KINDER'S COMMENTARY: GOVERNOR WANTS AG TO SUE OVER LAW BOTH ARE SWORN TO UPHOLD

Let me see if we have this straight: On Thursday afternoon, Gov. Mel Carnahan signed the bills that make up the $14.7 billion state budget. The big issue was what the governor would do with the House bill appropriating money for the Department of Health. This one contains language prohibiting any state money's going to Planned Parenthood, America's largest abortionist. The language was drafted in the House and approved overwhelmingly by that body and later by the Senate.

Mel Carnahan is easily the most pro-abortion governor in Missouri history and received six-figure contributions from the pro-abortion lobby in his campaigns for governor. He had all along threatened a veto of this restrictive language, citing a federal judge's ruling last year that the Legislature can't single out one such provider and deny funding solely to them. Came the big day and the governor's split-the-difference decision: He would sign the bill into law and immediately ask Attorney General Jay Nixon to go back to that liberal federal judge's courtroom to ask him whether the state was in violation of the judge's order of last year, which came in another case.

Excuse me, but has anyone asked the obvious questions, which are straight out of ninth-grade civics class? Let's take it step by step:

The governor had the option to veto the bill, an option he rejected. Once the governor signs a bill, it is the law of our state. (Keep in mind that the state's fiscal year begins Tuesday. Keep in mind also that a basic principle of American law is that our courts don't issue what are called "advisory" opinions, i.e., rulings that opine on the law even when there exists no true controversy between real parties. Carnahan is asking Nixon to go get him what amounts to such an advisory opinion.)

For whom, then, does the attorney general toil? That is, who is his client? Why, the State of Missouri, of course. And what is the heart of the oath of office taken by the governor and the AG? To defend the Constitution and laws of the State of Missouri, of course. Why then, are we witness to an attempt by the governor and attorney general to void a law immediately after its having been signed by that governor? Does there exist any precedent in the entire history of the state for so bizarre an action?

Let's be plain about the matter: The attorney general's job is to defend the laws of the State of Missouri, not to enter into a conspiracy with the governor as the two of them cast about for ways to undermine those laws.

To further illustrate: What would be the role of the attorney general should the Planned Parenthood crowd file their suit challenging this law, as they have so frequently in the past? The AG would do the only thing he could do: Defend the law. Why is it different now?

Perhaps someone should go into court Monday morning seeking a writ of mandamus. This writ, if granted by a judge, commands a public official to do "that which the law requires." In this case, that would be to cease and desist from their violations of their oaths of office, and to begin defending, rather than undermining, the duly enacted laws of our state.

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All this occurs amid the backdrop of the other big decision this governor will make this summer: Whether to sign or veto Senate Bill 275, the bill I introduced and passed to ban the gruesome practice of partial-birth abortion. Sometime in the next two weeks we will know whether our governor is as extreme as our president (a veto), or whether he will sign the bill. In the last 10 days two Democratic Senate colleagues, one of whom is among the governor's closest allies, have told me that they have told the governor face to face that they will vote with me to override a veto.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.