How a Sebelius judge saved Planned Parenthood

by Jack Cashill {WND.com}


With her first appointment to the Kansas Supreme Court as governor in 2003, Democrat Kathleen Sebelius chose the proudly “third-wave” feminist, Carol Beier. It was a timely choice.  That same year, Republican Phill Kline took office as Kansas Attorney General.  From Beier’s perspective, Kline represented a serious threat to the “reproductive freedom” that she, Sebelius, and other third-wavers espoused.

As Kline sensed before taking office, the state’s two dominant abortion providers, Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri (CHPPKM) in suburban Kansas City and George Tiller’s Women’s Health Care clinic in Wichita, were ignoring state restrictions on late term abortion, Tiller flagrantly.  What Kline discovered only after a multi-year fight with Sebelius’s people to get access to relevant records was that both clinics were grossly ignoring mandatory reporting laws on child rape.

Of the 166 abortions performed on girls under-fifteen in the years 2002 and 2003, the clinics reported only three cases to the state department of Social and Rehabilitation Services. They should have reported all 166.

Kline was prepared to press charges against both Tiller and CHPPKM. For reasons of ideology and campaign finance, Sebelius could not let this happen.

To begin, Sebelius persuaded Paul Morrison, a popular Republican district attorney from Johnson County in suburban Kansas City, to change parties and run against Kline in 2006. The state abortion industry invested nearly $2 million to help the local media defeat Kline.

To the dismay of the abortion industry, however, Kline was elected to fulfill the remaining two years on Morrison’s term as Johnson County DA. From that position, he was able to continue the investigation into CHPPKM he had begun as attorney general.

In October 2007, Kline filed 107 counts, 23 of them felonies, against CHPPKM. District Court Judge James Vano found “probable cause” of crimes having been committed and allowed the case to proceed.

Planned Parenthood and new AG Morrison sued Kline to derail the prosecution.  When the case reached the Kansas Supreme Court, the justices grudgingly ruled in Kline’s favor and allowed his case against Planned Parenthood to go forward.  If the facts supported Kline, Judge Beier clearly did not. “His attitude and behavior are inexcusable,” she wrote for the majority , “particularly for someone who purports to be a professional prosecutor.”

Associated Press writer John Hanna uncritically described her summary as “a public tongue-lashing.” A Topeka reporter termed her opinion “a searing condemnation.” The Kansas City Star headlined its story, “Kansas Court Rebukes District Attorney Kline.” And remember, Kline won the case.

If the media were blind to what was happening, then Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice, Kay McFarland, was not.  She called Beier’s opinion “ the very antithesis of ‘restraint and discretion’ and . . . not an appropriate exercise of our inherent power.”  McFarland scolded Beier and the majority for attempting “to denigrate Kline for actions that it cannot find to have been in violation of any law and to heap scorn upon him for his attitude and behavior that does not rise to the level of contempt.”


McFarland may have suspected that Beier’s hectoring of Kline was not spontaneous. Earlier that year, in fact, Beier co-authored a provocative paper that endorsed a strategy very much like the one used to defame Kline.  The paper was written for the Feminist Legal Theory and Feminisms (sic) Conference sponsored by the University of Baltimore School of Law and dealt with what is called third-wave feminism and its effect on parenting law.


The article’s closing quote by Gloria Steinem captures the spirit of this radical feminist incarnation. “We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned,” said the feminist icon and all-purpose leftist. “We are really talking about humanism.”  Understanding that tradition is not easily discarded in a state like Kansas, Beier and Walsh cite approvingly a strategy suggested by feminist law professor Bridget Crawford.

Write the authors, “Crawford posits that the third-wave’s reclamation of feminism through engagement with the media is powerful ‘cultural work’ that may be a necessary pre-condition to an evolution in the law.”

According to Crawford, “The media are tools to produce cultural infrastructure, without which even the best intentioned and artfully designed legal reforms are ineffective.”  Beier knew something about the media. Before going to law school, she worked several years for the Kansas City Times, the then sister publication of the Kansas City Star.

The Star proved to be the most useful of all media “tools” at Beier’s disposal. Indeed, the paper won Planned Parenthood’s top 2006 national editorial honor for its work defeating “anti-choice zealot” Kline and attacked him relentlessly thereafter.  So powerful was the media’s “cultural work” that in May 2007 Sebelius had no qualms about letting Planned Parenthood celebrate her birthday at a big Kansas City blow-out.

Leading the “conga line around the concert hall” was Peter Brownlie, the local CEO whose abortion clinic was then at the center of Kline’s investigation.  The partiers “sure know how to have fun!” enthused the Planned Parenthood newsletter.  With the cultural infrastructure so well established, Kline lost his re-election bid and was forced to leave the state to find employment.

Wanting to make an example of Kline lest some other prosecutor challenge Planned Parenthood in the future, the activists on the Supreme Court prompted an ethics investigation into Kline’s handling of the abortion cases.  Ironically, one of the charges was that Kline did not share the scope of his investigation with Sebelius. This was true. Kline feared her people would hamper the investigation and possibly destroy evidence.

As it turned out, they did both. Planned Parenthood will likely escape prosecution because Sebelius’s health department and her attorney general’s office separately destroyed key evidence.  Last week, as the decision in the ethics case neared, Kline filed a recusal motion showing that Beier’s 2008 opinion was “flagrantly dishonest in its presentation of facts.” After reading Kline’s motion, four other justices decided that they too had previously complained about Kline’s behavior and recused themselves, as did Beier.

In doing so, the justices gave Beier cover. A public airing of the Beier-led assault on Kline would have seriously damaged the court’s reputation and Sebelius’s.  Planned Parenthood stood to lose over $300 million in federal funding if CHPPKM had been successfully prosecuted. Sebelius protected Planned Parenthood’s interest in Kansas and now oversees its funding as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

The ladder goes up, Kathleen, but the circles go down.




Kansas Supreme Court Message: Don't enforce the law

by Jenn Giroux


Phill Kline's legal marathon to clear his good name and save his law license

On May 15, 2012 the legal team of former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline filed a motion in the Kansas Supreme Court seeking the recusal of two justices who would otherwise sit in review of Kline's appeal of an ethics panels' recommendation that his law license be indefinitely suspended after he prevailed in successfully filing criminal charges against Planned Parenthood. The motion seeks to recuse both Justice Carol Beier for her bias and deception and Justice Lawton Nuss, who, himself, was the subject of an ethics complaint brought by Kline when he was Attorney General. The legal brief is nothing short of a white hot legal bombshell. The majority of the brief focuses on Justice Beier. The heavily footnoted motion exposes for anyone who reads it, Justice Beier's pattern of dishonest opinion writing, her bias against Kline, and her aggressive activism from the bench to protect the abortion industry from legitimate legal prosecution. The motion also reveals Beier's tactics to undercut and defeat legitimate enforcement of Kansas laws designed to protect children from sexual abuse.

As prosecutor of Johnson County, Kansas, Kline filed 107 criminal charges against Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri in October, 2007. While civil suits have been filed against Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers in the past, Phill Kline's investigation was the first and only criminal case pursued against the abortion giant by a prosecutor in our nation's history. While in office, Kline was personally attacked and publicly maligned by the Kansas Supreme Court (and their friends in the media) for his willingness to investigate child rape and illegal abortions that were being performed by Planned Parenthood and late term abortionist George Tiller. Every single judge that reviewed Kline's evidence found probable cause that crimes had been committed. The detailed recusal motion reveals the deception of Justice Carol Beier, a lifetime appointee to the Kansas Supreme Court by then-Governor Kathleen Sebelius. Beier prevented Kline's prosecution of Planned Parenthood from ever reaching trial, and her not-so-subtle dishonesty came to light when she crafted a remedy in one case that required Kline to hand over all of his evidence to his successor, former Kansas Attorney General Paul Morrison, who made clear his intention of returning the evidence to Planned Parenthood. You read that right: while Planned Parenthood was fighting to derail Kline's investigations of abortion-related crimes, Justice Beier fashioned a factually dishonest opinion that required Kline to turn over the evidence gathered during his investigation to the target of the investigation.

Additionally, Mr. Kline's appeal brief dismantles the flawed reasoning of the Disciplinary Panel which conducted a kangaroo court-like hearing and has now recommended his suspension. The outcome was all too predictable despite the fact that there are no facts to support their findings and recommendations.

It is important to keep the following facts in mind:

1. While Kline has been constantly maligned with accusations that he was violating patient privacy, not a single patient name was ever revealed by him or his staff in two prosecutorial offices covering nearly six years of effort.

2. The evidence clearly shows hundreds of abortions on children. Under state and federal law these pregnancies are a result of child abuse/rape. Of over 400 abortions on children, only 16 were reported as potential abuse. To date, no one but Kline has seriously followed up on that evidence or these abused children.

3. Justice Carole Beier is a Sebelius appointee and an avid supporter of abortion. She formerly worked for the National Women's Law Center which represented interests supporting abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood. This presents a clear bias and conflict for her in this case.

4. None of the allegations against Phill Kline relate to the investigation that he initiated against the Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri. They are created accusations which are completely false.

5. The evidence against Planned Parenthood has always been, and continues to be, strong and verifiable.

6. Every judge who has reviewed the evidence has found probable cause to believe that Planned Parenthood committed crimes.

7. Justice Beier, as revealed in the recusal motion, has written approvingly of using the media as a "tool" to shape public perception in order to bring about "legal reform" in support of "third-wave feminism." And that is exactly what she achieved with her anti-Kline opinions — turning Kline into a reviled figure in Kansas based in large part on non-existent evidence and lies about the actual evidence.

8. Kline consistently prevailed in moving the case forward while he was in office because the evidence was so strong. However, he lost in the public perception game because of Beier's deceptions and the deliberate media confusion created in Kansas, a state whose mainstream media feeds off the lies of one another. At the height of Kline's investigation the main newspaper, The Kansas City Star, ran a cartoon of Kline sitting on the bench next to a little girl with his hand up her dress. The script under the photo mocked the investigation of child rape with the theme: "he'll violate anyone's privacy to get what he wants." That same paper was awarded the "Maggie Award" by Planned Parenthood (in honor of founder, Margaret Sanger) for their editorial efforts to unseat Phill Kline.

Phill Kline lost his bid for re-election in 2008. It was a tragic turn of events when then Senator, now Governor of Kansas Sam Brownback betrayed the pro-life movement and longtime friend, Phill Kline, by endorsing RINO Steve Howe, who now serves as prosecutor over the remaining criminal case against Planned Parenthood. Unfortunately, Howe has chosen to drop the felony charges which could have led to the de-funding of Planned Parenthood nationwide. Many in the pro-life community (inside Kansas and across the country) have believed for some time that Howe lacks the will and the desire to aggressively prosecute the case against Planned Parenthood. Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this is the fact that throughout Kline's ordeal of fighting unjust charges from political enemies, (i.e. friends of the abortion industry trying to remove Kline's law license), there has been only silence from Governor Brownback's office. He sat in the Governor's office just blocks away from where Phill Kline was put on trial by Beier's political hacks. It calls to mind the biblical verse: "I do not know the man" (Mathew 26: 72). This is no surprise coming from the same man who betrayed the entire country by refusing to invoke a long standing Senate tradition which allowed one Senator of a nominee's home state to pull the plug on their nomination. This would have stopped the appointment of Kathleen Sebelius as Obama's HHS Secretary. Brownback, in both scenarios, could have changed the course of events by simply stepping forward for the truth. He chose political self-preservation instead.

Many may ask: "Why are they still after Kline?"

The answer is simple. Planned Parenthood wants to make an example of Phill Kline to send this message to all prosecutors nationwide: if you pursue criminal investigations against the abortion industry, you will suffer....you will be sued, you will be unjustifiably charged with trumped-up ethical accusations, you will be sued again and again, you will be lied about in the media, you will be betrayed by political friends in high places, your ability to support your family will be targeted, and of course, you will be politically assassinated. The one thing they have continually underestimated is Kline's tenacity and willingness to stand up for the truth and the law in order to protect the legal rights of abused children and the unborn. The power of that truth can be found in the legal brief filed this week. This case against Phill Kline has far reaching effects if Justice Beier and her other abortion-minded friends on the bench succeed. Few people in my lifetime have endured what Phill Kline and his family have been put through. Kline's silent strength shines through in all of the suffering. It has been both inspiring and painful to watch. And it is a story that must be told. Truly they are a living example of this verse: "Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake: Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven." (Mathew 5: 3-12)

Do you have a gun in your House?

by Conservative Action

 

When I had my gallbladder taken out and spent 10 days in the hospital for what should have been an overnight stay the insurance company kicked me out.  I had home nurse visits for two weeks and was asked if I had guns in the house.  I responded that if I did I would not tell them.  So the comments I received have some merit. There are comments from two other people who have also been asked if we keep guns in the house. The nurse just kinda slipped it in along with all the other regular questions.  I told her I refused to answer because it was against the law to ask. Everyone, whether you have guns or not, should give a neutral answer so they have no idea who does and who doesn't.  My doctor asked me if I had guns in my house and also if any were loaded. I, of course, answered yes to both questions. Then he asked why I kept a loaded gun close to my bed.  I answered that my son, who is a certified gun instructor and also works for Homeland Security, advised me that an unloaded, locked up gun is no protection against criminal attack. The Government now requires these questions be asked of people on Medicare, and probably everyone else. 

I had to visit a doctor other than my regular doctor when my doctor was on vacation..  One of the questions on the form I had to fill out was: Do you have any guns in your house?? My answer was None of your damn business!!  So it is out there! It is either an insurance issue or government intervention.  Either way, it is out there and the second the government gets into your medical records (as they want to under Obamacare) it will become a major issue and will ultimately result in lock and load!! Please pass this on to all the other retired guys and gun owners... 

Thanks, from a Vietnam Vet and retired Police Officer: I had a doctors appointment at the local VA clinic yesterday and found out something very interesting that I would like to pass along. While going through triage before seeing the doctor, I was asked at the end of the exam, three questions:1. Did I feel stressed? 2. Did I feel threatened? 3. Did I feel like doing harm to someone? The nurse then informed me, that if I had answered yes to any of the questions, I would have lost my concealed carry permit as it would have gone into my medical records and the VA would have reported it to Homeland Security. Looks like they are going after the vets first. Other gun people like retired law enforcement will probably be next. Then when they go after the civilians, what argument will they have? 

Be forewarned and be aware. The Obama administration has gone on record as considering veterans and gun owners potential terrorists. Whether you are a gun owner, veteran or not, YOU’VE BEEN WARNED! If you know veterans and gun owners, please pass this on to them. Be very cautious about what you say and to whom.



Editors Note:  Remember that Obamacare requires everyone's medical records to go into an electronic database managed by the government. Refusal to authorize your records to be transferred to this database will assuredly result in refusal of treatment. Your medical information then becomes a national gun registry which will be used as a 'confiscation' list probably under the UN small arms treaty that has been approved without Senate ratification. 



The Secret Poceedings of the Kansas Supreme Court...

by Denis Boyles


Locking the courthouse door may seem like a lousy way to insure fair justice for all, but holding secret hearings on one of the state's most controversial issues is exactly what the Kansas Supreme Court is doing.

Most of us don't trust courts that operate in the dark. Americans, observed Justice Hugo Black 60 years ago, have a "historic distrust of secret proceedings, their inherent dangers to freedom, and the universal requirement of our federal and state governments that criminal trials be public."

Here's a short list of places where secret court proceedings are not unknown:

  • North Korea
  • Iran
  • China
  • Cuba
  • Syria
  • Zimbabwe
  • Kansas

All those secretive Syrians and enigmatic North Koreans probably would beg to differ, but, to paraphrase everybody's favorite Sunflower cliché, "what's up with Kansas?" How did it hop onto that short list of kangaroo judiciaries?

Back in June 2007, Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri filed charges in the Kansas Supreme Court against former Attorney General and Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline, all part of the ongoing battle by abortion clinics to prevent government enforcement of state laws regarding late-term abortions and child molestation.

Peter Brownlie, Planned Parenthood's CEO, confirmed the filing and that's the last we've heard, because Planned Parenthood requested a secret hearing, and the Kansas Supreme Court gave them one. That meant, according to David Klepper, blogging at the Kansas City Star, "the public couldn't see what the court case involved, couldn't read the filings, couldn't sit in on what surely must have been a fascinating hearing before the Supreme Court."

It's risky business when courts invite ridicule, but at the Kansas Supreme Court, the invitation's a standing one. Because of the eccentricities of state law, none of the supreme court's justices have ever been vetted by elected representatives. As many critics, including KU law professor Stephen J. Ware, have complained, "..there's no confirmation process at all" the governor appoints them and there they sit, sometimes dozing through cases that often seem to have already been decided by some backroom handshake.

Because Kansas has never had a conservative governor, there's not even much political diversity on the court. All the members are in general agreement on the way things ought to be in Kansas in fact, in 2005, they even started passing legislation of their own, deciding to the penny how much the state should spend on educating kids. Most of them have, at one time or other, made clear their impatience with wing-nuts and others who disagree with them.

You'd think conservatives would be pleased with a court that has moved so far back in time that its hearings resemble the Star Chamber trials that ended the reign and the life of Britain's Charles the First back in the 1600s.

But no. this afternoon, Rep. Lance Kinzer's House Judiciary Committee will hold hearings "public's invited, of course"on HB 2825, a crowbar bill that would pry open courtroom doors across the state by limiting the ability of judges to conduct secret trials and hearings or have their pleadings sealed.

The Planned Parenthood v Kline case triggered Kinzer's concern, but, as he wrote in an email, the bill is "more of an open [government] issue than a pro-life issue." In a statement released yesterday, Kinzer wrote, "The public has a fundamental interest in all cases that are submitted to a court for resolution. It is an unfortunate reality today that many of the most important public policy issues facing our State are being decided by courts. As such it is more important than ever that our judicial process is open and accessible."

An open court presided over by justices who have been through a public confirmation process? There's a wild and crazy idea, one that's never been tried in Teheran or in Topeka.

Denis Boyles, comments on the media and the Midwest for National Review Online, also writes the Monday, Monday column for Kansas Liberty. He's the author of Superior, Nebraska, an oddly-titled book mostly about Kansas.