Kansas is heading toward its own fiscal cliff, like the nation as a whole, and Gov. Sam Brownback has almost single-handedly driven us to the edge of this abyss. He must now lead his conservative majorities in the legislature in avoiding financial disaster.

Brownback deserves credit for restraining state spending during his first two years in office and for building up healthy balances, with big help in revenue growth from the "temporary" sales tax increase of 2010. He pulled Kansas out of the financial ditch but then quickly steered the state toward a deeper chasm by signing a rushed and flawed tax bill.

TOPEKA — Gov. Sam Brownback's task force on school efficiency was wrapping up its work Monday after having heard from school administrators, school board members and critics of school funding.

But the task force hasn't allowed time, and apparently won't, to hear from those who are in the classroom every day — teachers.

Another legislative session coming up, another attempted overreach by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

The conservative Republican has said he will again ask the Legislature to give his office the power to search out and prosecute suspected cases of voter fraud. Let’s hope lawmakers turn him down, as they did the last time he asked.

Prosecuting voter fraud is currently the job of county prosecutors. Kobach says those offices are overworked, and voter fraud isn’t a high priority with them.

If ever smart, independent lawmakers were needed in the Kansas House, it is now.

The ill-advised income tax cuts passed last year by the Legislature’s Republican majority and signed by Gov. Sam Brownback are projected to create a deep financial hole that will harm schools, families and the state’s infrastructure.

Fourteen votes. The Kansas Senate will need that many votes to prevent Gov. Sam Brownback and the Legislature’s newly empowered conservative majority from moving forward with constitutional amendments which could profoundly damage the state’s character.

The moderate Republican contingent that had acted as a check on misguided and even dangerous ideas was decimated in the August primaries. Conservative groups spent big to purge lawmakers who might stand in the way of Brownback and more extreme members of their own party.

Kansans learned something this week about their governor. For Sam Brownback, the end justifies the means.

The second-year Republican governor double-crossed leaders of the Kansas Senate, tossed legislative decorum into the gutter and carpetbombed relationships throughout the statehouse to move along a radical income tax cut. He was aided by Republican House Speaker Mike O’Neal.

President Obama today announced that he now supports same-sex marriage, reversing his longstanding opposition amid growing pressure from the Democratic base and even his own vice president.

In an interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts, the president described his thought process as an “evolution” that led him to this place, based on conversations with his own staff members, openly gay and lesbian service members, and conversations with his wife and own daughters.

The House voted to kill the Senate's redistricting map Wednesday after representatives denounced it as an unworkable piece of legislation that disenfranchised minority voters.

The maneuver means the 2012 Legislature — after nearly four months of debate — has so far failed to meet its constitutional duty to develop new maps for the Kansas House, Kansas Senate, U.S. House and the Kansas State Board of Education.

Resolution of the political stalemate won't come easily because factions in the Statehouse remain unpersuaded they should move to common ground on the maps.

TOPEKA -- Plans to increase funding for education are going nowhere fast thanks to political in-fighting and the Legislature’s tendency to put off the biggest issues until the last minute.

At the crux of the debate is a Senate-approved plan to add $74 to the per-pupil school finance formula, a move supporters say would inch the state toward restoring big cuts made in the midst of the recession.