Re: #DeLay: one rule for Michael Schiavo, another for himself
Raymond
1527 Dead wrote:
>
<http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-delay27mar27,0,5710023.story?coll=la-home-headlines>
>
> THE TERRI SCHIAVO CASE
> DeLay's Own Tragic Crossroads
> # Family of the lawmaker involved in the Schiavo case decided in '88
> to let his comatose father die.
>
>
> By Walter F. Roche Jr. and Sam Howe Verhovek, Times Staff Writers
>
> CANYON LAKE, Texas - A family tragedy that unfolded in a Texas
> hospital during the fall of 1988 was a private ordeal - without
> judges, emergency sessions of Congress or the debate raging outside
> Terri Schiavo's Florida hospice.
>
> The patient then was a 65-year-old drilling contractor, badly injured
> in a freak accident at his home. Among the family members keeping
> vigil at Brooke Army Medical Center was a grieving junior congressman
> - Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas).
>
> More than 16 years ago, far from the political passions that have
> defined the Schiavo controversy, the DeLay family endured its own
> wrenching end-of-life crisis. The man in a coma, kept alive by
> intravenous lines and oxygen equipment, was DeLay's father, Charles
> Ray DeLay.
>
> Then, freshly reelected to a third term in the House, the 41-year-old
> DeLay waited, all but helpless, for the verdict of doctors.
>
> Today, as House Majority Leader, DeLay has teamed with his Senate
> counterpart, Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), to champion political intervention
> in the Schiavo case. They pushed emergency legislation through
> Congress to shift the legal case from Florida state courts to the
> federal judiciary.
RE: HERR DOCTOR BILL "Mengele" FRIST: The HMO WHORE:
It's such an open secret that Senator Bill Frist wants to be
President-that
he can not contain himself. He's so busy trying to get to 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue that it is almost impossible for him to do his job
as Senate Majority Leader.
Frank Rich, of the New York Times, says that Frist rarely fails to
talk about his good work in Africa but didn't flinch when his friend
(?) GW Bush demanded a cut of more than 50 percent in AIDS/HIV funding
for the continent. Rich also noted that Frist supports allowing
private health plans to get a piece of the Medicare pie; he didn't
mention that he owes his wealth to a for-profit health-care company
that his father and brother founded.
Rich also says that Dr.Bill Frist is a smoothie. "He continues to
dispense 'bromides and pallatives' for every troublesome topic,
dishing out the spin so smoothly that you have to question your own
grasp on reality.
This medicine man may even find a way to sit on the throne before his
time. If Cheney's batteries fail to recharge, guess who will be
annointed to
fill his crooked chair. Yep. Bill, the dog killer, Frist
When Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was a student at Harvard
Medical School in the early 1970s, he routinely, according to his
autobiography, took cats home from animal shelters and practiced
operating on them, often killing them. He wouldn't have faced harsh
punishment, though, since that kind of animal cruelty was not a felony
in Massachusetts then. But it is now.
"Meow" Bill. Stay with taking "Pussy" home. Washington is filled with
stray hookers. 535 of them. Lots and lots of cat litter to explain
though.
Heil ! Vote Frist/Santorum in 2008.
See: Bill Frist's Rich Rewarding Life
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0252/ridgeway.php
Cyn City - ... are shoving their way in--involving themselves in this
situation--are whores. ... ever considering asking 535 strangers in
Washington, DC, what to do. ...
http://cyncity.typepad.com/
Let us prey.
+++++++++++++
> And DeLay is among the strongest advocates of keeping the woman, who
> doctors say has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years,
> connected to her feeding tube. DeLay has denounced Schiavo's husband,
> as well as judges, for committing what he calls "an act of barbarism"
> in removing the tube.
>
> In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as the congressman
> quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die.
>
> "There was no point to even really talking about it," Maxine DeLay,
> the congressman's 81-year-old widowed mother, recalled in an
interview
> last week. "There was no way [Charles] wanted to live like that. Tom
> knew - we all knew - his father wouldn't have wanted to live that
> way."
>
> Doctors advised that he would "basically be a vegetable," said the
> congressman's aunt, JoAnne DeLay.
>
> When his father's kidneys failed, the DeLay family decided against
> connecting him to a dialysis machine. "Extraordinary measures to
> prolong life were not initiated," said his medical report, citing
> "agreement with the family's wishes." His bedside chart carried the
> instruction: "Do not resuscitate."
>
> On Dec. 14, 1988, the DeLay patriarch "expired with his family in
> attendance."
>
> "The situation faced by the congressman's family was entirely
> different than Terri Schiavo's," said a spokesman for the majority
> leader, who declined requests for an interview.
>
> "The only thing keeping her alive is the food and water we all need
to
> survive. His father was on a ventilator and other machines to sustain
> him," said Dan Allen, DeLay's press aide.
>
> There were also these similarities: Both stricken patients were
> severely brain-damaged. Both were incapable of surviving without
> medical assistance. Both were said to have expressed a desire to be
> spared from being kept alive by artificial means. And neither of them
> had a living will.
>
> This previously unpublished account of the majority leader's personal
> brush with life-ending decisions was assembled from court files,
> medical records and interviews with family members.
> It was a pleasant late afternoon in the Hill Country of Texas on Nov.
> 17, 1988.
>
> At Charles and Maxine DeLay's home, set on a limestone bluff of
cedars
> and live oaks, it also was a moment of triumph. Charles and his
> brother, Jerry DeLay, two avid tinkerers, had just finished work on a
> new backyard tram - an elevator-like device that would carry family
> and friends down a 200-foot slope to the blue-green waters of Canyon
> Lake.
>
> The two men called for their wives to hop aboard. Charles pushed the
> button and the maiden run began. Within seconds, a horrific
screeching
> noise echoed across the still lake - "a sickening sound," said a
> neighbor. The tram was in trouble.
>
> Maxine, seated up front in the four-passenger trolley, said her
> husband repeatedly tried to engage the emergency brake, but the rail
> car kept picking up speed. Halfway down the bank, it was
> free-wheeling, according to accident investigators.
>
> Moments later, it jumped the track and slammed into a tree,
scattering
> passengers and debris in all directions.
>
> "It was awful, just awful," recalled Karl Braddick, now 86, the
> DeLays' neighbor at the time. "I came running over, and it was a
> terrible sight."
>
> He called for emergency help. Rescue workers had trouble bringing the
> injured victims up the steep terrain. Jerry's wife, JoAnne, suffered
> broken bones and a shattered elbow. Charles, who had been thrown
> head-first into a tree, was in grave condition.
>
> "He was all but gone," said Braddick, gesturing at the spot of the
> accident as he offered a visitor a ride down to the lake in his own
> tram. "He would have been better off if he'd died right there and
> then."
>
> But Charles DeLay hung on. In the ambulance on his way to a hospital
> in New Braunfels 15 miles away, he tried to speak.
>
> "He wasn't making any sense; it was mainly just cuss words," recalled
> Maxine with a faint, fond smile.
>
> Four hours later, he was airlifted by helicopter to the Brooke Army
> Medical Center at Ft. Sam Houston. Admission records show he arrived
> with multiple injuries, including broken ribs and a brain hemorrhage.
>
> Tom DeLay flew to his father's bedside, where, along with his two
> brothers and a sister, they joined their mother. In the weeks that
> followed, the congressman made repeated trips back from Washington,
> his family said. Maxine seldom left her husband's side.
>
> "Mama stayed at the hospital with him all the time. Oh, it was
> terrible for everyone," said Alvina "Vi" Skogen, a former
> sister-in-law of the congressman. Neighbor Braddick visited the
> hospital and said it seemed very clear to everyone that there was
> little prospect of recovery.
>
> "He had no consciousness that I could see," Braddick said. "He did a
> bit of moaning and groaning, I guess, but you could see there was no
> way he was coming back."
>
> Maxine DeLay agreed that she was never aware of any consciousness on
> her husband's part during the long days of her bedside vigil - with
> one possible exception.
>
> "Whenever Randy walked into the room, his heart, his pulse rate,
would
> go up a little bit," she said of their son, Randall, the
congressman's
> younger brother, who lives near Houston.
>
> Doctors conducted a series of tests, including scans of his head,
> face, neck and abdomen. They checked for lung damage and performed a
> tracheostomy to assist his breathing. But they could not prevent
> steady deterioration.
>
> Then, infections complicated the senior DeLay's fight for life.
> Finally, his organs began to fail. His family and physicians
> confronted the dreaded choice so many other Americans have faced: to
> make heroic efforts or to let the end come.
>
> "Daddy did not want to be a vegetable," said Skogen, one of his
> daughters-in-law at the time. "There was no decision for the family
to
> make. He made it for them."
>
> The preliminary decision to withhold dialysis and other treatments
> fell to Maxine along with Randall and her daughter Tena - and "Tom
> went along." He raised no objection, said the congressman's mother.
>
> Family members said they prayed.
>
> Jerry DeLay "felt terribly about the accident" that injured his
> brother, said his wife, JoAnne. "He prayed that, if [Charles]
couldn't
> have quality of life, that God would take him - and that is exactly
> what he did."
>
> Charles Ray DeLay died at 3:17 a.m., according to his death
> certificate, 27 days after plummeting down the hillside.
>
>
>
> The family 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."
>
>
>
> After her husband's death, Maxine DeLay scrapped the mangled tram at
> the bottom of the hill and sold the family's lake house.
>
> Today, she lives alone in a Houston senior citizen residence. Like
> much of the country, she is following news developments in the
Schiavo
> case and her son's prominent role.
>
> She acknowledged questions comparing her family's decision in 1988 to
> the Schiavo conflict with a slight smile. "It's certainly
interesting,
> isn't it?"
>
> She had a new hairdo for Easter and puffed on a cigarette outside her
> assisted-living residence as she sat back comparing the cases.
>
> Like her son, she believed there might be hope for Terri Schiavo's
> recovery. That's what made her family's experience different, she
> said. Charles had no hope.
>
> "There was no chance he was ever coming back," she said.
>
> *
>
> Verhovek reported from Canyon Lake, Texas; Roche reported from
> Washington. Also contributing to this report were Times researchers
> Lianne Hart in San Antonio and Nona Yates in Los Angeles.
>
>
> --
> Election 2004
> The Triumph of the Swill
> "The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost
> duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation.
> It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our
> nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation
> of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national
> life."
> Adolph Hitler, My New World Order,
> Proclamation to the German Nation
> at Berlin, February 1, 1933
>
>
> Not dead, in jail, or a slave? Thank a liberal!
> Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.
>
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>
> -
>
> Carl M. Forti, a spokesman for the National Republican
> Congressional Committee -- "A month from now,
> people are not going to remember [Terri Schiavo],"
> he said, and 20 months from now, in the 2006
> elections, "it will be irrelevant."
> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/26/politics/26delay.html?
>
>
> Not dead, in jail, or a slave? Thank a liberal!
> Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.
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