MATTHEW DALY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senators from both parties are urging the National Football League to get rid of a rule that bars home games from being televised in a local market if they have not sold out.

Sens. Richard Blumenthal and John McCain say the NFL’s “blackout” rule is unfair to fans who have helped the league reap billions of dollars in revenue from broadcast rights to games that are among the most-watched programs on TV.

The Federal Communications Commission voted this fall to stop enforcing the NFL’s blackout policy, but the action did not end blackouts, which are written into the NFL’s private contracts with broadcast and cable companies.

Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, and McCain, an Arizona Republican, warned that if the league does not repeal the rule, Congress may step in.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The top transportation official in Kansas says highway projects scheduled for 2015 and 2016 will proceed, despite a projected multi-million shortfall in the state’s budget.

The Kansas Department of Transportation announced in August $1.2 billion in highway projects for the next two years. In November, the state announced it was expecting a $279 million shortfall for this fiscal year and another $436 million shortfall the following fiscal year.

Transportation Secretary Mike King said Wednesday the projects for the next two fiscal years will proceed but he wasn’t as certain about 2017.

The Wichita Eagle reports some conservative legislators have suggested using money from the highway fund to find extra money for other state needs. Democrats have warned that doing that would stop the planned highway projects.

PITTSBURG, Kan. (AP) — Former first lady Laura Bush is coming to southeast Kansas in the spring to speak during Pittsburg State University’s Women in Government Lecture Series.

The university says Bush will speak on education, literacy, volunteerism and human rights on April 22 at the Bicknell Family Center for the Arts.

Ticket prices and their availability will be announced early in the spring semester.

Previous participants in the Women in Government series include former Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, human rights activist Kerry Kennedy, White House correspondent Helen Thomas and Kansas Supreme Court Justice Kay McFarland.

The lecture series at Pittsburg State began in 2001 through a gift to the school from the Helen S. Boylan Foundation, which provided a special grant to bring Bush to the campus.

NEW YORK (AP) — Health officials are telling doctors that the flu vaccine may not be very effective this winter.

As flu season begins to ramp up, officials say the vaccine does not protect well against the dominant strain seen most commonly so far this year.

That strain tends to cause more death and illness, especially in the elderly. CDC officials say the vaccine should still provide some protection, but it won’t be as good as if the vaccine strain was a match.

Flu vaccine effectiveness tends to vary from year to year. Last winter, flu vaccine was about 60 percent effective overall, which experts consider good.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an advisory to doctors about the situation on Wednesday.

TOPEKA – Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt announced in a media release that he has joined with Texas and 15 other states in a legal challenge to President Barack Obama’s unilateral decision to stop enforcing parts of federal immigration law.

The Texas-led lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Brownsville, Texas, seeks a declaration that the president lacked constitutional authority to abandon enforcement of various provisions of federal immigration law. The suit asks the federal court to find instead that the president was obligated to follow the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that he “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” as Congress wrote them.

“Until recently, the president repeatedly made clear that there is a lawful way to fix the nation’s broken immigration system and an unlawful way,” Schmidt said. “Until he reversed course last month, the president correctly insisted that he lacked authority under the Constitution to essentially suspend the law or rewrite it to suit his preferences.”

The president’s announcement of “executive action” in November directs federal authorities to change how they enforce federal immigration law, abandoning various statutory requirements entirely. The states’ lawsuit asks the federal court to order the federal agencies to disregard the president’s ‘executive action’ and instead to follow the requirements set forth in the statutes.

“Congress has a constitutional and a moral obligation to fix our country’s broken immigration system,” Schmidt said. “There are many important interests involved in this complex debate, including many in Kansas. The diverse interests of our state in immigration reform are best served when Kansas voices in Congress are part of the solution, and the country is best served when the president and federal agencies follow the law and the Constitution. Frustration arising from political gridlock is not an excuse for a president to bypass Congress, ignoring the law and the Constitution.”

In addition to Texas and Kansas, the states filing suit today are: Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Governors Phil Bryant of Mississippi, Paul R. LePage of Maine, Patrick L. McCrory of North Carolina, and C.L. “Butch” Otter of Idaho also joined as plaintiffs in the case.

The cost of the litigation will be borne by Texas.

MARCIA DUNN, Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s new Orion spacecraft will have to wait another day to fly.

Wind gusts and a sticky rocket valve forced the Cape Canaveral launch team to call off Thursday’s attempt to send Orion into orbit on its first-ever test flight.

NASA promised to try again Friday.

Orion is how NASA hopes to one day send astronauts to Mars. This inaugural flight, while just 4½ hours, will send the unmanned capsule 3,600 miles into space.

A boat in the flight path delayed Thursday morning’s first countdown. High winds twice halted the launch with less than four minutes remaining. Then a valve in the unmanned Delta IV (four) rocket malfunctioned at the three-minute mark. Launch controllers scrambled to check all of these so-called “fill and drain” valves in the three first-stage booster engines. But time ran out.

ERICA WERNER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans are prepared to pass a bill declaring President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration “null and void.”

But even supporters acknowledge that the bill by Rep. Ted Yoho of Florida is mostly meant to send a message. It stands little chance in the Democratic-controlled Senate and would face certain veto by Obama.

Instead, its passage Thursday would set the stage for the real showdown over legislation to keep the government running past Dec. 11, when a current funding measure expires. Conservatives are demanding language in the spending bill to strip money to pay for Obama’s move to defer deportations and grant work permits to more than 4 million immigrants here illegally.

House GOP leaders fear such language would court a government shutdown.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A market analyst is headlining the annual gathering of Kansas ranchers amid record high cattle prices.

CattleFax Executive Vice President Randy Blach will talk Thursday about the cattle market outlook at the Kansas Livestock Association convention in Wichita. He is expected to offer his perspective on how the industry reached record price levels and how long the profitability might last.

Another keynote presentation is expected from James Herring, the president and CEO of Friona Industries, the nation’s third largest cattle feeding operation. Herring’s session is billed as a presentation on the challenges and opportunities facing the beef industry.

The three-day conference includes a trade show.

By Dave Ranney
KHI News Service

TOPEKA — A spokesperson for the Kansas Department for Children and Families on Tuesday announced that Deputy Secretary Kathe Decker and Prevention and Protection Services Director Brian Dempsey have left the agency.

Anna Pilato, director of the department’s divisions for strategic development and community and faith-based initiatives, is due to leave later this month.

“As is normal with a new term, we have re-evaluated our organizational structure and identified places where we can be more efficient,” Theresa Freed, communications director at DCF, wrote in an email to KHI News Service.

“Some individuals have been let go, decided to move on or accept different positions within the agency,” Freed said. “Although we cannot discuss specific personnel matters, we can say that the changes are unrelated to any one issue.”

Dempsey and Decker oversaw the administration of the state’s foster care program, which in recent months has taken in record and near-record numbers of children.

According to DCF reports, 6,156 foster children were in “out-of-home placements” in April, which, at the time, was an all-time high. Since then, the monthly counts have topped that number in May, June, July and October.

In October, 6,215 foster children were in out-of-home placements.

DCF officials have attributed the increases to corresponding greater public awareness. Child advocates have cited how the increases coincided with cuts in the state’s public assistance programs.

Freed said Dempsey’s position has been filled by Michael Myers, director at the department’s regional office in Overland Park since 2012.

Jaime Rogers, she said, has been named deputy secretary of family services, replacing Decker, a former Republican legislator from Clay Center. Rogers had been director of economic and employment services at DCF.

Freed said Pilato’s position “will be left vacant.”

According to state records, Pilato’s annual salary last year was $97,500. Decker’s salary was $90,000 and Dempsey’s was $66,600.

Dave Ranney is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.