Up to date in Kansas City

They haven't changed the Wright Amendment yet, even though they're debating it a lot, but they're whittling away at it. A little noticed clause in the just-passed transportation appropriations bill adds Missouri to the list of states that are allowed to have non-stop service to and from Dallas Love Field, the others being those states that border Texas, as outlined in the original late-1970s amendment, plus Mississippi, Alabama, and Kansas, added in the 1990s. All other states: change planes before flying to or from Love Field. The Missouri rider, slipped in, it is believed, at the behest of Senator Kit Bond, the Missouri Republican who is on the appropriations committee, just makes another exception to the unchanged rule. But it willl probaly give Southwest another argument that Wright is wrong: in a year, after Southwest has carried thousands of flyers between Love Field and St. Louis,  it will be able to argue that it has saved them millions of dollars after it forces down fares. Ditto for Kansas City, which despite its name is in Missouri and is the largest city in the western half of the state.