somehow $125.11 a month for a Kansas family of four is encouraging them to live off our largess.
Oh, come on.
In Allen County, 25 percent of children live in households that are unsure of where their next meal is coming from.
Look at our Meals on Wheels program, busting at the seams for help in both funds and manpower to feed an increasing number of senior citizens who rely on the program for their main meal of the day.
It’s an insult to the working poor, the unemployed, and, especially, the elderly to say they are taking advantage of the food stamp program. It’s a sure bet here in Allen County each of us has first-hand knowledge of someone who relies on the program.
Ask any teacher, nurse, minister or police officer and they can rattle off a list of families who subsist by the slimmest of margins.

THE FATE of SNAP is unknown. Even those solely interested in farming were not keen for the nutrition element to be stripped from the farm bill. Since the 1970s the two programs have been worked in tandem to appeal to both urban and rural interests.
At church Sunday, the theologian Cornel West was quoted as saying, “Justice is what love looks like in public.”
Justice was not served.
— Susan Lynn