Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Dec. 13 WorldNetDaily column by Jack Cashill had a goal of whitewashing allegations against Phill Kline, the anti-abortion activist and former Kansas attorney general now working as district attorney in Johnson County, Kansas. If only it weren't for those meddling facts.
Cashill writes of the investigation of Kline done by Kansas City TV station KCTV:
The KCTV-5 staff spent nine months stalking the beleaguered Kline and waited for sweeps week in late November to share its much-anticipated findings.
Except that there was nothing to share. OK, although Kline did have a "residence" in Johnson County, where he spent several nights a week, he and his wife kept a home in Topeka, the state capital, so their daughter did not have to switch high schools. Kline freely admitted as much.
And that was about it.
Um, no. From KCTV's report:
KCTV5 News caught up with Kline as he was leaving the Johnson County courthouse one afternoon and asked him about where he lived.
He pointed out that he owned a home in Topeka, but that he also had the apartment in Stilwell.
KCTV5 News frequently found his wife's car, which was also registered to the Stilwell address, at the home Phill Kline owns in Topeka.
KCTV5 spent weeks waiting and watching for him to show up there -- more than a dozen times early in the morning and late at night -- but not once did KCTV5 News see Kline in Stilwell.
Stilwell is a town in Johnson County; Topeka is not. Kansas law requires district attorneys to live in the county where they work.
Cashill ignored completely the other main finding of the KCTV investigation: that Kline spent an average of only 29 hours a week in the office and found 24 weekdays during which Kline never clocked in or out at all. The station cites another district attorney who suggests the job can't be done "in less than roughly 50 to 60 hours a week."
As we've detailed, this is the kind of "reporting" we've come to expect from Cashill.
Cashill also noted in support of his attack that KCTV's investigation of Kline was "– in the words of the dependably anti-Kline alternative newspaper, the Pitch – even 'creepy.'" While the Pitch blog post from which Cashill pulled this word did indeed question the aggressiveness of the investigation and the reliability of the keycard info from which KCTV assembled Kline's at-work time, it also contains this interesting tidbit:
According to Web site Kansas Meadowlark, Kline spoke about the surveillance at a November 14 meeting of the Zenith Boosters Club. Kline complained about a camera crew tailing his daughter and the KCTV helicopter hovering over his property, according to this post. (Zenith head Jack Cashill declined to allow The Pitch to attend that meeting.)
Gee, Cashill didn't mention anything about this. Does the term "conflict of interest" mean anything to him?
