Mike Fitzpatrick Former Bucks County Congressman Dead at 56

He actually was a decent guy. I was luke warm on his political performance at best. I agreed with him maybe 60% of the time and he was pretty solid on 2A issues. Don't get me started about his POS brother.

The original article is from the Bucks Courier Times. It's one of the worst newspapers going. Note the bolded section. It's totally out of context and makes no sense.

Former Bucks County Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick dead at 56

By JAMES MCGINNIS
BUCKS COUNTY COURIER TIMES
JAN 06, 2020 | 10:54 AM


https://www.mcall.com/resizer/KUS5ua...2DZ6CSCR7M.jpg
Former U.S. Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (Contributed photo)

Former U.S. Rep. Michael G. Fitzpatrick, who rose from Bucks County commissioner to representing the region in Congress, has died at age 56, leaving behind a political legacy that shaped Bucks County for decades.

His death was confirmed Monday morning by Pat Poprik, head of the Bucks County Republican Party.

For 22 years, the former Eagle Scout and Bishop Egan High School graduate presented himself to voters as a moderate and pragmatic conservative.

He was seemingly pro-business and pro-environment, co-sponsoring legislation to protect 1.5 million acres of Alaskan coastal plain from oil companies.

Raised Catholic, Fitzpatrick was also staunchly anti-abortion.

As a Bucks County commissioner, the Middletown resident convinced voters to pay more in property taxes and preserve tens of thousands of acres of area farmland.

An unrelenting campaigner, he could be casual at the backyard barbecue and calculating with the press and political opponents. Democratic rivals were falsely accused of backing the Islamic militant group Hezbollah and being supporters of the convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.

At 31 years old, Fitzpatrick, an attorney with the firm Begley, Carlin & Mandio, was appointed chair of the county commissioners, a three-member board overseeing more than 2,000 government workers and $400 million in programs from child welfare to corrections, parks and prisons.

In 1996, he donated the $1,200 he received as commissioners’ chairman to a World War II committee, which later built a monument outside the county rotunda in Doylestown.

He pushed the $59 million program to purchase tens of thousands of acres of land for open space over criticism from Democrats in Bucks County’s lower end, where there was little farmland left for preservation.

At age 41, Fitzpatrick made his first, successful bid for U.S. Congress, winning the seat left open by retiring Republican Jim Greenwood.

A year later in Congress, he inserted himself into the national debate over end-of-life care.

Americans were divided by the case of Terri Schiavo, a Warminster native who remained on life support for 15 years after suffering brain damage.

In Congress, Fitzpatrick joined other conservatives in supporting a plan to provide legal representation for Schiavo and others on life support with no living will. Schiavo’s feeding tube was eventually removed at the request of her husband.

In January 2006, Fitzpatrick lobbied for the construction a national veterans cemetery in Upper Makefield. It would later become the 205-acre Washington Crossing National Cemetery — the 131st veterans cemetery in the U.S.

Yet, after just two years in Congress, military operations would cost Fitzpatrick his job.

Voters grew unhappy with bumbling of post-war Iraq by the Bush White House, and Fitzpatrick’s opponent, the Democrat and Iraq War veteran Patrick Murphy, won the congressional seat with 51% of the vote.

Undaunted, two years later, Fitzpatrick announced he would run for a seat in the state House.

Diagnosed with colorectal cancer, he soon dropped out of that race — only to return again for Congress.

Beating back the cancer, Fitzpatrick ran once more for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2011, defeating Murphy and retaking his seat.

As a federal lawmaker, Mike Fitzpatrick was heralded as bipartisan. He introduced bills to ban the import and sale of chimpanzees and other primates into the US.

For many years, he unsuccessfully lobbied Congress to demand better security on airplanes and the cockpit doors which the terrorists breached on 9/11 — a bill signed into law last year after being reintroduced by his brother, Brian Fitzpatrick, who was elected in 2016 after Mike Fitzpatrick retired from public office.

Mike Fitzpatrick supported term limits for members of Congress, increases in federal spending after natural disasters, and he wanted federal workers to use video conferencing rather than waste government money on travel expenses to meetings throughout the U.S.

In 2018, Holy Family University awarded Fitzpatrick an honorary doctorate, in part for his steadfast opposition to abortion.


https://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/...ova-story.html

A good man gone too soon. Let's hope his brother follows suit.

That's the knothead that wanted EVERY vehicle registered in Pennsylvania (new and old) to be equipped/maintained and inspected at yearly PA inspection , at owners expense , with a breathalyzer interlock to cut down on college student binge drinking/driving accidents/deaths.

Yeah , he was pro2 , and appeared at our gun club meetings.

Too young. F- his politics.

I really hate cancer.

Rest in peace.

I smoked cigars with him at a local shop a few times, was pretty down to earth.

Yeah,that bolded portion seemed to have dropped from out of nowhere.