Yet another way the multitudinous arms of the government

regularly smother citizens in their parental embrace:

This is the story of PHILL KLINE, ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR THE STATE OF KANSAS, who has made it his mission in life to uphold the laws of our land. Or, rather, those laws of the land that he agrees with and/or can interpret to his liking.

For those of you who are really interested, the Supreme Court of the State of Kansas wrote this opinion about Mr. Kline and his nefarious doings. It is pretty long, but if you just want more details about the case, you can read only the first couple of pages. To be precise, they didn't think his doings were quite as nefarious as I do, but they did slap him around a little bit, and somewhat thwarted his efforts. But not enough, I don't think. There's also an editorial in the Kansas City Star (again, I encourage readers to look into bugmenot.com to get around site registrations (works great as a Firefox extension!)).

To summarize: Mr. Kline, who is an honorable man, has undertaken an inquisition against a couple of abortion providers in Kansas. (I call it an "inquisition" not out of editorial license, but because that is actually what they call this type of legal action in the state of Kansas. I'm not making this up.) As part of his inquisition, Mr. Kline has subpoenaed the medical records of 90 patients of these two clinics.

According to Mr. Kline, this has (ostensibly) been done as part of his criminal investigation relating to violations of two separate laws. First, there is Kansas' criminal abortion statute, which makes it a crime to give or receive an abortion under certain circumstances (in this case, where the gestation period is more than 22 weeks and the health of the mother is not threatened). Second, there is a statute which requires health care providers to file a report with authorities when they have reason to suspect that a child has been injured as a result of physical, mental, or emotional abuse or neglect or sexual abuse.

Mr. Kline alleges that these clinics performed so-called late term abortions in cases where the health of the mother was not threatened. According to the Kansas statute, both the referring doctor and the performing doctor must first agree that the mother's health is threatened. If they do, then it is legal to perform the abortion. This is undisputed.

As far as I can tell, it is also undisputed that in none of the cases where late term abortions were performed did the two doctors not agree that the health of the mother was threatened. No, the sole reason Mr. Kline alleges that a crime was committed in these cases was because Mr. Kline interprets the law to say that the mental health of the mother cannot be considered by the doctors in their conclusions, but only their physical health.

Now, you may disagree with Mr. Kline on this point. Or maybe you do agree with him. Either side of the issue might be reasonably argued. But there's just one small problem with his position: the issue has already been argued, in front of none other than the United States Supreme Court, a court whose opinion is binding on the State of Kansas (and Mr. Kline) in this instance, which court has specifically stated that doctors may consider the mental health of the mother in coming to these conclusions.

Since Mr. Kline is a lawyer, and since he has sworn to uphold and enforce the laws of the State of Kansas and of the United States, we can conclude from these facts that: (a) he knows the law, and he is intentionally violating his oath, a number of judicial regulations, and various ethical rules (not to mention the public trust) in a cynical attempt to undermine the democratic will of the people of his state and our country, all with a view to persecute, and outrageously violate the privacy of, a few dozen anguished women who made poor choices by becoming pregnant and who made the agonizing decision to take advantage of a perfectly legal medical procedure which would, to some extent, in their minds, mitigate the consequences of these poor decisions, or (b) he doesn't know the law, in which case he has fought a three-year legal battle based on his ignorance of the very area of law he is (ostensibly) enforcing, thereby making him the most incompetent moron ever to hold public office who should forthwith be removed therefrom and immediately disbarred.

But the other crimes Mr. Klein claims to be investigating involve the failure of these health care workers to report the alleged abuse of some of the clinics' patients. The abuse in question? Well, some of these patients were under the age of sexual consent. And Mr. Klein believes, and has issued a formal written opinion stating this belief, that all sexual intercourse engaged in by anyone younger than 16 is, by definition, rape and inherently injurious. Keep in mind that this is not Kansas law. It is only Mr. Klein's opinion, and, while as the Attorney General he has the authority to issue official written opinions on such matters, his opinions are not binding on any court.

A couple of obvious things about this aspect of the case. First off, you should understand that Mr. Kline is not just referring to, for example, 22yr olds having sex with 15 yr olds, but to 15yr olds and 16yr olds having sex with 15yr olds. No state in this country considers this to be statutory rape. Second, I think that for most reasonable human homo sapiens in this world, it is going to be a very hard sell to convince them that every conceivable circumstance in which someone who has sex at age 15 constitutes rape and abuse. I mean, it has been a while, but when I was fifteen, having sex was like my greatest dream come true. These persons, humans, potential jurors, voters, and supreme court justices, have all been 15 at some time in their lives. They know. In fact, in the course of human history, it is only VERY recently that we as a species have decided that 15yr olds aren't supposed to have sex. I have not researched this, but I think that for most inviduals the age of "sexual maturity", at least biologically speaking, comes a couple of years before age 15. Blame this on the Creator.

But anyway, Mr. Kline believes that these girls were raped and abused. Ok, Mr. Kline, for the sake of argument, I'll go along with you. So tell me, what do you want to do about it? Well, Mr. Kline wants to address the rape and abuse of these girls by getting his sweaty hands on their medical records, invading their privacy in the most egregious fashion, and using this information in a public trial to punish the doctors that treated them!!! If that isn't one of the most outrageous things you've heard in a while, then I really don't know what else to say.

Let me suggest that instead of having a cushy job where he gets driven around in a Town Car to eat filet mignon and spend his non-lunching hours profligately wasting taxpayers' money and governmental resources in vain attempts to foist his shit-brained sense of morality onto unsuspecting citizens, instead of THAT, this guy needs to be sent somewhere where he will regularly be raped, abused, and injured in the most horrible ways possible. Regularly, forever.