Thursday, March 24, 2005

I'd call him a flip-flopper but I don't speak moron.

Bush Signs Bill That May Let Schiavo Live, the Associated Press, March 21, 2005:

President Bush signed the bill almost immediately after its passage early Monday, vowing in a statement to "stand on the side of those defending life for all Americans, including those with disabilities." "In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life," he said.

From The Texas Clemency Memos, the Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2003:

On the morning of May 6, 1997, Governor George W. Bush signed his name to a confidential three-page memorandum from his legal counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, and placed a bold black check mark next to a single word: DENY. It was the twenty-ninth time a death-row inmate's plea for clemency had been denied in the twenty-eight months since Bush had been sworn in. In this case Bush's signature led, shortly after 6:00 P.M. on the very same day, to the execution of Terry Washington, a mentally retarded thirty-three-year-old man with the communication skills of a seven-year-old.

Law might contradict one Bush signed in Texas

WASHINGTON - The federal law that President Bush signed yesterday in an effort to prolong Terri Schiavo's life appears to contradict a right-to-die law he signed as Texas governor, prompting allegations of hypocrisy from congressional Democrats and some bioethicists.

In 1999, then-Gov. Bush signed the Advance Directives Act, which lets a patient's surrogate make life-ending decisions on his or her behalf. It also allows Texas hospitals to disconnect patients from life-sustaining systems if a doctor, in consultation with a hospital bioethics committee, concludes the patient's condition is hopeless.

Bioethicists familiar with the Texas law said yesterday that if the Schiavo case had occurred in Texas, her husband would be the legal decision-maker and, because he and her doctors agreed she had no hope of recovery, her feeding tube would be disconnected.

Posted by LMM14_1 :: 4:05 PM :: 0 Comments:

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