It's a big week in the Rackaway household -- my mother's birthday is Friday and my anniversary falls on Sunday. Happy birthday to my mom, and a very happy anniversary to my beautiful wife, Andrea.

Best wishes for recovery to my father-in-law, Tony Schumacher, too. I'm lucky to have in-laws I'm really proud to be connected to, and I'm hoping for a speedy recovery for Tony.

Cigars and rum = recovery!

Rep. Jerry Moran has the right idea. For a long time, our national policy was to isolate Cuba as a way of trying to end the Castro family's communist rule. How's that worked out?

So the congressman is now pushing to open up agricultural trade with Cuba. Considering all of the communist nations we do business with, it seems like an unnecessary artifact of history to still ostracize Cuba from our trade routes. Since we haven't had success with the isolation approach, let's see if something different works.

Be counted

Every 10 years, we have an important thing to do as a country: fill out our census forms. Every state's federal funding depends on population, so it's vital to get the headcount of all Kansans right. We don't have the population to write people off, and we need to have as many people counted as possible.

Many Kansas counties produced less that 70 percent response rate to the 1990 census, and the only people that costs is us. So when you get that census form, be sure to fill it out. I will.

Ironic ...

Some of the worst news to come out this week is that Kansas has the best roads in the country, according to the Reader's Digest I'll bet you that KDOT is one of the next targets for budget cuts by the Legislature. We have run into a typical problem in budgeting, where the more vital the service, the easier the state government finds it to cut.

Chapman Rackaway is an associate professor of political science at Fort Hays State University.