Can you say "Hypocrite"...?

House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) told evangelical Christians last week that only Christianity offers a reasonable answer to basic questions about the purpose of life. - The Washington Post

Now, I don't know about anyone else, but Tom DeLay shrouding himself in the mantle of Christian virtue is rather like dressing a pig in velvet and brocade. It makes the pig uncomfortable and the velvet and brocade gets soiled and tattered. But Tom has much to be uncomfortable about as it is...not the least of which are his questionable ethics and being a hairs breadth away from an indictment in Texas. And by his actions, he soils the good name of Christianity. By past standards he would be branded a blasphemer and stoned to death.

Then there's that little thing about Christianity "...being the only reasonable answer..." to life's challenges. Well, I've got news for him...a goodly majority of the world's population has gotten along just fine without his particular brand of Christianity, thank you very much.

And, of course, there was his little speech before The Family Research Council in which he promised that Republican leaders would work to implement the political agenda of the religious right wing-nuts. But golly, can you overlook those ethics charges and possible indictments? For the whole written transcript and audio tape, the Americans United for Separation of Church and State is the website to go to. They've got all the sordid details on Tom's groveling and whining.

It should be obvious by now, to anyone capable of rational thought, that the Republicans are using religion to further their own political power while, in actuality, they do nothing more than pay lip-service to Christian virtue.

5: Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

6: Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. - Matthew 7, 5-6

Citations:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A18077-2002Apr19¬Found=true

http://www.au.org/site/PageServer?pagename=press_audio

Sleaze merchants, not statesmen, soil the halls of Congress

Like many Americans, I suspect, I tried to picture how I would have reacted if a bunch of smarmy, camera-seeking politicians came anywhere near a hospital room where my own relative was hooked up to life support. I imagined summoning the Clint Eastwood of "Dirty Harry," not "Million Dollar Baby." But before my fantasy could get very far, star politicians with the most to gain from playing the God card started hatching stunts whose extravagant shamelessness could upstage any humble reverie of my own.

Senator Bill Frist, the Harvard-educated heart surgeon with presidential aspirations, announced that watching videos of Ms. Schiavo had persuaded him that her doctors in Florida were mistaken about her vegetative state - a remarkable diagnosis given that he had not only failed to examine the patient ostensibly under his care but has no expertise in the medical specialty, neurology, relevant to her case. No less audacious was Tom DeLay, last seen on "60 Minutes" a few weeks ago deflecting Lesley Stahl's questions about his proximity to allegedly criminal fund-raising by saying he would talk only about children stranded by the tsunami. Those kids were quickly forgotten as he hitched his own political rehabilitation to a brain-damaged patient's feeding tube. Adopting a prayerful tone, the former exterminator from Sugar Land, Tex., took it upon himself to instruct "millions of people praying around the world this Palm Sunday weekend" to "not be afraid."

The president was not about to be outpreached by these saps. The same Mr. Bush who couldn't be bothered to interrupt his vacation during the darkening summer of 2001, not even when he received a briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," flew from his Crawford ranch to Washington to sign Congress's Schiavo bill into law. The bill could have been flown to him in Texas, but his ceremonial arrival and departure by helicopter on the White House lawn allowed him to showboat as if he had just landed on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Within hours he turned Ms. Schiavo into a slick applause line at a Social Security rally. "It is wise to always err on the side of life," he said, wisdom that apparently had not occurred to him in 1999, when he mocked the failed pleas for clemency of Karla Faye Tucker, the born-again Texas death-row inmate, in a magazine interview with Tucker Carlson. - Frank Rich, The New York Times

Listening to Dubbyuh, Bill Frist and Tom DeLay bray about the virtue of erring "...on the side of life..." just makes my skin crawl. Their utter hypocrisy, smarmy insincerity and sleazy political oportunism is shameless...but they have no shame. Their eagerness to make poltical hay from the the private tragedy of a family in agony is an apalling sign of just how far the Republic has fallen. Gone are the statesmen from America's past. In their place, we find snake-oil merchants of every stripe...wild-eyed religious fanatics...grifters...and a tiny minority of people who do care about the nation. These latter, however, are drowned out by the braying of the asses who form the majority which roams the halls of our nation's capital, soiling them with their very presence.

It's time to clean house, and put the live-stock out to pasture where they can do no harm.

The Right Wing Three Ring Circus

And that's what these sorry sacks of excrement have made of Terri Schiavo's case. They passed legislation, which was then signed by the head sack-o-crap, affecting a single individual. This pernicious bit of legislative skulduggery will allow Mrs. Schiavo's case to be heard before the federal judiciary. The Florida legislature passed a law aimed at keeping Mrs. Schiavo's PEG tube in place and had it thrown back in their faces by the Florida Supreme Court, and ignored by the SCOTUS. Barney Franks (D, MA) had it right when he said that this is a violation of the separation of powers, and that Congress' role was the determination of broad policy issues and the courts were for individual adjudication. All well and good with right wing-nuts except when they get their panties in a twist over a given issue. Then, by golly it's "Katie bar the door...!", as they bitch and whine about "activists judges" interfering with the legislative process and the "will of the people".

Only Mrs. Schiavo's case, the federal version of Florida's overturned "Terri's Law", wasn't about the "will of the people", it wasn't even about Terri Schiavo...It was about politics, pure and simple. It was reported on the news this morning that a memo circulated amongst congressional republicans stating that this case was essentially a political goldmine for republicans, particuilarly since one House republican was facing a contested election and could benefit from this issue. But what I want to know is where the concern of these sanctimonious, self-righteous twits was a year ago...? Two years age...? Seven years ago...? It was nowhere to be found. It wasn't until they thought they could get some political mileage out of it that they did anything.

And listening to Dubbyuh spout his hypocritical nonsense about "...our society, our laws, and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life..." had me choking on my coffee this morning. This coming from a man who, as Governor of Texas, presided over more executions than any governor in the last 50 years. And let's not forget his cheerful willingness to permit the execution of the mentally retarded, and his cruel mockery on "Larry King: Live", of a woman he permitted to be executed. Dubbyuh's mouthings about the sanctity of life are nothing more than calculated remarks to appeal to a selected audience, they have all the substance of a rapidly evaporating puddle on the hot asphalt of a parking lot.

Our congressional reps in both houses should be ashamed of themselves for so shamelessly politicizing this case. As far as I can tell, they have bought and paid for their places in hell. I hope they enjoy them.