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.\
EL SALVADOR, November 27, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - On April 9, New York Times reporter Jack Hitt produced what may be called a 'hit piece' against the pro-life movement in El Salvador. The piece, laden with scare tactics, culminates in his tale of woe of a woman who he says had an illegal abortion when she was 18 weeks pregnant and was sentenced to thirty years in prison. The only problem with the story is that the woman was found guilty of strangling her full-term baby shortly after her birth.
Writing in an editorial in one of the largest papers in El Salvador, Julia Cardenal, who was interviewed for the New York Times Hitt piece, excoriates the Times for false reporting. Referring to Hitt, Cardenal asks what the intention was of the NYT piece. "To cause indignation in the United States so that they will pressure us to legalize abortion?," she asks rhetorically.
New York Times Caught in Abortion-Promoting Whopper - Infanticide Portrayed as Abortion
8mm
Except T-E-R-R-I wasn't brain dead, she wasn't on life support, and she was put to death, not "allowed to die."
The one who looks more nordic and healthy...
You have spoken wisely when you speak of "the pack mentality". Pope Benedict calls it the dictatorship of common opinion.
Yes, sir, it is. We all face Judgment Day. Think about that when you trumpet the legal niceties of judicial murder. Think about that when you rule that schoolchildren cannot hear the word of God. Both of those crimes carry a death sentence.
Nope, Terri war murdered by being deprived of food and water. My guess is that it won't be long until the culture of death introduces a new "worthless eater" term.
Is this an Ole and Lena joke?
I hope so
Ping to wagglebee thread on word twisting in Canada...
Ottawa, Canada (LifeNews.com) -- Carleton University is coming under fire from pro-life advocates in Canada because the student government there is considering a proposal that would prohibit pro-life organizations on campus. Pro-life advocates are upset saying it would restrict free speech at the college.
Katy McIntyre, vice-president of services for the Carleton University Students' Association (CUSA), proposed a motion last week that would amend the student society's discrimination policy.
Her proposal would state that "no CUSA resources, space, recognition or funding be allocated for anti-choice purposes."
Carleton University in Canada May Prohibit Pro-Life Groups on Campus
8mm
Oh, no, no, no. Please. This cannot be so. The New York Times has not told a gigantic whopper since, oh, twenty or twenty-five minutes ago.
Lady, try crossing your legs.
Gives me new thoughts on the meaning of the word, whopper, something for which one would scold his Great Dane if it happened on the rug.
Heaven forbid!!!
Pope Benedict XVI has invited Henry Kissinger, former adviser to Richard Nixon, to be a political consultant and he accepted.
Kissinger to Serve As Papal Adviser?
8mm
The above link was to FLOutdoorsman's thread.
Sorry, FLOutdoorsman, for not crediting the thread as yours. I was in a state of shock. Kissinger has that effect on me.
8mm
G. K. Chesterton took a look at the death culture a century ago and cheerfully offered them the term "free death." (Very funny back then.) It's harder than ever to satirize weirdos, -- you have to out-weird them, -- but maybe we could coin some new "worthless eater" terms that fit today's thinking.
-- Peter Singer Awards
-- Gene Pool Hygiene
-- Scholarship to Bergen-Belsen
-- Retroactive Reproductive Health Choice
-- Medicare Cost Saving Personnel Unit
-- E-ticket to the Dirt Bed
-- Strolling into the Garden of Perpetual Retirement
-- Talking to Tupac
-- Adopting the Menendez Brothers
-- Margaret Sanger's Children
Because any idea that is presented in sarcasm is "studied" by the "bioethicists" and they decide it's a good idea!
:-) GKC wrestled with it too. Hard to get any more idiotic than the late Victorian Brit idiots. But you could watch the SPCA and anti-vivisection movements learn from satire and turn into PETA.
Had Anne Frank lived, it's likely that none of us would have ever known who she was, today she is probably the best known victim of the Holocaust.
So, she really did luck out, you just need to look at it from the right perspective!
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