General Discussion

Miles Archer

(18,837 posts) Wed Feb 24, 2016, 02:28 PM Feb 2016

For people in the media who have called Jeb! a "class act," let's look back at Terri Schiavo.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/jeb-bush-and-dying-with-indignity-20160224?page=6

And then I remember Terri Schiavo, whose living remains were tormented in my backyard for the same remorseless cameras Jeb stood in front of, with smiles dying on his lips. I remember Jeb having no standing to file a brief on behalf of her parents — who refused to let their son-in-law pull the plug — and filing one anyway. I remember "Terri's Law" shooting through the Florida house and senate and being signed right away, granting Jeb the unconstitutional power to ignore a court order. I remember his executive order that removed Terri Schiavo from the hospice in which her husband wanted to let her die and took her to a hospital and shoved a feeding tube back down her throat.

I remember the Florida Supreme Court ruling unanimously against Jeb Bush, and his running the case up to Washington to circumvent it — first to the U.S. Supreme Court, then to the U.S. Congress. I remember the FDLE being readied to break into Terri Schiavo's room and "rescue" her from fake complaints of abuse.

And then I remember her death and her autopsy and details of a brain deadened to all sense and pain, and a governor who did not admit a scintilla of error or doubt or even moment's horrified self-recognition — not even after warping the law and courts and constitutional governance he held so dear to allow the state to interfere so cruelly in the life of a single person.

I remember all that, and I realize that Donald Trump could have stripped Jeb Bush on the debate stage and beaten him with a rod, and it would not have been half so much as he deserved.