The Tennessee Liberal

When the Terri Schiavo controversy worked its way onto the floor of Congress, many a recipe for political meddling of the most outlandish proportions. Those of us who had that sense of foreboding as the situation evolved knew that what little respect was left for the life and wishes of this woman would evaporate in the hot light of politics.

So, I wasn't really surprised when a memo of GOP talking points was distributed on the floor of the Senate, highlighting the advantages of addressing the Schiavo issue and "exciting" the "pro-life" party faithful. Both ABC News and the Washington Post were given copies of the memo, which I should note again was distributed on the floor of the Senate.

As you might expect, the Republican spin machine, ably aided by media that just doesn't question anything anymore, tried to say that the memo was cooked up by Democrats. While being a completely ludicrous allegation, the GOP probably figured that if it worked so well for the poorly-reported CBS National Guard story, then surely it would work again.

Woops.

It turns out that the memo was not just written by any Republican; no, that would not be good enough. It was written by the Chief Counsel to Florida's newest Republican Senator (and Bush's former HUD Secretary), Mel Martinez:

Martinez, the GOP's Senate point man on the issue, said he earlier had been assured by aides that his office had nothing to do with producing the memo. "I never did an investigation, as such," he said. "I just took it for granted that we wouldn't be that stupid. It was never my intention to in any way politicize this issue." ... [Sen. Tom] Harkin [D-Iowa] said in an interview that Martinez handed him the memo on the Senate floor, in hopes of gaining his support for the bill giving federal courts jurisdiction in the Florida case in an effort to restore the brain-damaged Florida woman's feeding tube. "He said these were talking points -- something that we're working on here," Harkin said. (Emphasis mine.)

So, for those keeping track at home, not only were Republicans the first to the mat to politicize the issue of Terri Schiavo, not only were their staffs busy writing heartless memos that can't even spell the woman's name correctly, but that their very own Senators were handing the talking points out on the floor of the Senate.

Sen. Joe Biden sums it up well in the Post article:

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said he believed that the memo originated with the GOP because it is "totally consistent" with how the Republicans have operated for the past four years. "They just shouldn't lose their memos," he said.

Yep.