PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH RIP

HE CROSSED THE AISLE TO CREATE THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT

President Bush the senior, the one known for his "Thousand Points of Light," worked tirelessly to create far-reaching legislation to protect the rights of people with disabilities.

Many of the most-famous Civil Rights and related legislation, to right longtime wrongs for African Americans and other people of color, was passed in 1964 with the Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson in the White House. 

But Bush, a Republican led bipartisan backing to finally, more than a quarter century after the 1964 federal Civil Rights legislation, protect the rights of people with disabilities.

More than 50,000 Americans are impacted by some degree of disability.

Bush worked with Justin Whitlock Dart, the co-founder of the American Association of People with Disabilities, who is regarded as the "Godfather of the ADA."

Dart got polio in 1948 before entering the University of Houston, where he earned undergraduate degrees in history and education in 1954.

The university refused to give him a teaching certificate because of his disability. 

The university is now home to the Justin Dart Jr. Center for Students with Disabilities, a facility designed for students who have any type of temporary or permanent health impairment, physical limitation, psychiatric disorder, or learning disability.

People with disabilities still have the highest rate of unemployment and underemployment of any minority group in America.

And the current evil version of the GOP threatens, constantly, to dissolve the ADA.

But today, we pause from our vitriol -- toward the party whose president stole the office and makes no apologies for ridiculing people with disabilities -- because (old school) GOP stalwart George H.W. Bush worked with both parties for the good of all people.