“Hey, I’ll have what Florida Governor Jeb Bush is drinking..”:
Gov. Jeb Bush said Friday that a prosecutor has agreed to investigate why Terri Schiavo collapsed 15 years ago, citing an alleged time gap between when her husband found her and when he called 911.
Bush said his request for the probe was not meant to suggest wrongdoing by Michael Schiavo. “It’s a significant question that during this ordeal was never brought up,” Bush told reporters.
Well, certainly not. So WHAT if Bush is requesting this right after the autopsy vindicated Michael Schiavo and sent Majority Leader Bill Frist into Spin City to try to erase the diagnosis by videotape that he made on the Senate floor? That has no bearing on this latest investigation.
Besides: we know the vast majority of Americans want more Schiavo investigations and that polls showed solid backing of Congressional GOP and White House involved in this case. OOPS! Polls showed the public — including Republicans — were overwhemlingly AGAINST it. Well, the METHODOLOGY of those polls were wrong. MORE:
In a statement issued by his lawyer, Schiavo called the development an outrage.
Why should they feel that way?
“I have consistently said over the years that I didn’t wait but ‘ran’ to call 911 after Terri collapsed,” Schiavo said in the release.
In a letter faxed to Pinellas-Pasco County State Attorney Bernie McCabe, the governor said Michael Schiavo testified in a 1992 medical malpractice trial that he found his wife collapsed at 5 a.m. on Feb. 25, 1990, and he said in a 2003 television interview that he found her about 4:30 a.m. He called 911 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,” Bush wrote. “In light of this new information, I urge you to take a fresh look at this case without any preconceptions as to the outcome.”
See? He says he doesn’t want any preconceptions.
McCabe was out of state Friday and couldn’t immediately be reached for comment, but Bush said McCabe has agreed to his request.
On Wednesday, Michael Schiavo’s attorney, George Felos, said his client didn’t wait to call for help and has conceded that he confuses dates and times. He has said that if Michael Schiavo had not called 911 immediately, as Bush and others allege, Terri Schiavo would have died that day.
“There is no hour gap or other gap to the point Michael heard Terri fall and called 911,” Felos said. “We’ve seen the baseless allegations in this case fall by the wayside one by one … That’s what I would call it, a baseless claim to perpetuate a controversy that in fact doesn’t exist.”
The governor’s request followed the release Wednesday of an autopsy concluding that Terri Schiavo had been in a persistent vegetative state and revealed no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused before she collapsed.
That’s just a coincidence. Leave it to the mainstream media to suggest a political bias in this act motivated by a thirst for knowledge of what happened that day.
What could be Jeb Bush’s motivations in this? Here are some possibilities:
- A thirst for knowing what really happened. No political motive. Tying up loose ends. (By the way: it is a fact that “Gandelman” is an Italian name..)
- CYA. Nothing else panned out to support the case against Schiavo’s husband and in terms of political polls and due to the autospsy report Frist, the two Bush brothers, Tom DeLay and Randall Terry and company came out of it with a troubling odor.There is a need to get something on Michael Schiavo ASAP.
- A further attempt to show social conservatives that Jeb Bush is on their side and will leave no stone unturned to look into this case.
- A sign that JB plans to run for President after all in 2008 or, at the very least, is laying the groundwork to cement his bond with religious right voters and run in 2012.
- Political revenge. The Bush brothers and GOPers in Congress who clamored for the tube to be connected in this case have taken a hit in terms of poll numbers and credibility. This is looking for “payback” — any kind of payback.
And what’s the impact of this?
- This assures the case will be kept alive and the strong passions swirling around it will continue, although probably in a diluted form.
- This gives talk show hosts a great topic.
- This cannot but be ONE MORE REASON for voters who are independents, centrists, moderates or libertarian Republicans to look at their ballots next time and say: “You know what? I’m not voting for ANYONE who continued to be obsessed with this issue after the autopsy report came out. They have wasted government time, energy, attention and funds on an issue aimed at ingratiating themselves with one constitutency and one agenda — and this has not been an item on my agenda, nor on the agenda of most of my neighbors.”
“I said I’ll have what Jeb Bush is drinking. It’s called ‘power.'”
SOME OTHER VOICES:
—Crooks And Liars’ post announces: “Jeb Bush Trying To Land A Role On CSI” and it reads in part:
Typical republican trick. Look like a fool for your actions so shift the focus onto something else. I thought the idea behind Terri’s case was that she wasn’t in PVS, not murdered. Get ready for round two folks. Thought you had enough? Hannity has been doing the evidence shuffle of the autopsy to foul play so this will feed into his hysteria. I’m sure there’s a couple thousand cases that Florida residents might want to call old Jeb about and ask him to reopen an investigation.
If there had been a reason to bring criminal charges against Mr. Schiavo for his actions, or in-actions, they should have been investigated and brought forward 15 years ago. Yesterday’s findings shed no light on the cause of Ms. Schiavo’s collapse 15 years ago and a new investigation is unlikely to turn up any new evidence. This call for an investigation is another waste of taxpayer dollars and a new effort to provide justification for the Republican Party’s illogical behavior throughout the final weeks of this case.
—Talk Left:”Maybe this is how Jeb Bush intends to get even with Michael Schiavo for “winning” the autopsy?”
—Demagogue:”Bill Frist must be kicking himself for not having thought of this first.”
—Pandagon:
Knowing that their bizarre belief systems took a blow from the reality of Terri Schiavo’s autopsy report, Jeb Bush decided to throw the religious right a conspiracy bone to gnaw on. Michael Schiavo killed his wife by convincing her to have a heart attack so that he could delay the phone call just long enough to get her into a vegetative state! Because he wanted her dead, you see. Of course, if he somehow did manage to convince her to have a heart attack, his nefarious wife-murdering plan would have worked better if he’d waited until after she passed to call 911. But details, schmetails.
Yeah, I’m sure he’s just interested in setting the record straight. This is the problem now: these politicians banked on some wrongdoing on Michael Schiavo’s part, and when no evidence of this materialized, they started fishing. They could just admit that they were wrong about this, but that would take, umm, what do you call it? Integrity, that’s the word. It will never happen. They’ve publicly vilified Michael Schiavo and can never back down from that without *gasp* admitting that they were wrong.
—skippy the bush kangaroo (all in lowercase):
the pandering just won’t stop… my first reactions? let him keep trying to keep this issue alive. it’s already backfired badly for the republicans – polls showed most people disapproved of their handling of the issue. so why not let jeb keep up his self-destructive, cynical behavior?
This is truly beyond belief…The Bush children have always been distinguished by a fiery unwillingness to back down combined with an almost bestial pursuit of revenge against anyone who has ever crossed them. They don’t want to beat their opponents, they want to destroy them.
This, though, simply beggars the imagination. What kind of human being would keep a vendetta like this alive at this point?
—The Peking Duck:”Jeb Bush shows his true colors as he seeks with pathological vengeance to destroy Michael Schiavo for daring stand up to him. This is truly sick. If I believed in God and in hell, I’d ask God to see that Bush burns there forever. Unfortunately, as an atheist, I can’t.”
—Abnormal Interests:”Jeb Bush is not some lost soul wallowing in conspiracy theories and other delusions (I hope). Jeb Bush is a governor. Jeb Bush knows better. Jeb Bush is knowingly exploiting this tragedy for his own purposes.”
—Ron Beasley:”I thought Jeb was supposed to be the smarter brother. The Terri Schiavo debacle has already cost the Republicans dearly. So why does Jeb try to keep the issue alive? Of course he’s trying to pander to the really radical Christian right, but why. It is not only political suicide for Jeb but will continue to hurt the Republicans as long as it remains an issue. It’s not only cruel to keep up the attack on Michael Schiavo but really stupid.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.