There were lots of wankers this week, so many it was quite a winnowing process selecting just one. Thank God for Phill can't-even- spell-
Phil Kline.
Kline is the former Kansas state legislator and Attorney General who was thumped by Paul Morrison in the AG race in November. Paul Morrison switched parties just too tromp his ass and send him packing.
Kline just doesn't give a good-god-damn about minutiae such as "due process" or professional ethics. He was born 40 years too late and in the wrong super-power. He woulda been one hell of a Soviet aparatchik. Unfortunately, he's a pretty fuckin' lousy American.
He spent his four years as Attorney General obsessing about abortions performed on minors. He tried to obtain confidential medical records, and some confidential information made it to the air on Bill O'Lieleys show.
Now he has a new obsession.
Kline out of bounds with blood-test plan
Prosecutor seeks evidence of a crime at the expense of a medical patient’s privacy. Health professionals object. Prosecutor says he’ll arrest them if they stand in his way.The sequence has a familiar ring to anyone who followed Phill Kline’s turbulent term as Kansas attorney general. It’s perturbing, but not surprising, to see him continue the pattern as Johnson County’s district attorney.
As attorney general, Kline sought records of some patients who had received abortions. He waged an unsuccessful and widely ridiculed legal battle to require counselors, doctors and others to notify authorities if they suspected that some teenagers were sexually active.
Now Kline wants hospital staffers to obtain blood tests from certain unwilling patients to determine whether they are intoxicated. He says he’ll arrest the medical personnel for “obstruction of justice” if they don’t comply, even though they are bound by federal regulations and accreditation guidelines to respect patient privacy and a patient’s right to refuse medical treatment.
No responsible person wants to let intoxicated drivers off the hook. But the proper procedure is to obtain a warrant from a judge if a motorist balks at providing a blood sample.
In a small number of cases, a warrant won’t be available. Reasonable prosecutors have still found ways to hold drunken drivers accountable without forcing health care workers to violate professional codes.
Kline, however, lacks finesse and experience in criminal prosecution, not to mention respect for health professionals. After just three months in his new post, he is drawing the once-respected Johnson County district attorney’s office into unnecessary, but predictable, controversy.
This health professional is not going to play along. I have informed the healthcare staffing agencies that I take shifts for every summer when I'm off from school, that I will not take any shifts on the Kansas side.
An invasive procedure committed upon an objecting lucid patient is assault, and I am not going to commit that crime.
Fuck Phill Kline. He may not have any professional ethics, but I do. And I am not going to put myself in a position where I have to chose between whether to live up to the professional code of ethics that I have operated under for two decades, or going to jail. I have no desire to be a martyr or a test case. Kansas trauma teams will just have to operate without me until that wanker is out of office.
