Bill O'Reilly and his minions are at it again.
So what's got O'Reilly fired up now? The statements of Dr. McHugh, an "expert" witness in the "case" against Dr. George Tiller. In reality, he was a hired-gun witness for former AG Phill Kline. In that position, he had access to and reviewed late-term abortion records seized by Kline. Recently, McHugh has publicly stated that, in his opinion, none of the late-term abortions were medically justified. Of course, as a paid witness for Kline, he's totally credible and unbiased, right?
Wrong!
Needless to say, speaking publicly about private and sensitive medical records poses both ethical and legal questions. Current AG Paul Morrison quickly gave McHugh a judicial slap-down with a "cease and desist" order. McHugh has so far agreed to abide by the order and make no further comments regarding the medical records.
Of course, all of this has left Mr. O'Reilly foaming at the mouth. Hence, he and his team of crack journalists have evolved from raving commentators into lurking stalkers. Just this week, a member of Team O'Reilly traveled to Wichita to corner and question Dr. George Tiller at a convenience store. You can see the video by clicking here. Or, you can read the transcript here.
Once again, O'Reilly is calling on his viewers to contact and denounce Governor Kathleen Sebelius and as an added bonus, he'd like them to give AG Paul Morrison a buzz as well. It only seems fair that Mr. O' Reilly be visited with the same kindness. If you'd like to contact Bill O'Reilly and tell him what you think, please click here.
In other news, the National Right to Life Committee is holding their national convention this week in Kansas City. So it's no coincidence that O'Reilly is focusing his anti-choice lasers on the great state of Kansas with more fury than usual. The convention and coverage of goings on here in Kansas have even made it to the international press. To read the article from the International Herald Tribune, please click here.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Friday, May 11, 2007
Spy vs. Spy
Headlines in Kansas, that’s something ProKanDo is used to. Making our way to the Wall Street Journal Online, that’s new. Here’s the beef:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Antichoice Double Agent
Kansas has a new law making it a crime to harm an unborn child, the Wichita Eagle reports.
"Alexa's Law" was a response to the murder of 14-year-old Chelsea Brooks, who was pregnant with a girl she intended to name Alexa. Brooks's boyfriend is now charged with murder for hire.
But as the Eagle notes, "not everyone approved of the governor's actions" in signing Alexa's Law:
The abortion-rights group ProKanDo and others opposed to Alexa's Law had lobbied for a measure that would increase penalties for harming a pregnant woman while not defining the fetus as a separate person.
They say laws like Alexa's Law have done little to protect women in the states where they are already on the books.
"What we need are laws that will place value on the lives of the women who give life," said Julie Burkhart, director of the abortion-rights group ProKanDo.
Huh? 'The women who give life'? What does 'life' have to do with the right to choose? Is Julie Burkhart secretly in the employ of the antichoice Christianist fanatics?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is insanity, people! Why on earth would a group who favors a woman’s right to reproductive health also want to respect her entire well-being?? Oh wait…now that I’ve typed it out, it actually does make sense.
But seriously folks….
Julie Burkhart as a double agent? Let’s just file that one under “Things that only happen in an alternate universe.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Antichoice Double Agent
Kansas has a new law making it a crime to harm an unborn child, the Wichita Eagle reports.
"Alexa's Law" was a response to the murder of 14-year-old Chelsea Brooks, who was pregnant with a girl she intended to name Alexa. Brooks's boyfriend is now charged with murder for hire.
But as the Eagle notes, "not everyone approved of the governor's actions" in signing Alexa's Law:
The abortion-rights group ProKanDo and others opposed to Alexa's Law had lobbied for a measure that would increase penalties for harming a pregnant woman while not defining the fetus as a separate person.
They say laws like Alexa's Law have done little to protect women in the states where they are already on the books.
"What we need are laws that will place value on the lives of the women who give life," said Julie Burkhart, director of the abortion-rights group ProKanDo.
Huh? 'The women who give life'? What does 'life' have to do with the right to choose? Is Julie Burkhart secretly in the employ of the antichoice Christianist fanatics?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is insanity, people! Why on earth would a group who favors a woman’s right to reproductive health also want to respect her entire well-being?? Oh wait…now that I’ve typed it out, it actually does make sense.
But seriously folks….
Julie Burkhart as a double agent? Let’s just file that one under “Things that only happen in an alternate universe.”
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Governor Sebelius Signs UVVA
Yesterday, Governor Kathleen Sebelius signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UVVA) into law, despite hopes that she would veto it. Obviously, we am very concerned about the implications this law will have for pregnant women in the state of Kansas.
Below, you will see ProKanDo's official statement regarding this issue.
"We are sadly disappointed that Governor Sebelius has chosen to sign the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UVVA) into law. The bill contains no provisions to protect pregnant women in the state of Kansas against violence," said Julie Burkhart, Director, ProKanDo. "In fact, more than 30 states have laws similar to UVVA, and violence against pregnant women in those states has not stopped or even been minimized. Similarly, this law will not help pregnant women in Kansas escape the perils of violent behavior, either."
Burkhart continued, "After Chelsea Brooks' tragic murder, we had hoped that the legislature would focus on legislation that would actually protect pregnant women and their children. Chelsea Brooks was murdered in spite of a protection order. What we need is a full and honest conversation about the rate of male violence against women. What we need are laws that will place value on the lives of the women who give life."
It is with your support that we will continue to fight anti-woman legislation and work to improve laws like UVVA. If you would like to help us with the work that lies ahead, please consider a contribution to ProKanDo. We appreciate all of your support.
To contribute, follow the link below:
http://www.prokando.org/contribute.asp
Below, you will see ProKanDo's official statement regarding this issue.
"We are sadly disappointed that Governor Sebelius has chosen to sign the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UVVA) into law. The bill contains no provisions to protect pregnant women in the state of Kansas against violence," said Julie Burkhart, Director, ProKanDo. "In fact, more than 30 states have laws similar to UVVA, and violence against pregnant women in those states has not stopped or even been minimized. Similarly, this law will not help pregnant women in Kansas escape the perils of violent behavior, either."
Burkhart continued, "After Chelsea Brooks' tragic murder, we had hoped that the legislature would focus on legislation that would actually protect pregnant women and their children. Chelsea Brooks was murdered in spite of a protection order. What we need is a full and honest conversation about the rate of male violence against women. What we need are laws that will place value on the lives of the women who give life."
It is with your support that we will continue to fight anti-woman legislation and work to improve laws like UVVA. If you would like to help us with the work that lies ahead, please consider a contribution to ProKanDo. We appreciate all of your support.
To contribute, follow the link below:
http://www.prokando.org/contribute.asp
Friday, April 27, 2007
One Last Chance to Defeat UVVA!
HB 2062, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UVVA), has been approved the by the Kansas House of Representatives. It is now on its way to Governor Kathleen Sebelius' desk for final approval. But, you have one last chance to help defeat this anti-woman bill.
I strongly urge you to contact Governor Sebelius and encourage her to VETO HB 2062. She can reached at her office, 785-296-3232 or you can call toll free at 1-877-579-6757. You can also send her a message by clicking here.
HB 2062 is a bad bill for many reasons. Here are a few things you can tell the Governor:
The Kansas legislature has a responsibility to punish those whose violent actions interfere with a woman's fundamental right to have a child. Existing Motherhood Protection laws (K.S.A. 21-3440 and K.S.A. 21-3441) recognize the particularly heinous nature of crimes against pregnant women by providing separate criminal charges for those who interrupt a pregnancy in the commission of a crime. HB 2062 actually strikes Motherhood Protection Laws.
HB 2062 will have unintended consequences for pregnant women. In South Carolina, a similar law has been used approximately 3 times against actual perpetrators since its inception in 1984. It has been used over 70 times, however, to prosecute women who suffered stillbirths. A similar trend has appeared in other states as well, even though the laws specifically exempt pregnant women just as HB 2062 does.
HB 2062 does nothing to address violence against pregnant women, but functions solely by defining fetuses as people in the Kansas criminal code. Motherhood Protection Laws, on the other hand, keep the focus where it should be - on the victims of these horrible crimes.
UVVA is intentionally vague and overbroad. Motherhood Protection Laws have a specific goal: to punish those who intentionally harm pregnant women. By repealing these acts, it would ignore the harm that is directly done to a pregnant woman and her right to have a baby.
HB 2062 is controversial because for the first time ever, it would define fetuses, from the moment of conception, as full people in Kansas law.
Motherhood Protection Laws address violence against pregnant women without dragging abortion into the debate.
Please ask the Governor to VETO HB 2062. Ask her NOT to repeal existing Motherhood Protection Laws K.S.A. 21-3440 and K.S.A. 21-3441.
I strongly urge you to contact Governor Sebelius and encourage her to VETO HB 2062. She can reached at her office, 785-296-3232 or you can call toll free at 1-877-579-6757. You can also send her a message by clicking here.
HB 2062 is a bad bill for many reasons. Here are a few things you can tell the Governor:
The Kansas legislature has a responsibility to punish those whose violent actions interfere with a woman's fundamental right to have a child. Existing Motherhood Protection laws (K.S.A. 21-3440 and K.S.A. 21-3441) recognize the particularly heinous nature of crimes against pregnant women by providing separate criminal charges for those who interrupt a pregnancy in the commission of a crime. HB 2062 actually strikes Motherhood Protection Laws.
HB 2062 will have unintended consequences for pregnant women. In South Carolina, a similar law has been used approximately 3 times against actual perpetrators since its inception in 1984. It has been used over 70 times, however, to prosecute women who suffered stillbirths. A similar trend has appeared in other states as well, even though the laws specifically exempt pregnant women just as HB 2062 does.
HB 2062 does nothing to address violence against pregnant women, but functions solely by defining fetuses as people in the Kansas criminal code. Motherhood Protection Laws, on the other hand, keep the focus where it should be - on the victims of these horrible crimes.
UVVA is intentionally vague and overbroad. Motherhood Protection Laws have a specific goal: to punish those who intentionally harm pregnant women. By repealing these acts, it would ignore the harm that is directly done to a pregnant woman and her right to have a baby.
HB 2062 is controversial because for the first time ever, it would define fetuses, from the moment of conception, as full people in Kansas law.
Motherhood Protection Laws address violence against pregnant women without dragging abortion into the debate.
Please ask the Governor to VETO HB 2062. Ask her NOT to repeal existing Motherhood Protection Laws K.S.A. 21-3440 and K.S.A. 21-3441.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Commentary from the peanut gallery...
The right wing, basking in the ecstasy of a Supreme Court boondoggle, had a few choice nuggets for the world. This is just a sampling of the fortune cookie wisdom coming from the anti-choicers:
Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue: "The court has now said it's OK to ban procedures. We can do more than just put hurdles in front of women seeking abortions - we can put roadblocks in front of them." (Associated Press, 4/19/07)
Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition of America: "It is just a matter of time before the infamous Roe v. Wade...will also be struck down by the court." (USA Today, 4/19/07)
Leslee Unruh, an anti-choice activist in South Dakota who helped lead the abortion ban in that state: "I'm ecstatic.... It's like someone gave me $1 million and told me, 'Leslee, go shopping.' That's how I feel." (Los Angeles Times, 4/19/07)
Senator Sam Brownback, Republican Presidential Candidate: "I applaud the Court for finding that the Constitution 'expresses respect for the dignity of human life,' and hope that this decision signals the Court's willingness to revisit and reverse Roe v. Wade." (Press release, Brownback for President 4/18/07)
Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue: "The court has now said it's OK to ban procedures. We can do more than just put hurdles in front of women seeking abortions - we can put roadblocks in front of them." (Associated Press, 4/19/07)
Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition of America: "It is just a matter of time before the infamous Roe v. Wade...will also be struck down by the court." (USA Today, 4/19/07)
Leslee Unruh, an anti-choice activist in South Dakota who helped lead the abortion ban in that state: "I'm ecstatic.... It's like someone gave me $1 million and told me, 'Leslee, go shopping.' That's how I feel." (Los Angeles Times, 4/19/07)
Senator Sam Brownback, Republican Presidential Candidate: "I applaud the Court for finding that the Constitution 'expresses respect for the dignity of human life,' and hope that this decision signals the Court's willingness to revisit and reverse Roe v. Wade." (Press release, Brownback for President 4/18/07)
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Urgent Legislative Alert!
House Bill 2062, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UVVA), is coming up for a final vote very soon. This is a piece of anti-woman legislation will even effect women who want to have their babies.
HB 2062 will have unintended consequences for pregnant women. In South Carolina, a similar law has been used only three times against an actual perpetrator since its inception in 1984. It has been used over 70 times, however, to prosecute women who were carrying their babies to term. A similar trend has appeared in other states as well, even though the laws specifically exempt pregnant women just as HB 2062 does.
HB 2062 does nothing to address violence against pregnant women, but functions
solely by defining fetuses as people under the Kansas criminal code. Homicide is the number one cause of death amongst pregnant women. Until violence against women is addressed; pregnant women will continue to be murdered.
HB 2062 is controversial because, for the first time ever, it would define fetuses, from the moment of conception, as full people under Kansas law.
Please help us stop this bill today. Please contact the representatives below and ask them to vote "NO" on HB 2062.
Robert Grant
620-457-8496
grant@house.state.ks.us
Shirley Palmer
620-223-4105
palmers@house.state.ks.us
Dennis McKinney
620-723-2129
mckinney@house.state.ks.us
Joshua Svaty
785-472-7794
svaty@house.state.ks.us
Tom Burroughs
913-375-1956
burroughs@house.state.ks.us
Stan Frownfelter
913-262-9659
frownfelter@house.state.ks.us
Steve Lukert
785-284-3623
lukert@house.state.ks.us
Eber Phelps
785-625-5947
phelps@house.state.ks.us
Vincent Wetta
620-326-5205
wetta@house.state.ks.us
Nile Dillmore
316-264-2988
dillmore@house.state.ks.us
Oletha Faust-Goudeau
316-652-9067
faustgoudeau@house.state.ks.us
Raj Goyle
316-681-8133
goyle@house.state.ks.us
Ann Mah
785-266-9434
mah@house.state.ks.us
Melody McCray-Miller
316-744-7516
Millerm@house.state.ks.us
Terry McLachlan
316-619-7879
mclachlan@house.state.ks.us
Cindy Neighbor
913-268-9061
neighbor@house.state.ks.us
Michael Peterson
913-371-7354
peterson@house.state.ks.us
Tom Sawyer
316-265-7076
sawyer@house.state.ks.us
Mark Treaster
620-459-6363
treaster@house.state.ks.us
Ed Trimmer
620-221-7146
trimmer@house.state.ks.us
Jim Ward
316-683-3609
ward@house.state.ks.us
HB 2062 will have unintended consequences for pregnant women. In South Carolina, a similar law has been used only three times against an actual perpetrator since its inception in 1984. It has been used over 70 times, however, to prosecute women who were carrying their babies to term. A similar trend has appeared in other states as well, even though the laws specifically exempt pregnant women just as HB 2062 does.
HB 2062 does nothing to address violence against pregnant women, but functions
solely by defining fetuses as people under the Kansas criminal code. Homicide is the number one cause of death amongst pregnant women. Until violence against women is addressed; pregnant women will continue to be murdered.
HB 2062 is controversial because, for the first time ever, it would define fetuses, from the moment of conception, as full people under Kansas law.
Please help us stop this bill today. Please contact the representatives below and ask them to vote "NO" on HB 2062.
Robert Grant
620-457-8496
grant@house.state.ks.us
Shirley Palmer
620-223-4105
palmers@house.state.ks.us
Dennis McKinney
620-723-2129
mckinney@house.state.ks.us
Joshua Svaty
785-472-7794
svaty@house.state.ks.us
Tom Burroughs
913-375-1956
burroughs@house.state.ks.us
Stan Frownfelter
913-262-9659
frownfelter@house.state.ks.us
Steve Lukert
785-284-3623
lukert@house.state.ks.us
Eber Phelps
785-625-5947
phelps@house.state.ks.us
Vincent Wetta
620-326-5205
wetta@house.state.ks.us
Nile Dillmore
316-264-2988
dillmore@house.state.ks.us
Oletha Faust-Goudeau
316-652-9067
faustgoudeau@house.state.ks.us
Raj Goyle
316-681-8133
goyle@house.state.ks.us
Ann Mah
785-266-9434
mah@house.state.ks.us
Melody McCray-Miller
316-744-7516
Millerm@house.state.ks.us
Terry McLachlan
316-619-7879
mclachlan@house.state.ks.us
Cindy Neighbor
913-268-9061
neighbor@house.state.ks.us
Michael Peterson
913-371-7354
peterson@house.state.ks.us
Tom Sawyer
316-265-7076
sawyer@house.state.ks.us
Mark Treaster
620-459-6363
treaster@house.state.ks.us
Ed Trimmer
620-221-7146
trimmer@house.state.ks.us
Jim Ward
316-683-3609
ward@house.state.ks.us
Friday, March 30, 2007
The Capitol Bully
This article is from The Pitch, enjoy!
Capitol Bully
As a state senator, Jim Barone has been accused of accosting women and using his power for his sons' gain.
By Justin Kendall
Published: March 29, 2007
A 22-year-old Kansas Senate intern had all the guys' eyes during the 2005 legislative session. The Washburn University senior was an intern for Senate President Stephen Morris. She was friendly and confident, energetic and gregarious; her smile was sweet and her eyes piercing.
It started as a bet on a basketball game. Kansas state Sen. Jim Barone bet her dinner that his alma mater, Pittsburg State University, would whip Washburn. But Washburn won the January 26 game, 76-61. Barone wanted to pay up.
Barone — a chubby, graying and balding anti-choice, pro-gun Democrat from Frontenac, Kansas — wasn't just being friendly. The then-63-year-old was in his eighth year as a lawmaker. In that time, he'd earned a reputation for latching on to pretty young women at the Capitol. Barone asked for the intern's cell phone number, and she gave it to him. She didn't think a senator 41 years her senior would call her. But Barone called — often.
He'd call and leave messages for her saying she could call him at any hour; he'd be up all night. Barone called one evening in the waning days of the session. He wanted to get together with the intern. She had gone out for drinks with co-workers at Terry's Bar and Grill in Topeka, a hot spot for lawmakers and statehouse staff during the session. She laughed when she saw Barone's name on her caller ID, but she was "a little freaked out," says a senior Senate staffer who was with the woman that evening.
"She was laughing, but she thought it was going too far," according to the senior Senate staffer.
Barone told her he was going to stop by Terry's because he had a present for her, homemade wine from southeast Kansas. She didn't want to meet him. But, finally, she gave in.
"We have to be very discreet," Barone told her.
Discreet meant that the married Barone would give the wine to the intern outside the bar.
The young woman told her co-workers to stay inside the bar while she fetched the wine. Barone dropped off the bottle, and the woman returned to the bar. But the young woman's co-workers had seen enough.
"When he starts calling an intern and making unwanted advances," a co-worker who was at Terry's that night tells the Pitch, "that's when it crosses the line."
The 22-year-old intern wasn't the first allegation of harassment against Barone. The Pitch has learned of at least two other instances, dating back to Gov. Bill Graves' administration.
But his problems don't end there. The senator has used his position to get one of his sons out of legal trouble and to protect another son's lobbying interests. Barone's harassment of women and his abuse of power have led members of his own party to remove him from prominent positions in the Senate and to publicly question his ability to serve. The gift exchange was the last straw for a senior Senate staffer, who reported Barone to Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley later that session.
"I have never gone to the minority leader to do anything like that before, but because I was familiar with Barone's reputation, and because I felt this particular intern was vulnerable and naïve, I thought, I'm going to put a stop to this," the staff member tells the Pitch. "The bottom line is, what was he doing asking an intern for her phone number? What was he doing calling and leaving messages for her? That right there is incredibly questionable behavior."
Hensley confirmed the story with the Pitch. He says he confronted Barone about the phone calls to the intern.
"I visited with him about it, and he denied it," Hensley tells the Pitch. "But I also had a conversation with the young woman, who was pretty emphatic that that's what happened."
The intern also played voice mail messages for Hensley. However, the woman never filed a formal complaint against Barone, Hensley says.
Hensley's office had heard complaints about Barone before.
About seven years ago, a couple of bureaucrats reported Barone to Hensley for allegedly making repeated phone calls to a female employee of the state's human resources department. The employee was on the verge of filing a sexual harassment suit but agreed not to if the alleged phone calls stopped. Hensley told the bureaucrats to call him if there were other complaints. He never heard from them again.
Hensley can't remember whether he spoke with Barone about the earlier alleged phone calls.
"I have to say that I don't recall that I did," Hensley tells the Pitch. "I may have, but I don't recall that I did. My memory is real fuzzy on that deal."
No official complaints were filed in these instances.
Another woman alleges that Barone tried to swap his support for favors. The woman was a citizen working to lobby the Kansas Legislature, and she says Barone made advances toward her after taking an interest in her cause.
Things went bad from the start. When the woman introduced herself to Barone outside a committee meeting, she says Barone ogled her, looking her up and down, and then said, in a deep voice, "Really?"
"I totally did not expect that at all," the woman tells the Pitch. "I've dealt with many state officials, and they don't do that."
In future meetings, she says, Barone made her feel more uneasy. When the senator would shake her hand in private, he'd place his left hand on top of hers and hold it there. She thought it was strange, but she "didn't want to ruffle any feathers," she says. "He was the only person willing to help me."
One night while discussing the issue, Barone allegedly told her that she was "a very attractive woman."
The woman told Barone that she wanted to stick to the issue.
Barone made no further advances that night, she says, but then he started calling her "baby" in conversations. "I didn't encourage him," the woman tells the Pitch. "I let it go because I really wanted him to help me." Finally, the woman alleges, Barone suggested that they get together.
"I really appreciate what you're doing for us," the woman says she told Barone, "but I'm not interested in any fling or affair. I'm a married woman."
She says he was undeterred. "What two people do behind closed doors is their business," he allegedly told her.
"Look, I'm not going to have a fling with you, period," the woman claims she told him.
Then, she says, Barone lost his cool, telling her: "You owe me."
"I don't owe you anything," the woman says she told Barone. "Aren't you a state senator?"
"You're not even my constituent," Barone allegedly told her. Then, the woman says, Barone became defensive and told her that she had come on to him.
Barone kept calling after she turned him down — for six years, the woman says.
The woman stopped returning his calls.
This year, Hensley has politically neutered Barone, removing the Senator from three important committee positions. In January of this year, Hensley stripped Barone of his position as ranking Democrat on the Senate Ways and Means Committee, which controls the state's budget. In February, Hensley declined to reappoint Barone to the Legislative Building Committee. In March, Hensley pulled Barone from the Kansas Bioscience Authority.
"That's unheard of," says a former co-worker of the intern, who asked not to be named. "What that tells me is the Democrat leadership in the Senate has had enough of him and is tired of dealing with the complaints about him and has basically clipped his wings."
Asked about why he removed Barone from key committees, Hensley read a statement to the Pitch by phone last week in which he said Barone had become a "liability to me and to our caucus" because of his behavior. "My decision to remove him from that position was an accumulation of numerous complaints heard through the years from fellow legislators, lobbyists, state agency heads and others concerned with Sen. Barone's behavior. He has had the consistent pattern of using his position as state senator to mistreat and abuse people and advance his own personal agenda," Hensley said. "Harry Truman had a sign on his desk saying 'The buck stops here.' That same adage applies to decisions I make as the senate minority leader. If [former U.S. Speaker of the House] Denny Hastert had followed this adage when a member of his caucus became a liability, he wouldn't today be sitting on the back row of the U.S. House."
In 2004, Jim Barone narrowly won re-election, edging his opponent by 317 votes. Barone told The Pittsburg Morning Sun that his victory proved that "millionaires can't buy an election, negative campaigning doesn't pay off and integrity and public service does count."
But integrity has been lacking in Barone's behavior on the Senate floor. He isn't above showing up his political opponents — or misleading lobbyists about which way his vote will go.
Barone worked for 30 years in St. Louis for Southwestern Bell. He had been an executive with the telephone company, working in "government relations, operational controls and fiscal management," according to the Morning Sun.
After retiring, Barone returned home to southeast Kansas. When Barone and his wife, Donita, settled in Frontenac, it was a homecoming of sorts. He had grown up in Crawford County in a small coal-mining township called Camp 50, according to the Morning Sun. He graduated from Pittsburg State University in 1962.
His career with the phone company led him away from home. But his political career led him back to Frontenac. In 1996, Barone won his first Senate race.
"When he started out about 10 years ago, he came on like he was going to do the job for the people," says a statehouse source who asked not to be named. "To most people ... his five favorite words are 'What's in it for me?'"
Barone is a restless soul on the Senate floor. He bites his fingernails. He swings and reclines in his chair. He frequently disappears into the Senate break room, out of sight from the Senate gallery. Barone refers to himself in the third person: "this senator."
Last year, Barone helped torpedo a move to revive legislation sought by the regents. Barone was reportedly on the floor yelling at members of his own party not to vote for the bill. The move failed. Afterward, Barone shouted to a state official. When he had the guy's attention, he started rubbing his index and middle fingers together as if he were sharpening a blade. He then made a throat-slitting motion with his fingers and started brushing down his coat as if wiping off the blood spurting from his neck.
"You should have talked to us about this," Barone yelled.
A year earlier, Barone crossed Gov. Kathleen Sebelius on a bill targeting abortion clinics. An amendment was offered to regulate all outpatient medical clinics equally. Barone gave a lobbyist his word that he'd vote for the amendment. When it came time for the vote, Barone voted against it. The amendment failed. When the vote failed, Barone glared at the governor's staff, licked his index finger, and waved it in the air as if to chalk up a victory.
Sebelius vetoed the bill.
Chris Barone, Jim Barone' s middle child, called KU Medical Center on the morning of February 12, 2004, demanding to see Dr. Paul Wetzel. Secretary Jennifer Howse told him that the doctor was booked until March 25. Chris Barone, who was 38 years old then, wasn't satisfied. He demanded the doctor's pager number. When Howse refused to give him the number, he berated her and called her a "bitch," according to court documents.
Howse hung up on him. When Chris Barone called back, Howse transferred him to nurse Carolyn Paul. Chris Barone demanded to speak with Howse's supervisor. Paul told him the supervisor was out of the office. He demanded the supervisor's phone number. Paul refused to give it to him. Chris Barone then threatened to come to the hospital and "raise hell." Before hanging up, he told Paul, "Then fuck you to you, cunt."
The women called the University of Kansas Police Department. Officer Travis Marshall responded at 10 a.m.
"Both receptionists expressed concern for their safety due to these statements," Marshall wrote in his report.
Howse wanted to press charges.
Chris Barone called again. Marshall picked up the phone and asked Chris Barone to come to the hospital and make a statement. He refused. He said he didn't believe Marshall was really a police officer and hung up on him. But Chris Barone called one last time. He asked Howse if she had called the police. She told him she had. Finally, he agreed to come to the hospital.
The officer met Chris Barone in the lobby, where he was arrested for telephone harassment. He was released and told not to return unless he was in need of medical assistance.
Jim Barone had some leverage that could be used to get his son out of trouble: He was the ranking Democrat on the Senate budget committee, which controls KU Medical Center's budget.
A day after the arrest, Melanie Coffman, an official from KU Med Center Executive Dean Barbara Atkinson's office, told Howse that Sen. Barone had called Atkinson and said "that he wanted the charges dropped against his son," court documents say.
Coffman, another Med Center official and an attorney for the hospital asked Howse three more times over the next four weeks to drop the charges. Court documents say Howse was offered apologies and flowers in exchange for dropping the charges. Each time, she refused.
Meanwhile, Chris Barone filed a complaint with the hospital against Howse. In his complaint, which Coffman took by phone, he claimed that Howse ignored his request for medical treatment.
"I am coughing up pure white foam. I cannot eat, and KU is denying me care," he told Coffman. He added that he wasn't "a threat to anyone," and he apologized in the complaint "for whatever I said to the lady who filed charges against me."
In his complaint, Chris Barone also said, "My father is a senator, and my brother is a lawyer."
Howse filed a follow-up police report on February 16. She claimed that Coffman had approached her about dropping the charges. "When Melanie told me she was a rep of Dr. Atkinson and that Sen. Barone had called — I felt some pressure, but I told my side of the story and I told the truth," Howse wrote in the report.
Coffman asked if Howse would accept an apology from Chris Barone and drop the charges, according to the police report. "I said, 'I don't care who his daddy is, I am not going to drop the charges.'"
On March 9, 2004, Chris Barone was scheduled to appear in municipal court on his telephone harassment charge.
Howse was there, but Chris Barone didn't show. A judge issued a warrant for his arrest.
Hours after the hearing, Howse was called to the human resources department to talk to Chris McGoldrick, the senior business administrator for internal medicine, and Saunny Jordan, human resources manager for internal medicine. They told her she was fired. (Jordan declined to comment; McGoldrick no longer works at the medical center.)
In court documents, Howse claimed that McGoldrick said, "Sometimes people get fired for political reasons." She also claimed that McGoldrick told her four or five times, "Surely you knew this was going to happen." Howse kept telling him, "No."
Howse called Officer Marshall on March 11 to complain that she had been fired for pursuing the charges against Chris Barone. Howse filed a police report with Marshall.
On April 30, 2004, Chris Barone pleaded guilty to charges of telephone harassment. He was fined $200.
Howse filed a lawsuit on July 22, 2004, against KU Medical Center, Atkinson and another hospital official. She claimed in the suit that hospital administrators were more interested in "pleasing a Kansas Senator who is responsible for funding the Medical Center" than the "best interests" of the hospital.
The case settled out of court on November 3, 2005. Terms of the settlement are confidential.
"The matter was resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties," says Carrie Mulholland Brous, Howse's attorney.
Chris Barone has had other legal problems. In June 2003, Chris Barone was arrested in Crawford County for possession of a controlled substance or drug paraphernalia. He still owes Jackson County, Missouri, $8,821.43 in unpaid property taxes on 4547 Fairmount Avenue, which he purchased from his father in 2003. Jim Barone bought the house in 2001 and deeded it to Chris in 2003.
Jim Barone doesn't want to talk about his family. He refuses to talk about his sons — Chris and Kevin — or answer questions about using his influence to try to get Chris Barone out of legal jams.
"You can do all of the research you want on me," Jim Barone tells the Pitch. "It'll be hard to find me talking about my family."
During the 2006 session, Senate leaders were scrambling to get a 21-vote majority to pass an expanded casino gaming bill. Lawmakers saw gambling as a way to pay for an increase in school funding. But Jim Barone, a self-professed supporter of gambling expansion in Kansas, was balking at the bill. His reason: a provision in the bill could prevent his son Kevin from keeping a job.
In early March of last year, Barone met with officials of the Sumner County Economic Development Commission in south central Kansas, according to the Morning Sun. He told the county's economic development team that they had a shot of being included in the gaming bill.
About the same time as the meeting, the county hired Jim Barone's son Kevin to lobby on behalf of the county's gaming interests. Barone's fee for lobbying the Legislature was $1,250 a month plus expenses, according to The Caldwell Messenger.
But Sumner, in farm country south of Wichita, had never been discussed as a potential casino site.
Hensley, the minority leader, blasted Barone in an editorial in The Wellington Daily News, saying Barone had misled the people of Sumner County. "I find it disturbingly coincidental that Sen. Barone's son, Kevin Barone, was then hired to lobby for Sumner County," Hensley wrote. "In my opinion, no legislator should place their personal interests above the interests of every other Kansan."
Barone was unable to deliver gambling to Sumner County. He would eventually cast his vote in favor of expanded gambling, though the measure failed.
Lawmakers added a conflict-of-interest clause to the bill, barring legislators and their family members from working in the gaming industry until they'd been out of office for five years.
"It wasn't an accident that we wrote a bill to take care of what we saw as very egregious overstepping of bounds," an architect of the bill, who asked that his name not be used, tells the Pitch.
A former legislator adds, "It just smells bad when there's an opportunity for a legislator's family member to gain from a piece of legislation that the legislature is voting on. I think anybody can see that."
Barone complained to reporters that the conflict-of-interest provision was "far overreaching." His opposition came at the expense of his home county. Crawford County voters had passed a referendum in 2005 in support of expanding casino gambling in the county.
Sumner County has retained Kevin Barone to lobby lawmakers again in 2007.
The hallway outside room No. 181-E is empty except for a security guard sitting next to the entrance to the Capitol building. Sen. Jim Barone has two minutes before he has to be at the Senate Ways and Means Committee. A Pitch reporter introduces himself to Barone as he exits his office. Barone glares at the reporter, leaving the reporter's outstretched hand hanging in the air. "Come here," Barone grumbles, stomping back into his office.
Barone storms past three secretaries. He goes no farther than the doorway. Barone's office is decorated with Pittsburg State University memorabilia — a red-and-gold PSU rug sits in the doorway to his office. A framed portrait of PSU's mascot, a gorilla, hangs on the wall next to his desk. A gold-colored statue of a gorilla sits next to a gold donkey on his desk. He leaves the door half-open. The lights are off, and the room has the gray haze of a midday afternoon.
"Do you have that statement?" Barone asks one of the secretaries.
"Yeah, I just printed it," she says.
"Let's see it," Barone says. He grabs the statement, places it on a table near the door and signs it.
The statement was prepared before Barone knew what the reporter wanted to discuss. When asked about the incident with the intern, he says, "You know, I ain't got nothing to say about that." He looks at the ceiling of his office in disbelief. "That wasn't true," he adds somberly. "Have you talked to the lady?"
Barone storms off to his committee meeting.
The statement isn't on Senate letterhead. "From the Office of Jim Barone" reads the top of the white page.
"I have always made it a practice not to respond to rumors, gossip, or innuendos and I do not intend to change my position now," it reads. "It has always been my long standing personal belief that my personal family life and the personal lives of my family members are just that, personal and private family matters.
"My job as a citizen legislator is to represent the folks back home to the best of my ability and my conservative democratic district doesn't always think exactly like my state party. I am proud to be a lifelong Kansas democrat but my number one concern is taking care of business for the people who elected me.
"The folks in my district are like family and family comes first."
A week later, Barone invites a Pitch reporter back to his office to discuss his work as a senator. Barone has only a few minutes before he has to leave to take pictures with legislative pages. He promises a Pitch reporter that he'll finish the interview later if he has to skip out.
Barone spends much of the interview dodging questions. Asked about his demotion on Ways and Means and the Buildings Committee, Barone pauses and says, "Ask the senator who did that." Then he dismisses the question by saying, "That laundry has been washed. I don't see any value in re-plowing that field." Barone adds, "I'm an optimist. You can't unfry an egg. That egg's been fried."
Barone says the demotions haven't hurt his standing in the Democratic Party. "My sense is I still enjoy the same amount of respect that I've always had," Barone says.
Barone runs through his legislative agenda. He clicks his pen. He bites his fingernails. He jingles the change in his pocket. He unbuckles the watch that has been jangling on his wrist. Barone reclines in his chair with his hands on his head, as if he were doing situps.
Barone opens a manila folder on his desk and runs through the Senate bills he's working on. He wants to set up a riverfront authority for Fort Scott and Bourbon counties. The bill made it out of committee and was headed for floor debate. He's pushing a scholarship fund for students who graduate from Frontenac High School; every student would get a scholarship, $800 maximum, toward any postsecondary education. He also wants to create sinkhole insurance.
From the shelf behind him, Barone grabs a copy of Newt Gingrich's Winning the Future. He reads the inscription inside: "To Senator Jim Barone, your friend Newt Gingrich. Good luck on your price posting bill."
The former Republican speaker of the house visited Topeka last year.
"He heard about my bill," Barone says proudly. He's referring to a bill he introduced that would require hospitals to post the costs of 25 common outpatient procedures, such as chest X-rays, mammograms and blood tests. "He very aggressively supports it."
As Barone departs for his photo-op, he says he will discuss only some aspects of the gambling bill. "Remember the ground rules," Barone warns. "I'm not going to talk about [family], but I'll talk about my work up here.
"The bill didn't make it. I supported the bill, voted for it, but it didn't make it. Check the record."
Ten minutes later, returning from the photo-op, Barone tells his secretary to fetch a transcript of the testimony he delivered before the Federal and State Affairs Committee last year.
Asked about corruption in gambling, Barone says, "Is there corruption in gaming? What evidence do you have of that? There's a history of corruption in every facet of our lives: state government, highway contracting, schools, newspapers — fair?"
The secretary returns with his testimony. "I can exert very little financial control in my own household," Barone's testimony, dated March 10, 2006, reads. "Most of you know that Donita runs it, and I guarantee you that very few, if any of us, can exert strict financial control over adult family members not residing in our households. How are we to know what their business activities are?"
Satisfied with his answer, Barone changes the subject and calls himself "an old man ... on Social Security." A Pitch reporter says Barone isn't hurting for money with his legislative salary.
"You a gambling man?" Barone asks. "I bet you a Coke, a lunch, a steak that you make more than I do up here."
The reporter declines to take the bet.
Barone digs in his bag.
"I just happen to have something here, and I'll gladly give it to you to do away with any misconceptions of what we make," Barone says. He takes out his W2 tax form, passes it to the reporter and reads the numbers with satisfaction: $15,084.21.
"Publish it," he says.
Capitol Bully
As a state senator, Jim Barone has been accused of accosting women and using his power for his sons' gain.
By Justin Kendall
Published: March 29, 2007
A 22-year-old Kansas Senate intern had all the guys' eyes during the 2005 legislative session. The Washburn University senior was an intern for Senate President Stephen Morris. She was friendly and confident, energetic and gregarious; her smile was sweet and her eyes piercing.
It started as a bet on a basketball game. Kansas state Sen. Jim Barone bet her dinner that his alma mater, Pittsburg State University, would whip Washburn. But Washburn won the January 26 game, 76-61. Barone wanted to pay up.
Barone — a chubby, graying and balding anti-choice, pro-gun Democrat from Frontenac, Kansas — wasn't just being friendly. The then-63-year-old was in his eighth year as a lawmaker. In that time, he'd earned a reputation for latching on to pretty young women at the Capitol. Barone asked for the intern's cell phone number, and she gave it to him. She didn't think a senator 41 years her senior would call her. But Barone called — often.
He'd call and leave messages for her saying she could call him at any hour; he'd be up all night. Barone called one evening in the waning days of the session. He wanted to get together with the intern. She had gone out for drinks with co-workers at Terry's Bar and Grill in Topeka, a hot spot for lawmakers and statehouse staff during the session. She laughed when she saw Barone's name on her caller ID, but she was "a little freaked out," says a senior Senate staffer who was with the woman that evening.
"She was laughing, but she thought it was going too far," according to the senior Senate staffer.
Barone told her he was going to stop by Terry's because he had a present for her, homemade wine from southeast Kansas. She didn't want to meet him. But, finally, she gave in.
"We have to be very discreet," Barone told her.
Discreet meant that the married Barone would give the wine to the intern outside the bar.
The young woman told her co-workers to stay inside the bar while she fetched the wine. Barone dropped off the bottle, and the woman returned to the bar. But the young woman's co-workers had seen enough.
"When he starts calling an intern and making unwanted advances," a co-worker who was at Terry's that night tells the Pitch, "that's when it crosses the line."
The 22-year-old intern wasn't the first allegation of harassment against Barone. The Pitch has learned of at least two other instances, dating back to Gov. Bill Graves' administration.
But his problems don't end there. The senator has used his position to get one of his sons out of legal trouble and to protect another son's lobbying interests. Barone's harassment of women and his abuse of power have led members of his own party to remove him from prominent positions in the Senate and to publicly question his ability to serve. The gift exchange was the last straw for a senior Senate staffer, who reported Barone to Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley later that session.
"I have never gone to the minority leader to do anything like that before, but because I was familiar with Barone's reputation, and because I felt this particular intern was vulnerable and naïve, I thought, I'm going to put a stop to this," the staff member tells the Pitch. "The bottom line is, what was he doing asking an intern for her phone number? What was he doing calling and leaving messages for her? That right there is incredibly questionable behavior."
Hensley confirmed the story with the Pitch. He says he confronted Barone about the phone calls to the intern.
"I visited with him about it, and he denied it," Hensley tells the Pitch. "But I also had a conversation with the young woman, who was pretty emphatic that that's what happened."
The intern also played voice mail messages for Hensley. However, the woman never filed a formal complaint against Barone, Hensley says.
Hensley's office had heard complaints about Barone before.
About seven years ago, a couple of bureaucrats reported Barone to Hensley for allegedly making repeated phone calls to a female employee of the state's human resources department. The employee was on the verge of filing a sexual harassment suit but agreed not to if the alleged phone calls stopped. Hensley told the bureaucrats to call him if there were other complaints. He never heard from them again.
Hensley can't remember whether he spoke with Barone about the earlier alleged phone calls.
"I have to say that I don't recall that I did," Hensley tells the Pitch. "I may have, but I don't recall that I did. My memory is real fuzzy on that deal."
No official complaints were filed in these instances.
Another woman alleges that Barone tried to swap his support for favors. The woman was a citizen working to lobby the Kansas Legislature, and she says Barone made advances toward her after taking an interest in her cause.
Things went bad from the start. When the woman introduced herself to Barone outside a committee meeting, she says Barone ogled her, looking her up and down, and then said, in a deep voice, "Really?"
"I totally did not expect that at all," the woman tells the Pitch. "I've dealt with many state officials, and they don't do that."
In future meetings, she says, Barone made her feel more uneasy. When the senator would shake her hand in private, he'd place his left hand on top of hers and hold it there. She thought it was strange, but she "didn't want to ruffle any feathers," she says. "He was the only person willing to help me."
One night while discussing the issue, Barone allegedly told her that she was "a very attractive woman."
The woman told Barone that she wanted to stick to the issue.
Barone made no further advances that night, she says, but then he started calling her "baby" in conversations. "I didn't encourage him," the woman tells the Pitch. "I let it go because I really wanted him to help me." Finally, the woman alleges, Barone suggested that they get together.
"I really appreciate what you're doing for us," the woman says she told Barone, "but I'm not interested in any fling or affair. I'm a married woman."
She says he was undeterred. "What two people do behind closed doors is their business," he allegedly told her.
"Look, I'm not going to have a fling with you, period," the woman claims she told him.
Then, she says, Barone lost his cool, telling her: "You owe me."
"I don't owe you anything," the woman says she told Barone. "Aren't you a state senator?"
"You're not even my constituent," Barone allegedly told her. Then, the woman says, Barone became defensive and told her that she had come on to him.
Barone kept calling after she turned him down — for six years, the woman says.
The woman stopped returning his calls.
This year, Hensley has politically neutered Barone, removing the Senator from three important committee positions. In January of this year, Hensley stripped Barone of his position as ranking Democrat on the Senate Ways and Means Committee, which controls the state's budget. In February, Hensley declined to reappoint Barone to the Legislative Building Committee. In March, Hensley pulled Barone from the Kansas Bioscience Authority.
"That's unheard of," says a former co-worker of the intern, who asked not to be named. "What that tells me is the Democrat leadership in the Senate has had enough of him and is tired of dealing with the complaints about him and has basically clipped his wings."
Asked about why he removed Barone from key committees, Hensley read a statement to the Pitch by phone last week in which he said Barone had become a "liability to me and to our caucus" because of his behavior. "My decision to remove him from that position was an accumulation of numerous complaints heard through the years from fellow legislators, lobbyists, state agency heads and others concerned with Sen. Barone's behavior. He has had the consistent pattern of using his position as state senator to mistreat and abuse people and advance his own personal agenda," Hensley said. "Harry Truman had a sign on his desk saying 'The buck stops here.' That same adage applies to decisions I make as the senate minority leader. If [former U.S. Speaker of the House] Denny Hastert had followed this adage when a member of his caucus became a liability, he wouldn't today be sitting on the back row of the U.S. House."
In 2004, Jim Barone narrowly won re-election, edging his opponent by 317 votes. Barone told The Pittsburg Morning Sun that his victory proved that "millionaires can't buy an election, negative campaigning doesn't pay off and integrity and public service does count."
But integrity has been lacking in Barone's behavior on the Senate floor. He isn't above showing up his political opponents — or misleading lobbyists about which way his vote will go.
Barone worked for 30 years in St. Louis for Southwestern Bell. He had been an executive with the telephone company, working in "government relations, operational controls and fiscal management," according to the Morning Sun.
After retiring, Barone returned home to southeast Kansas. When Barone and his wife, Donita, settled in Frontenac, it was a homecoming of sorts. He had grown up in Crawford County in a small coal-mining township called Camp 50, according to the Morning Sun. He graduated from Pittsburg State University in 1962.
His career with the phone company led him away from home. But his political career led him back to Frontenac. In 1996, Barone won his first Senate race.
"When he started out about 10 years ago, he came on like he was going to do the job for the people," says a statehouse source who asked not to be named. "To most people ... his five favorite words are 'What's in it for me?'"
Barone is a restless soul on the Senate floor. He bites his fingernails. He swings and reclines in his chair. He frequently disappears into the Senate break room, out of sight from the Senate gallery. Barone refers to himself in the third person: "this senator."
Last year, Barone helped torpedo a move to revive legislation sought by the regents. Barone was reportedly on the floor yelling at members of his own party not to vote for the bill. The move failed. Afterward, Barone shouted to a state official. When he had the guy's attention, he started rubbing his index and middle fingers together as if he were sharpening a blade. He then made a throat-slitting motion with his fingers and started brushing down his coat as if wiping off the blood spurting from his neck.
"You should have talked to us about this," Barone yelled.
A year earlier, Barone crossed Gov. Kathleen Sebelius on a bill targeting abortion clinics. An amendment was offered to regulate all outpatient medical clinics equally. Barone gave a lobbyist his word that he'd vote for the amendment. When it came time for the vote, Barone voted against it. The amendment failed. When the vote failed, Barone glared at the governor's staff, licked his index finger, and waved it in the air as if to chalk up a victory.
Sebelius vetoed the bill.
Chris Barone, Jim Barone' s middle child, called KU Medical Center on the morning of February 12, 2004, demanding to see Dr. Paul Wetzel. Secretary Jennifer Howse told him that the doctor was booked until March 25. Chris Barone, who was 38 years old then, wasn't satisfied. He demanded the doctor's pager number. When Howse refused to give him the number, he berated her and called her a "bitch," according to court documents.
Howse hung up on him. When Chris Barone called back, Howse transferred him to nurse Carolyn Paul. Chris Barone demanded to speak with Howse's supervisor. Paul told him the supervisor was out of the office. He demanded the supervisor's phone number. Paul refused to give it to him. Chris Barone then threatened to come to the hospital and "raise hell." Before hanging up, he told Paul, "Then fuck you to you, cunt."
The women called the University of Kansas Police Department. Officer Travis Marshall responded at 10 a.m.
"Both receptionists expressed concern for their safety due to these statements," Marshall wrote in his report.
Howse wanted to press charges.
Chris Barone called again. Marshall picked up the phone and asked Chris Barone to come to the hospital and make a statement. He refused. He said he didn't believe Marshall was really a police officer and hung up on him. But Chris Barone called one last time. He asked Howse if she had called the police. She told him she had. Finally, he agreed to come to the hospital.
The officer met Chris Barone in the lobby, where he was arrested for telephone harassment. He was released and told not to return unless he was in need of medical assistance.
Jim Barone had some leverage that could be used to get his son out of trouble: He was the ranking Democrat on the Senate budget committee, which controls KU Medical Center's budget.
A day after the arrest, Melanie Coffman, an official from KU Med Center Executive Dean Barbara Atkinson's office, told Howse that Sen. Barone had called Atkinson and said "that he wanted the charges dropped against his son," court documents say.
Coffman, another Med Center official and an attorney for the hospital asked Howse three more times over the next four weeks to drop the charges. Court documents say Howse was offered apologies and flowers in exchange for dropping the charges. Each time, she refused.
Meanwhile, Chris Barone filed a complaint with the hospital against Howse. In his complaint, which Coffman took by phone, he claimed that Howse ignored his request for medical treatment.
"I am coughing up pure white foam. I cannot eat, and KU is denying me care," he told Coffman. He added that he wasn't "a threat to anyone," and he apologized in the complaint "for whatever I said to the lady who filed charges against me."
In his complaint, Chris Barone also said, "My father is a senator, and my brother is a lawyer."
Howse filed a follow-up police report on February 16. She claimed that Coffman had approached her about dropping the charges. "When Melanie told me she was a rep of Dr. Atkinson and that Sen. Barone had called — I felt some pressure, but I told my side of the story and I told the truth," Howse wrote in the report.
Coffman asked if Howse would accept an apology from Chris Barone and drop the charges, according to the police report. "I said, 'I don't care who his daddy is, I am not going to drop the charges.'"
On March 9, 2004, Chris Barone was scheduled to appear in municipal court on his telephone harassment charge.
Howse was there, but Chris Barone didn't show. A judge issued a warrant for his arrest.
Hours after the hearing, Howse was called to the human resources department to talk to Chris McGoldrick, the senior business administrator for internal medicine, and Saunny Jordan, human resources manager for internal medicine. They told her she was fired. (Jordan declined to comment; McGoldrick no longer works at the medical center.)
In court documents, Howse claimed that McGoldrick said, "Sometimes people get fired for political reasons." She also claimed that McGoldrick told her four or five times, "Surely you knew this was going to happen." Howse kept telling him, "No."
Howse called Officer Marshall on March 11 to complain that she had been fired for pursuing the charges against Chris Barone. Howse filed a police report with Marshall.
On April 30, 2004, Chris Barone pleaded guilty to charges of telephone harassment. He was fined $200.
Howse filed a lawsuit on July 22, 2004, against KU Medical Center, Atkinson and another hospital official. She claimed in the suit that hospital administrators were more interested in "pleasing a Kansas Senator who is responsible for funding the Medical Center" than the "best interests" of the hospital.
The case settled out of court on November 3, 2005. Terms of the settlement are confidential.
"The matter was resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties," says Carrie Mulholland Brous, Howse's attorney.
Chris Barone has had other legal problems. In June 2003, Chris Barone was arrested in Crawford County for possession of a controlled substance or drug paraphernalia. He still owes Jackson County, Missouri, $8,821.43 in unpaid property taxes on 4547 Fairmount Avenue, which he purchased from his father in 2003. Jim Barone bought the house in 2001 and deeded it to Chris in 2003.
Jim Barone doesn't want to talk about his family. He refuses to talk about his sons — Chris and Kevin — or answer questions about using his influence to try to get Chris Barone out of legal jams.
"You can do all of the research you want on me," Jim Barone tells the Pitch. "It'll be hard to find me talking about my family."
During the 2006 session, Senate leaders were scrambling to get a 21-vote majority to pass an expanded casino gaming bill. Lawmakers saw gambling as a way to pay for an increase in school funding. But Jim Barone, a self-professed supporter of gambling expansion in Kansas, was balking at the bill. His reason: a provision in the bill could prevent his son Kevin from keeping a job.
In early March of last year, Barone met with officials of the Sumner County Economic Development Commission in south central Kansas, according to the Morning Sun. He told the county's economic development team that they had a shot of being included in the gaming bill.
About the same time as the meeting, the county hired Jim Barone's son Kevin to lobby on behalf of the county's gaming interests. Barone's fee for lobbying the Legislature was $1,250 a month plus expenses, according to The Caldwell Messenger.
But Sumner, in farm country south of Wichita, had never been discussed as a potential casino site.
Hensley, the minority leader, blasted Barone in an editorial in The Wellington Daily News, saying Barone had misled the people of Sumner County. "I find it disturbingly coincidental that Sen. Barone's son, Kevin Barone, was then hired to lobby for Sumner County," Hensley wrote. "In my opinion, no legislator should place their personal interests above the interests of every other Kansan."
Barone was unable to deliver gambling to Sumner County. He would eventually cast his vote in favor of expanded gambling, though the measure failed.
Lawmakers added a conflict-of-interest clause to the bill, barring legislators and their family members from working in the gaming industry until they'd been out of office for five years.
"It wasn't an accident that we wrote a bill to take care of what we saw as very egregious overstepping of bounds," an architect of the bill, who asked that his name not be used, tells the Pitch.
A former legislator adds, "It just smells bad when there's an opportunity for a legislator's family member to gain from a piece of legislation that the legislature is voting on. I think anybody can see that."
Barone complained to reporters that the conflict-of-interest provision was "far overreaching." His opposition came at the expense of his home county. Crawford County voters had passed a referendum in 2005 in support of expanding casino gambling in the county.
Sumner County has retained Kevin Barone to lobby lawmakers again in 2007.
The hallway outside room No. 181-E is empty except for a security guard sitting next to the entrance to the Capitol building. Sen. Jim Barone has two minutes before he has to be at the Senate Ways and Means Committee. A Pitch reporter introduces himself to Barone as he exits his office. Barone glares at the reporter, leaving the reporter's outstretched hand hanging in the air. "Come here," Barone grumbles, stomping back into his office.
Barone storms past three secretaries. He goes no farther than the doorway. Barone's office is decorated with Pittsburg State University memorabilia — a red-and-gold PSU rug sits in the doorway to his office. A framed portrait of PSU's mascot, a gorilla, hangs on the wall next to his desk. A gold-colored statue of a gorilla sits next to a gold donkey on his desk. He leaves the door half-open. The lights are off, and the room has the gray haze of a midday afternoon.
"Do you have that statement?" Barone asks one of the secretaries.
"Yeah, I just printed it," she says.
"Let's see it," Barone says. He grabs the statement, places it on a table near the door and signs it.
The statement was prepared before Barone knew what the reporter wanted to discuss. When asked about the incident with the intern, he says, "You know, I ain't got nothing to say about that." He looks at the ceiling of his office in disbelief. "That wasn't true," he adds somberly. "Have you talked to the lady?"
Barone storms off to his committee meeting.
The statement isn't on Senate letterhead. "From the Office of Jim Barone" reads the top of the white page.
"I have always made it a practice not to respond to rumors, gossip, or innuendos and I do not intend to change my position now," it reads. "It has always been my long standing personal belief that my personal family life and the personal lives of my family members are just that, personal and private family matters.
"My job as a citizen legislator is to represent the folks back home to the best of my ability and my conservative democratic district doesn't always think exactly like my state party. I am proud to be a lifelong Kansas democrat but my number one concern is taking care of business for the people who elected me.
"The folks in my district are like family and family comes first."
A week later, Barone invites a Pitch reporter back to his office to discuss his work as a senator. Barone has only a few minutes before he has to leave to take pictures with legislative pages. He promises a Pitch reporter that he'll finish the interview later if he has to skip out.
Barone spends much of the interview dodging questions. Asked about his demotion on Ways and Means and the Buildings Committee, Barone pauses and says, "Ask the senator who did that." Then he dismisses the question by saying, "That laundry has been washed. I don't see any value in re-plowing that field." Barone adds, "I'm an optimist. You can't unfry an egg. That egg's been fried."
Barone says the demotions haven't hurt his standing in the Democratic Party. "My sense is I still enjoy the same amount of respect that I've always had," Barone says.
Barone runs through his legislative agenda. He clicks his pen. He bites his fingernails. He jingles the change in his pocket. He unbuckles the watch that has been jangling on his wrist. Barone reclines in his chair with his hands on his head, as if he were doing situps.
Barone opens a manila folder on his desk and runs through the Senate bills he's working on. He wants to set up a riverfront authority for Fort Scott and Bourbon counties. The bill made it out of committee and was headed for floor debate. He's pushing a scholarship fund for students who graduate from Frontenac High School; every student would get a scholarship, $800 maximum, toward any postsecondary education. He also wants to create sinkhole insurance.
From the shelf behind him, Barone grabs a copy of Newt Gingrich's Winning the Future. He reads the inscription inside: "To Senator Jim Barone, your friend Newt Gingrich. Good luck on your price posting bill."
The former Republican speaker of the house visited Topeka last year.
"He heard about my bill," Barone says proudly. He's referring to a bill he introduced that would require hospitals to post the costs of 25 common outpatient procedures, such as chest X-rays, mammograms and blood tests. "He very aggressively supports it."
As Barone departs for his photo-op, he says he will discuss only some aspects of the gambling bill. "Remember the ground rules," Barone warns. "I'm not going to talk about [family], but I'll talk about my work up here.
"The bill didn't make it. I supported the bill, voted for it, but it didn't make it. Check the record."
Ten minutes later, returning from the photo-op, Barone tells his secretary to fetch a transcript of the testimony he delivered before the Federal and State Affairs Committee last year.
Asked about corruption in gambling, Barone says, "Is there corruption in gaming? What evidence do you have of that? There's a history of corruption in every facet of our lives: state government, highway contracting, schools, newspapers — fair?"
The secretary returns with his testimony. "I can exert very little financial control in my own household," Barone's testimony, dated March 10, 2006, reads. "Most of you know that Donita runs it, and I guarantee you that very few, if any of us, can exert strict financial control over adult family members not residing in our households. How are we to know what their business activities are?"
Satisfied with his answer, Barone changes the subject and calls himself "an old man ... on Social Security." A Pitch reporter says Barone isn't hurting for money with his legislative salary.
"You a gambling man?" Barone asks. "I bet you a Coke, a lunch, a steak that you make more than I do up here."
The reporter declines to take the bet.
Barone digs in his bag.
"I just happen to have something here, and I'll gladly give it to you to do away with any misconceptions of what we make," Barone says. He takes out his W2 tax form, passes it to the reporter and reads the numbers with satisfaction: $15,084.21.
"Publish it," he says.
Friday, July 01, 2005
Sandra Day O'Connor Retires; What's Next for Women's Rights and the Supreme Court
Friday, July 1, 2005
Bush gets first chance for Court nominee
By DEB RIECHMANN
Bush gets first chance for Court nominee
By DEB RIECHMANN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
President Bush arrives to make a statement about the retirement of Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor in the Rose Garden of the White House Friday, July 1, 2005 in Washington. O'Connor, the first woman on the Supreme Court and a swing vote on abortion as well as other contentious issues, announced her retirement Friday. A bruising Senate confirmation struggle loomed as President Bush selects a successor.
WASHINGTON -- President Bush said Friday he will pick a successor to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in a timely manner so her vacancy can be filled by the time the Supreme Court resumes work in the fall.
The White House said he would not decide before returning from Europe July 8.
Bush will consult with Republican and Democratic senators about his selection, and will talk with them on the flight to Denmark next Tuesday and during his stay Wednesday through Friday at the summit of leading industrialized nations, in Gleneagles, Scotland, said presidential spokesman Scott McClellan.
The White House got the first indication of the retirement on Thursday when the Supreme Court's head marshal, Pamela Talkin, called White House counsel Harriet Miers to make arrangements to deliver a sealed envelope the next morning. Miers informed Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who were having lunch together, that a letter was coming. Talkin informed the White House around 9 a.m. Friday that the letter was from O'Conner , and Miers alerted Bush .
The president spoke with O'Connor before he appeared in the Rose Garden to express appreciation for her 24 years of service.
"For an old ranching girl, you turned out pretty good," he told O'Connor, who grew up on an Arizona ranch. But it was an emotional call, McClellan said. He quoted Bush as telling her, "You're one of the great Americans" and "I wish I were there to hug you."
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Lactivists Fight for Women's Rights
Lactivists' nursing anger
Walters' remark on breast-feeding
sparks moms' protest at ABC
By Amy Harmon New York Times News Service
Published June 7, 2005
The calls for a "nurse-in" began on the Internet mere moments after Barbara Walters uttered a negative remark about public breast-feeding on her ABC talk show, "The View."
Inspired by similar events organized by a growing group of unlikely activists nationwide, the protest brought about 200 women to ABC's headquarters Monday. "Shame on View," their signs read. "Babies Were Born to be Breastfed."
Walters, who had said a few weeks ago on the show that the sight of a woman breast-feeding on an airplane next to her had made her uncomfortable, said through a spokesman that "it was a particular circumstance, and we are surprised that it warrants a protest."
But the rally at ABC is only the most visible example of a recent wave of "lactivism." Prodded by mothers tired of being asked to adjourn to a bathroom while nursing in a public space, six states have recently passed laws giving a woman the right to breast-feed wherever she "is otherwise authorized to be."
An Ohio bill saying a woman is "entitled to breast-feed her baby in any place of public accommodation" passed the Legislature last month over the objection of one representative who wanted to exempt businesses from liability for accidents caused by "spillage."
"I really don't know any women who `spill,"' said Lisa Wilson, mother of a 4-month-old in Fairview Park, Ohio, who helped organize a nurse-in at a local deli to support the bill.
Trying for federal law
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) hosted a nurse-in on the Capitol's Cannon Terrace last month as she reintroduced federal legislation to amend the Civil Rights Act to protect women from employment discrimination for using a breast pump or feeding babies during breaks.
Nursing mothers are pressuring businesses too. Burger King has declared they are welcome. Starbucks, the target of a letter-writing campaign that asked "What's more natural than coffee and milk?" also has.
The flurry of moves come as the number of American women who choose to breast-feed has climbed from about half in 1990 to close to 70 percent.
"We're all told that breast-feeding is the best, healthiest thing you can do for your child," said Lorig Charkoudian, 32, who started the Web site www.nurseatstarbucks.com after being asked to use the bathroom to nurse at her local Starbucks. "And then we're made to feel ashamed to do it without being locked in our homes."
Legislators, business owners and family members are debating how to reconcile the health benefits of nursing with the prevailing cultural squeamishness toward nursing in public.
"It's nothing against breast-feeding. It's about exposing yourself for people who don't want to see it," said Scotty Stroup, the owner of a restaurant in Round Rock, Texas, where a nursing mother was refused service last fall.
But the new generation of lactivists compare discomfort with seeing breast-feeding in public to discomfort with seeing interracial couples or gays holding hands.
"It's like any other prejudice. They have to get used to it," said Rebecca Odes, who attended the ABC protest. "People don't want to see it because they feel uncomfortable with it, and they feel uncomfortable with it because they don't see it."
Whether to breast-feed in public, many nursing mothers say, is not simply a matter of being respectful. They cite research by the Food and Drug Administration showing that the degree of embarrassment a mother feels about breast-feeding plays a bigger role in determining whether she is likely to breast-feed than household income, length of maternity leave or employment status.
Medical advice on practice
The American Academy of Pediatrics urges that women feed their babies only breast milk for the first six months and continue breast-feeding for at least an additional six months. But while more women are breast-feeding for the first few weeks, fewer than one-third are still nursing after six months.
"To many mothers, breast-feeding runs up against sexual attitudes toward the breast," said Dr. Lawrence Gartner, who leads the academy's research on breast-feeding. "That reduces the prevalence of breast-feeding, which is a bad situation because duration of breast-feeding is an important factor in children's health."
Even mothers who are committed to nursing say they are shaken when confronted.
"People make you feel like you're doing something dirty almost," said Rene Harrell, 26, of Chantilly, Va., who recently was asked to leave a Delta Airlines lounge in Atlanta as she nursed her 8-month-old son, Elijah.
Monday, June 06, 2005
New Women's E-News Article Highlights ProKanDo
Hands Off My Medical History
By Ann Farmer, Women's eNewsPosted on June 6, 2005
A woman seeking reproductive health care usually starts by filling out a questionnaire detailing her complete medical history including whether she is sexually active, past illnesses, number of pregnancies, number of live births, contraceptive use, marital status, gender of her sexual partner, occupation, address and more.
Yet, as the legal battles over reproductive rights continue to increase in number and intensity, more and more women have become reluctant to be open and frank.
And after last week--when an Indiana judge on May 30 denied the request of Planned Parenthood of Indiana to stop the state's Attorney General Steve Carter from accessing the medical records of its young clients--it may be even harder for doctors to gather an accurate health history from women and teens.
Planned Parenthood of Indiana filed its lawsuit in March after the state attorney general's office implemented the state Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, which apparently overrides federal health privacy laws, to investigate whether more than forty Planned Parenthood affiliates are properly reporting cases of rape and molestation involving girls under 14. The lawsuit also asked the Superior Court judge to require the return of records already taken by the attorney general's office. Following the judge's denial, Planned Parenthood requested a stay in the case and has vowed to appeal to the Indiana Court of Appeals if necessary.
"I think it's very disturbing and frightening," says Dorothy Greene, a New York City writer who had an abortion years ago but chooses not to share that information with her doctors. "I don't know anymore where these records end up or who sees them. I don't want to feel that the personal private records of mine will be open to scrutiny by someone who has no business looking at them except for their personal ideological reasons."
Indiana is the second state in a matter of months in which prosecutors have sought full access to medical records held by reproductive health clinics.
Kansas Subpoenas
In February, Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline served subpoenas on two Kansas reproductive health clinics seeking access to the medical records of at least 90 women who had used its abortion services.
Attorneys for the two clinics--Comprehensive Health, a Planned Parenthood clinic located in the suburbs of Kansas City and Women's Health Care Services, located in Wichita--filed an appeal on March 16 with the Kansas Supreme Court to block Kline's access to the unedited files, which include the patient's name, medical history, psychological profile and sexual history.
"We made a commitment to our patients that their records are confidential and private," says Peter Brownlie, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, which, along with Women's Health Care Services, has not released any files to date.
The decision on whether to uphold Kline's injunction is pending review by the seven-member Kansas Supreme Court and may not be issued for months.
The Kansas women whose medical records were subpoenaed have expressed outrage at what they see as an incursion into their privacy, says Julie Burkhardt, executive director of ProKanDo, a pro-choice political action committee that she founded along with Dr. George Tiller, medical director of Women's Health Care Services. "They're very concerned that a non-medical official was going to be searching through their medical records."
Legal Violations
Both clinics cited in the subpoenas offer legal second-trimester abortion services.
Kline says that he's investigating possible violations of a state law limiting late-term abortions and another that requires the mandatory reporting of suspected child rape.
"This is a fishing expedition," retorts Brownlie of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, noting that Kline is poised to run next year for either a second term as attorney general or for the governorship. "We fully comply with Kansas' laws."
Whitney Watson, spokesperson for Kansas Attorney General Kline, refused to discuss any potential evidence, saying only that the District Court judge who signed the subpoenas had determined that probable cause existed.
Critics say Kline is pushing an anti-choice agenda.
"He has been very clear throughout his political career that he is out to get abortion providers," Burkhardt says. "When this inquisition broke back in February, he repeatedly said that this is about protecting children from child rapists."
But she says that Kline has subpoenaed the records of all women--not just the very young--who had abortions at or after 22 weeks of pregnancy during 2003.
She says if Kline's motive was to uncover possible instances of child sexual abuse he'd also be looking at the records of family physicians, psychologists, social workers and others.
When asked about that, Watson responded, "You don't know that we're not."
A spokesperson for the Indiana attorney general's office also says that it is pursuing its legal obligation to investigate potential wrongdoing involving minors.
Signs of Intimidation
Although Planned Parenthood declines to say exactly how much activity it lost at the Kansas clinic, it contends that the empty places in its appointment books indicate that Kline's actions were intimidating women who would normally be seeking its health care services.
"We are concerned about the chilling effect," says Brownlie. "We had phone calls from patients wanting to know if their privacy was at risk."
Concealing their medical histories can put patients' health at risk, says Katharine O'Connell, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University.
For instance, says O'Connell, many teens today take the acne drug Accutane. If they do not reveal to their doctors that they are pregnant, they might continue taking the drug, which can cause serious birth defects.
"Doctors trust that patients will be open to them," says O'Connell.
Health workers, however, say patients often feel there is a bigger risk in sharing their information.
"What people leave out are the things they're ashamed of or perceive others to have judgment about," says Leslie Rottenberg, senior director of social services for Planned Parenthood of New York. She cited sexually transmitted diseases, drugs and abortions as likely omissions.
Rottenberg adds women most often omit their abortion history, worrying that somehow their employers might find out and that minors, in particular, are concerned about insurance information reaching their parents.
"There is definite concern about where that information goes and who will know and who will have access to it," she says.
Discouraging Headlines
Carole Joffe, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis, believes even more women would conceal their abortion history if they knew what was going on in Kansas and Indiana.
"When young women in society see headline after headline that says the attorney general is seeking abortion records, it just adds to the sense that abortion is stigmatized. And that your records may be subpoenaed."
This stigma surrounding abortion, she says, compels many women to reach for their pocketbook rather than use their health insurance to cover the procedure.
"They're afraid to let their insurance company know or have it become part of their permanent medical record."
Both state cases follow a failed attempt in 2003 by former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to gain access to women's medical records across the nation as part of litigation to defend an anti-choice law passed by Congress which would have banned abortions after the 12th week of pregnancy.
In addition, in 2002, after the discovery of a dismembered infant in Iowa, local law enforcement officials subpoenaed approximately 1,000 positive pregnancy test results from a Planned Parenthood affiliate there in attempts to locate the mother. Months later they withdrew the subpoena after lawyers for Planned Parenthood of Iowa successfully appealed to the state Supreme Court to block and review the lower court order. Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller cited a deficit of time and resources as his reason for backing off from that intrusion into women's privacy.
Ann Farmer is a freelance writer who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Cynthia Cooper contributed reporting to this article.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/22157/
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