Very chilling statements tracing Bush's ploy to cull Christian votes...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7305206/site/newsweek/

Take a Look in the Mirror

The pols confused law with theology and allowed tabloidism to trump privacy.
By Jonathan Alter
Senior Editor and Columnist
Newsweek

April 4 issue - When he was governor of Texas, George W. Bush presided over 152 executions, more than took place in the rest of the country combined. In at least a few of these cases, reasonable doubts about the guilt of the condemned were raised. But Bush cut his personal review time for each case from a half hour to a mere 15 minutes (most other governors spend many hours reviewing each capital case to assure themselves that there's no doubt of guilt). His explanation was that he trusted the courts to sort through the life-and-death complexities. That's right: the courts.

I bring up that story because it's just one of several ironies that have arisen in connection with the Terri Schiavo saga, in which the president said that the government "ought to err on the side of life." Fine, but whose life? The inmate who might not be guilty? The poor people across the country denied organ transplants (and thus life) because Medicaid—increasingly under the Bush budget knife—won't cover them? The poor people across the world starving to death because we won't go along with Tony Blair when it comes to addressing global poverty?

Or how about Sun Hudson? On March 14, Sun, a 6-month-old baby with a fatal form of dwarfism, was allowed to die in a Texas hospital over his mother Wanda's objections. Under a 1999 law signed by Bush, who was then governor, cost-conscious hospitals are empowered to decide when care is "futile." The Hudson case is the first time ever that a court has allowed bean counters to override the wishes of parents. "They gave up in six months," Wanda Hudson told the Houston Chronicle. "They made a terrible mistake." Wanda apparently was not "cable ready," as they say in the television world, and she failed to get Randall Terry and the radical anti-abortionists on her side. Tom DeLay never called.

Could there be—perish the thought—politics at work here? Knowing that they cannot deliver on a gay-rights amendment or abortion ban, Karl Rove & Co. settled on bonding to the base with the Schiavo case. The beauty part, as Ross Perot used to say, was that they could be cynical and sincere at the same time, even if it meant twisting themselves into ideological pretzels. The same conservatives who have spent the last generation attacking "judicial activism" and federal intrusion in state jurisdictions were suddenly advocating what they had so long abhorred.

(snip - more at link)

http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2005/03/nanny-state-on-steroids.html
...We're not dealing with factory workers here, but ultras, the hard core. Ultra is a term used in European football to describe the diehard fans, the people who protest to fire a coach after a loss. Bush and Bush didn't jump into bed with the pro-life moderates, but the ultras, the hard core. These people are extremists and they expect to win. They aren't going to accept a good try. If you fail them, they will seek revenge.

I think Jeb got talked to Friday. When he was told about the polling and how being seen with Pat Mahoney was not smart. So he ran. The problem with ultras is that they are never pleased unless they get their way. And Jeb was close to committing political suicide on Thusday, maybe an hour away. If he had moved to grab Terri Schiavo, he wouldn't be worrying about impeachment, but a murder and kidnapping trial while he sat in custody and a massive civil suit. The unreality of people like Bennett and the NRO egging Jeb on was amazing. They didn't care about the consequences.

They thought 25-50,000 people would join them out by the hospice.

Ah, the delusions of radicals. They think the revolution is coming, it never is and if it was, they wouldn't be part of it.

(snip)