Kansas Khaos

Last June, we took an inside look at the embarrassing Kansas scandal of Rove Republican Racket member and former Attorney General of Kansas, Phill Kline (pictured), who used his position to criminally target an abortion doctor and was influenced to do so by the mistress of his arch-enemy.

George Tiller, the abortion dctor, had been shot and killed the weekend before our post last June.

Now comes news that Kline used the state's highest law enforcement office to engage in a witchhunt of women who had abortions. Kline and some of his former Deputy Attorney Generals are facing state disiplinary hearings this spring for misconduct.

Why? In brief, using the issue of illegal abortions of underage girls as a front, Kline and company obtained medical records of adult women trying to obtain an abortion.

Kline's former Deputy Attorney General Eric Rucker made headlines late last night after responding to the detailed accusations which are eye-popping. The Topeka Capital-Journal writes:

The state's disciplinary board pointed to complaints Rucker was involved in obtaining state medical files under false pretenses, misleading court officials to retain possession of records, dispatching staff to record license plates of women entering the Wichita office of physician George Tiller and securing records from a motel where some of Tiller's patients stayed. Specifically, Rucker is accused of misleading the Kansas Supreme Court when he said the state attorney general's office wasn't pursuing the identity of any adult women who had obtained medical services at Tiller's clinic. The ethics board indicated there was evidence of an effort to obtain names of adult clients.

An Inside Look at Kansas

The news from this weekend focused on the murder of physician George Tiller, who performed abortions in Kansas.

We found an article from the Kansas City Star from January that was re-posted on Sunday in South Carolina by The State. Although the story focused on the trial of Tiller, it also contained an inside look into the politics of Kansas' legal establishment.

Both Paul Morrison and Phil Kline served as Kansas Attorney General.

The deeds and misdeeds of Paul Morrison and Phill Kline, both former Kansas attorneys general, proved to be the subject of a lengthy — and at times, salacious — legal drama Tuesday.

The day's star witness? Linda Carter, the former staffer in the Johnson County district attorney’s office whose affair with Morrison led to his resignation as attorney general a year ago. Tuesday was the first time Carter had spoken publicly about the relationship. She said Morrison and Kline were "arch-enemies" and that she and Morrison often argued about her employment in Kline’s office after he replaced Morrison as district attorney. They also fought about the Tiller investigation and late-term abortion, which Carter said she opposes.

Morrison, she said, "was increasingly becoming more verbally abusive, angry towards me. That was always because I continued my employment with Phil Kline."

Tiller is accused of having an improper financial relationship with a second physician who signed off on late-term abortions he performed. Tiller maintains his innocence, but his attorneys argue that the 19 misdemeanor charges should be dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct from the start of the investigation.

They accuse Kline, the Republican who began the investigation of Tiller, of letting his opposition to abortion influence his decision to pursue charges. And they say Kline mishandled medical files retrieved from Tiller's office.

Tiller's lawyers contend that Morrison, who changed parties to run as a Democrat against Kline in 2006, later filed the charges under pressure from Carter. She began working for Kline after the election, when he was appointed to fill out Morrison's term as Johnson County district attorney.