Quotes & amp;amp; Notes

by Inlander Staff


Which Lives Count? -- With all the talk of sanctity of life surrounding the Terry Schiavo case, maybe it's finally time to have that really big discussion we never quite seem to have. You know, is it sanctity of life across the board (as in bombing 100,000 Iraqis and enforcing the death penalty) or just in specialized cases (like abortion and Terry Schiavo)?


President Bush rushed back to Washington to sign the emergency legislation, but his own background seems a little inconsistent on right-to-life issues. As governor of Texas, he refused to take Karla Faye Tucker off of death row after her conversion to Christianity, saying he had to uphold the law. Now he and his party seem to have decided that when the issue is important enough, you can just change the law.


And Bush signed a Texas law in 1999 that seems consistent with what Florida has on the books; in fact, just last week in Texas, that law was all over the media. Wanda Hudson's 6-month-old child died in a Texas hospital when doctors decided to remove his breathing tube, despite Hudson wanting to keep him alive. But a judge overruled her, citing the Texas "futile care law," which was signed into law by Bush.


Clearly it's a tough issue with no easy answers, so maybe now's a great time to have that debate.





"It's been said the largest mental health facility in Washington state is the King County jail. It shouldn't be that way."


-- Sen. Lisa Brown, speaking at a town hall meeting at the West Central Community Center on Saturday. Brown sponsored a bill last year that would require insurance companies to cover costs for mental health the same way they cover physical health. The bill was signed into law by Gov. Gregoire on March 9.





"I do not sit in judgment of other players, whether it deals with their sexual preference, their marital problems, or their personal habits ... My message is that steroids is bad."


-- Former Oakland Athletics and St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire, testifying before the House Government Reform Committee on the use of steroids in professional baseball. McGwire skirted questions surrounding allegations made by former teammate Jose Canseco in his scandalous new memoir, Juiced, that the two used to inject each other with performance enhancers before games.





"Pardon me?" -- That's how McGwire responded when asked by the committee how he would know that "steroids is bad."





Publication date: 03/24/04