Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline is right that the state has a legitimate interest in investigating suspected child sexual abuse. But as the Kansas Supreme Court ruled Friday, in doing so, Kline must also respect the legitimate privacy interests of patient/doctor relationships.
The ruling involving Kline’s efforts to get medical records from abortion clinics appeared to strike a careful and appropriate balance between these two sometimes-competing public interests. Ironically, the ruling came as Kline was giving testimony in Wichita on a related issue involving mandatory reporting by medical providers of sexual activity by minors, regardless of whether it’s between consenting teens.
What these closely watched cases should help clarify is the extent of medical privacy rights for minors and adults. Today’s ruling sends a message that those privacy concerns cannot be discounted.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
President Bush has yet to offer a convincing defense of his warrantless wiretapping program. During his State of the Union address, he suggested that Sept. 11 could have been prevented had the program been in place before the attack — by monitoring the calls of two suspects. But this Washington Post article says that the facts don’t agree, considering “the Sept. 11 commission and congressional investigators said the government had compiled significant information on the two suspects before the attacks and that bureaucratic problems — not a lack of information — were the main reasons for the security breakdown. The FBI did not even know where the two suspects lived and missed numerous opportunities to track them down in the 20 months before the attacks.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
Let’s see: The Legislature has balanced the state budget in recent years by keeping hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue it is supposed to share with local governments. Now it wants to eliminate taxes on new business equipment, the cost of which will be borne almost entirely by local governments. And when City Manager George Kolb and his top budget officials told local lawmakers Wednesday that the city might have to raise other taxes in order to cover its lost revenue, they were told to stop being so pessimistic. “I’m kind of disappointed with the city and county,” said Rep. Joe McLeland, R-Wichita (in photo). The feeling likely is mutual.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
In his speeches this week in defense of his Iraq policy, President Bush has conveniently found a new straw man to knock down — isolationism.
“If we were to withdraw, not only would we cede ground to the terrorists and endanger this country, we would miss a fantastic opportunity to help spread liberty,” he said.
Of course, almost no one is saying America should retreat from the world and batten down the hatches. What many object to is how America engages the world — in Iraq’s case, with a simplistic ideology and a poorly planned strategy that is endangering our military forces and hurting our image and relations abroad.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
The following satirical headlines come from borowitzreport.com:
BUSH: ‘I AM AN OILAHOLIC’; President Admits Petroleum Addiction, Enters Rehab
GREENSPAN SENDS MIXED SIGNALS IN FIRST DAY AT HOME; Former Fed Chief’s Inscrutable Statements Baffle Wife
OPRAH TAKES BUSH TO WOODSHED; Rips President Over WMD Fibs
SADDAM DANCES ON TOP OF LIMO TO THE DELIGHT OF FANS; Deposed Dictator Hoping to Create Media Circus, Insiders Say
OSAMA ANNOUNCES BOOK CLUB; Madman on Collision Course With Oprah
ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS CALLS CHOCOLATE CITY UNFEASIBLE; New Orleans Would Be in Constant Danger of Melting, USACE Says
NAKED PHOTOS OF BUSH AND ABRAMOFF ROCK WHITE HOUSE; But President Still Denies Knowing Lobbyist
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
