The Republican Agenda

During the election process they tried to convince voters that they were against abortion and gay marriage when the reality is they just used these issues to divide the nation and were not really concerned about either. Rather, their goal was to persuade voters to elect them to office so they could continue the campaign of bankrupting the nation while giving tax breaks to the wealthy and destroying the social, health, and environmental programs that decades of progressive Democrats and Republicans had set in place.

Now they are making political hay at the expense of a woman who is unable to defend herself. These politicians voted against the very Medicaid that supported Terri Schiavo through years of need. They also voted to restrict law suits against negligent corporations of the very kind that provided funds supporting the wishes of Terri Schiavo’s family to keep her alive. Now, solely for political gain they wanted to prolong the life of this individual whom the courts have determined wished not to be subjected to this kind of indignity they wanted to impose upon her. (source)

Sadly, it’s all true. During the last presidential race, it was the gay marriage issue that the Bush Administration used as their hot ticket to get the conservative base to go to the polls and put him in office for another four years.

Now, those same conservatives are mad as hell because the president hasn’t followed through on his promise to push for a constitutional amendment against marriage. Why should he? He got what he wanted. He’s in for four more years. Pushing for a constitutional amendment against gay marriage simply is a losing issue for him that brings him no gain. It has nothing to do with his real goals; keeping the war going in Iraq, “fighting terrorism” (at least his definition of it), killing Social Security, gutting the environment so that a few corporations can get even richer than they are. These are his goals. Gay marriage doesn’t even show up on his radar screen anymore. It has served his purpose. I suspect it won’t show it’s ugly head again until the next presidential race. But will it work again? Given how gullible the American People are, I suspect it will.

And to the conservatives out there who loyally marched to the voting booths to stop the gays from having marriage, you were used. Get over it. At least now you can see what you voted for.

A few days ago on my way home, I was listening to Sean Hannity. He was going on and on about Terri Schiavo and “activity judges”. I personally can’t stand Sean Hannity, but I listen to him to try to gain an understanding of what it is we are dealing with. He said (I’m paraphrasing) that, “I never thought I would see the day when judges would have such contempt for the will of Congress and the will of the people, that they would just completely ignore those wishes and rule however they wanted. What has America come too?”

I wanted to yell back to him, “You moron! The function of the court is not and never has been to appease the will of the people or to listen to the will of Congress! The function of the court is to interpret and carry out constitutional law. Sometimes that will happen to agree with the will of the people, but not always.”

That is the function of the court - to interpret law. And if the Supreme Court had heard the Schiavo case, I suspect that they would have had some rather harsh words for the intrusion of Congress into this issue. This is called the Separation of Powers. Congress would do well to brush up on what is apparently a little known fact to them.