You must read the whole story. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s Department of Children and Families was convicted of “institutional neglect” that led to the near beating death of the then-2-year-old Marissa Amora at the hands of her known-to-be-abusive guardians. A jury awards her $35 million for damages and future health care costs. So now Bush is trying to have the entire award thrown out (not reduced, eliminated!) so the now-6-year-old will end up with no way to afford her lifelong medical care. Read it all; here’s a taste to tide you over:

If Marissa were, say, a nice white woman in a vegetative state whose case had been taken up by powerful financial and political interests then ballyhooed into a national media carnival, then doubtless Jeb would even now be dabbing his eyes as he knelt for a photo-op at her bedside.

But because Marissa is “nobody” — one of the poor, the powerless, the “insulted and injured,” in Dostoevsky’s phrase — she can be flushed down the toilet and no one will notice. For the aim of Bush’s legal maneuvering is clear: he wants to “run out the clock” on Marissa, litigating the case quite literally to death, until her family sinks beneath the overwhelming financial and physical burden of keeping her alive and at some point her makeshift, overstrained support system suffers the inevitable breakdown.

What do you expect from the grandsons of Nazi war profiteer Prescott Bush? (Whoops, I said the “N” word!)

Further commentary from The Smirking Chimp:

Then came the inevitable: A few weeks later, Marissa was back in the hospital, beaten nearly to death, with severe injuries to her brain and liver and several broken bones. Now the [Department of Children and Families] took an interest: They rushed to court to obtain a “Do Not Resuscitate” order for the mangled 2-year-old. For God’s sake, don’t let her live, the DCF told Marisa’s doctors, because she might “potentially” be left “in a vegetative state.”

But the doctors disagreed with the Bushists’ expert diagnosis. And so Marissa is still alive today — brain-damaged, crippled, fed through a stomach tube, but alert, talkative, happy, with a new foster mother. Indeed, she would seem to be a shining example of the “culture of life” that we hear so much about these days from certain pulpit-pounding politicians. But to Jeb and the DCF, she’s just a “useless eater,” a budgetary burden, a mistake to be flushed away. Without state aid, her new family will sink beneath the staggering cost of Marissa’s treatment — and the decent life that she’s clawed back from the hellhole Jeb left her in years ago will wither on the vine.

How much more will it take for the truly Christian people of America (I know many of you; you’re good-hearted and moral) to wake up? The Bush Dynasty is using you. They appropriate the language and feel-good sentiment of your religion to herd you to the polls, never truly believing a word of the beatitudes they spout. They push all your god / guns / gays / abortion / flag / immigrants buttons and you respond as reliably as Pavlov’s dog. You keep supporting them, hoping for the integrity and morality you so desperately want for America, only to be constantly given more death, more war, more poverty, more illness, more corporate crime, more ethics violations, more congressional corruption, more government debt, more trade imbalance, more hatred from the world, and more perversions of justice like this poor Marissa Amora.

What Would Jesus Do? It’s wrong to say whether Jesus is a Republican or Democrat; He’s bigger than that. But He sure as hell is not a Bush supporter.