LA Times' Smear of Tom DeLay a Big Mistake

If the Far Left/Big Media objective is to "Gingrich" Tom DeLay, I would think that they would know better than to get personal like this:

On Sunday the Los Angeles Times published a report detailing the death of DeLay's father - suggesting that the Republican House majority leader, when faced with a case similar to Terri Schiavo's, allowed his father to die.

According to the Times, in 1988 DeLay's father, Charles, was allowed to die after suffering severe injuries in an accident that over a 27-day period left him in a coma with no hope of recovery.

His family told doctors not to connect him to life support systems that would have kept him alive artificially. Charles died soon thereafter.

"Doctors conducted a series of tests, including scans of his head, face, neck and abdomen," the Times reported, adding that the doctors checked for lung damage and performed a tracheotomy to assist his breathing but were unable to prevent steady deterioration.

In the end 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," the Times wrote.

"Daddy did not want to be a vegetable," one of his daughters-in-law at the time told the Times. "There was no decision for the family to make. He made it for them."

The LAT report is getting wide play from the media and was published on the AP wire. Is DeLay guilty of hypocrisy?

Two words: "hell" and "no."

Note the highlighted phrases above. I highlighted them because none of them apply to Terri Schiavo - or at least they didn't before Judge George Greer ordered her starved and mummified.

There is substantial evidence suggesting that she was not, nor had she ever been, in a "persistent vegetative state." Moreover, she has never been in a coma, or on "life support," as Big Media polling questions have mendaciously claimed in order to manipulate the results they wanted to dishonestly portray the public as being pro-euthanasia. She was no more being kept "artificially alive" than is Stephen Hawking, or was Christopher Reeve, two other people with crippling injuries who were/are unable to feed (or do much else for) themselves, and yet nobody has ever suggested that they were/are "vegetables," or should be "allowed to die."

Yet, anyway.

Indeed, the only way in which Terri Schiavo differed is that her handicap prevented her from speaking for herself, thus leaving her at the mercy of a husband who may have wanted her dead from the beginning and a court system that was only too happy to help him finish her off.

This is what the LA Times equates to the lethal injuries suffered by Tom DeLay's dad that killed him before they ever had a chance to "plug him in," let alone pull the plug. This is the LA Times' way of either accusing the House Majority Leader of rank hypocrisy, or calling him a lying, murdering scumbag every bit as bad - oh, yes, this is the LA Times we're talking about, isn't it? - exponentially worse than Michael Schiavo.

To call this despicable is to euphemize obsequiously. To call it surprising or unexpected would be hopelessly naïve. DeLay must have known a "story" like this was coming. But that doesn't make it any easier to be prepared for it, or have such a personal tragedy "scandalized" and rubbed in his face, as though he did something immoral by going the extra mile to provide Terri Schiavo - and the thousands of other severely handicapped Americans across the country in similar situations that she symbolizes - with the due process of law that she had heretofore been denied.

DeLay couldn't have saved his father seventeen years ago. He did the right thing in trying to save Terri Schiavo a week ago. He knows both of these things, and so does anybody who bothers to get the other side of the Schiavo story.

But there is an unwritten rule, not just of politics, but of life: whatever dispute you have with somebody, leave their family out of it. That is the Rubicon that, once crossed, can turn mere disagreements into blood feuds.

I've opined previously that Tom DeLay is made of sterner stuff than Newt Gingrich was. And even then it took the DisLoyal Opposition three and a half years to finally bring down Mr. Newt. Going personal like this will only help ensure that DeLay digs in that much deeper, and that his GOP colleagues will rally around him.

And yet another episode of desperate Donk overreach will snap back in their snouts.

Again.