You can stop yanking the Obama signs out of your neighbor’s Chinese communist marijuana garden, because, Presidentially speaking, even if Obama wins, the good news is that he won’t win in Kansas.

Of course, the bad news, if you’re a Republican, is that he’ll win everyplace else.

That means Kansans will have to go along with the rest of the country and memorize that Obama pledge thing they make kids in Chicago do if they want their free milk and Ritalin. In January, we can all huddle around the TV and watch the Rev. Jeremiah Wright administer the oath of office.

If you’re a Kansas Republican, after you vote for McCain, there’s not much you can do about all of that.

However, there is one vote to can cast that will do more to change the political life of Kansas more than anything else

You can vote not to retain a couple of state Supreme Court justices named Eric Rosen and Lee Johnson. If enough Kansans do that, the world of Kansas politics will be changed forever and for the better.

What do you know about Rosen and Johnson? Nothing. If you’re like most voters, you barely recognize their names. They were nominated to the court by some lawyers whose names you don’t know either. Without any public scrutiny at all, they were then appointed by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, whose name you do know. Sebelius recently wrote about how she couldn’t serve on a jury in the state because she knows all the judges. She didn’t need to mention she knows all the lawyers, too, since before she ran for office, she was director of the lawyer’s lobby in Topeka.

What with the governor appointing friends to the state’s courts, you may be wondering where checks and balances come into this equation. According to Earl Glynn, the Kansas Meadowlark, the checks come from donors to Sebelius, like Rosen’s hyper-generous wife. The balance comes when donors like Mrs. Rosen tote up their checkbooks. In Kansas, the third branch of government is where all the monkeys live.

The lawyers who have created and maintained this bizarre system say that giving citizens the same rights lawyers have in selecting judges is a crazy Republican plot, probably something having to do with Phill Kline.

Sounds good. After all, the issues that might cause a Kansas Republican to vote for McCain are the same issues that ought to cause a Kansas Republican to vote against retaining judges such as Rosen and Johnson (and, for that matter, every judge on the ballot who was selected by committees of lawyers instead of voters): limited taxes, smaller government, enforcement of abortion laws, a better, more efficient education system, and an end to cronyism in the state’s highly politicized judiciary.

Want to do something about all that stuff? Just write a check—and put it in the box marked “no” next to Rosen and Johnson’s names.

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Denis Boyles is the author of Superior, Nebraska, a book mostly about Kansas.

The week in Review