St. Petersburg Times: On Bush 1999 Texas Futile Care Law

[norml]

Political opportunism
Congressional Republicans have forsaken their traditional politicsto exploit the Schiavo family's tragedy for gains in the next election.
A Times Editorial
Published March 22, 2005

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


In 1999, as governor of Texas, George W. Bush signed a bill that would allow hospitals to override the wishes of family members and remove a patient's life support when further treatment was judged futile by a hospital committee. But on Sunday, the president rushed back to Washington from his Texas ranch to sign a bill, cobbled together in an emergency weekend session of Congress, to keep one severely brain-damaged woman alive despite what her husband says - and what state courts have held - is her desire not to linger in a persistent vegetative state. Have his convictions changed? Or his politics?

With the family tragedy of Terri Schiavo transformed into a cause celebre for religious conservatives, the Republican leadership in Congress and the White House have turned it into a travesty. The likes of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and our own Republican freshman senator, Mel Martinez, have been ringmasters of a congressional circus, using outright lies and half-truths regarding Schiavo's care and condition to justify passing a highly intrusive and, we believe, unconstitutional bill.

Some lawmakers no doubt voted their convictions, but there also was a whiff of political opportunism in the air. An unsigned memo that was circulated among Republican senators over the weekend said the case could be exploited as "a great political issue" that could excite the party's "prolife base" for the next election.

Forget the Republican Party's traditional support for federalism and state's rights. It doesn't matter that Florida's courts have grappled with this case for seven years, with 19 state judges - after lengthy trials and painstaking review of the medical evidence - consistently upholding Michael Schiavo's right to carry out his wife's wishes and remove her feeding tube. It doesn't matter to Tom DeLay and Bill Frist that a brain scan and electroencephalogram indicate she has no cerebral activity. Frist said the images he saw in a short, carefully edited video of Schiavo "depicted something very different" from a persistent vegetative state. As a physician, surely he knows better.

snip

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/22/Opinion/Political_opportunism.shtml

[Gman]

1. The truth of the matter:

"This case has demonstrated just how beholden our Congress and president are to a narrow ideological fringe group that wants to interfere in painful, personal decisions regarding the end of life."

[Demit]

2. If I could have one wish, it would be to get Bush to answer the question

How is this different? Explain why you signed this Texas law allowing hospitals to remove life support, but in the Schiavo case now you say we must err on the side of life?

Actually I'd settle for someone just ASKING the question to his face. I know he can't explain the contradiction, but it would cheer me to see somebody in the media have the gumption to try to get him to.

[Gman]

3. All you'd get would be a smirk

and some kind of disjointed, nonsense answer.

[Demit]

4. Ha! Actually I think we'd get that furious eye-blinking thing he does

What he did in the debates, and still does at his press conferences when someone posits something in the question that seems to be criticism. He flat-out can't take it. He can't scream "I will fucking get you, you motherfucker" the way he would like, he has to hold his temper, but the eye-blinking betrays him.

[seventythree]

6. It's gotta be coming -- having just seen

What the bleep do we know -- let's get our collective consciousness working on it.

[PDittie]

5. Amen. And amen to all

the replies so far.

[norml]

7. It's Not About Terri Schiavo: A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

It's Not About Terri Schiavo

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Laura Flanders

From The Laura Flanders Show (March 20th, 2005):

About that posturing in Congress on Palm Sunday, I've got just one thing to say: it's not about Terri Schiavo.

Accidentally in uttering the words "she's my life," in her conversation with the media Terri Schiavo's mother revealed what's at the very heart of this whole dismal story. None of this is about poor brain-destroyed Terri Schiavo. It's all about someone else's life, or various someone-elses.

Tom DeLay knows nothing about morality or ethics. He dragged congress back to Washington for a special session so he could put his fellow members through a loyalty test on Palm Sunday. According to Robert Novak (who, as we know, knows these folks) analysts at the RNC sent out a warning this week to the House of Representatives that the GOP's in danger of losing 25 seats in the 2006 election. The Schiavo case "is a great political issue" for Republicans, anonymous advisors told party senators in an unsigned memo this weekend. It isn't about Terri Schiavo's life; it's about the life of this GOP-ruled congress.

It isn't about Terri Schiavo, it's about tossing a bone to poor Christian voters who voted Republican this November but haven't gotten a thing for those votes so far, except a slap around the face with another brass knuckle budget and tougher treatment for poor folks who go bankrupt. It's about performing compassion when this congress is really only-and-all about profits. And it's about obscuring the corruption and fraud on which Delay's power is built, and hoping poor voters will forget that once they've cast their votes, the GOP doesn't care about them anymore. Their first order of business is well, business.


snip

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/05/03/con05097.html