Lawrence filmmaker to show work in Columbia

“CSA: The Confederate States of America,” the locally made film that showed at last month’s Sundance Film Festival, will be screened this weekend in Columbia, Mo.

The film, written and directed by Kevin Willmott, an associate professor of theater and film at Kansas University, will be shown at 3:30 p.m. Sunday at the Blue Note Theatre in Columbia as part of the True/False Film Festival.

Willmott sold the rights of the film to IFC distributors at the Sundance festival. He previously had committed to show the film in Columbia and has worked with IFC to allow it to be shown.

“CSA” is a faux documentary depicting America as if the South had won the Civil War.

Politics

Lawrence Republican to run for House seat

Rich Lorenzo, a Republican financial consultant and attorney, has announced he will run for the 10th District Kansas House seat.

The district includes south Lawrence, Baldwin, Wellsville and northern Ottawa. The incumbent is Rep. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin.

Lorenzo, 30, is a senior financial consultant with Berthel Fisher & Co. in Lawrence.

He said he would use his business experience to create jobs, improve the work force and reduce regulations. He said he also was dedicated to improving public education.

Lorenzo is married, serves on several community boards, and coaches sixth- and seventh-grade boys in the Lawrence Hoopster Basketball League.

Pension benefits

Former congressman tapped for D.C. post

Former Kansas congressman Vince Snowbarger will serve as acting executive director of the federal corporation that guarantees payment of basic pension benefits for 44 million American workers.

Snowbarger will act as an interim replacement in the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. for Steven A. Kandarian, who is departing this week. Snowbarger has served as the corporation’s assistant executive director since July 2002.

His appointment was announced Friday by Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, who serves as chair of the corporation’s board of directors.

Snowbarger represented the Kansas 3rd Congressional District from 1997 until 1999 and served 12 years as a member of the Kansas House of Representatives, where he held the post of majority leader from 1993 to 1997.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. was created under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.

Courts

Pretrial conference set in school biting lawsuit

A judge has scheduled a June 4 pretrial conference in a lawsuit filed by a Lawrence woman who claims a preschool teacher bit her 3-year-old son to show him that biting hurts.

Raintree Montessori officials have said the incident didn’t happen the way mother Yan Annie Lin alleges, and an attorney for the school wrote in a response to the suit that the plaintiff’s “injuries are not of the nature and extent alleged.”

Douglas County District Judge Michael Malone on Friday dismissed two counts of the lawsuit with no objection by Lin’s attorney, Rachel Smith. One of the claims was that the mother suffered emotional distress; the other was that the school had “ratified” the actions of the teacher.