If you can stand one more compendium of hypocrisy, read The Party of No Principles by Ari Berman.

Ultimate irony: Schiavo simply sought thinness by Paul Campos

As I write these words, Terri Schiavo is being starved to death because she was once a chubby little girl.

Almost everyone has heard about how, 15 years ago, Schiavo’s heart stopped for several minutes, causing massive brain damage that left her severely disabled. What very few people are aware of, because it has gone largely unreported, is that Terri’s heart stopped as a consequence of an eating disorder.

Terri was a chubby child, in a culture that tells children that not being thin is both a disease and moral failing. And our children get the message: Fully half of all 9- to 11-year-old girls either are or have been on a diet.

Terri was one of these children. …

Indeed, the civil judgment that has paid for Terri’s medical care was based on the failure of her doctors to diagnose her bulimia, despite what should have been obvious symptoms.

Such diagnostic failures are caused by the same factors that have led the media to largely ignore this tragic irony at the center of Terri’s story. After all, Terri was merely being a “good girl.” She was fat, and she made herself thin – a transformation for which she surely received endless praise.
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Creators.com – Creators Syndicate by Molly Ivins

For your information, while he was governor of Texas, George W. Bush signed the Advanced Directives Act in 1999, which gives hospitals the right to remove life support in cases where there is no possibility of revival, when the family cannot pay, no matter what the family’s wishes are in the matter. In Texas, you can only live in a persistent vegetative state if you are accepted in one of the few institutions that provide such care or if your family is both willing and able to take care of you. …

The very Republicans who pushed for this arrogant, interfering bill, which if used across the board would take away everyone’s right to make their own decisions in these awful cases, are the same people who voted to cut Medicaid, which pays for the care of people like Terry Schiavo across the country.

That the main player in this fiasco is Majority Leader Tom DeLay — who is in the midst of yet another scandal himself — is enough to make anyone throw up. This is a man whose sense of morality is so deformed that upon being chastised three times by the House Ethics Committee, his response was to change the rules and stack the committee. …

Those who passed this bill are the same politicians who want to outlaw medical malpractice suits like the one that provided the care for Terry Schiavo for many years while she was in “a persistent vegetative state.” They are the same politicians who have just finished changing bankruptcy law so that it is now much harder for families hit by tragedies like this one to get out from under the staggering medical bills. How dare they talk about morality?

channelcincinnati.com – News – Target 5 Investigates How Gun Gets Past Airport Security

A pistol made it through security at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport this weekend, causing the airport to shut down.

The Transportation Security Administration said 500 guns were found at airports in 2004. …

“We’re certain we had an image of a gun on an X-ray,” said Paul Wisniewski, the airport’s federal security director.

But one day later, federal security officials don’t know who had the gun, where the person and gun went or how both got past security screeners. …

“Are we doing anything to track this person down? No. Because we don’t have enough to go on to make it worthwhile,” Wisniewski said. “We don’t have any good idea of who it might be.”

www.GovExec.com – Passenger screening system may not be ready by August (3/28/05)
By Danielle Belopotosky, National Journal’s Technology Daily

Delays in developing key elements of the computerized system for prescreening airline passengers make it unclear if the system will be ready by its slated August deployment date, according to the Government Accountability Office. The watchdog agency also said it is uncertain whether privacy protections for the Secure Flight system will be met.

DeLay’s Own Tragic Crossroads

The family [of Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas)] then turned to lawyers.

In 1990, the DeLays filed suit against Midcap Bearing Corp. of San Antonio and Lovejoy Inc. of Illinois, the distributor and maker of a coupling that the family said had failed and caused the tram to hurtle out of control.

The family’s wrongful death lawsuit accused the companies of negligence and sought actual and punitive damages. Lawyers for the companies denied the allegations and countersued the surviving designer of the tram system, Jerry DeLay.

The case thrust Rep. DeLay into unfamiliar territory — the front page of a civil complaint as a plaintiff. He is an outspoken defender of business against what he calls the crippling effects of “predatory, self-serving litigation.”

The DeLay family litigation sought unspecified compensation for, among other things, the dead father’s “physical pain and suffering, mental anguish and trauma,” and the mother’s grief, sorrow and loss of companionship.

Their lawsuit also alleged violations of the Texas product liability law.

The DeLay case moved slowly through the Texas judicial system, accumulating more than 500 pages of motions, affidavits and disclosures over nearly three years. Among the affidavits was one filed by the congressman, but family members said he had little direct involvement in the lawsuit, leaving that to his brother Randall, an attorney.

Rep. DeLay, who since has taken a leading role promoting tort reform, wants to rein in trial lawyers to protect American businesses from what he calls “frivolous, parasitic lawsuits” that raise insurance premiums and “kill jobs.”

Last September, he expressed less than warm sentiment for attorneys when he took the floor of the House to condemn trial lawyers who, he said, “get fat off the pain” of plaintiffs and off “the hard work” of defendants.

Aides for DeLay defended his role as a plaintiff in the family lawsuit, saying he did not follow the legal case and was not aware of its final outcome.

The case was resolved in 1993 with payment of an undisclosed sum, said to be about $250,000, according to sources familiar with the out-of-court settlement. DeLay signed over his share of any proceeds to his mother, said his aides.

Three years later, DeLay cosponsored a bill specifically designed to override state laws on product liability such as the one cited in his family’s lawsuit. The legislation provided sweeping exemptions for product sellers.

The 1996 bill was vetoed by President Clinton, who said he objected to the DeLay-backed measure because it “tilts against American families and would deprive them of the ability to recover fully when they are injured by a defective product.”

[thanks, Lisa!]

News Hounds: We watch FOX so you don’t have to.

While FOX News Waves The Flag Of Patriotism, Rupert Murdoch Dodges US Taxes

An article in yesterday’s Observer begins:

Rupert Murdoch last week floated his family’s 3.8 billion-pound personal investment company in Bermuda – saving himself 522 million pounds in taxes.

Bermuda was chosen because the media tycoon, who chairs News Corporation, wanted to avoid the taxman after his firm changed domicile from Australia to the United States recently. Just prior to the Bermuda float, Murdoch bought a 20-room, three-floor residence opposite Central Park in Manhattan for 22 million pounds. Days later he bought a house in Beijing.

Comment: As of March 24, the conversion rate was 1 pound to 1.87 US dollars. That means Murdoch avoided more than $976 million in taxes. I wonder how many armored humvees that would have paid for?