Bob Herbert on the Michael Schiavo witchhunt

Before you decide that Jeb Bush's playing Inspector Javert to Michael Schiavo's Jean Valjean (albeit one who hasn't even stolen a loaf of bread) is something that couldn't happen to you, ponder this: Here is a politician from a powerful family deciding to hound someone whose efforts have made him look bad -- and have quite possibly damaged his chances at the presidency in 2008.

Bob Herbert has more:

"Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" asked Joseph Welch in his famous confrontation with the pathologically cruel Joe McCarthy. "Have you left no sense of decency?"

More than a half-century later, I would ask the same question of Florida's governor, Jeb Bush.

In an abuse of power that has been widely denounced, and has even appalled many of his own supporters in the Republican Party, Governor Bush has tried to keep the Terri Schiavo circus alive by sending state prosecutors on a witch hunt against her husband, Michael.

The state attorney who has been pushed by the governor into pursuing this case told me yesterday he has seen nothing to indicate that a crime was committed. Nevertheless, the inquiry continues.

Governor Bush asked Bernie McCabe, the state attorney for Pinellas County, to "take a fresh look" at this already exhaustively investigated case to determine, among other things, whether Michael Schiavo had perhaps waited too long to call for help after discovering that his wife had collapsed early one morning 15 years ago.

Mr. McCabe did not seem particularly enthusiastic about his mission. "I wouldn't call it an investigation," he told me in a telephone conversation. The word "investigation," he said, "is a term of art in my business."

He then explained: "When I conduct an investigation, it would mean that I have a criminal predicate. In other words, that I have some indication that a crime has occurred. That's my job.

"In this circumstance, that does not exist at this time. So what I'm attempting to do is respond to the governor's request by conducting what I'm calling an 'inquiry' to see if I can resolve the issues he raised."

He chuckled at his use of the word inquiry. "It may be a distinction without a difference," he said.

Just hope and pray that YOUR family is never in a position in which a private tragedy can be used for political gain by the Bush family. Because these Bushes, who love to tubthump about what good Christians they are, will not hesitate to wield their power like a club to beat you unto death if that's what's necessary for their purposes.