Phill Kline got slapped down today by the Kansas Supreme Court for mishandling abortion clinic patient records. The court unanimously ordered that Kline give to the Attorney General’s Office copies of records that he transferred to the Johnson County District Attorney’s Office after he lost his re-election as attorney general. By a 5-2 vote, the high court also declared that Kline should be sanctioned for a series of actions he took in the case. In addition to transferring the records, the records were not properly safeguarded. A Kline investigator said he kept copies of the sensitive records in a Rubbermaid container in his dining room for several weeks, and other Kline officials said they stored records in cars and homes – and copied them at a Kinko’s in downtown Topeka on the day Kline left the Attorney General’s Office.
U.S. employers cut more than half a million jobs in November, the most monthly job cuts in 34 years and far more than analysts expected. The new losses raise the U.S. unemployment rate to 6.7 percent, the highest level since the recession of the early 1990s.
After falling short of votes in her attempt to become Kansas Senate president, state Sen. Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, said the leadership race’s main issue was the state budget, not social issues such as abortion. But Senate President Steve Morris (in photo), R-Hugoton, told the Topeka Capital-Journal that some of his supporters were “pressured, intimidated, harassed” to support Wagle by groups including Kansans for Life. He said that the anti-tax Americans for Prosperity also supported Wagle. Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, responded: “We didn’t do nearly what we could have done. We considered, but did not, rev up the phones.”
“If terror groups are to be defeated, it is national governments that will have to do so,” columnist Bill Kristol wrote about the attacks in Mumbai, India. “In nations like India (and the United States), governments will have to call on the patriotism of citizens to fight the terrorists. In a nation like Pakistan, the government will have to be persuaded to deal with those in their midst who are complicit. This can happen if those nations’ citizens decide they don’t want their own country to be dishonored by allegiances with terror groups. Otherwise, other nations may have to act.”
A group of retired military generals and admirals urged members of Barack Obama’s transition team Wednesday to establish a single, internationally accepted standard for the treatment of detainees, the Washington Post reported. In addition to being a violation of international law and America’s ideals, torturing is ineffective. “If the goal is to gain actionable intelligence . . . then we have to use the techniques that are most effective,” said John D. Hutson, a retired Navy rear admiral and former judge advocate general. “Torture is the technique of choice of the lazy, stupid and pseudo-tough.”
Phill Kline got slapped down today by the Kansas Supreme Court for mishandling abortion clinic patient records. The court unanimously ordered that Kline give to the Attorney General’s Office copies of records that he transferred to the Johnson County District Attorney’s Office after he lost his re-election as attorney general. By a 5-2 vote, the high court also declared that Kline should be sanctioned for a series of actions he took in the case. In addition to transferring the records, the records were not properly safeguarded. A Kline investigator said he kept copies of the sensitive records in a Rubbermaid container in his dining room for several weeks, and other Kline officials said they stored records in cars and homes – and copied them at a Kinko’s in downtown Topeka on the day Kline left the Attorney General’s Office.
