Vanity, vanity, all is vanity

[libertango]

The Seattle Times runs a story originating at the Los Angeles Times.

Here're the lead paragraphs:

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CANYON LAKE, Texas -- A family tragedy unfolding in a Texas hospital in 1988 was a private ordeal -- without judges, emergency sessions of Congress or the raging debate outside Terri Schiavo's Florida hospice.

The patient was a 65-year-old drilling contractor, badly injured in a freak accident at his home. Among family members standing vigil at Brooke Army Medical Center was a grieving junior congressman -- Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

{snip}

In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric (such as what DeLay has used regarding Terri Schiavo) as the congressman joined the sad family consensus to let his father die.

*^*^*

As Denis Leary might say, "Whining, fucking, hypocritical, opportunistic maggot."

But wait. There's more. Let's cut down a few paragraphs, where we find this gem:

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On Nov. 17, 1988, Charles DeLay (Tom DeLay's father) and his brother, Jerry DeLay, had just finished work on a new backyard tram -- an elevator-like device to carry passengers from the house down a 200-foot slope to Canyon Lake.

But the tram, on a test run, jumped the track and slammed into a tree, scattering passengers and twisted debris.

{snip}

Charles Ray DeLay died at 3:17 a.m., his death certificate says, 27 days after the accident.

The family then turned to lawyers. A wrongful-death suit against the distributor and maker of a coupling that the DeLays said caused the tram to hurtle out of control thrust the congressman into decidedly unfamiliar territory. He since has taken a leading role in reining in trial lawyers to protect business from what he calls "frivolous, parasitic lawsuits" that raise insurance premiums and "kill jobs."

*^*^*

Yup. It's fairly clear that, for Tom DeLay, the Golden Rule is for "the little people."

Comments

And from She of the Long View on Politics - Texas Politics in Particular

[aamusedinatx.livejournal.com]

Molly Ivin touches on all those points:

RELEASE: TUESDAY, MARCH 22, 2005, AND THEREAFTER
...Bad cases make bad law, and this is a bad case. In the tragic cases where a family splits on the decision, the case goes to court, where there is a well-established body of law on the subject. The Schiavo case has been litigated for seven years now, the verdict upheld at every level (including the U.S. Supreme Court, by refusing to hear arguments). It is beyond comprehension, not to mention the Constitution, that the Congress of the United States and the president should have involved themselves at this point.

...For your information, while he was governor of Texas, George W. Bush signed the Advanced Directives Act in 1999, which gives hospitals the right to remove life support in cases where there is no possibility of revival, when the family cannot pay, no matter what the family's wishes are in the matter. In Texas, you can only live in a persistent vegetative state if you are accepted in one of the few institutions that provide such care or if your family is both willing and able to take care of you. And if Bush is so concerned about the right to life, why didn't he give death-row inmate Carla Faye Tucker more than 10 minutes consideration and some cheap mockery?

...The very Republicans who pushed for this arrogant, interfering bill, which if used across the board would take away everyone's right to make their own decisions in these awful cases, are the same people who voted to cut Medicaid, which pays for the care of people like Terry Schiavo across the country.

...That the main player in this fiasco is Majority Leader Tom DeLay -- who is in the midst of yet another scandal himself -- is enough to make anyone throw up. This is a man whose sense of morality is so deformed that upon being chastised three times by the House Ethics Committee, his response was to change the rules and stack the committee.

What a despicable display of pure political pandering. What an insult to everyone who has faced this decision without ever considering asking 535 strangers in Washington, D.C., what to do.

The full article can be found here (http://www.creators.com/opinion_show.cfm?next=0&ColumnsName=miv)

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

And Rick Santorum's wife just got a $350,000 (not the half-mil, they asked for) because of chronic pain; resultant from a chiropractic error.

He testified, for the plaintiff.

TK