Jeb Bush Sent Cops To Seize Schiavo

The Miami Herald reveals that Jeb Bush nearly created a police shoot-out and a constitutional crisis by sending squads of police to the hospital where Terri Schiavo was under local police guard:

Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told police in Pinellas Park, the small town where Schiavo lies at Hospice Woodside, on Thursday that they were on the way to take her to a hospital to resume her feeding.

For a brief period, local police, who have officers at the hospice to keep protesters out, prepared for what sources called "a showdown."

In the end, the squad from the FDLE and the Department of Children & Families backed down, apparently concerned about confronting local police outside the hospice.

"We told them that unless they had the judge with them when they came, they were not going to get in," said a source with the local police...

Gov. Jeb Bush had planned to use a wrinkle in Florida law that would have allowed them to legally get around the judge's order...

"There were two sets of law enforcement officers facing off, waiting for the other to blink," said one official with knowledge of Thursday morning's activities.

In jest, one official said local police discussed "whether we had enough officers to hold off the National Guard."

"It was kind of a showdown on the part of the locals and the state police," the official said. "It it was not too long after that Jeb Bush was on TV saying that, evidently, he doesn't have as much authority as people think."

I think this whole Schiavo case should be seen as a serious test - a failed one - of Jeb Bush's efforts to run for President in 2008 on the tails of US evangelists.