Posted on 09/13/2007 2:36:33 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
THE VILLAGES, Fla. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson said Thursday he doesn't know enough about efforts by President Bush and Congress to keep Terri Schiavo alive to have an opinion on the right-to-die case that stirred national debate.
Thompson was asked in an interview for Bay News 9's "Political Connections" program if he thought Congress' intervention to save the life of the brain-dead woman two years ago was appropriate.
"I can't pass judgment on it. I know that good people were doing what they thought was best," Thompson said. "That's going back in history. I don't remember the details of it."
Congress passed a bill after Schiavo's feeding tube was removed in March 2005 to allow a federal court to review the case, and Bush returned from his Texas ranch to sign the bill into law. But a federal judge refused to order the tube reinserted, a decision upheld by a federal appeals court and the Supreme Court.
Thompson, a former Tennessee senator who left office in 2003, did say, "Local matters generally speaking should be left to the locals. I think Congress has got an awful lot to keep up with."
Earlier, Thompson told a crowd in Jacksonville that Bush's signature education program isn't working and that he would provide federal education money with fewer strings attached.
"We've been spending increasing amounts of federal money for decades, with increasing rules, increasing mandates, increasing regulations," Thompson said. "It's not working."
He added that there are problems with Bush's No Child Left Behind program, which requires annual testing and punishes schools that don't make progress.
"No Child Left Behind — good concept, I'm all for testing — but it seems like now some of these states are teaching to the test and kind of making it so that everybody does well on the test — you can't really tell that everybody's doing that well. And it's not objective," Thompson said.
Instead, he said the federal government should be providing block grants as long as states set up objective testing programs.
He said his message to states would be, "We expect you to get objective testing done and publicize those tests for the local parents and for the local citizens and suffer the political ramifications locally if things don't work out right."
The former star of NBC's "Law & Order" was responding to a question as he began a three-day bus tour of Florida, his first visit to the state since announced his candidacy last week. A woman asked what he would do for education. He told her decisions on how schools are run should be made by local and state decisions, not dictated out of Washington.
Thompson voted for the No Child Left Behind law in 2001, as did most of his fellow senators.
"It's your responsibility," he said. "If you don't like what's going on, don't get in your car and drive by your school board and maybe drive by the capitol and get on an airplane and fly to Washington and say, 'I don't like the way the school down the street is being run.'" Hosted by Google
Totally misleading headline.
I kind of like what they said on SouthPark..
We were wrong for the right reasons and they were right for the wrong reasons..
(not saying we were wrong, just an interesting quote about the situation..)
Or the federal government should tax people far far less, so they don't have any pork to dole out.
Then, with their new found money, local voters can let their local politicians fund and evaluate any public school system they decide to build in their community with their own money.
If I were running for president, I'd vote for me.
(Flame Suit On)
“If I were running for president, I’d vote for me.”
I’d vote for you too.
I’d run myself, but I’m too busy being retired.
That's exactly the way he justified his bad immigration votes to Laura Ingraham the other day.
“I don’t think that the federal government had any business getting involved in the Schiavo case.”
Agreed. A sad case, but not one for the feds.
Hey Fred:
For those of us who DO remember the details, and who felt that the “authorities” allowed an innocent woman to be killed, your answer seems pretty evasive and unsatisfying.
The Schiavo matter is kind of a litmus test for a lot of us around here, and if you can’t pick a side in this one, you’re only starting to confirm my suspicions that you’re not really a conservative, just trying to play one on TV.
That's the very headline in the news. I didn't touch it other than add Fred's name to it in parenthesis.
The fact that the Florida courts were wrong (as usual) does not make you any less correct. It is unfortunate that the court gave power over Terri Schiavo’s life to someone with a clear conflict of interest. Michael Schiavo was not an honest broker. That, and that alone is what made it wrong as a matter of law. However, the Federal government had no place to get involved.
“I don’t remember the details of it.”
Good grief. It was only discussed on cable news channels 24/7 for three months straight. A news junkie he aint.
Generally a sound position: to have the government involved in as little as possible. But to me, when it comes to life and death issues, especially potentially saving lives, the government has an obligation to protect citizens, when state and local authorities cannot or will not. Same argument with abortion. The right to life is the primary right with which we are endowed. Without it, we can enjoy no other rights. If the federal government can intervene to save a life - born or unborn - it has a moral duty to do so. And it has my blessing. Saving a human life should never be construed as anything but positive. If you make a "mistake" in saving a life, what's the harm? If you don't intervene and death occurs, that is irreversible. (Not including death penalty issues here).
Fred feels the same way you do.
Thanks to the support of the two of you, I just moved ahead of Dennis Kucinich in the polls!
Very true.
But how much do we REALLY know about that case?
Every person involved gave a different story...from her being 100% a vegetable, to being damn near conscious...and everyone with a story had an agenda.
The fact is, we really will never know what really happened there and what condition Terri’s brain was actually in.
The Federal government has no business in such a case for that very reason.
On one hand you can argue that as long as someone can be kept alive we should do so.
OTOH...how do we know that God hadn’t planned to take her back in 1990 and we were just prolonging what He wanted?
It’s not as simple a situation as some here would like to believe, it never is, and I hope to never have to make such a decision for another person. Of course that illustrates the importance of a living will.
The RINOs are desperately trying to sew disinformation about Fred Thompson, I see.
(not you, the article)
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