evolution

Stand by for a heaping helping of Christmas cheer!

Our outgoing Attorney General certainly had a big media day for himself in his last two weeks of office. Phill Kline, who was defeated for re-election by Paul Morrison, the Johnson County DA (which, incidentally, is Kline’s next job), filed charges against Dr George Tiller, a legendary abortion provider in Wichita. The charges were all related to Tiller’s allegedly misreporting the facts of several late-term abortion cases, many of which were performed on girls younger than 17 — including, said Kline’s complaint, a girl as young as 10.

Gee, who to root against in this one: is it possible to despise both George Tiller and Phill Kline. I say it is — because I do. I think George Tiller is a soulless vulture, scum of the first order. And Phill Kline is clearly an unprofessional hack with an agenda that doesn’t include the job which he was elected to do. Aren’t there other crimes going on in this state, ones which require more urgent attention? How about employers who knowingly employ illegal immigrants, which we subsidize in a myriad of ways? What has Phill Kline done about that? That’s just one example. What’s being let go so that Kline can focus on his white whale?

Seriously — all that work, all that publicity for some misdemeanors?

There’s still one thing that I can’t figure out, one that I spoke of previously. In their statement, Operation Rescue said they were “elated.” If I were in their position, I’d be furious. Phill Kline, with his rash and provocative actions, just guaranteed that whatever legitimate cases there may have been — if indeed there were any to begin with — against Dr Tiller will never, ever be heard.

Paul Morrison’s spokesperson, Ashley Anstaett — who used to work in that capacity for Democratic State Sen. Anthony Hensley, the Senate Minority Leader — said that Morrison would “give them the attention they deserve based on the evidence.” I’ll let you decipher according to your own biases what that means.

The judge in Sedgwick County (Wichita) tossed the charges, in a single-page ruling. The DA, Nola Foulston, argued that Kline’s complaint did not satisfy KSA 75-704:

75-704. Aid to county attorneys; opinions. The attorney general shall consult with and advise county attorneys, when requested by them, in all matters pertaining to their official duties. The attorney general shall also, when required, give his or her opinion in writing, without fee, upon all questions of law submitted to him or her by the legislature, or either branch thereof, or by the governor, secretary of state, state treasurer, state board of education, or commissioner of insurance.

Foulston appears to have both the law (although the wording of the relevant statutes seems to be unclear, to my untrained eye) and the precedent on her side.

And now, finally, we come to the larger point. (Deck the halls with boughs of holly!)

This message is for you, the conservative who’s thrown in with the social cons and dreams one day of banning abortion; or for you who, like me, may be liberal or may be conservative depending on how much you’ve had to drink, but find abortion to be both a disgusting practice and a sad commentary on society.

This message is for you, and the message is: You lost this one. It’s over. Unless there is a seismic societal shift — and I mean a “title of your kid’s school history unit”-sized event — the abortion “genie” will never be put back into the bottle. So, my argument goes, don’t squander what say you have left in it — work within the system to see that it is done safely and with maximum regard for human life.* Then, no one else has to suffer or perhaps die to make a political point, or for the temporal self-aggrandizement of an unprofessional political operative like Phill Kline. He is an easy target. It’s easy to call someone like Kline names like “snoop” or “panty-sniffer” (from people who are themselves political partisans, each and every one) and dismiss this as a case of the Jesusland savages getting uppity again; it’s much harder to confront the underlying social issues that make these confrontations inevitable. That’s what I’m interested in; you should be too. After all, it falls to us to make a reasonable set of laws in order to live in peace — and in the current climate, some form of the current arrangement is the only one that will work.

Most people are like you on some level — they don’t like abortion either. Most of them, however — myself included — want on some level for it to be legally permitted. The bell will never be un-rung. This battle in the culture war is over — and lost.

(Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la.)

MEDIA COVERAGE:

• AP/Lawrence Journal-World
• The KC Star
• The Topeka Capital-Journal has similar AP copy to that ran by the J-W. The TCJ version truncates the statements by Operation Rescue and Kansans for Life.
• The Wichita Eagle.
• This story made both Drudge and Breitbart as well.

*: This line is awkward, but it’s the best I’ve come up with, so I’m rolling with it.