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Jeb’s Mob: Snatch, Grab, Insert Tube

Tallahassee, Florida

The ongoing spectacle of the U.S. congress’ near seizure of judicial power in the matter of the clinically brain dead Terri Schiavo, was (political) theatre of the absurd at its absurdist.

But it may pale in signficance of what is to come.

Word around the capital is that Jeb Bush is set to put on his own version of the Janet Reno/Elian Gonzales saga.

Jeb, I’m informed by an employee of the Department of Children and Families who says he’s “disgusted” with how the agency is being used, is just as likely as not to storm the hospice in Pinellas county where Schiavo lay dying and take her into protective custody.

On Wednesday the DCF went before Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge George Greer, (a Christian conservative Repubublican who House Majority Leader Tom Delay called a “murderer and a terrorist” last week) and claimed that based on a brief “viewing” by a doctor sent in by the agency, the DCF and the Governor believe Schiavo was incorrectly diagnosed as being in a persistance vegetative state.

Jeb and the DCF are also telling the media that they believe Schiavo is being abused and that DCF had the right to “protect her.”

Legal guardian Michael Schiavo, who everyone from Nat Hentoff to FoxNews’s Sean Hannity and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, are portraying as another Scott Peterson and Terri Schiavo as the abused and soon-to-be-murdered Laci, has threatend to have anyone who enters without his permission charged with assault.

Since it become clear that Judge Greer wouldn’t budge and that enough Republicans in the legislature would uphold the state’s Death with Dignity Act, Jeb has pushed the DCF into action by having them investiate bogus charges that Michael Schiavo abused Ms Schiavo even while she was a patient.

Indeed, over the last couple of days former nurses who worked at the hospice have shown up on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes and and MSNB’s Scarborough show to claim abuse. Judge Greer in past rulings has said their claims were without merit.

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has turned away the parents of Terri Schiavo, right wing anarchy is sure to ensue.

And Jeb Bush will be at the head of the mob.

JACK McCARTHY lives in Tallahassee, Florida. He can be reached at: jackm32301@yahoo.com