Cruelty and Recklessness. Where have I heard that before?

From: kathleen (kathleen.dickson_at_snet.net)
Date: 03/24/05 

Date: 24 Mar 2005 05:58:36 -0800

 http://ctfamiliesunited.homestead.com/files/Advocate_Sues_DCF.pdf

http://hispanicportal.org/offerings/hpnnews/transfertempestjud/

"In the ruling, published in August, Lopez lambasted the state
Department of Children and Families for "an appalling combination of
arrogance and ineptitude" in intentionally manipulating facts to obtain
an order of temporary custody. Paul Chill, associate dean of academic
affairs at the University of Connecticut School of Law, said Lopez, in
deciding the case, "was appropriately intolerant of official
malfeasance and abuses of power in the child protection system." Chill,
who has run advocacy clinics on child protection issues for 16 years,
said Lopez was the first judge to hold DCF accountable. "

-------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.courant.com/travel/columnists/hc-dencol-0324,0,916465.column

Leave Her Alone
Denis Horgan
WANDERINGS

March 24 2005

These apostles of independence and individual liberties instruct us how
we may be born, how we must live, what we can listen to, with whom we
may sleep and, now, how we must die. They command that we may not hear
soldiers use strong language in combat's very strong situations, listen
to the humor or music of our choice if they do not approve of it and
that we must pray whether we are of a mind or spirit to pray or not. In
their own minds, they have become gods of the earth and damnation or,
worse, is the dealt-out fate of any who would disagree with their
omnipotence. They are mind-control fanatics worthy of Orwell or Mao.

We may not know the science of the poor Terri Schiavo business but who
doesn't know demagoguery, exploitation and manipulation when we see it?
It is, simply, disgusting that so many would play their rightwing,
Elian Gonzales politics with that poor sick woman and her family's
understandable grief. Shame on them all.

Time was, accurately or not, the right claimed a higher road. But the
party of smaller government is now the party of gigantic government.
Once proclaiming itself the party of balanced budgets it has taken a
balanced budget and created monstrous deficits -- and promises class
warfare on the poor, the undereducated, the elderly ill and the
veterans as a result. Self-anointed as the defenders of the individual
from the intrusive government, of the states from Washington, they have
become the most intrusive government in our nation's history telling
everyone but the rich how we must live and breath.

Laughingly calling themselves victims of non-existent foes, they have
perfected the Big Lie, the Bogus Report and Faux Reporter, the Hidden
Truth and, if you have a separate vision for your country they unleash
the brownshirts of President Bush's Swift Boat boys to savage you --
just as the neutral AARP was scalded for not liking Bush's enrich the
Wall Streeters at the expense of Social Security recipients ploy and,
now, the husband of Terri Schiavo is demonized by lies and slanders
from the rightwing spider webs.

Swooping in like vultures to make political mileage out of the achingly
sad Schiavo case, they shamelessly play with peoples' most basic
emotions and fears for political gain, and are comfortable where others
might at least blush. They will rewrite our history and our science and
poison God's Green Earth to make ever more money and wrap themselves in
the Lord when the lights are turned on exposing their depredations.
People in South Carolina, Texas and Georgia cannot see a simple nature
movie, IMAX' "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea" because it doesn't comport
with the creationist point of view. A movie about volcanoes. Nature
itself has to kneel before their ideology.

And these are the people who insist that their view alone must prevail
in all things -- and have the might and muscle to make the rest cow to
their threats. In matters of policy and taxes and governmental
imperatives, there may sometimes be a battle of strong forces in honest
and vibrant conflict. That is a good thing as strong views should be
tested by strong views.

But it is no fair fight to glom onto a family's sorrow and twist it to
political ends. Costing life by the tens of thousands with cowboy
foreign policy and war-built-on-blunders, they instruct us that a human
life is sacred. Of course it is; Iraqi life, too. Our soldiers' lives,
too. But just as Newt Gingrich, before he was shown the House door for
his womanizing hanky-panky, tried to see liberals behind the woman who
drove her children into a lake, a woman from a conservative Republican
family as it turned out, now they try to bring politics to the deathbed
of a long-dying innocent.

Leave that woman alone, for God's sake.

As Joseph Welch, the Army counsel famously said to their patron saint,
Sen. Joseph McCarthy, a half-century ago, "Until this moment, Senator,
I think I never gauged your cruelty or recklessness ... Have you no
sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you no sense of decency?"
Copyright 2005, Hartford Courant

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Relevant Pages

  • OT: Poitical
    ... but between people who live and breathe politics and those for whom ... The president doesn't MAKE hurricanes, ... Similarly, if Katrina has an electoral effect, it is likely to be local ... If Katrina's aftermath was, or is seen to have been, a government failure, ...
    (rec.arts.dance)
  • Ordinance to "pardon" Ms Sonia Gandhi
    ... Under the leadership of Ms Sonia Gandhi, the UPA government has ... RIP: Reforms, ideology, politics ...
    (soc.culture.indian)
  • Re: David Mamet comments on the liberal mind
    ... Twentieth century's greatest play. ... I wrote a play about politics (November, Barrymore Theater, Broadway, ... are less than those of government intervention. ... there is such a thing as liberalism, and it may be reduced to these saddest ...
    (rec.music.classical.guitar)
  • forgive and forget so i can sin anew
    ... Analyzing GMA's call to form a government of national unity may ... any form of collaboration with GMA as blatant opportunism. ... The politics of denial and amnesia may be GMA's only way out of the ...
    (soc.culture.filipino)