Who do you love? Gov. Kathleen Sebelius or Rep. Jerry Moran or Rep. Todd Tiahrt? Kansans may get to decide in 2010, since, as Politico reports, it's now official that Sebelius will not be any of the following: vice-president of the United States, secretary of labor, EPA chief, secretary of agriculture, energy secretary, secretary of commerce, host of Saturday Night Live.

Obama's number-one gal even came out second behind Obama's number-one enemy, Hillary Clinton, who may have lost the primary campaign, but won the US State Department.

Sebelius, apparently, will have to stay in Topeka and deal with an economy collapsing at least partly because of her affection for massive over-funding of the state's obese educational bureaucracy. It gets easier after that, since in 2010, all she has to do is run against Republicans - namely, one of the two self-defeating GOP candidates for Brownback's US Senate seat.

Politico notes "Sebelius' abrupt withdrawal even as the FBI reportedly was conducting background checks will surely fuel speculation that the governor did not get the Cabinet post she wanted or was rejected for the Cabinet altogether."

Yeah, okay. How come it doesn't fuel speculation about what the FBI might have found?

Real journalism is like work. You have to report stuff, which can be such a drag. For example, in reporting Carol Breier's embarrassing tantrum, the headline in the Kansas City Star somehow missed the whole point of the court's decision, which was to, uh, render a decision. Instead, the Star headlined its peculiar, partially-reported story, "High court sanctions Kline for handling of abortion records."

Kansas City's other left-leaning paper, The Pitch, did a better job, as usual. Its online wrap, by Justin Kendall, one of the few writers not to have fallen into a swoon at the appearance of the word "sanction," at least reported the dissenting comments of McFarland, along with "Kline's eagerness to share copies of the records and meet with Kansas Attorney General Steve Six," a part of the story apparently way too complex for the Star's aces.

True, it took Kendall two takes to get past all Beier's shouting. But at least he got the story in the end. That's more than the Star can do when it comes to reporting on Kline. For the Kansas City Star, Kline is not merely a public person. He is now a circulation gimmick.

Probably works for them in Lawrence.

Reporting the Biolab. When it comes to brain-hurting reporting, the Star could be worse. It could be The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which is reporting the triumph of the leaders of "an Athens citizens group" - a husband-and-wife team named Thrasher and Prescott - who say they are "proud to have helped stop a bid by the state to land a $450 million laboratory to study biological threats for the federal government."

The headline? "Biolab picked Kansas for better incentives, Athens activists say."

But wait. How did they help? The AJC explains:

A draft of Homeland Security’s “Preferred Alternative Selection Memorandum,” obtained by The Associated Press earlier this week, stated the Kansas site was chosen based on its proximity to existing biohazard research, strong community acceptance and a generous package of incentives offered by the state. Those incentives, matched by Texas and Mississippi interests, totaled $100 million. Georgia offered $25 million in incentives.

Thrasher and Prescott said that while the governor’s statement blamed a “small activist minority,” their group represented the sentiment of a large portion of the Athens area community, probably a good majority.

Sure. But just forget that "good majority" apparently inserted by a helpful AJC. Because according to Thrasher, “One of the reasons Athens was turned down is because the state failed to offer the kind of incentives that Kansas did.”

Whatever. They're green and they're proud, and that's what counts.

You asked for it. By now, most literate Kansans know about the lawyer-infested, corrupt system that pushes unknown, mediocre attorneys into lifetime jobs without so much as a public hearing. The latest poster child for this lunacy is Justice Carol Beier who will be retained when she's next on the ballot in 2010, despite the fact that her angry-blogger opinion in the Kline case was so embarrassing that even some of her fellow Supremes had to dress her down in opinions of their own.

Kansans may not know much about the angry attorneys who get sent up to the Supreme Court, but they know they want more of them, because when it comes to asking if lousy judges should be fired, voters never say no - if they bother to say anything at all.

Martin Hawver, writing in the Newton Kansan, takes note of the fact that hundreds of thousands of Kansans didn't even bother to vote whether or not Eric Rosen or Lee Johnson, two justices who were fine with allowing Beier to speak for them, should go. And of those voters who did, nearly two-thirds of them agreed that Rosen and Johnson were the kinds of judges they wanted.

And they deserve them. When it comes to retaining judges, Kansans will say yes to any judge on the ballot - Rosen, Johnson, Beier, Judy, Hatchett, Joe Brown, Mills Lane, Mathis. If Judge Dredd were on the ballot, something tells us Kansans would vote to retain him.