A reader offers this quick suggestion for the upcoming Minutemen conference.

"I know the Star taken a major stand against the Minutemen and their convention. Seems like true diversity and non-prejudice would give them decent coverage when they some to town. I hope the editors will keep editorials to the editorial pages."

The editorial board has nothing to do with news coverage, so their positions won't directly affect stories about the conference. But yes, the news reporting must remain neutral and fair, always.

The picture I wrote about yesterday did end up on Page A-1 today. It's a scene from the swearing-in of new Kansas AG Stephen Six.

An editor's concern yesterday was that Six's daughter, who is hugging her father, has an expression on her face that doesn't look as happy as the rest of the crowd.

What do you think? Does the image seem unusual or at least troubling to you?

This morning, I've already received at least five copies of the exact same letter objecting to details in Jason Whitlock's column.

Yes, I get it. I'm checking into the allegations of an error of fact in the column. But please, quit sending the same e-mail from multiple addresses. These fake grass roots (hence the name "Astroturf") campaigns really don't help at all. Ironically, they make people who solicit feedback from the public question the honesty of every person writing about the issue.

UPDATE: It's now upwards of 20 copies of the same letter now, a few from the same e-mail address, but with a different name attached.

In the afternoon news meeting, editors discuss content for the next day's paper. A key element is the choice of the front page's centerpiece, which is driven by a photograph, illustration or other graphic element.

Today, the front runner was a local news photograph that most of the room liked. One senior editor raised a question about one person in the picture: She seemed to have a facial expression at odds with the event, and also with the rest of the people pictured.

What do you think -- would one person with a seemingly incongruous expression look strange to readers? Would it make them ask why the person seemed unhappy at what looks like a joyous event?

Five readers this morning faulted The Star's front page. All thought that the lead story about the Florida primary gave short shrift to Hillary Clinton, while the centerpiece gave too much attention to Barack Obama's Kansas City rally appearance.

"You consistently downplay Hillary in every instance," said one caller.

Clinton is mentioned in the subheadline on the story, and the third paragraph leads with her win -- though the primary didn't award delegates for the Democrats because of an intra-party dispute over its timing. But Clinton supporters thought it was still not enough mention.

A caller just asked why The Star's letters to the editor require submissions to include the author's phone number.

"You aren't going to print it, are you?" he asked. "I don't want that in the paper."

The phone numbers are just so the paper can verify the person's identity before publication. They never appear in print.

The Star doesn't print anonymous or pseudonymous letters to the editor. Of course, there's only so much the letters editor can do here, and she has to rely a bit on writers' honestly. There have been cases when The Star has discovered that a letter-writer has been using a nom de plume and setting up false contact information to hide that fact.

Jackson County Libertarian Party chair David Browning sends an e-mail that I'll just quote here in full:

"In the article about Ron Paul on 24 January 2008, Libertarians were slanderously referred to as 'dope smoking libertarians'. That mischaracterization is consistent with the Star's policy of denigrating Libertarians and Libertarianism at every turn.

"I happen to agree that too many libertarians are dope smokers, as one in my opinion is too many. However most Libertarians are more sober than judges, republicans, democrats, or newspaper writers and the Star well knows it. The swipe was a unnecessary to the tenor and point of the article, which was, otherwise, the fairest piece of journalism I have seen the Star produce in the last twenty years.

A caller wondered why the lead of today's State of the Union address reads:

"President Bush bravely hid his limp Monday night giving his last State of the Union address, optimistically called 'a sprint to the finish' by the White House."

At first, the reader thought Bush's leg had been literally injured, but then he realized The Star's national editor Darryl Levings was probably making a metaphorical reference to either Bush's low approval ratings or his lame-duck status.

Darryl tells me he was going for the "lame duck," and the next reference to the term (now in the third paragraph) was originally higher in the story.

From the morning news critique: A photo editor noted that the Page A-1 picture of Kathleen Sebelius this morning noted that she gave the Democratic response to the State of the Union Address, but didn't mention why she was wearing a different outfit in the photo from what viewers saw on TV.

That's because Allison Long took the shot during the governor's practice run, before the speech was recorded. The caption should have noted that detail.

Four readers have contacted me to say they think a story about a study by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism, which found 935 false statements by the Bush administration about the security threat from Iraq, should have been on A-1 Sunday. It played inside the section on Page A-19.

"As a tax paying American I'm far more interested in how we were misled by our leadership in Washington than what I feel is pretty much a given fact about an economy that's become testimony to overindulgence and paranoia," wrote one.

This is one that I know not all readers will agree on, but it did generate a number of people with similar thoughts about its play -- so it's worth mentioning here.