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.\
oxycontin? Not as of this morning but for 4 months. It's called hillbilly heroin and it is poison.
No judge would hear a dissolution case (what divorce is technically called in Florida). NO JUDGE. They went various places around the state. The court system was all on the adulterer's payroll.
yes, but if Frist goes back to cardiology, is that because he feels guilty that Terri was murdered and he wants to save lives since he failed to save hers? He wimped out and none of us have. We didn't have any money to throw at the GOP, that's what our problem was. We voted for them in 2004 but it was a meaningless exercise with regard to Constitutional issues and fiscal issues.
I'm a Terri Schindler Schiavo INDEPENDENT. I won't be insulted by being called a republican.
"The divisions which exist among Christians are a scandal to the world," the Pope said after the meeting.
"No judge would hear a dissolution case (what divorce is technically called in Florida). NO JUDGE. They went various places around the state. The court system was all on the adulterer's payroll."
Thank you. A friend was asking me why Terri couldn't get a divorce because of Michael's adultry.
Florida does not allow for anyone to seek a divorce other than either one of the spouses or, if one of them is incapacitated, the guardian of the incapacitated spouse.
If Terri had an honest guardian, such a person would have been able to apply for divorce on her behalf. After Michael had openly declared his intentions to marry Jodi, it would have been hard for a judge not to honor a properly-filed motion.
BTW, one thing I haven't seen much on the threads, but which the Schindlers mention in their book, is that when the Schindlers first challenged Michael's guardianship, the judge asked Terri's guardian ad litem (it wasn't Pearse or Wolfson, but I forget who it was) for his recommendation and when he saw no reason Terri shouldn't stay with Michael, the judge (not Greer) dismissed the case with prejudice without allowing the Schindlers to cross-examine him.
I'm sure the dismissal with prejudice severely impaired the Schindler's efforts after that, but I found myself perplexed: how is it even remotely kosher for a judge to act upon testimony by a witness before allowing cross-examination? Does anyone have any idea if or how such a thing could have gotten by?
The problem was, quite simply, that the only person with the authority to file for divorce had no intention of doing so.
In light of that, it makes me wonder if the Catholic Church could've annulled the marriage as 'next friend'? Is there any reason why the Catholic Church could not litigate? Gordon Watts stood up for Terri in the FSC and he is just an ordinary citizen. Damn near pulled it off too.
"The problem was, quite simply, that the only person with the authority to file for divorce had no intention of doing so."
He wanted the money, and revenge.
"In light of that, it makes me wonder if the Catholic Church could've annulled the marriage as 'next friend'? Is there any reason why the Catholic Church could not litigate? Gordon Watts stood up for Terri in the FSC and he is just an ordinary citizen. Damn near pulled it off too."
I don't know what the grouds of annulment are from the Church.
If Terri could have gotten a legal divorce, it would have freed her from being murdered, but she would still have been within the Church if she never married.
I don't know either. I would think cruelty would be worth something.
Even if the Catholic Church had annulled Terri's Catholic marriage, such that the Church would no longer consider her married, such action would have no effect upon her civil marriage, nor would the church have any standing to file any motions in that regard.
Cruelty isn't grounds for annulment per se, I don't think, but the woman would be advised to leave the man for her own safety, and report him to the police.
I always thought Pearse was the first ad litem guy. And by the way you state it, it sounds like the judge was Demers. I admit this don't line up because this was 4 or 5 years after the 1993 guardianship hearing.
Isn't it nice the ACLU has legal impetuous in the case and the Catholic Church is banned from the courts.? I am sorry, I just don't accept that.
It is rough, that's what it is. (((( ))))
Nor I you! Just so long as any misunderstanding is cleared away.
That was my understanding also, though I have no link to any information. The Schindlers did not have legal standing to act on Terri's behalf. Michael owned Terri, and her potentially lucrative estate. Small wonder he put her to death rather than setting her free.
By the way, Michael, with the "bulimia" theory trashed by the M.E. and gone, are you ready to tell us how your wife went from healthy to nearly dead of cardiac arrest, face down on the hallway floor, shortly after you got home that Saturday night?
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