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Tom DeLay Awards Badge Of Honor
DANIEL RUTH
Published: Mar 23, 2005
You had to know the Terri Schiavo kerfuffle was moving into the mother of all parallel universes when congressman Tom DeLay, who is so ethically challenged he makes Al Swearengen of ``Deadwood'' look like a Ramada Inn night clerk, started weighing in on morality.
It was the Bumpkin of the Brazos who suggested Michael Schiavo, who has been the guardian of his vegetative wife for 15 years, had abused Terri Schiavo.
``I don't have a lot of respect for a man who has treated a woman this way,'' preened the poster child for Ethics Committee investigations. ``What kind of man is he?''
Well, for starters, not having the ``respect'' of some cheesy, opportunistic demagogue who makes Tammany Hall look like the College of Cardinals is really a badge of honor for Michael Schiavo.
Really now, does anybody doubt that DeLay's sudden epiphany as the faux John Brown of the ``right-to-life'' movement is a self-imposed welcome respite from being the subject of more ethics probes than James Traficant in his prime?
Dishing Gossip
Indeed, what kind of man would insert himself into the Schiavo family tragedy to appease the Christian right wing, cloaking himself in a vestment of deceits rivaling a Nuremberg defendant?
It has been DeLay and his fellow travelers of prevarication who have been suggesting Terri Schiavo is sitting in her Pinellas Park hospice reading Vogue, having her eyebrows waxed and dishing gossip with her girlfriends while Michael Schiavo lingers outside her door fingering a garrote.
``She talks and she laughs and she expresses likes and discomforts,'' DeLay lied the other day.
Talking? Laughing? That would be a pretty neat trick considering the opinions of countless medical experts, seven years of court testimony and the conclusion of a guardian ad litem appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush, all asserting Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state."
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