Posted on 04/13/2005 8:21:32 PM PDT by cyncooper
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay apologized Wednesday for using overheated rhetoric on the day Terri Schiavo died, but refused to say whether he supports impeachment of the judges who ruled in her case.
~snip~
At a crowded news conference in his Capitol office, DeLay addressed remarks he made in the hours after the brain-damaged Florida woman died on March 31. "I said something in an inartful way and I shouldn't have said it that way and I apologize for saying it that way," DeLay told reporters.
~snip~
DeLay seemed at pains to soften, if slightly, his rhetoric of March 31, when Schiavo died despite an extraordinary political and legal effort to save her life.
"I believe in an independent judiciary. I repeat, of course I believe in an independent judiciary," DeLay said.
At the same time, he added, the Constitution gives Congress power to oversee the courts.
"We set up the courts. We can unset the courts. We have the power of the purse," DeLay said.
Asked whether he favors impeachment for any of the judges in the Schiavo case, he did not answer directly.
Instead, he referred reporters to an earlier request he made to the House Judiciary Committee to look into "judicial activism" and Schiavo's case in particular.
~snip~
(Excerpt) Read more at story.news.yahoo.com ...
I personally am not even very religious though I do believe in G*D.
AND religion belongs in the political process. You must not have read the Founding Fathers' words.
And don't tell me what to do. I will do as I please only with regards to the posting rules and the rules of this forum.
Remember: We ain't the hicks that you would like to believe we's are.
One doesn't have to be religious to know what's right and what's wrong. Murdering an innocent person is wrong..religion or not.
Just because we are pro life doesn't mean we condone or advocate what he did in regards to the abortion clinic bombings.
Don't know what his motiviation was concerning the Olympic Park bombing. It was just terrorism pure and simple.
And it's awfully small of you to compare me to him or the pro life side to him but then I don't expect much out of your side.
So even though you are a small person, I still love ya as a human being. ;P
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There are some here who think their "assignment" is to rid FR of anyone who they don't like. They remind me of the liberals who love groupthink above all else.
Sign of a small mind, dontcha know. Tsk, tsk!
You need to read them and heed their warning's.
Let's start with the words of James Madison, The fourth president of the United States. Then see what John Adams thoughts on the matter were. You may be surprised by what you find. Most of this country's founders were in fact Deists, not Christians.
"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not."
- "Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
James Madison
- "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785
"Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by the difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be depreciated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society."
George Washington - letter to Edward Newenham, 1792
"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."
James Madison-1803 letter objecting use of gov. land for churches
"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes."
John Adams - letter to John Taylor
I "get" the point that you are setting up false statements and trying to apply them to me.
I also "get" that there are thousands of cases such as this and they are often terminated after the best medical advice and practice declares them hopeless as was done in this case. At no point am I involved in such decisions since I am not a medical authority.
I also "get" that this case consumed millions in medical and judicial resources for NOTHING. Terri was beyond hope as all competent medical authorities found and had been for over a decade.
I also "get" the fact that the fanaticism aroused by the Schindlers cares nothing about the truth and distorts information as you have to try and make people believe their actions are correct.
This was no slippery slope and is nothing unusual since hundreds are in the same situation as TS. And I have NOTHING to do with them being there nor with their ultimate demise. The question here was never who was "worthy" of living but totally who was CAPABLE of living without medical intervention. TS was not and so she died after millions were expended on the pretense that something other than death was possible.
While that was sad it was not the end of the world nor anything any more significant than the thousands of other deaths which occurred that day some of which could have been avoided using the massive expenditures wasted on TS because of the Schindlers selfishness. But since those deaths were politically useless they are ignored.
I don't compare you to him...but he does.
sw
An historical untruth usually propagated only on leftwing websites, not FR.
Name one.
You mean those quotes I posted?
Which is why people like you are so dangerous, and why people like me are forced to fight you politically.
No. Can't you read? Your claim that the Founders were Deists. It's a lying myth perpetrated by the anti-Christian Left.
I don't know you, but the fact that you're propagating such lies tells me everything I need to know about you.
You're just like Felos, thinking that you are somehow qualified to judge the worth of a single human life. As I said in my previous post, you and the line you are pursuing is dangerous in the extreme.
Fine, make all the fun you want about what people say, their opinions, etc....but leave people's personal looks alone. It is mean and hateful.
None of the Founding Fathers were atheists. Most of the Founders were Deists, which is to say they thought the universe had a creator, but that he does not concern himself with the daily lives of humans, and does not directly communicate with humans, either by revelation or by sacred books. They spoke often of God, (Nature's God or the God of Nature), but this was not the God of the bible. They did not deny that there was a person called Jesus, and praised him for his benevolent teachings, but they flatly denied his divinity. Some people speculate that if Charles Darwin had lived a century earlier, the Founding Fathers would have had a basis for accepting naturalistic origins of life, and they would have been atheists. Most of them were stoutly opposed to the bible, and the teachings of Christianity in particular.
Yes, there were Christian men among the Founders. Just as Congress removed Thomas Jefferson's words that condemned the practice of slavery in the colonies, they also altered his wording regarding equal rights. His original wording is here in bold: "All men are created equal and independent. From that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable." Congress changed that phrase, increasing its religious overtones: "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights." But we are not governed by the Declaration of Independence-- it is a historical document, not a constitutional one.
If the Christian Right Extremists wish to return this country to its beginnings, so be it... because it was a climate of Freethought. The Founders were students of the European Enlightenment. Half a century after the establishment of the United States, clergymen complained that no president up to that date had been a Christian. In a sermon that was reported in newspapers, Episcopal minister Bird Wilson of Albany, New York, protested in October 1831: "Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism." The attitude of the age was one of enlightened reason, tolerance, and free thought. The Founding Fathers would turn in their graves if the Christian Extremists had their way with this country.
Evidence to the contrary?
sw
Ah, I see you're an experienced propagator of the secularist myth of the founding of this nation.
Not surprising then to see you chime in in support of the murderers of Terri Schiavo.
After all, what moral basis can you have?
It's all relative, you know...
More pap.
Good day.
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