The rabidness with which the Catholic League and the Liberty Council and other anti-choice groups oppose Gov. Sebelius for HHS may seem out of whack with her actual stances, which are fairly stock Democratic stuff. So for those of you not familiar with the wonderful story of Phill Kline and Dr. George Tiller and how Gov. Sebelius got wound up in this ugly twisted version of the politics of abortion, I thought I'd give a short history, but then I realized I can't do short and this tale is too epic to abridge too much.
Kline's political career can be described as a fluke of geography. Johnson County has been growing at a breakneck pace, at least compared to the contracting population of the rest of the state, for a few decades. Due to the constant misspelling of Phill's first name, it's difficult to find references to this, but Phil Kline with one L is a beloved, long-serving member of the Kansas legislature from Leawood, Kansas (part of Johnson County). In 1992, Phill Kline took advantage of his nomenclature to confuse the hell out of voters, and successfully won the office in a style befitting Eddie Murphy in The Distinguished Gentleman, only without the conscience. I'm unable to find corroboration to my brother's claim that the district double-L was elected in was a section of single-L's district, but since he was working in the state Capitol at the time I find no reason to doubt him. Really, this is all you need to know to find out what kind of politician Phill is.
His goal was the US House of Representatives, for which he lost in 1986 to Jim Slattery and 2000 to Dennis Moore. The latter loss cost him his seat in the state legislature, so two years later he set his sights on the spot of Attorney General. Despite the fact that you have to be dumber than a brain-damaged fruit fly to lose a statewide election as a Republican in Kansas, and sometimes that doesn't even help, Kline won by only four thousand votes.
Upon assuming office, Kline immediately began using his power to intimidate family planning centers under a law that requires doctors to report sexual contact by underage girls for statutory rape charges. It's important to note that under Kansas law, a sixteen-year-old having sex with a fifteen-year-old is considered rape. Indeed, a fifteen-year-old having sex with another fifteen-year-old is rape, although it's unclear who's guilty. But Kline's going to prosecute someone for it!
So Kline subpoenas Dr. George Tiller, who is notorious among the anti-choice crowd as a doctor who performs late term abortions. Kline: "And the law in Kansas says that when you have a ten-year-old who is pregnant, the child has been raped." Which, I suppose, makes a sort of sense, but it doesn't seem that the attorney general should be fishing for such cases. And, indeed, he wasn't. As the CEO of Planned Parenthood of Kansas says at that same link, "The vast majority of the records that have been subpoenaed are of adult women. A very small percentage is minor women. None of the records subpoenaed from our organization are for women who are children who are ten, eleven or twelve or thirteen."
The matter eventually wound up in the Kansas Supreme Court, which had one of the better smackdowns of a right-winger in recent memory:
Kline exhibits little, if any, respect for the authority of this court or for his responsibility to it and to the rule of law it husbands. His attitude and behavior are inexcusable, particularly for someone who purports to be a professional prosecutor. It is plain that he is interested in the pursuit of justice only as he chooses to define it.
And it turned out that Kansans weren't too happy about it either. The reliably pro-life, redder than a blood-spattered fire truck state, it turned out, wasn't too happy with an attorney general who was spending his time on witch hunts while living in a city whose crime rate was nearly double the national average.
And they really weren't happy when it turned out that Bill O'Reilly seemed to have these confidential medical records that Kline's dragnet had collected. Not happy to the tune of giving 58.6% of the vote in the AG election to his Democratic opponent. You'd think it would end there.
But no. In a desperate attempt to make his witch hunt look legitimate, Kline filed charges on thirty criminal counts (sorry for the WorldNetDaily link, I'm just sourcing my number. Come to think of it, it'd probably be better for your brain if you just didn't click it) against Dr. Tiller shortly before leaving office. The Sedgwick County DA declined to prosecute them, largely because there was no evidence of crimes committed (unless you think teenagers should be put on the sex offender registry for consensual sex with their peers).
So Kline goes back to Johnson County, where he's appointed DA, until he loses a primary election. Seems nobody wants him anymore. But wait! No! Look at that Wikipedia link again! Monica Goodling's alma mater, Liberty University (I mixed up the college founded by Pat Robertson with the one founded by Jerry Falwell. h/t to boofdah), the petri dish in which some of the worst right-wing hack lawyers in the country are grown (and also awful "Christian rock," formerly awful "Christian rap" group dc talk), hired him to teach law. Which is rich enough if it ends there.
But, still, no. Seems on his last day in office as the Johnson County District Attorney, Kline mailed the Tiller records to himself. But he misaddressed them and they were returned. That's what we call here in Kansas, and probably everywhere else, "mishandling of confidential records." Still begs the question "Why the hell did a Johnson County DA have records for a case in Sedgwick County, two and a half hours to the southwest on I-35?"
Of course, during this time, Dr. Tiller didn't stand idly by. It appears that he donated money to any cause or candidate that would help get rid of Kline. And while, to any rational observer, it's clear that Kline's actions were a witch hunt, he became a superstar of the right-wing anti-choice movement. If you think you're up to it, go ahead and read that WorldNetDaily link.
And that list of folks naturally included Kathleen Sebelius, who was doing everything she could to get rid of this blockheaded embarrassment to her state and replace her with someone who'd do his damn job. She recruited Paul Morrison, who ultimately was forced to resign because of an affair (this made me laugh and cry -- but that's a different diary for someone else to write).
The fact is, Sebelius's targetting by the far right isn't even ideological. It's political payback for her beating one of their boys.
[EDIT: Ah, crap. I didn't mean to do a drive-by diary, but I thought it was about an hour earlier. Back after class.]