To the editor:

I read with curiosity and a degree of disgust of the extreme-right fringe of the Republican Party meeting to denounce the reach of the federal government and to reassert Kansas sovereignty as supreme (Journal-World, 1/16.) These folks are somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan.

There was a civil war over this issue a while back. Surely even these folks heard of it. It was in all the papers.

Federal money is frequently given to the various states with strings attached. Otherwise it will be completely diverted to local partisan purposes. As Rodney Wrenn said, if Kansas really wants to assert its sovereignty, it should return all federal funds it receives, including that for highways, education, Medicare, Social Security and agricultural subsidies.

I wonder where the Huelskamp/Lynn Jenkins/Kobach crowd were when George Bush federalized primary and secondary education with the No Child Left Behind program?