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 ...
How unblievable it is what I'm reading.
This is the United States of America, we do not kill our handicapped people to save money. I take it next you'll be going into all the institutions for the mentally retarded and putting them out of their misery as well?
You won't think it's hilarious when it happens to someone in your family. I've seen so much. I'm not alone. I'm digusted with the way the whole world seem to be so SELFISH.
You can laugh all you want. Like it or not, we ARE going downhill.
Which would do nothing except cause more trouble for the GOP. The best thing for the Delay and other Republicans to do is work to reign in the federal courts by limiting their jurisdiction over certain issues such as abortion, homosexual marriage, and other things that should be left to the states and to the people.
I *totally* agree.
Don't forget the evil Christians argument, mocking faith is a favorite insult of the politically pure.
To argue semantics we consider the meaning of 'independent' in contrast to that of 'separate'.
There may be a stretch of the notion of three 'separate' branches of government linked via the Constitution to an alterior meaning of 'independent' branches.
The distinction is important whereas 'separate' refers in kind to physical space and 'independent' to activities.
That the three branches are physically separate, there is no argument. However, their activities are never completely independent, ergo always dependent in some sense.
This is the crux of the issue. The judiciary is acting 'independent' when in fact they are merely separate, yet dependent on Congress for their role and jurisdiction.
Still we wonder what Tom Delay meant by his remarks and why he feels compelled in any sense to appease his accusers.
It's very sad and this sort of thing has to be stopped.
I hear you. It is frustrating as heck, isn't it?? I think the best thing we can do is to continue to pray and keep on the case of our representatives.
Translation: I apologize for momentarily seeming as though I had a backbone. I give this apology so that I can be sure EVERYONE is mad at me.
bttt
Well, once again, I tried to make some arguments, and the more righteous accused me of reveling in the "murder" of someone, and another said I should be wearing a swastika. So this is the level of conversation here.
Amazing, you could change one or two words, and you would think we were at DU.
Have a good night, keep fighting.
No he blundered egregiously by speaking of impeaching judges for reasons not recognized by the constitution as valid. He was not speaking of impeaching for the reasons the Founders intended but because he didn't LIKE their rulings.
This is not just a "sign of weakness" but a recognition that he screwed up big time. THAT at least is positive.
Differences of opinions in the judiciary were part of the design of the Founders since they specified that the grounds of impeachment were ONLY misbehavior NOT their opinions. It is probably one of the strengths of our system that such differences exist.
The only constitutional means of changing the courts are appointments even FDR eventually had to accept that fact. It would be just as wrong for the GOP to pack the Court as it would have been for him.
OH PLEASE! wake up!!!!!!!
Stop talking about yourself and your mindless posts.
You have $100,000.
You can keep one PVS patient alive for five years. Or you can feed 100 hungry children for five years.
What are you going to do?
The problem isn't between money vs. life. It is between life vs. life. The reality is that there are not nearly sufficient resources to provide the highest level of medical care to everyone who can benefit from it, or who can be sustained in life by it. Who pays? How do you allocate limited resources? These are real-world questions.
This is not just a "sign of weakness" but a recognition that he screwed up big time. THAT at least is positive.
DeLay has been taken to the woodshed. He is now acknowledging that he let his shotgun mouth get ahead of his BB gun butt.
I think you missed the co-equal part of the argument.
The Hammer is really a rubber mallet?
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