Alter: Sliming the Innocent (Jebbie's attack on Michael Schiavo)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8292690/site/newsweek/

I’ve never agreed with Florida Governor Jeb Bush on much, but I’ve always respected his integrity and the sincerity of his conservative views. Until now. His latest gambit in the case of Terri Schiavo is despicable. In fact, it calls to mind what another craven opportunist without regard for human decency did in the Tawana Brawley case in the late 1980s. Jeb Bush is acting like the Al Sharpton of the right.

You thought the Schiavo autopsy, which showed she was blind and irreparably brain damaged, would end the finger-pointing in this tragic case? You thought wrong. Last Friday, Bush faxed a letter to Pinellas-Pasco County State Attorney Bernie McCabe that clearly implied that Michael Schiavo, Terri’s husband, had left his wife to die in 1990. Bush wrote that Schiavo testified in a 1992 malpractice suit that he had found his wife passed out at 5:00 a.m. of February 25, 1990. But in a later interview on “Larry King,” Schiavo said he found her unconscious at 4:30 a.m. He placed the 911 call at 5:40 a.m.

“Between 40 and 70 minutes elapsed before the call was made and I am aware of no explanation for the delay,” the governor wrote, as if Schiavo could be expected to remember the exact time he found her and placed the call. While claiming preposterously that he was not suggesting wrongdoing, he urged a “fresh look” at the 15-year-old case and McCabe has opened an investigation.

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Bush has a daughter who, sadly, is a convicted drug abuser. When she passed out (as all drug abusers do), did he immediately call 911? Does he remember the exact time of the call? Was there a gap between the time he first saw that she might be ailing and when he took her for treatment?