By Jerry Burke
What's happening? A national crisis! Congress, assemble! Call an emergency Sunday session! Pass legislation, for time is of the essence! Quick, call the president back from vacation so he can sign it into law!
Awesome! Our government at work, protecting your rights! So, what was this massive display of government-in-action all about? Was Halliburton, which we have paid billions of dollars to fix Iraq, finally being dismantled for stealing our money and allowing hundreds of Iraqi children to die agonizing deaths from dysentery and other water-borne diseases because the sewers still aren't working?
Has Congress finally realized that our country's infrastructure, according to a little-heralded report made by the American Society of Civil Engineers two weeks ago, needs upward of $1.6 trillion to repair? Has the government decided to act decisively on reports that our aviation security has "shown little to no improvement since receiving a collective D+" on the ASCE report card in 2001?
No, silly people of America! A woman who has been brain-dead for 15 years is about to be released from her suffering. And we can't let that happen, can we?
I feel very sorry for the family of Terri Schiavo. Nobody deserves what has happened to this once-lively woman. It's an awful situation, made increasingly bitter by many years of legal wrangling. But that wrangling, in the eyes of the state of Florida, is over. The state has spoken. The neutral court-appointed doctors agree: There is no Terri Schiavo left in her body.
But why should that stop our all-knowing Congress from cranking up yet another circus to distract you from the real problems it refuses to face. Steroids in baseball? It's zero hour! Poverty in America? We'll get back to you on that...
These clowns know exactly what they're doing, and Terri Schiavo's life, as well as the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which gives states the obvious jurisdiction in this case, doesn't mean squat to them.
Who is the grandmaster of this "pro-life" parade? Why, none other that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, whose ethical record was so heinous that he removed the Republicans who criticized him from the House ethics board. DeLay stands up on his soapbox, receiving the praise of 50 people wearing red masking tape across their lips with the word "Life" written on it, and we're all supposed to forget that he tried to raise money for his campaign by selling tickets for a cruise under the guise of a children's defense fund-raiser? On the second anniversary of the "we'll be out in six months" Iraqi war, no less?
Yes, that's exactly what you're supposed to believe. Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control.
They've demolished bankruptcy laws that used to help families in financial predicaments get back on their feet. They want tort reform to put an end to malpractice claims much like the settlement that has kept Schiavo alive all this time. And while he was running the Lone Star State, then Governor George Bush signed off on the Texas Futile Care Law, which gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the family's wishes. As his mother cried last Wednesday, that law allowed the Texas Children's Hospital in Houston to pull the plug on 6-month-old Sun Hudson, who was suffering from a rare form of dwarfism.
Our representatives yip and yap about the sanctity of marriage, but seek to supersede Michael Schiavo's rights as a husband by calling a woman in a vegetative state to testify before them. Ghouls, ladies and gentlemen. These people are hypocritical ghouls, feeding off what little life is left in that body for their own political gain.
Who's next, people? Whose private life will next be marched before the country to appeal to a "base of voters" who are just fine with executing retarded teenagers on death row? If life is so darned sacred, when are the hearings to stop the genocide in Africa scheduled? Get bent, Congress. Now I'm mad.
