Pol - Not a lotta class in Martinez camp
 

This is a nice thing to kinda wrap up the whole Congress and Shiavo thingy. I hope everyone remembers this sort of crap a few years from now...good thing he found the guy who wrote it and he never saw it befoire today....DeLay had said it a week earlier in his meeting but I guess Martinez wasn't there.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/04/....ap/index.html

Florida senator's aide resigns over Schiavo memo
Martinez: Senior staffer responsible for document

Thursday, April 7, 2005 Posted: 9:42 AM EDT (1342 GMT)

Martinez
Mel Martinez

What's this?



WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Mel Martinez said Wednesday an infamous unsigned memo passed around on Capitol Hill emphasizing the politics of the Terri Schiavo case originated in his office.

The memo -- first reported by ABC News on March 18 and by The Washington Post and The Associated Press two days later -- said the fight going on then over removing Schiavo's feeding tube "is a great political issue ... and a tough issue for Democrats."

"This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue," said the memo, which was described at the time as being circulated among Senate Republicans while legislation was being considered to place the Schiavo case under the jurisdiction of federal courts.

Martinez, R-Florida, said in a written statement that he discovered Wednesday that the memo had been written by an aide in his office.

"It is with profound disappointment and regret that I learned today that a senior member of my staff was unilaterally responsible for this document," Martinez said.

He said he accepted the resignation of the staffer who drafted and circulated the memo. "This type of behavior and sentiment will not be tolerated in my office," he said.

Martinez did not identify the aide, but The Washington Post said he was the senator's legal counsel, Brian Darling.

"Until this afternoon, I had never seen it and had no idea a copy of it had ever been in my possession," Martinez said of the document. He had previously denied knowing anything about the memo and condemned its sentiments.

The memo had been disavowed by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, both primary forces behind Congress passing the bill and sending it to President Bush on March 21.

Democrats had pounced on the document as evidence that Republicans were seeking a political advantage in the fight between Schiavo's husband and her parents over removing her feeding tube 15 years after she incurred severe brain damage that left her incapacitated.

Schiavo, 41, died a week ago in a Florida hospice, 13 days after the feeding tube was removed. During the interim, federal courts repeatedly rejected what Republicans said was the intent of the bill: to have the tube reinserted and prolong Schiavo's life.

Martinez, in his statement, said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, had asked for background information on the bill ordering a federal court to review the Schiavo case.

He said he pulled a one-page document from his coat pocket and handed to Harkin. "Unbeknownst to me ... I had given him a copy of the now infamous memo."

He said Harkin had called him earlier Wednesday to say he believes the memo had been given to him by Martinez. The Florida senator said he then ordered an internal investigation in his office.

Allison Dobson, a spokeswoman for Harkin, said the Iowa Democrat had received the memo from Martinez in the days leading up to passage of the bill.

Martinez said he also had apologized to Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, who is up for re-election in 2006 and was cited in the memo because he had declined to become a sponsor of the bill.

Someone take me off the feeding tube now.

He was asked for info and pulled a memo from his coat pocket THAT HE HAD NOT READ AND DID NOT KNOW THE CONTENTS OF? As a Republican I'll say that this stinks to high heaven.

The fact that there are people that don't think that everything debated in Congress isn't a political game is what scares me more than this.

It seems plausible to me; what stinks is that he is not taking personal responsibility. Even if one of his aides DID write the memo, Martinez shows no integrity or honor by passing the buck.

Yeah, this guy needs to take his lumps and move on. The reality is he distributed the memo done by his staff. To put it in a different light, if the memo had a cure for cancer, I doubt he would have credited his staffer :D

/applauds st.cronin & Arles.

I like how both sides are up in arms because, essentially, someone was stupid enough to put what they all talk about behind closed doors in writing. Gotta love politicians!

Bingo. Yet Congress attacks Donald Rumsfeld and the military for passing the buck (see Abu Gahrib). :rolleyes:

Exactly. It's the same exact concept.

Apparently the buck stops nowhere these days.

I think Rummy took plenty of heat for Abu Ghraib - enough to where he's going to make darn well sure nothing like that happens again. Which is all I think we can hope for given the events that occurred.

Heat, not responsibility. Totally different.

Outside of resigning, what more could he have done? I can't remember a precedent in history of a wartime Sec of Defense telling the enemy we screwed up and that they now have the morale relevancy to go out and torture our guys.

A resignation would have satisfied me.

1. The majority of prisoners in Abu Gharaib were regular criminals.

2. That's quite a conclusion to draw, Arles (they now have the moral relevancy to go out and torture our guys).

3. Rumsfeld should have resigned for a long list of failures.

re point 1: *ACCUSED* criminals. Very few prisoners had been convicted of anything.

The point of asking for Rummy's resignation is to underscore the US's moral superiority - we do things the right way here, maybe not always, but when we do things wrong, we treat it like a screw up.

I thought this was about PEDRO Martinez.. :(

Rummy tendered is resignation, it was turned down.

They probably lied bout that though.