Doug Kmiec is a constitutional law professor at Pepperdine University, former law school dean of Catholic University of America, and former legal counsel to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.

Kmiec's Republican and Catholic credentials have given him heightened prominence as a Barack Obama apologist. Kmiec just published the book, Can a Catholic Support Him?: Asking the Big Question about Barack Obama, and is currently participating in a nationwide "Faith, Family and
Values Tour" on Obama's behalf....

So given Kmiec's credentials, I was surprised to read his frankly daft defense of Obama on the IL Born Alive Infants Protection Act. From his book....

Where to start?

First, I'd recommend Kmiec give up and simply declare this muddled section, "a non-viable, but temporarily alive, but unborn child with a transient heartbeat," the fault of an aberrant manuscript transcriber.

Then, Kmiec could not possibly have read the Born Alive Act before writing....

Kmiec is in serious need of his own law clerk. Not only did he miss the aforementioned, he expressed further ignorance of IL law by stating, "[T]here isn't a county recorder in the country who would record a live birth" of a "temporarily alive" child.

On the contrary, the state of IL requires that all babies born alive, no matter what gestational age and no matter how fleeting their lives, be issued legal birth certificates....

According to Kmiec, very premature babies are not legal persons. If this were true, bashing them over the head to expedite the end of their "temporarily alive" status would be legal....