I see that the Huffington Post has discovered virtue is alive and well in Kansas.

The Sierra Club’s Carl Pope, one of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ strongest allies in the not-finished battle for economic development that centers on the proposed Holcomb power plant expansion, is celebrating her triumph over “the coal industry” in a HuffPo item called “What’s Right with Kansas.”

Well, King Coal did its best. The insiders in the Kansas political world huffed and puffed. The Speaker of the Kansas House of Representatives kept a vote open for two hours while the coal industry's allies tried desperately to bludgeon four more members into voting to override Governor Kathleen Sebelius's veto of a bill denying the state's chief health officer the right to block coal-fired power plants…

But none of it worked. Kansas citizens have spoken out.

King Green did its best, and the people did indeed speak out. By a huge bipartisan majority, most representatives opposed Sebelius' environmental grandstanding.

But they were silenced by a tiny minority of Republicans from the part of the state that produces far more pollution than a dozen Holcomb plants and pays far less for electricity than their friends in the west. When they spoke, they spoke for Sebelius — and drowned out the rest of the state's citizens.

Pope singles them out for praise, so we should, too:

The votes of some Johnson County lawmakers proved decisive. Rep. Judy Morrison, a Shawnee Republican, and Rep. Ben Hodge, an Overland Park Republican, voted no, though both had supported the plants before. Rep. Pat Colloton, a Leawood Republican seen as a possible swing vote, also voted against the override.

Not to unfairly pick on these three — perhaps they voted as they did because they thought their votes wouldn't make the difference and nobody knew for sure how many votes there would be to override. But Sebelius' supporters were blocking the will of the majority, and for whatever reason, they and other area Republicans joined in that strategy and gave Sebelius — and the environmental activists — what they wanted, which was not what most Kansans wanted.

After all, most Kansans know perfectly well that Pope — who makes more than $140,000 a year as the Sierra Club’s semi-permanent executive director — is only doing what any good corporate exec should do: pumping for profits. The coal industry and the environmental fundraising industry both made nearly $10 billion last year, but only one of them did it by mining bad science and selling it to liberal arts majors.

And most Kansans know their governor’s just doing the same look-at-me! show she’s been doing for years now in hope of getting a shot at national prominence. Her trick: Turning what most Easterners think is a "red state" even more blue than it already is — and then taking credit for it.

And most Kansans know that allowing an untrained health secretary to ban economic development on the basis of popular superstition is a bad deal for all Kansans, because most Kansans know as sure as trees can’t talk that carbon dioxide isn’t pollution.

What’s right with Kansas, according to Pope and others of his left-wandering tribe, is that a minority of politicians has turned its back on fair play, stymied the rights of the majority, and deprived their distant neighbors of opportunity and hope.

Or — who knows? Maybe Johnson County's trio of politicians said the right thing. We'll find out at the next election, which, Carl Pope may be surprised to learn, is actually when Kansas citizens will have a chance to speak out for themselves.