Posted on 11/02/2006 5:23:50 AM PST by 8mmMauser
Republican gubernatorial front-runner Charlie Crist says he was perfectly clear in opposing governmental intervention in the Terri Schiavo case.
He spoke out loudly.
And he was silent.
Loudly silent.
The day after limping through a tough nationally televised debate, the Republican attorney general wanted to talk about his plans to slash taxes. Instead reporters questioned him about his debate assertion that, “Yes, I did’’ speak out against Congress trying to force the reinsertion of the severely brain-damaged woman’s feeding tube in 2005.
Crist did not publicly express his opposition to the Schiavo intervention until April 2006, more than a year after the Pinellas woman’s death. But he maintained on Tuesday that he forcefully expressed his opposition from the start.
“I spoke loudly,” Crist said in Tallahassee. “I think it’s important that when issues like that come up and you believe that government is the appropriate place for it that you act that out, and you walk the walk, and don’t just talk the talk.’’
The attorney general noted that his office “by not going to court and pushing the agenda on that issue, that was speaking out louder than anybody else did in Florida.”
This is one of many issues — from insurance reform to abortion and civil unions — where Crist has been accused of ambiguity or trying please all sides.
Contrary to his comments Tuesday, during the Republican gubernatorial primary in August he stressed to the weekly newspaper of the Florida Baptist Convention that his office helped the governor’s office with legal work to keep Schiavo alive, even though he personally had qualms.
“I don’t remember that, but I’ll check on it and see,” Crist said when asked about that interview with the Florida Baptist Witness.
Gov. Jeb Bush came to his would-be successor’s defense. “He spoke out to me,” Bush told reporters. Crist, however, said he never directly talked to Bush.
There are few issues in the political realm so black and white as the Terri Schiavo case. People either supported the state and federal government intervening to keep her alive or they didn’t.
But Crist is the second statewide candidate recently to face questions about how he acted during the Schiavo end-of-life controversies that erupted in 2003 in the Legislature and in 2005 in both the Legislature and Congress.
Democratic Attorney General candidate Walter “Skip” Campbell, a state senator from Broward County, has been on the defensive this week for having voted to keep Schiavo alive and later criticizing the governmental intervention. Crist’s involvement in the Schiavo case may be the only common ground between the Schindler family, Terri
Schiavo’s parents and siblings who fought to keep her alive, and her husband, Michael Schiavo, who insisted his wife did not want to be kept alive in a persistent vegetative state. Both sides have criticized Crist.
“When he said in that debate that he’s going to be a leader, my heart dropped. He’s not a leader, he’s a follower,’’ Michael Schiavo said Tuesday. “If he really wanted to stand up he would have said, 'No, this is wrong. The government should stay out of this.’ ... Charlie Crist did not say a word, he was nowhere to be found. He’s a coward.’’
Terri Schiavo’s father, Bob Schindler, wrote an essay in August accusing Crist of snubbing the family’s pleas for him to help their efforts. “Florida Atty. Gen. Charlie Crist let my daughter die. He had it within his authority to save her life, but he turned a blind eye to her suffering,’’ Schindler wrote.
The Florida Democratic Party issued a release saying Crist “lied” about his role in the Schiavo case, but at a brief campaign stop at Arco-Iris restaurant in Tampa on Tuesday, Davis would only say that Crist “misrepresented his position.”
“I was up fighting George Bush and the entire United States Congress, both political parties, and Charlie Crist was unwilling to take a position,” Davis said.
Davis, trailing in polls and campaign money, is hoping his debate performance Monday night will cut Crist’s advantages. No statewide viewership numbers were available Tuesday, but in the Tampa Bay area about 152,000 households tuned in — a ratings jump for that time slot on WFLA — and that doesn’t include those who watched on MSNBC.
- Tallahassee bureau chief Steve Bousquet and staff writer Alex Leary contributed to this report. Adam C. Smith can be reached at asmith@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8241.\
Ping to wagglebee thread on another case of euthanasia.
A nine-year-old lawsuit on behalf of Madeline Neumann charges doctors wrongfully took measures to prolong the 92-year-old's life, violating a living will, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported.
Filed by Neumann's granddaughter, Linda Scheible, the suit against Joseph L. Morse Geriatric Center and Dr. Jaimy Bensimon is thought to be the first of its kind to reach the trial level in Florida.
'Death with dignity' on trial in Florida
8mm
Fwiw, I think his theory on "political" markets is hot air. Real markets are based on exchanges of money and goods, not on mere opinion. They get their feedback from double-entry bookkeeping, not from Will or Stephanopolous. Markets we can trust. Polls and pundits are part of the entertainment industry.
WICHITA, Kansas, November 9, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline lost the Attorney General race 42% to 58% on Tuesday to Democrat Paul Morrison, a vehement supporter of abortion. In the past few years, Kline has garnered national attention and pro-life support for his investigation into local abortion clinics and their concealment of probable child rape cases and the performance of illegal late-term abortions.
Kline had just recently been granted access to 90 medical records from abortionist George Tiller’s Women Health Care Services and the Kansas Planned Parenthood clinic in Overland Park. Access was given only after a judge ruled that there was ‘probable cause’ that Kansas law had been violated by the clinics.
Kansas Voters Let Abortionist, George "Tiller the Killer", Avoid Criminal Investigation
8mm
I trust you noticed that the death lawyers were from something called the "bioethics law project." The bioethickers are not just studying and writing and preaching why everybody should love to die. They are hiring lawyers and suing to kill.
I think a lot of people will misunderstand this case. I don't know of anyone who would argue with the right of someone in their 90s and suffering from a terminal illness having a DNR order. But if the doctor is not made aware of that order, it's his moral and professional duty to try to save the person's life.
Active critters, aren't they...
So are wharf rats.
It may not yet be time to abandon politics and go into the "every man for himself" mode, but election results like this one are not encouraging.
(Always assuming Janet Reno no longer enjoys Waco or swat team privileges. That woman was a practicing death-culter before it became fashionable.)
Mildred was a 93 year-old woman who was particularly despondent over the recent death of her husband, Earl. She decided that she would just kill herself and join him in death.
Thinking that it would be best to get it over with quickly, she took out Earl's old Army pistol and made the decision to shoot herself in the heart since it was so badly broken in the first place.
Not wanting to miss the vital organ and become a vegetable and a burden to someone, she called her doctor's office to inquire as to just exactly where the heart would be. "On a woman," the doctor said, "your heart would be just below your left breast."
Later that night, Mildred was admitted to the hospital with a gunshot wound to her knee.
Meanwhile every candidate that Schiavo campaigned for lost.
http://lifenews.com/bio1857.html
You might say he is the kiss of death.
.
He has truly gone over to the dark side.
Well at least the poor guy doesn't have to check her odometer anymore.
Did you ever see a media complaint that Clinton/Reno were "intervening" in Elian's case?
We know kid. George Bush got a law passed to help Terri Schiavo, but Bill Clinton has come for you personally.
Better sleep with a hammer under your pillow, Jodi.
Come to think of it, no, I didn't. But you see, "intervene" means "come between." Clinton and Reno did the opposite. They "joined together" Elian and his spiritual godfather, Fidel Castro.
So they tore Elian's family apart. Enh. It's a small price to pay for socialist paradise.
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