Sunday, March 27, 2005

You'd Better Sit Down -- Tom DeLay May Be a Hypocrite

CNB took an unplanned blogging break (work, baby). Fortunately, nothing at all happened in the world but the Terri Schiavo mess.

Congress passes legislation to let federal courts review the case, every federal court that reviews it (including the Supreme Court) refuses to order the feeding tube to be reinserted, and no one in Florida touches this hot potato. As said here before, I feel great sympathy for her parents, but having Randall Terry be their spokesman (a man who once said "We want theocracy") makes me wonder if they may have stopped thinking solely of their daughter a long time ago. Then again, maybe these grief-stricken folks are just being manipulated by opportunists. For an objective assessment of Ms. Schiavo's condition from the court-appointed guardian ad litem, go here.

One of the most vocal supporters of Ms. Schaivo's parents has been Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), who said that the Schiavo case is "medical terrorism" and the temerity to say that the federal courts failed to follow the "clear intent" of Congress (which would have been to overturn 7 years of litigation in the Florida state courts).

However, today it was revealed that Mr. DeLay had a fairly similar situation with his own father (he was in a coma, not a persistent vegetative state). In that case, the family made the decision privately to take DeLay's father off of a ventilator. Is that "life support" in the same way as a feeding tube? Depends who you ask.

It would seem that it is no one's business what happened with the DeLay family, but I would think that thought would also have applied to the Schiavo family.