Cynically, Tom Delay, facing increasing pressure because of corruption charges, and Bush, owing a the religious right pay back for helping him win a second term, led the charge to pass a new law that gives "any parent of Theresa Marie Schiavo" standing to sue in federal.
A NY Times Editorial asserts:
This narrow focus is offensive. The founders believed in a nation in which, as Justice Robert Jackson once wrote, we would "submit ourselves to rulers only if under rules." There is no place in such a system for a special law creating rights for only one family. The White House insists that the law will not be a precedent. But that means that the right to bring such claims in federal court is reserved for people with enough political pull to get a law passed that names them in the text.
Worse yet, as the case proceeds in Federal court, the parent's attorney argues:
Ms. Schiavo's religious beliefs as a Roman Catholic were being infringed because Pope John Paul II has deemed it unacceptable for Catholics to refuse food and water. "We are now in a position where a court has ordered her to disobey her church and even jeopardize her eternal soul."
Effectively, Congress acted in part on behalf of the Roman Catholic church. Both of these public bodies interfered in the private affairs of the Schiavos [...] Tom Delay is rather cynically using this issue to divert attention from his own corruption. ...Delay represents himself as acting on behalf of a higher cause. He said of the case over the weekend, "This is not a political issue. This is life and death."
Republican [theocratic law] will have the same effect in the United States that it does in the Middle East. It will reduce the rights of the individual in favor of the rights of religious and political elites to control individuals. Ayatollah Delay isn't different from his counterparts in Iran.
Republican's pandering to the Christian Right continues despite the damage our country's checks and balences it causes.
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