Want to rig the game? Get elected
By BUD KENNEDY
The Texas Legislature is supposed to help us.
But instead, one lawmaker, who is also the leader of the Texas Conservative Coalition, is just helping himself.
Faced with losing his Gulf vacation home because it now stands on public beach, East Texas state Rep. Wayne Christian crafted a last-minute rider allowing him and a few neighbors to rebuild and defy a 50-year state law.
Generally, Texas beaches belong to Texans. If you build at the beach’s edge, then you take the risk of a Hurricane Ike moving the beach.
Yet Christian, a Republican representing Nacogdoches and Center, rewrote Texas law so he and a handful of Crystal Beach neighbors — but not folks on Galveston Island or anywhere else along the Gulf — could keep their homes.
Basically, the guy rigged the law for himself and Crystal Beach.
Christian had already earned a much-deserved place on the Texas Monthly "Ten Worst Legislators" list released Friday.
The magazine criticized him for trying to tinker with Travis County prosecutors’ power over ethics investigations and for defying a bill ending stealth campaign ads.
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Showing posts with label breaking the law. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breaking the law. Show all posts
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Saturday, May 30, 2009
800 Britons on waiting list for Swiss suicide clinic
Record numbers of Britons who are suffering from terminal illnesses are queueing up for assisted suicide at the controversial Swiss clinic Dignitas, the Observer can reveal.
Almost 800 have taken the first step to taking their lives by becoming members of Dignitas, and 34 men and women, who feel their suffering has become unbearable, are ready to travel to Zurich and take a lethal drug overdose.
The tenfold increase in the number of Britons who have joined Dignitas since 2002 will raise questions about the law that bans assisted suicide in Britain.
On Tuesday, 46-year-old Debbie Purdy, who suffers from progressive multiple sclerosis, will go to the House of Lords, the UK's highest court, asking it to determine whether her husband Omar Puente will be prosecuted if he helps her to travel abroad to die.
[...]
The disclosures will reopen the highly charged debate about euthanasia. This week, an influential group of peers, led by two former ministers in Tony Blair's cabinet, will seek to end what they see as the outdated and inhumane situation in which relatives or friends risk up to 14 years in prison if they travel with a loved one undertaking assisted dying overseas.
The peers - led by Lord Falconer, a former lord chancellor, and Baroness Jay, a former leader of the House of Lords - will table an amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill in an attempt to lift the threat of prosecution from people in England and Wales who want to support someone in their final moments.
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Almost 800 have taken the first step to taking their lives by becoming members of Dignitas, and 34 men and women, who feel their suffering has become unbearable, are ready to travel to Zurich and take a lethal drug overdose.
The tenfold increase in the number of Britons who have joined Dignitas since 2002 will raise questions about the law that bans assisted suicide in Britain.
On Tuesday, 46-year-old Debbie Purdy, who suffers from progressive multiple sclerosis, will go to the House of Lords, the UK's highest court, asking it to determine whether her husband Omar Puente will be prosecuted if he helps her to travel abroad to die.
[...]
The disclosures will reopen the highly charged debate about euthanasia. This week, an influential group of peers, led by two former ministers in Tony Blair's cabinet, will seek to end what they see as the outdated and inhumane situation in which relatives or friends risk up to 14 years in prison if they travel with a loved one undertaking assisted dying overseas.
The peers - led by Lord Falconer, a former lord chancellor, and Baroness Jay, a former leader of the House of Lords - will table an amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill in an attempt to lift the threat of prosecution from people in England and Wales who want to support someone in their final moments.
MORE...
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