The Los Angeles Times tries desperately today to paint GOP Rep. Tom DeLay as a hypocrite over the Schiavo case by exposing a family tragedy involving his deceased father. DeLay’s dad suffered massive injuries in a freak accident in 1988 while testing a trolley he had built on a slope near his home. The story (which as far as I can tell from Nexis and other online searches has never been reported before) could have been told in a deeply moving and sensitive way. Instead, it is marred by the muck-raking reporters’ heavy-handed gotcha editorializing:

More than 16 years ago, far from the political passions that have defined the Schiavo controversy, the DeLay family endured its own wrenching end-of-life crisis. The man in a coma, kept alive by intravenous lines and a ventilator, was DeLay’s father, Charles Ray DeLay.

Then, freshly re-elected to a third term in the House, DeLay waited all but helpless for the verdict of doctors.

Today, as House Majority Leader, DeLay has teamed with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to champion political intervention the Schaivo case. He pushed emergency legislation through congress to shift the legal case from Florida state courts to the federal judiciary.

And he is among the strongest advocates of keeping the woman, who doctors say has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years, connected to her feeding tube. DeLay has denounced Schiavo’s husband, as well as judges, for committing what he calls “an act of barbarism” in removing the tube.

In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as the congressman quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die.

The DeLay and Schiavo cases are worlds apart, for heaven’s sake, and it is patently unfair to compare the two. DeLay’s father’s had suffered broken ribs and a brain hemorrhage; he needed a tracheotomy and ventilator to assist his breathing; his kidneys failed; multiple infections ravaged his body. Unlike Terri Schiavo, he was in a state of steady deterioration and at death’s imminent doorstep within days of his accident.

Unlike the Schiavo case, there was a family consensus among the DeLays and no dispute over what the father would have wanted. Moreover, DeLay was not the primary decision-maker in the family’s choice to withhold heroic treatment. That role fell to his mother and another brother and sister.

Instead of acknowledging the vast differences in the cases, the Times piece strains to make flimsy parallels and includes only one sentence from DeLay’s press aide pointing out the contrasts. Couldn’t the reporters have found a single medical expert to make the point for balance?

Oh, no. Balance would have interfered with the newspaper’s obvious petard-hoisting agenda.

The Times‘ journalistic irresponsibility is ugly enough. But the glee with which liberal bloggers are greeting the L.A. Times story and Rep. DeLay’s painful family experience is even more appalling:

The Hypocrisy of a Texas Bug-Chaser, squealed one left-wing blogger.

“What a creep,” wrote another. “Hypocrite, Hypocrite, Hypocrite,” gloated another.

“He’s the King of Crap. Sucker DeLay is such a liar!” crowed Duncan Black.

These people are shameless ghouls whose hatred of Republicans is being fueled by a recklessly and callously framed Los Angeles Times story. And they have the nerve to keep railing about the politicizing of the Terri Schiavo case.

May God have mercy on them all.

Update: 3/28 1210am. DeLay’s ethical problems, on the other hand, are completely fair game for criticism. The Wall Street Journal takes a tough stand in a must-read editorial today.

Update II: Tom Maguire takes note of the Texas Natural Death Act, which was in place when Tom DeLay’s father’s accident occurred. Why didn’t the L.A. Times bother to report on these significant facts? Ask the readers’ representative:

Los Angeles Times Readers’ Representative Office
E-mail: readers.rep@latimes.com
Telephone message line: (877) 554-4000
Fax: (213) 237-3535
Postal mail: 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012
Newspaper delivery hotline: (800) 252-9141