msnbc front page: Fallout - Schiavo case creates tremors on Capitol Hill

[montana500]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7297597/

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. you know it must be mroe serous than we think

they would never post that if it was not

[Bluebear]

3. Finally, one issue that unites 80% of those polled....

against this Bush/Religious lunatic/anti-court/Delay-Rove machine, and people here don't think it's important or matters!

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. I know, teh bushes shot themselves in the proverbial foot

here or they believed their shit a little too much

[cynatnite]

2. I just read this a second ago

It's a good article and shows how out of step the repubs are with the rest of the country.

I will say that we have to make sure people don't forget what Congress did. Intruding on personal lives is what they do best.

As was mention by another DUer, privacy can be a wedge issue for 2006 and possibly 2008.

If they can intrude on one family they can do it for another. If they can disregard the courts they will for any other legal document. If they can can stomp on one state's rights, they will on others.

This is something I don't think we should let people forget.

[Bluebear]

5. Fascinating excerpts.........

Republican concerns grew, the senior House GOP lawmaker said, as a succession of federal judges, some of them conservative appointees, rejected Congress's entreaty. "A lot of members are saying, 'Why did you put us through this?' " said the lawmaker, who agreed to recount the events on the condition that he not be named.

There has been similar grumbling in the Senate, where the Schiavo effort was led by Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.), a former transplant surgeon who is retiring in 2006, presumably to run for president; Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), a conservative Catholic who also may harbor presidential ambitions; and freshman Sen. Mel Martinez (Fla.).

Aides to other Republican senators said there was little discussion of the matter outside that group. "It definitely would have gone down differently had it actually been considered," a senior aide to a moderate Republican senator said.....

Aggravating Republican frustrations are disturbing new polls, including a CBS survey that found that 82 percent of Americans — including a whopping 68 percent of people who identify themselves as evangelical Christians — think Congress's intervention was wrong.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. my, my

shadows of 1996, and Newt... my, my, my....

the corporatists will now say that the elections are umpty squat months away...

Oh and another amazing section

Republican leaders knew from the outset they were entering new and possibly rocky terrain. DeLay said that he told Judiciary Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) two weeks ago, "We have to do something for Terri Schiavo," but that the chairman was reluctant because, as DeLay recounted, "we don't have a precedent for doing private bills in these matters, and he didn't want to violate that precedent."

I have an action sugestion, anybody care to send a copy of the US Constittution to Delay with the section on the job of congress highlighted? We don't pass bills for a single person, the Constitution says such... thank King george III and his abuses of power and parlaiment

[roguevalley]

7. wait until someone gets killed. Mark my words. Its coming.

:scared:

[Freedom_from_Chains]

8. Say it ain't so.

"A lot of members are saying, 'Why did you put us through this?"

You mean Terri's well being is not these lawmakers highest concern.

Shocking I tell you, just shocking.

[rodeodance]

9. "Public reaction to federal intervention surprises many lawmakers"

Love the subtitle!!!!

[rodeodance]

10. Delay said he did not want to violate the precedent for doing private

bills and Sensenbrenner told him to be creative.!!---Seems to me that he was not creative enough--!!


.....On rocky ground
The fracas over congressional involvement has taken many GOP lawmakers by surprise. Most knew little about the case and were acting at the direction of their leaders, who armed them with the simple argument that they just wanted to give Schiavo a final chance, and that they wanted to err on the side of life. But because of the rush to act and the insistent approach of the leadership, Republicans had no debate about whether their vote could be seen as federal intrusion in a family matter, or as a violation of the separation of powers between the judicial and legislative branches. Both issues are concerns of many voters responding to polls, and of some members themselves.

Republican leaders knew from the outset they were entering new and possibly rocky terrain. DeLay said that he told Judiciary Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) two weeks ago, "We have to do something for Terri Schiavo," but that the chairman was reluctant because, as DeLay recounted, "we don't have a precedent for doing private bills in these matters, and he didn't want to violate that precedent."

The majority leader's response to Sensenbrenner: "Be creative."

Resentment among friends
One senior GOP lawmaker involved in the negotiations, who did not want to speak for the record, said that DeLay, who is fighting ethics charges on several fronts, faced considerable pressure from Christian conservative groups to respond to pleas by the parents of the brain-damaged woman to intervene before her husband, Michael Schiavo, removed the feeding tube that kept her alive. The lawmaker said that DeLay "wanted to follow through" but added that many House Republicans were dubious and suspected that the leader's ethics problems were a motivating factor........

[aquart]

11. They followed DeLay into hell, anyway.

They seem to be finding it too warm.

[merbex]

17. I love Casablanca n/t

[Habibi]

13. Love this part:

"It definitely would have gone down differently had it actually been considered," a senior aide to a moderate Republican senator said.....

D'oh!

[Hans Delbrook]

24. Hubris - that's how the gods actually destroy tyrants

Though I guess it is a kind of madness. Gets them every time.
See Imperial Rome, Napoleon, Hitler, etc.

It's a race against time though, will they destroy themselves before they destroy our country?

[July]

12. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay?

I thought Hastert was in charge.

Did I miss something?

[charlie]

14. Yeah, Delay's stepping out

was just another of his blunders, since a good part of his longevity and power came from working as the man behind the curtain. Now that the country has been properly introduced to the shitweasel, he may have lost the ability to rule with impunity. Oops.

[July]

15. What shocks me is that the press is calling him that.

At least twice in that article (I just skimmed it).

Edit: Okay, I stand corrected. Hastert's title is Speaker, DeLay's is Majority Leader. Has this been done before? I thought they were one and the same.

[charlie]

16. You mean House Majority Leader?

He is. Hastert's Speaker, purportedly senior to Delay, but no one's really been that moron's boss since at least 1994.

[Gin]

18. Just like the war vote......they didnt think it through.....and they

pandered to the lunatic fringe. They knew what they were doing.

Delay is safe as long as they hold control. What a cockroach.

[Discord]

19. Personally, I think there is a fair chance that

DeLay is being set up to be the fall guy. To take the heat for the rest of them. Since he is already facing ethics charges anyways, he makes the logical choice for the Pugs to have him take the rap. He'll go as far as he can, then simply resign. Lay low for a few months, then -*- will give him some appointment to some position that will never make a headline.

[calimary]

25. Hastert is Speaker of the House. Next in line for the presidency after

cheney. The speakership is a different position from majority leader. But the speaker comes from the majority party. Frankly, he's as obnoxious and undesireable as tom delay, they're Tweedledee and Tweedledum, only delay seems to have more of a jones for publicity. Hastert tends not to stick his neck out so obviously, or so frequently. Thus, while I don't know a lot about him, he does seem to operate more in the shadows than delay does. delay has such a huge ego and power hunger that neither will allow him to do "shadow."

[LizW]

20. What we have to do now is

point out how they're doing the exact same thing on Social Security. They're blindly following Bush for political reasons without listening to their constituents. They weren't looking out for Terri Schiavo and they aren't looking out for us.

[snippy]

21. Excellent idea. n/t

[Bluebear]

22. Wonderful framing.

[femme.democratique]

23. Most important statement in the article:

Republicans are "going to get kicked around a lot," said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. On the other hand, he sees a silver lining in the otherwise miserable polls: The minority that does back congressional action probably supports it intensely, while the majority that disagrees "won't remember this woman's name in a few months."



Watch out, here we come Republic of Gilead...ladies, get your red cloaks ready!