Abbie Hoffman Moment

The First For Riley County Kansas

Congratulations to the first gay couple in Riley County, Kansas to marry! Today was a very special day for Joleen Hickman and Darci Bohnenblust. Despite the ongoing efforts of a small number of Republican officials who pander to a larger number under socialized morons, who live in Kansas, to deny civil rights to some citizens while fully granting them to others, Joleen and Darci were married in Manhattan, Kansas this morning. Such equality, here in Kansas, of all places!

Kansas Gives Teacher Permission To Assault

According to Eyewitness News 12, a Kansas teacher and foster parent named Noble Rick Pendland was charged with sex crimes against three children, but the court accepted pleas to assault on the three charges, instead. His name does not appear in the sex offender registry, or even the violent offender registry. Each sentence is six months, eighteen months in total; and because he was held for over eighteen months in lieu of bond, his sentence was time served. He is no longer allowed to serve as a foster parent or a teacher, though. 

How backwards can Kansas possibly be? Pendland should at least be required to register in the violent offender registry, so that parents have access to his dossier when he teaches Sunday School or decides to become a priest! And telling him not to teach is useless because he does not need a teaching license to work as a para. He will probably move to Marshall County Kansas and find employment immediately at Frankfort! 

What About The Baby, Chad Taylor?

Chad Taylor, prosecuting attorney in Topeka, Kansas, pretends that he is really fighting crime by ignoring student safety issues and other problems in Kansas schools, then charging seventeen year old Brendan Steven Moore, of Topeka, with four counts of solicitation of first degree murder as an adult. When a baby actually died last year, in a Topeka home daycare, he could not even bother to read the reports and statements made about the incident. To this day, anyone who calls Chad Taylor's office in Topeka Kansas and asks about the investigation of the death of Caleb Stewart will not get an answer. His secretary generally hangs up on anyone who asks that question. If Chad Taylor really cares about crime, why doesn't he find out why Caleb died, shut down all daycares and schools that do not take child safety seriously, and question the last adult to have any contact with Caleb before he coded and was rushed to the hospital?

Why is one Topeka child's death important enough for legal action, while another's is not? Where does Chad Taylor draw the line? Does he only care about the children of parents whose jobs are white collar? Is it college graduates, but no one else, who elicits his concern when a baby dies? Does it matter how long the baby's parents have lived in Kansas, or how likely they may or may not have been to vote for him? Because other cases, involving similar deaths, have been investigated, and tried in court. According to information that is courtesy of the Kansas Child Death Review Board, daycare deaths of children in Caleb's age group usually occur because of sleeping arrangements. Caleb was sleeping in a dog bed, which had, according to one witness, been placed in a closet! Has Chad Taylor even taken an afternoon to sit down with Caleb's parents and discuss the opinions of the Kansas Child Death Review Board with them? It's really starting to look as if he is only willing to jump on whatever bandwagon will net him the most publicity. A child creating a ruckus at school with threats faces Taylor in court, tried as an adult, on charges of solicitation of first degree murder, because this type of case has been in the eye of the media, nationwide, lately. Not quite as many cases involving babies who do not survive daycare while both parents work become photo ops for folks like Chad Taylor.

At least sit down and talk to the other children who were at the daycare that day, Chad.

Busted! Another Kansas Attorney Bites Dust!

 

Phill Kline, former Attorney General of Kansas, just lost his license to practice law indefinitely, in Kansas, because of unethical conduct while he represented the state of Kansas during his "reign" as Attorney General. It seems that most of the complaints filed against him involved his obsession with womens' medicine, specifically reproductive rights and obstetric needs, and undue attention given to any clinic that offered therapeutic abortion. The items for which the Kansas Bar Association did not particularly care include, but are not limited to: giving false testimony to a judge, making false statements to the Supreme Court, allowing a member of his staff to take medical records from a clinic to her home for several weeks and stating that the records were being kept in a secure facility! (so much for doctor/patient confidentiality and hipaa) He was also faulted for seeking a subpoena from the Grand Jury without informing them of the actual law in the involved case; in other words, he wanted them to grant him carte blanche in a matter with no regard for the law. Today, in a surprising decision, the Kansas Bar Association has determined that it might not be a good idea for such an attorney to continue to practice law. Who could possibly have seen that coming?

In addition to the above unethical conduct, "the court found Friday that when he was attorney general, Kline committed misconduct by instructing members of his staff to attach sealed documents to a publicly filed document in violation of a Supreme Court order. He also told staff to file a court pleading that contained misleading information."

Whoa! Wait a minute! Back up the truck.............

Is it really unlawful and unethical for a prosecutor to file court pleadings that contain misleading information? Say it ain't so! Has anyone told the prosecutor in Marshall County? Hahaha! But seriously, folks, Kline was found to have committed eleven serious ethical violations since 2003. It's a shame the Kansas Bar Association did not seek disbarment.

 

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/10/18/3065275/kansas-supreme-court-indefinitely.html#storylink=cpy

Stupid Prosecutor Loses License To Practice Law

Mingo County, West Virginia has a position open for a county prosecutor now that Michael Sparks the law license of Michael Sparks, former Mingo County prosecutor, has been revoked. It seems that Michael Sparks was either acutely aware, or vaguely aware, of the practice employed by a West Virginia judge, the former Judge Thornsbury, of planting evidence and falsely accusing innocent people of crimes, and attempting to initiate prosecution against his victims! It appears that in addition to taking a dim view of false litigation, the Supreme Court in West Virginia takes an equally dim view of looking the other way when elected officials in law enforcement and the court have engaged in corrupt, unlawful behaviors that erode the trust of the general public. What a concept! The Supreme Court also has a problem with prosecutors and judges who try to silence federal witnesses. An element of that also played a role here. In fact, Both Sparks and Thornsbury did something that is often done in Marshall County, Kansas, where a prosecutor named Laura McNish is constitutionally incapable (pun somewhat intended) of winning a jury trial by herself, and intimidates and threatens defendants who hire lawyers, invoke their rights, and insist upon jury trials: they attempted to deprive a defendant of adequate legal counsel in exchange for a lighter sentence. A quote from WOWKTV states this:

"Sparks is accused in a scheme to protect former Sheriff Eugene Crum from revelations he'd bought drugs from a campaign sign-maker.
Prosecutors allege Sparks, a former county commissioner and former Circuit Judge Michael Thornsbury offered a lighter sentence if the dealer fired his lawyer and hired one they preferred."

So interfering with a defendant's counsel is also criminally unethical? Who'd have thought?!

On a related note, the Kansas Department of Education is still looking for a way to ensure cooperation of prosecutors in the area of mandatory reporting of all teachers who commit crimes. When teachers who exhibit criminal behavior, such as criminal restraint and kidnapping are prosecuted and reported to the Department of Education AS THE LAW REQUIRES, it is much easier to identify them and deny the renewals of teachers' licenses. Perhaps if Marshall County Kansas had a prosecutor with competence, instead of Laura McNish, court in Marshall County would begin to administer justice and Frankfort High School would be safe enough to get insurance.

 

Once A Kansas Teacher, Always A Kansas Teacher

There is a push to start fingerprinting teachers in Kansas while performing criminal background checks, in an ongoing effort to curb the renewals of licenses of those teachers who have committed serious crimes both before and after starting their careers. But what good will that do? As has already been noted, in addition to criminal background checks for new hires, Kansas already has a law mandating that law enforcement and county prosecutors report any known criminal activity on the part of an educator to the Kansas Department Of Education, yet, during the past two years, only fourteen of the one hundred and five county prosecutors in Kansas reported such incidents as directed by law!

The problem does not lie in identification of these cases, it lies in proper documentation and reporting of same. In a more heavily populated or multi-lingual area, communication could present a possible problem in reporting and documentation, but here in Kansas, the problem with renewal of teaching licenses for criminals is much more likely to be cover-up and protection of cronies. Since this is probably not going to change without the help of citizens who care about the quality of the education received by our children, the most logical step a parent can take, after making sure that appropriate police reports are made, is to report any legally defined child endangerment incidents directly to the Kansas Department Of Education. This would relieve the political burden on the shoulders of the elected, and thereby recallable, county prosecutors. The telephone number one would call is 785-291-3678.

 

Duties Of Schools Boards And County Attorneys

Oh yes! The Kansas State Board of Education is now in the process of revoking six teaching licenses of teachers who, the Board discovered, had felony criminal records. The crimes in question have mostly been abuses of children, but at least one was a violation of a prohibition law. According to Cheryl Whelan, the attorney who represents the Kansas State Department of Education, the State Board of Education has a responsibility to make sure that no teacher renews a license after conviction of certain crimes, and that no new license is granted to a felon. An interesting additional comment she made is this: “There doesn't have to be a conviction,” she said. “It can be any act that endangers or injures the health or welfare of a minor through physical or sexual abuse or exploitation. The perception that a conviction triggers a duty to report is incorrect.” That means that if a teacher has committed a crime that has not been reported or prosecuted, which often happens in these parts because of corruption and judicial favoritism, and if criminal acts on the part of a teacher have been admitted, or can be proven to the satisfaction of the Board, the license in question should not be renewed, if the Board is following the law to the letter. That certainly is intriguing, considering that in 2009, a guidance counselor deliberately dropped my daughter off on a stretch of highway and never contacted law enforcement or yours truly. Luckily, she was found several hours later. Because of the danger this type of action on the part of a teacher presents, I reported it, yet no one wanted to do anything about the creepy guidance counselor's criminal act toward my daughter. This brings me to the other point made by Cheryl Whelan about the ability and responsibility of the Kansas Board of Education about revocation of teaching licenses when teachers prove unworthy. The misdeeds get swept under the rug, so to speak, in much the same way district and county attorneys manipulate testimony and evidence for cases here in Kansas. Oddly enough, Whelan has the notion that the Board of Education's agency for hearing these cases, the Professional Practices Commission, does not get the cooperation it needs in order to serve the schools and children properly. She complains that the "agency has often had trouble enforcing those laws because school districts and local prosecutors often failed to report cases to state licensing officials." Imagine that! In the state of Kansas!

What's most amusing is that Whelan calls the situation "the new normal". New?