once again, the jesus freaks and the republicans (i know, i know, REDUNDANT) are sticking their fucking noses where THEY DON'T FUCKING BELONG

note the calls to "morality" in this case, but only from one side. you know, i really need to start a thread about George Lakoff, and how both sides have a coherent systems of morals & values, but only one side has worked out how to talk about theirs(whereas the other side doesn't always know their's).

Still, glad to hear the court did not prevail. I am very very for euthanasia, so much so I hope it is legal when/if I am old and infirm. Or else I may have to go the Hunter Thompson route. I'm not joking.

Who the fuck tells me what to do with my life? It's MINE.

yes, you are correct trayce. but this story just REALLY gets me pissed, b/c i see it as a bunch of religious busybodies who are using this woman's (as well as her husband's and family's) tragedy for their ends. once again, getting involved in PRIVATE matters so that they can cram THEIR beliefs down peoples' throats (as well as to slander and to bankrupt the husband in the process). AND the fact that the bushes got involved in this as well, exploiting all of this grief for political gain.

Well, in more legal terms, of course.

-- hstencil (hstenc!...) (webmail), March 18th, 2005 6:44 AM. (hstencil) (link)

yeah, that was pretty awe-inspiring.

I think the Baby Boom generation is going to sort that shit out. We've got an awful lot of people fixing to die in the next 20-30 years, and I don't think they're going to do it on anyone's terms but their own. Some of the taboos about talking about death and dying and how we do it have already started to crumble as the Boomers are watching their parents die. I expect that to continue, no matter what the life zealots say. Case in point is a 50-ish woman I work with, who said just the other day, "You know, when it's inoperable or terminal or the chances are 95 percent against me, just make sure I've got good drugs and as little pain as possible and let me go." Fuckin' A. I think that's one reason The Barbarian Invasions resonated like it did -- I know lots of people who loved that movie, and I think a lot of it has to do with its kind of idyllic presentation of the choose-your-own-death scenario. (Interesting that didn't raise the fuss that Million Dollar Baby did, even though it also won an Oscar and more or less advocated heroin for cancer patients. But it was in French, and I guess the pro-life pros don't watch movies in French.)

But yeah, the Schiavo thing...I can't believe people are talking about mass protests outside her hospice. I'm sorry, but if I was at a hospice and a bunch of people showed up outside to protest, I'd have somebody wheel me to the window and get me a megaphone so I could shout, "Do you fucking mind? Some of us are trying to die here!"

(whimpers)

I can't believe her parents think she has the ability to make a comeback. She's BRAIN-DEAD!

everyone should see wiseman's near death

Oh, wait. That was something else.

Very very legal.

yes -- in the United States. (the relevant documents are called "advance directives.")

in australia (where trayce and adam are), i don't know if they have such things.

The government tells you what the fuck to do with your life at many, many junctures. Or does your ire only get raised on the issue of euthanasia?

Im all for not intervening into this issue, but they dont have any record of Schiavo saying she wanted to go, right? So its basically word of the husband versus word of the family..

A. McCarthy complains

Some parts of the Corner are going nuts. Interesting, though, many aren't.

OF FOR CRYING OUT FUCKING LOUD.

SENSENBRENNER
Is the problem in the House of Representatives right now, according to many, and high-ranking sources. He made it clear to senators yesterday that he would not accept the Martinez private relief bill that passed yesterday. His reasons being that it would break precedent and that it would encourage people to petition Congress more often (like death-row inmates). (My answer? So. Don’t jump at them.)

(followed up by)

Worth noting that the Senate bill passed has this:

SEC. 8. NO PRECEDENT FOR FUTURE LEGISLATION.

Nothing is this Act shall constitute a precedent with respect to future legislation.

Precedent-setting concerns shouldn't really be a concern, because the bill is so specific.

"MRS. SCHIAVO, HOW MANY FINGERS AM I HOLDING UP? WOULD YOU LIKE TO DIE TODAY????"

WEEKEND AT TERRI'S

In other news, the aborted head of Manar Maged was ordered to testify before the Congressional Committee on Human Dignity. Though the head cannot speak, it can wink and smile.

3/18/2005
Terry Schiavo Must Die:
The time has come for the inevitable end of this story, this miserable lot of the last fifteen years for Terry Schiavo. Brain-damaged and rubber-boned, barely human anymore, Schiavo has the indignity of having her nerve-reflex smile paraded out every time the moment comes close for her to have to sink or swim, to learn quickly to feed herself or starve. She is the unfortunate child of narcisstic parents who have pathetically deluded themselves into believing that, at some point, the rock that rolls around in her head will once again become a brain. She sadly lives in a culture so driven mad by religion that people will gather and pray for her to go on "living" (if by "living," you mean "devolving into a gelatinous mound with a nerve-reflex smile"). Anyone even barely touched by the rationality that is supposed to mark us as the most advanced creatures on the planet know this to be true: She must die.

And it doesn't matter at this point how. Take out the feeding tube. Wheel her into the alley behind the hospice and put three bullets into the back of her foamy skull. Put her on a raft on Tampa Bay and send her out to the lovely Gulf of Mexico. Hell, a merciful nation would rejoice at this act and make sure there's fireworks and live music on the bayfront to accompany her on her last journey. A merciful God would have sent avenging angels to smite all those preening idiots outside the hospice with Gabriel announcing, "Are you all out of your fucking minds?" before setting the whole place, Schiavo and all, on fire.

But we are not a merciful nation, for we believe that suffering is a gift from God or some such bullshit, and if you are chosen to suffer, then suffer you must. If you're dirt poor, single, and homeless and you get pregnant, you must keep your baby, even though the overwhelming chance is that you and your baby will be hungry, cold, and miserable for the rest of both of your lives. Despite the fact that virtually every competent medical person who has walked into Schiavo's room and smelled the shit-scent of death has declared Schiavo a cabbage or, on a good day, a pea pod, the right smells opportunity to distract people from the gutting of programs that actually do good for the living . Other "experts" who have witnessed Schiavo's eyes follow a balloon on videotape are nonsensical idiots (and that includes Senate Majority Leader and noted cat-disemboweler Bill Frist).

Way back in 2000, before Schiavo became the rallying call for people who have nothing better to do, here is how the St. Petersburg Times described Schiavo's end: "If [the feeding tube] is removed, Mrs. Schiavo would die painlessly in a week or two. She does not feel hunger or thirst, and she would just drift away, doctors say." That fact, that Schiavo will not actually experience anything differently, is now left out of most media stories on her. The distorted face of Terry Schiavo is now merely a canvas upon which ideology has been writ large, where the notion of "life" has been perverted to mean "a heartbeat," and where the cruel vicissitudes of politics now rear their ugly, hydra-heads.

The right loves this. This is better than Elian Gonzalez. The National Review's Andrew McCarthy (who was so good in Pretty In Pink, but has really let himself go) rants like a baboon about to tear out the liver out of a fallen baboon enemy about Schiavo, saying that "she'd be better off if she were a terrorist." Schiavo's fate is like manna from heaven because anyone who dares to say, for instance, "Terry Schiavo Must Die," can instantly be labelled as uncaring and cruel and then you can go on Fox "News" and Hannity'll show that reflex-smile of the damned and everyone can say they are doing "what's best" for Schiavo.

Terry Schiavo was a vain woman, driven to bulimia by a sad desire to be thinner and thinner, afflicted, as so many women are and so many women aren't, by pop culture standards of thinness. Chances are it was the bulimia that led to the heart attack that led to the brain damage that led to the gooey being that is Schiavo being prayed over by the President and his brother. Now ask yourself: if Terry Schivao saw herself right now, knowing what we know about who she was and how she felt about looks, would she want to stay alive? You who know men and women like the pre-gelatinous Schiavo understand of what the Rude Pundit writes.

Now the Congress is involved. And the Republicans want Schiavo brought into the hearing room. What a spectacle that's gonna be. What a fucking horror show. What an embarrassment to this nation. All those righteous members of Congress, weeping because Schiavo can't answer their questions, listening to her machine sounds, the suckings, the gurgles. They called Schiavo before the committee in a little over a week because "it is a federal crime to harm or obstruct a person called to testify before Congress." Another person, another prop. Those fuckers in the GOP know what they're doing: force Democrats to vote against the bowl of jello in front of them and then use that as immunity in elections against charges that the Republicans are eliminating Social Security. What these disgusting, dirt-covered worms won't do to eat the flesh off the body politic.

The only comfort in any of this is that Schiavo won't know a fucking thing that's going on. She is an object, not a subject. She is acted upon. If Bill Frist wanted to test her reflexes by pulling up her gown and raping her in front of the gathered media, she would not care. If Tom DeLay wanted to pick her up and dance her around like a puppet, she would not care. She will never, ever care again. There is only one caring solution. She must die.

"she'd be better off if she were a terrorist."

Hahaha. I love that considering the NRO winks at all the detainee deaths. Sad, really.

If he does this, he gets my vote in 2008 I don't care who the Democrats put up.

I'm aware of what euthanasia is all about Tracer, and your condescension is surprising given my post. I really don't see what your accusations regarding my income or, specifically, hiding it from the IRS have to do with this, although your response is telling of what you want to bring to the discussion. FWIW, I think the Republicans and the Womb Goons are despicable on this issue but my position is informed by general political principle and not whomever the party in power is.

HENRY MILLSTEIN
Novato
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For trivial Congress
Editor -- I'm thrilled that our representatives are spending their time grandstanding on the comparatively trivial subject of baseball's drug policy.

The less time this particular Congress spends tackling truly important issues of the day, the better for all of us.

yer presuming that the average religious right person are intellectually sophisticated enough to see the contradiction here. believe me, they are NOT. i know that that does not really answer yer question, but there it is (and i suspect that there really is NO there there, as they say).

legally, the only leg they have to stand on is the fact that terry schiavo did not have a health-care power of attorney. if i am not mistaken, i'm not even sure that such a legal document would have even been legally recognized at the time schiavo went into a coma (since the US supreme court that legitimated them -- cruzan -- came down sometime in the early 90s, and i think that schiavo went into a coma in 1990.) in this situation, it comes down to a court decision (which was the law pre-cruzan and is STILL the law if you don't have a health-care power of attorney or other advance directives).

the religious right got involved in this b/c they (and jeb bush) were courted by terry schiavo's parents. that's why i have no sympathy for these parents -- getting the jesus freaks involved is the kiss of death. it's like getting into a dispute w/ yer next-door neighbor, noticing that said neighbor is black, and then running to the KKK as an "ally." i.e., even if yer dispute is valid you've LOST by pulling a chickenshit stunt like that.

Does it matter? Isn't one too many?

If you remove "religious right" from that sentence, it's absolutely correct.

anthony these are apostates we're talking about here, "mercy" was flushed from their vocabularies somewhere between voting to gut medicare and shoveling the people's money (your, mine and don's) into the pockets of the rich.

Er, Anthony's in Canada.

Dude, yr in SF, Alex, not Chicago.

ALL HAIL OUR NEW OVERLORD JIMMY THE MOD

If that's what's Tracer is responding to, great--I hope Tracer enjoys being spoken for because I do not. But even if that's the case, then I don't see the point of directing bullshit accusations towards me when I ask a question based on principle in order to refine the discussion. I don't know what your political convictions are TOMBOT, but I sense they are reactionary and not based on some sense of whether or not the government has ownership in your body or life.

HAHAHAHAHAHA OMG YR OUT OF YR ELEMENT DONNIE!!!!!!!!

fuck you.

to answer your question, ally, the technology to keep people alive was granted to us by god, because it is through Him that all things are possible. now it's true that sometimes god decides it's time for one of us to die, but that's his decision, not ours. and if it means i have to sit here and starve to death because i'm not sure whether god wants me to eat another meal, then so be it. i want to be right with god, and i'm simply waiting on a sign.

now of course there are some contradictions, especially in the willingness to declare a death "god's will" but to consider life to ALWAYS be god's will. i think the transformation from god willing life to god willing death comes when someone dies. because god cannot be wrong, and if your prayers went unanswered it's simply because god needed another angel up in heaven, sniff sniff.

Eisbar and Yancers OTM on this issue.

TITLE 10 > Subtitle E > PART II > CHAPTER 1209 > § 12319

§ 12319. Ready Reserve: muster duty

Release date: 2004-03-18

(a) Under regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Defense, a member of the Ready Reserve may be ordered without his consent to muster duty one time each year. A member ordered to muster duty under this section shall be required to perform a minimum of two hours of muster duty on the day of muster.

DNFTT!

Dan you are correct and I am mortified, sorry anthony.

-- a banana (aaaaaathatsfivea...), March 18th, 2005.

so OTM!

---

I’m getting a number of emails like this:

I completely agree with the husband of Terri Schiavo...you don't know about persistent vegetative states until your loved one is in that state. My [spouse] developed a persistent vegetative state about 1.5 years ago, and [our family] agreed it was most important to not let [my spouse] linger...it only tortures you the most. Let the woman die!

This sentiment is understandable, but I think it misses the point. Based on what we know about the case, there is abundant reason to doubt that Terri Schiavo is actually in a persistent vegetative state. If, upon a judicial review, hopefully including a more searching and objective examination, it turns out that she is a PVS case, this becomes a much stronger case for the husband. For many of us, it would still be critical that a reviewing court affirm the state court finding that Terri actually expressed a desire not to have sustaining treatment. But what we are principally arguing here is that, before a decision is made that will result in death (particularly an agonizing death), we should be reasonably certain both that she is actually in a PVS and that she personally did not want sustaining measures – not that a self-interested person has deduced that she would have wanted it that way.

If those things were established – especially by testing, like an MRI, that is evidently standard in PVS cases but has not, for some reason, been done in this case, then my lips are sealed.

But imagine if some state tried to pass a law that said: “a sentence of death may be imposed after the offense of murder has been established by something less than proof-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt, and the said sentence is not subject to review by federal courts to determine whether fundamental federal rights were violated in the state trial proceedings.” Americans would be profoundly offended by such a law, as well they should be. Yet, that is pretty much what Florida has done here: even though this is life-and-death, the facts of the Schiavo case have not been determined on our highest standard of proof and the case has not been reviewed to ensure that there has been no violation of federal law.

Conservatives also seem troubled by the federalism aspects of this case. Such concerns are natural but they are overwrought here. A federal court is not going to be able to reverse the Florida rulings here absent a showing that some recognized federal right (such as the right not to be deprived of life without due process of law under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments). If a federal court were, for example, satisfied that the state proceedings complied with applicable due process standards (which tend not to be terribly demanding), it would not be empowered to reverse the Florida courts simply because it would have decided the case another way.

But I digress. I'm sorry you--and Autumn, of course--don't see this issue springing from something more central with regards to civil liberties, or how this is just one more abuse by not only the Republicans, but of the federal government in general. I'm sorry that it's so painful to have little pieces of flesh torn off by my unstated (but, of course, tiresome unstated agenda) ponits but hey, sometimes I forget my commentary is so insipid, useless, and unworthy of your approval. I should only post on threads with explicit references to ID cards, taxes, and sinister mailboxes. That way, I won't have to worry about you pointing and laughing at me.

A final note to the Republican leadership in the House and Senate: You have to pull out all the stops. You have to run over your chairmen if they're being obstructionist for this niggling reason and that. Run over their egos, run past their fatigue. You have to win on this. If you don't, you can't imagine how much you're going to lose. And from people who have faith in you.

Bill Frist and Tom DeLay and Jim Sensenbrenner and Denny Hastert and all the rest would be better off risking looking ridiculous and flying down to Florida, standing outside Terri Schiavo's room and physically restraining the poor harassed staff who may be told soon to remove her feeding tube, than standing by in Washington, helpless and tied in legislative knots, and doing nothing.

Issue whatever subpoena, call whatever witnesses, pass whatever emergency bill, but don't let this woman die.

euthanasia is about life and death, not how much of your income you can hide from the IRS.

b-but Tracer that IS life and death!!! you know, like in NH and stuff.

Congressional GOP eager to change the subject from dead-in-the-water social security reform

Crossed my mind more than once, that thought.

Go revisit my post, Tracer. It was you and others who put my post in context of what people do, not me. You--because you are tired of my "agenda"?--made the first assumption. Not me. This digression into my finances or hints at my feelings regarding sinister mailboxes is all your work.

Maybe Autumn is unaware, but the government makes decisions based on your LIFE at many junctions: vaccinations, the cavalcade of code related to birth and healthcare in general, anti-suicide laws, and loads of other agency regulations. You think this issue is all about the government disagreeing with itself, and I think the reason this is the case is because fundamental issues remain unresolved beyond the point of states vs. the fed. And if, as you posit, that this discussionisn't really about governmental intrusion on the rights of individuals, the majority of the posts, including the thread title, certainly don't support that.

MSNBC reports that the tube was removed an hour ago.

If true, this will be the third time it's been removed then.

That said, this whole situation is making me wonder if I should go to the trouble of drawing up one of these things. Anyone know if it requires a lawyer?

you CAN draw up yer own advance directives (a living will, a health-care power of attorney [also known as a health-care proxy], and/or do not resuscitate orders) as long as you follow the applicable laws in the state where you expect the directives to be used. there are usually state statutes that specify what should be in each advance directive. if you don't have the time/desire to research the applicable laws, though, then you should go to a lawyer to draw them up for you (a lawyer who does estate planning work would be the best bet).

a living will specifies what type of treatment you want if you are terminally ill. a health care power of attorney/proxy designates a person who is to make health-care decisions on your behalf if you are incapacitated. do-not-resuscitate orders are pretty self-explanatory (and are usually tacked onto either of the other types of advance directives).

also, an advance directive that is effective in one state may not be effective in another state.

Yeah, although to be fair it's a little more than pretense. Doctors take the no-killing-patients rule pretty seriously.

Anyway, apart from all the sadness of the case itself, the guerrilla maneuverings of Congress over the past few days should totally freak everyone out. It didn't work (so far), but the things they've tried to do are really breathtaking from a constitutional standpoint, and totally unprecedented. It oughta put everybody on notice (like we weren't already) that the guys running the monkey house on the Hill have absolutely no regard for the Constitution, separation of powers, or rule of law in general. Their overreaching will hurt them eventually, but god knows what they'll do in the meantime. In some ways I think our existence as nation of laws is profoundly threatened -- more even than during the McCarthy or Nixon eras, because those times, it was Republicans who actually reined them in. The Republicans able and willing to do that now are pretty thin on the ground. Be afraid.

a) doesn't mean they're totally a dumb ass.
b) doesn't mean they necessarily agree with the gop on this one.

i know a SHITLOAD of people who believe the opposite for a variety of religious based reasons. many would cite that we need to "let nature takes it's course". hell, the christian scientist crowd would be appauled to even have a loved one in the hospital in the first place. that's their choice and yet i wouldn't call that stupid necessarily. spartan? primitivist?

divining god's will in these situations is ludicrous. the gop is barking up the wrong tree here. there's a huge difference between actively participating in your death via suicide and accepting the fate provided by nature. choosing in your will to not use the machines isn't suicide. it's accepting our fate, our condition. every one of us continues to die every day. we get on with it tho. we've got places to go and things to do, and so does terri.

"There's one place we're all going
yet to be disproved
call it the light or candy bribe
you can't stop moving toward it
it's a suction-magnet-maze
where you recline and become unmade
when the dirt hits your face
you part like water"

m.

is this really true?

yeah it's frivolous (waxman says: "flagrant abuse" but so are filibusters and gerrymandering and everyone gets away with that) but it's not like they dispatched delta force to kidnap the woman or anything.

haha holy crap you'll shit bricks when you see the PATRIOT ACT

at least these house wackos aren't trying to rearrange branches of the government ("uh, hospice care is now a special form interstate commerce under the jurisdiction of homeland security")

the court hasn't issued a death penalty - it's just said "legal to remove the feeding tube, if you like, mr schiavo". the committee says "ok yeah but just to make sure hospice care is administered properly we need to ask her a few questions first, if you don't mind, mr schiavo" (this is exactly what federal subpoenas generally do, anyway)

anyway to authorize marshals bringing her to dc there is a due process meant to reduce abuse - and in this case the courts ruled just like you said - "no way, frivolous, unnecessary, etc because the state court has been over this like 9 BILLION TIMES"

"balance of power" = scales are a balance, but so's a tug of war, a seesaw and a house of cards, too

and one last point = first you are up in arms about circumventing state laws then you are defending eisenhower's right to do same. i'm glad you and i and eisenhower and the rest of america get to have it both ways but so do the people on the other side of this case.

for them, one feeding tube = one james meredith or whatever, and federal law is really up-for-grabs on what it says about this case, with the president basically saying he sides with the family.

but i think we can definitively say that no laws are actually being broken or even bent here - what is being broken and bent is the facade of professionalism in congress, but then again that's the political gimmick of bush, schwarzenegger, jesse ventura, etc...

agreed!

... something more serious than decorum is coming unhinged

haha these people are unhinged to begin with

SANTORUM [K. J. Lopez]
Says "something will happen here tomrorow afternoon" or in "the wee hours of Monday morning."

Gives special thanks to Ron Wyden (of Assisted Suicide Oregon) and Carl Levin.

Makes it sound like the three of them are going to actually kill her or something!

Her husband isn't her family?

I've told my wife that I don't want to be kept on life support indefinitly and documented legally.

But I am quite sure I've never told that my parents my wishes. Even without the legal ppwk, I would prefer my wife to give instructions.

Bush signed the bill that makes this possible, from what I've read. What side is he really on? A: He doesn't have a side, just Karl Rove.

Tom DeLay addressed that point the other day. He said, "The sanctity of life outweighs the sanctity of marriage." Just so you can keep your santities straight.

(What I wanna know is, what if it was her parents who wanted to stop the feeding, and her lesbian spouse she married in Massachusetts who wanted to keep her alive? Which sanctity wins there?)

cspan is confusing because it's a live network but i think the house is going to be on at 1 pm EST and the senate on right afterward on cspan2.

here's the text of the bill:

http://www3.capwiz.com/c-span/issues/bills/?billtype=H.R.&billnumb=1332&congress=109

presiding 9th district judge fawcett is a reagan appointee - bets as to if she'll be hearing this case or not?

also are they going with terri's right to religious practice or did i hallucinate that??

Jesus, this is another full-employment-for-lawyers act. It's going to make writing a living will so complicated and subject to challenge that we'll all be hooked up to machines for decades before anyone's ever allowed to die.

you just can't make this stuff up ... these people have no shame.

It is the role of the courts to make findings of fact. Over and over, the courts have found that Terry Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state and that she expressed the wish to not be kept alive in such a state through continuous medical intervention. Her parents have had many opportunities to present evidence in support of their case and have failed.

The political arena is a great place to exert political pressure, but a horrible place to make findings of fact. That the parents have obviously found a way to exert enormous political pressure on the US Congress is extremely unsettling. It is pure public perversion of the most graphic and debased kind.

This stuff has to stop. Not because of Ms. Schiavo, bless her, but because it undermines our government.

The public, by 63 percent-28 percent, supports the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube, and by a 25-point margin opposes a law mandating federal review of her case. Congress passed such legislation and President Bush signed it early today.

That legislative action is distinctly unpopular: Not only do 60 percent oppose it, more — 70 percent — call it inappropriate for Congress to get involved in this way. And by a lopsided 67 percent-19 percent, most think the elected officials trying to keep Schiavo alive are doing so more for political advantage than out of concern for her or for the principles involved.

This ABC News poll also finds that the Schiavo case has prompted an enormous level of personal discussion: Half of Americans say that as a direct result of hearing about this case, they've spoken with friends or family members about what they'd want done if they were in a similar condition. Nearly eight in 10 would not want to be kept alive.

Intensity

In addition to the majority, the intensity of public sentiment is also on the side of Schiavo's husband, who has fought successfully in the Florida courts to remove her feeding tube. And intensity runs especially strongly against congressional involvement.

Included among the 63 percent who support removing the feeding tube are 42 percent who "strongly" support it — twice as many as strongly oppose it. And among the 70 percent who call congressional intervention inappropriate are 58 percent who hold that view strongly — an especially high level of strong opinion.

This is heartening, frankly. The amazing amount of fig-leaf discussion in places like NROblog is astounding -- there was one bit where Lopez, referring to the leaked memo among GOP Senators essentially saying "Hey, this whole thing gets to bolster our standing among the religious right, let's do it!," said that said memo was 'inappropriate and unhelpful.' Hilarious.

"But is it necessary for everyone to go through these experiences before they can grow out of the denial that seems to be the standard attitude about death in our society? Or can we bring about a healthier realization of its naturalness and inevitability at the same time we work to extend length and quality of life? (And by the way, aren't good conservative Christians taught, especially this week, to see death as a beginning, not an end?)"

On the other hand..

It's unbelievably demoralizing that there is actually zero "debate" on the subject, amongst the congressmen who are pushing or fighting this. Republicans refuse to even acknowledge that their opponenets i.e. Schiavo's husband has any kind of point, or argument. The rhetoric is almost identical to abortion rhetoric - they are "for life," rather than, um, against it. Unless there is communication here, some bridge between this position and what the husband wants, we won't have advanced this discussion by any distance, regardless of what happens to Schiavo. This is a great opportunity for Democrats not just to show how out of touch Republicans are, but to make the kind of arguments that resonate across abortion issues as well.

I'm not sure how I feel about this (the underlying issue, not the political BS). It's so messy and sad.

xpost

Love,
Nino.

http://www.miami.edu/ethics2/schiavo/timeline.htm

The timeline makes think both sides of this are behaving somewhat atrociously; surely the best thing to do would have been to assign custody to her parents and get a legal waiver absolving the husband of any financial obligation.

(* - by law, court-appointed guardians are permitted to use the funds of the guardianship estate to litigate on behalf of or to defend against claims made against the ward [i.e., terri schiavo]. so there is nothing per se improper about michael schiavo using the funds from the settlement [part of the guardianship estate] for the court proceedings.)

It would warm my heart if politicians' rhetoric and ensuing media coverage centered on the legal issues rather than the "Culture of Life" crapahoola. Ummmm, do any of these Lifers have anything to say about their beloved death penalty?

ahem ... see gore v. bush.

that said, this SHOULD get thrown outta court.

http://www.weeklyuniverse.com/2003/lucifer.JPG
"I respecfully beg to differ!"

Michael Schiavo petitions the court to authorize the removal of Terri Schiavo’s PEG tube; the Schindlers oppose, saying that Terri would want to remain alive. The court appoints Richard Pearse, Esq., to serve as the second guardian ad litem for Terri Schiavo.

Give the guy some credit - at least he waited 5-1/2 years after the settlement before petitioning for removal of the tube. Not knowing anything more about him, I am not quite cynical enough to assume that money is the deciding factor.

I know, I know (about gore v bush), but I think the many at the USSC, including Justices on both sides of that decision, are very, very, very reluctant to go down that road again. This case just isn't important enough to further risk the Court's perception of its own integrity.

I'm talking over my head here, clearly, but that's my hunch.

Well, that's not what the court-appointed "second guardian" concluded in 1998:

December 20, 1998

The second guardian ad litem, Richard Pearse, Esq., issues his report in which he concluding that Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state with no chance of improvement and that Michael Schiavo’s decision-making may be influenced by the potential to inherit the remainder of Terri Schiavo’s estate.

However, maybe the money has disappeared by now, do to the ongoing legal and medical costs.

xpost

OTM with a bullet. bush is the one saying it's better to, "err on the side of life"... "George W. Bush - 152 executions while governor of Texas."

yeah.
m.

Eating disorders have long been known to cause heart failure. According to the National Eating Disorders Association, the binge-and-purge cycles of bulimia can lead to chemical imbalances that harm major organs. - AP

The husband refused to let the family see these scans or the medical reports from the day she was brought into the ER. why?

xpost ... .

I've read different things about him including descriptions of his possessive behavior via a deposition by his former girlfriend. (he was accused of stalking her in 2001). I guess the problem is for me is he doesn't sound like he has a track record of being a great husband and his current actions don't do much to change that image. Yes each side has their own doctors to say what they want but the fact that there are doctors and nurses who have gone on record as expressing concern that she was abused is enough to raise flags for me. No matter whose "side" they are on.

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not going into that much detail. Yes, he cleaned up, put on his suit -- (laughter.)

good times!

- Selfish husband wants to remove wife's feeding tube so he can collect remaining settlement.

- Selfish parents want to leave feeding tube in out of spite at husband because he wouldn't share settlement.

I guess the problem is that when someone falls into a persistent vegetative state and they didn't leave explicit instructions about what to do in that circumstance, then the decision falls to their "guardian". And in cases where the competence of the "guardian" is open to question, you reach the kind of stalemate we see here. So I guess the issue really does come down to the question of whether or not Michael Schiavo is a good husband.

xpost

And also because the GOP strategists have yet to find a political gambit that is too distasteful, I guess.

Wonkette helpfully provides this chart of GOP strategic thinking:

http://www.wonkette.com/politics/circuschart.gif

Oddly enough, the courts have been reviewing all this for ages and have handed down several decisions. Somehow I feel more secure in the judgement of a judge who has reviewed the evidence than I do in half-informed speculations about rumors on the web. But, hey, that's just me.

this is a major reason why this whole thing is a travesty -- all of these things are issues that have presumably been litigated before the florida courts.

EXACTLY.

Well, Slate estimates that the cost of keeping Schiavo alive is about $80,000 per year, which is probably less than Donald Trump spends on toilet paper - and Schiavo, unlike Trump, isn't responsible for an annoying TV reality show. So maybe the solution should be to euthanize Donald Trump and keep Schiavo alive.

The womb goons do not like DNR-like directives at all. In fact, DNRs get contested a lot. That's why this case isn't a next-of-kin issue for the extremists--hell, they LOST that issue long ago (i.e. what Alex SF said.)

The AP story that the Salon story links to is really well written, and pretty spooky. This doctor's quote made me pay attention:

"She's a healthy female," Bushnell said. "The problem is that she doesn't have a cerebral cortex."

I was thinking more along the lines of monogrammed silk nappies.

either the congressional GOP does not know, or does not care, just what it is they may be stirring up w/ all this.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/guylum/ts1.jpg

How can someone know what God's will is enough to tinker with it?

http://www.cjrdaily.org/archives/001390.asp

...There is one bit of context, however, that seems particularly salient, and it involves a six-month old boy named Sun Hudson. On Thursday, Hudson died after a Texas hospital removed his feeding tube, despite his mother's pleas. He had a fatal congenital disease, but would have been kept alive had his mother been able to pay for his medical costs, or had she found another institution willing to take him. In a related Texas case, Spiro Nikolouzos, who, because of a shunt in his brain, is unable to speak and must be fed through a tube but who his wife says can recognize family members and show emotion, may soon be removed from life support because health care providers believe his case is futile.

The Hudson and Nikolous cases fall under the Texas Futile Care Law, which was signed into law by then-governor George W. Bush. Bush flew from Texas to Washington early this morning to sign legislation authorizing federal courts to review Schiavo's case, because apparently he felt that the Florida courts, which had reviewed the case several times over the past seven years, had failed in their duty. "In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life," said Bush.

As Mark Kleiman, who brought the Texas cases to our attention, points out, "an argument of some sort could be made for the Texas law, based on some combination of cost and the possibility that an impersonal institution will sometimes avoid mistakes that an emotionally-involved relative would make." But, he adds, "what I can't figure out is how someone could be genuinely outraged about the Schiavo case but not about the Hudson and Nikolouzos cases..."

there are those who are using this for cynical gain, and others who are involved because they truly believe in this stuff. and any sort of sound reasoning or rationality doesn't even begin play a role half of the time.

"I'm honestly not sure what Terry and I will do now," said Schiavo's mother. "We'll probably just hang out for a while. You know, sit in front of the TV and veg out."

If only this was a real quote and not a joke story

When the vote was over, the one anchor said to the other one, "Well, we've just seen the strange and wonderful acts of the U.S. Congress," like they were fucking God or something, upon which the other anchor turned excitedly to a lawyer/legal analyst type to explain what would happen next. "So now do they wake up the judge?", she asked eagerly. The analyst -- who was reasonably level-headed for being a CNN legal analyst -- gently explained that A.) it wasn't actually a law yet because the president hadn't signed it and, B.) unlike the president, who had given orders to be awoken for the signing, federal district judges aren't people who roll out of bed in the middle of the night just because Tom DeLay said so. Furthermore, the analyst said, while the anchor lady made distressed puppy faces, there was still going to have to be something called a "hearing," where the judge would have to hear something called "evidence" from both sides. "But," spluttered the anchor, "what does he need to hear? The feeding tube's been out since Friday! Every hour counts!" The analyst assured her that there certainly would be a hearing scheduled soon, and a ruling would come relatively quickly. The anchor looked like she was going to cry.

America, you have lost your fucking marbles.

Praise be to Allah!

Via CNN.CUM

I’m about to make a real dumb naïve remark (and I make it having supported congressional action, I realize), but here goes anyway (at least you’re warned this time): The worst part about this Schiavo frenzy, besides the obvious impending death of a helpless woman, is that it’s now so much about politics.

No shit, ya doof. And she helped feed the frenzy! Naive my ass, faux-naive maybe.

I also like this:

With all the talk that Republicans are just supporting Terri Schiavo's parents you'd think their position were actually, to put it crassly, polling well, which, seemingly it is not. So they're heartless opportunists who are blind to numerical facts?

All of a sudden it's solely a stand on principle. Uh-huh.

Expect more of this throughout the day.

I wonder what the Christian Scientists out there have made out of all of this.

--

Mr. Derbyshire---I am a physician, a board certified Internist, who cares for many patients in nursing homes. I am also a conservative, at least I think I am. I am greatly disappointed by the tone of most of the posts in The Corner regarding this case, and was relieved at least to read yours. Let's assume for a moment that Mr. Schiavo loves his wife dearly and that sometime when she was well and competent they had a discussion in which she told him she did not want to be kept alive by artificial means, or at least not indefinitely, by artificial means. She say's to him "promise me you won't do that to me". He says "I promise". This is a conversation many loving couples have and one I have had with my wife. Unfortunately, Mrs. Schiavo apparently never produced a document stating this clearly. This is the norm not the exception, particularly in younger people. Now, you are left with a man, if my assumption is correct, who spends a great deal of time with that promise ringing in his head. The thing she asked him to do, that she made him promise to do, and he can't do it. That man would be tormented.

Consider further that even when people do provide a living will it is almost impossible to take into account all the variables. If a man has a stroke or an intracranial hemorrhage and becomes incapacitated to the extent that immediately thereafter he cannot fend for himself, i.e. get water, drink water, get food, eat food. Is that it then, ballgame over, no tubes, no i.v. Of course not, some people take many weeks or months of intensive therapy to recover that capacity, and of course some men never do. The problem is it can be very difficult to predict this. So now you may have a man who is stuck forever on tubefeeding when all he might have reasonably wanted was to be given a "fair" shot at recovery. See how quickly we get into deep water. Almost nobody defines in their living wills how long they would like to be given to recover. Who would best know whether this man was given the chance, the fair shot he desired. His wife, likely, and probably no one else. You live with someone you get a feel for what they would want and what would be intolerable. Your colleagues in the Corner (many, not all) have demonized Mr. Schiavo I believe in a most unfair fashion. It is very likely that Mr. Schiavo is the only one that truly knows what his wife would have wanted. To call him a killer is in my opinion beyond the pale. At the very least he is allowing her to die, at best he is fighting like hell to fulfill his promise.

Let me say something else, and I admit up front that I don't know all the details of this case: in my experience poeple who have had a financial interest in the life or death of a loved one have almost always been interested in keeping that person alive. They may be living in a home which is in the patients name, they may have control of that person's bank accounts, his pension checks, his assets. If they have been given financial power of attorney, this is almost certainly so. I have seen this situation before, rarely thank God. A family member puts his completely demented octagenarian mother through a series of painful operations even though she is already completely non-communicative and dependent on tube feeds. You might say "why didn't the ethical physician object? The answer is he probably did, and was told: "If you let my mother die I will own you." Again, in my experience, anecdotal though it may be, this is much more common than the guy who just can't wait for daddy to die so he can inherit his money. After all, depending on the will, he may have to share it with siblings, the Humane Society, the church, and of course, depending on the size of the estate, the Federal government. Your colleagues have made some awful assumptions about Mr Schiavos motives, and as you ask "is there any proof?" It seems to me if he had just wanted to be rid of her, he could have easily gotten a civil divorce and been on his way. It seems to me at least that it is very possible, even likely, that he believes himself to be her champion, fighting for her wishes, fighting the courts and now fighting congress. There is a lot to be admired in this.

As a physician, from a practical standpoint, this whole affair is a nightmare. It calls into question the primacy of the husband and wife relationship and therefore terribly muddies the waters as to who has the right to make these difficult heart rending decisions. I always tell my patients, the best thing to do is consult with your family and try to reach a consensus. But obviously, this is not always possible. If there is a disagreement you pray for paperwork defining who has medical power of attorney. If there isn't, there has to be a pecking order. If the patient is married, it starts with the spouse, after that it gets very troublesome very quickly. Let me say for all physicians, we are not excited about having to testify in court everytime there are family members who disagree with the spouse, much less about having to wait for congress to pass a law each time this question comes up so that a higher court may decide. This is nonsense, as much as my conservative sensibilities loathe the overreaching of our courts, this is exactly where it belongs, not in congress. Let a local judge review the facts, the paperwork if any, the testimony and make a decision and be done with it. Most physicians want only some clear direction in these cases. It takes someone awfully well acquainted with Him to state that one choice or the other is the moral one. I can't do it and I think I have tried my best to know Him.

Finally, it seems to me that much has been written on your site about the primacy of marriage, how it must be protected, cherished, encouraged, valued, that we must fight to keep it from being disregarded, belittled, lumped into the evergrowing, soiled pile of disposable, unsacred relationships. The position that many of your colleagues have taken and I gather the editorial position of your publication can only hurt this. How can we convince our children that this will be the most important relationship they will ever have. They will ask why? What am I supposed to tell them? "It'll be great because you'll get to have sex and not feel guilty". That's a child's view -- and what the hell everyone is already doing that anyway. No: At least in part, I will say, it's because you will get to stand together with that person through thick and thin with God at your side. That you will tell that person things that you would never tell another soul. That you will know them better than you know yourself. That when the end comes, you will do right by her and she will do right by you. That you will ease each others passing through this insufferable imperfect world and meet perfectly in the next. It's an awfully big leap to tell Mr. Schiavo that he doesn't know his wife best. It's an impossible leap to to tell that to the rest of us.

Sincerely,

[Name], M.D.

--

Can I bet Schiavo's instead? *flees*

Tracer, you should adopt her.

Has anyone ever seen Terri Schiavo's parents and Lex Luthor in the same room at the same time????

This is ridiculous - a person in a coma is not in a position to disobey anybody.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3096225

wow you just blew my mind o nate

ok, easy on the sarcasm - I guess I was just responding to the "jesus freaks" in the title of the thread.

It's weird that you like the results of their culture-of-lifeness when in coincides with your agenda, but you don't like their motivation behind it.

I never said I don't like their motivations. I think it's understandable, inevitable, and healthy that people's religious beliefs will influence their political decision-making. That's why I posted that article that undermines the simple "religion and politics shouldn't mix" perspective. Of course, sometimes I will agree with the policy positions that result from those motivations and sometimes I won't. I don't see anything strange about that.

nate, the distinction b/w a "coma" and a "persistent vegetative state" is VERY large -- and VERY important to this whole thing. it shouldn't be just blown off as an aside.

Well, the context of my statement was just that she is not in a position to make a conscious choice about anything. So how could someone else choosing to remove her feeding tube cause her to jeapordize her soul? - it seems theologically unsound, as others have noted.

But I also had thought she was in coma before. Realizing the difference altered how I felt about her situation.

eh?

People shouldn't be attacking other's religious beliefs calling them freaks, but should instead democratically let their belief's be known.

(a) "jesus freaks" is shorthand not for people of faith in general, but the religious right in particular. (b) no-one is disputing the right of the "jesus freaks" -- or anyone else -- to believe whatever they want to believe. (c) permitting someone to believe something is NOT the same thing as keeping silent when such beliefs are offensive to you. (d) when people seek to use the government to enforce their religious beliefs, and support such impositions with arguments that have NO basis in law, then there are some of us (of ALL political stripes -- e.g., don has been at least as strongly opposed to the religious right as those generally to his left) who believe that we have a DUTY to oppose such impositions PRECISELY because it is illegal and unconstitutional.

Isn't this something like 85% of the dialogue between people of differing evangelical religions?

So we should say more and read more articles about what he said and she said?

Basically.

The point here is not so much to attack religion (which, of all the people on ILE you could respond to on that front, picking ME is kind of stupid) as it is to question whether the lawyer (and the parents) bringing religion into this are doing so in good faith (ha). Seeing as this has been battled in the courts time and time and time again and the parents haven't been able to produce enough evidence to either assume custodianship of their daughter, I don't think they can prove that Terri would explicitly choose to follow her church's rules and remain in a vegetative state until her body shuts down (assuming of course that her church's rules and the will of God are actually analogous).

I feel your pain, Tracer. I feel your pain. One of my exes once got mayo on her pastrami sandwich. It hurt. It hurt a lot.

Well, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with people trying to get the government to enforce their religious beliefs. Religiously-motivated people have often been on the progressive side of causes in the history of this country that helped to enshrine rights and protections which were not supported in the current law of that time - see for instance: Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., or going back further, the abolition movement. They didn't need to look to the tradition of laws to tell them that slavery or Jim Crow were wrong - they looked to their consciences informed by their religious faiths - and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

There was an interesting article in the New Republic a few weeks ago about that often overlooked history of the relationship between religion and liberalism:

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050228&s=dionne022805

they didn't NEED to, that is true ... but are you arguing that they did NOT look to the laws, to the Constitution, at ALL? that the laws that they were protesting were violative of constitutional guarantees?

i wrote out "NO basis in law" DELIBERATELY, to implicitly distinguish b/w folks like dr. king and those protesting removing terri schiavo's feeding tube.

In Romans 13:3 it says "For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same."

And the reason that some of us feel such a sense of duty (what Tracer kindly refers to as an "agenda" in my case) is because crass intervention like this isn't the invention of a particular political party. The more time we spend assigning blame to one side or the other only manages to obscure the abuse of political power going on; this issue is only tangible to many people because it provides a piefight between the dominant political parties. Meanwhile, the next time the courts or the Constitution gets trampled, it will get only a passing notice because NARAL and the Womb Goons don't have a dog in the fight.

(Next time you are here I'm feeding you cinnamon and raisin bagels filled with walnut cream cheese)

http://www.gamepreserve.com/store/images/items_extra/Satans_Stirrup.jpg

Bullshit. Where was the piefight? The Democrats mostly stayed out of town and let the Republicans have their bizarro little circus. Sure, Pelosi and a few others said a few things, but the idea that this was being used as some kind of political football is disingenuous. The game was almost all on one side. That they were wrong about it being a "great political issue" -- that, locked in their ideological echo chamber, they totally misread the national mood on this -- doesn't change the fact that they thought they were gonna score big political points by painting themselves as the Party of Life and everyone else as the Party of Death.

I know you all are very attached to this thread. You and this thread have some good memories -- you have cried together, laughed together and raged together, but... that was then. Things have changed and it's time to face up to it. Isn't it time to just let this thread die?

xpost

A) That's the McGriddle.
B) If by "killed" you mean "sainted", then YES.

You're not dense gypsy, you're just being myopic if you think that the Democrats are so stupid that they do not see the political opportunity in this fight. It doesn't matter who starts it. That the Republicans were more unabashed or vitriolic or hypocritical in this particular case doesn't change anything--the Democrats are more than happy to point out the bizzaro world that the Womb Goons live in.

Right, but that's a very convenient tack to take for people who more or less go along with modern conservatism (because they like the tax breaks, because they like the War on Terra, whatever) but who don't like the religious-zealot wing of the party. Like, I noticed Instapundit pretty much totally ignored the whole thing, just as he tends to gloss over the ruling party's gay-bashing, science-bashing, and general kowtowing to the Dr. Dobson faction. It's like this pretense that the religious zealots are just kind unfortunate but irrelevant hangers-on, rather than one of the major engines of the whole party. Maybe the major engine at this point, as I don't see Congress or the president cutting vacations short and staging midnight pep rallies on behalf of even the Chamber of Commerce.

xpost:
Don, I don't think the Democrats saw any particular "opportunity" here, which is why so many of them ran scared from it. It's a delicate issue that cuts a lot of different ways and doesn't lend itself to easy posturing. Now that it's kind of backfired on the GOP, I'm sure the Dems will make what they can of it, but I don't think it's a fight they wanted. And believe me, I have little love for the Democratic leadership. I just think pretending this is a political circus that both sides have contributed to is dishonest. The ringmasters were all on one side, and it's not playing politics to say that -- it's playing politics to deny it.

There was no basis in the Constitution for the abolition of slavery. In fact, the institution of slavery was enshrined in the Constitution through the 3/5ths compromise. I don't believe that the Constitution somehow magically contains the seed of every potential reform movement both historically and in the future. Sometimes people draw on other sources for ethical principles.

freeze her in carbonite.

surely it will save on the medical costs, since she'll be in hibernation!

Bush Role in Schiavo Case Bothers Right
Tue Mar 22, 6:21 PM ET
White House - AP

By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Not all conservatives are happy with the decision by Congress and President Bush (news - web sites) to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case. Some leaders said Tuesday the new law allowing a federal court review of the case is an example of the big government they have always opposed.

"To simply say that the 'culture of life,' or whatever you call it means that we don't have to pay attention to the principles of federalism or separation of powers is certainly not a conservative viewpoint," said former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga.

Allan Lichtman, who chairs the history department at American University in Washington, said the intervention of Congress and Bush to try to overturn the decision by Schiavo's husband not to prolong her life is the antithesis of several conservative principles.

"It contradicts a lot of what those behind it say they believe: the sanctity of the family, the sacred bond between husband and wife, the ability of all of us to make private decisions without the hand of government intervening, deference to states and localities as opposed to the centralized government," said Lichtman.

[...]

Conservatives "who questioned the wisdom of the federal government reaching down and interfering with the state courts have a very valid point," Keene said. "In Congress, most conservatives have said, 'We're cognizant of that fact and that's why we have done this so narrowly because we don't think there's another choice.' But those who are concerned about precedent should be concerned about it."

Julian E. Zelizer, a Boston University history professor who specializes in congressional trends, said a conservative Republican movement that "built itself in the 1970s around attacking government has become the party of big government since 2000."

"Starting with the war against terrorism and climaxing with Congress intervening in this case, we see a GOP that is quite comfortable flexing the muscle of Washington, and a Democratic Party which is increasingly finding itself in favor of limiting government," Zelizer said.

funny how the tune changes once one gains control of the federal government.

---

[Reader] Mark Steyn nailed it in his column yesterday: "In practice, a culture that thinks Terri Schiavo's life in Florida or the cleft-lipped baby's in Herefordshire has no value winds up ascribing no value to life in general."

---[JD] I love Mark as a man and a brother, and perhaps the most brilliant opinion journalist of our time, but on this point he is wrong. His argument is that demographic vitality correlates with uncompromising respect for human life in all conditions. Does it? The most sensational demographic explosion that England ever enjoyed was in the Regency and early-Victorian periods, when families of 15 or 20 children were common. Respect for life in that time and place can be examined in the novels of Charles Dickens. But why leave the present day for a counterexample? My Economist handbook of world facts and figures shows the most demographically vital nations (avge. number of children per woman, 2000-05) as Niger, Yemen, Somalia, and Angola. On Mark’s thesis, the Schiavo parents should sneak their daughter out of that hospice and ship her off to Niger. Will Mark be recommending this course of action to the Schindlers?

---[Reader] You think we Right-to-Life proponents are 'absolutists' and you trash Intelligent Design, yet you call yourself a conservative?

---[JD] It is news to me that you have to sign on to Roman Catholic dogma or swallow pseudoscientific claptrap before calling yourself a conservative. In any case, I decline to do either thing (though I would do the first long before I did the second).

---[Reader] Since you are willing to starve Terri to death, what do you say to just shooting her in the head? What’s the difference?

---[JD] The difference, for crying out loud, is that the one thing is morally acceptable to the US public (including me), and the other isn't. You can construct any number of bogus arguments like this. Sample: "Since you are willing to see convicted criminals locked up in cells, what do you say we hang them on the wall in shackles and flog them with piano wire twice a day?" What laws do is, they draw lines, according to the general sense of the people at any time. The general sense of the people of Florida at this time is that they are willing to countenance starvation of PVS cases. We know this because their representatives passed the relevant law, with no great public clamor; and their elected governor, Jeb Bush, signed it. The people of Florida are not, however (I feel sure) willing to countenance shooting in the head. Neither am I. Is this logical of us? Probably not; but we are speaking of human affairs, not trigonometry. Is 55mph a more logical speed limit than 65, or 54, or 155? Why can we execute for a crime committed at 18, but not for one committed as 17¾? Isn’t it illogical? I suppose it is; but on this kind of argument, we’d have no laws at all. If you don’t like this law, go down to Florida and agitate to have it changed, and stop bothering me with shallow sophistries.

---[Reader] For all you know about what's going on inside Terri’s skull, she might be dreaming the most beautiful dreams in there.

---[JD] I suppose she might. She might also be in her 16th year of agonized uncontrollable screaming. I should think the latter, if she has any self-awareness at all, is far more probable.

---[Reader] Why don’t you just come right out and say you want to kill Terri Schiavo?

---[JD] Because I am a person who tries to be scrupulous in my use of language. If I hear someone say: "I want to kill X," that signifies to me that the speaker is in a certain state of mind. I am not at all in that state of mind. Fooling around with words gets us nowhere. Strictly speaking, keeping children confined in schools all day is a form of imprisonment. Strictly speaking, clipping my fingernails is a form of self-mutilation. (I believe there is a Hindu sect that refuses to clip fingernails on precisely these grounds.) Would you, or any sane person, actually use the words "imprisonment" and "self-mutilation" in those contexts? Of course not. We try to use language to convey facts about the world and about our own inner states. My own inner state in re Terri Schiavo is not at all the one conveyed by the words "want to kill..." I don’t even know the woman, and have no power to do anything to her anyway. I am paid to express my opinions, though; and my opinion is, that the desire of Terri’s husband that she starve to death is more humane and compassionate than the desire of her parents, Andy, Ramesh, Kathryn, and the Pope – all of whom I admire and respect -- that she linger indefinitely in her present condition. I may as well accuse Andy, Ramesh, etc. of "wanting to trap her helplessly in a hospice bed for another 15 years." I don’t talk like that because I have scruples about language.

---[Reader] You have a dog, which you tell us you love very much. Would you sit and watch your dog starve to death?
---[JD] If he was in a PVS and the prognosis was for 15 more years of the same, I certainly would. And though I resist the analogy from animals to humans, I must say, it is plain to me that Boris is far more aware of what is happening to him than Terri Schiavo is.

One was Clinton appointee and the other was Bush I.

The United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida shall have jurisdiction to hear, determine, and render judgment on a suit or claim by or on behalf of Theresa Marie Schiavo for the alleged violation of any right of Theresa Marie Schiavo under the Constitution or laws of the United States relating to the withholding or withdrawal of food, fluids, or medical treatment necessary to sustain her life.

Any parent of Theresa Marie Schiavo shall have standing to bring a suit under this Act. . . . The District Court shall entertain and determine the suit without any delay or abstention in favor of State court proceedings, and regardless of whether remedies available in the State courts have been exhausted.

After a determination of the merits of a suit brought under this Act, the District Court shall issue such declaratory and injunctive relief as may be necessary to protect the rights of Theresa Marie Schiavo under the Constitution and laws of the United States relating to the withholding or withdrawal of food, fluids, or medical treatment necessary to sustain her life.

Notwithstanding any other time limitation, any suit or claim under this Act shall be timely if filed within 30 days after the date of enactment of this Act.

Gypsy is correct in terms of power play, but such is the nature of power, after all -- worship that which has control. The slavishness with which so many are willing to join in that is its own demonstration of that principle on a regular basis.

I think Don was incredibly right to note that this is likely a tempest in a teapot in terms of whether or not this is really going to cause a fracturing in the GOP, but it is still interesting to note how quickly the veneer comes off. Sullivan's being his usual self on his blog and elsewhere on these points:

In my view if a Democratic president had Bush’s record, the Republican party would have come close to impeaching him for his adventures in big government, fiscal insanity and foreign policy liberalism. But it swallowed its principles and covered up its differences to keep him (and itself) in power. The consequences are slowly becoming clear.

Also of interest, Reagan's solicitor general in the NY Times:

It is no good for politicians to try to justify this absurd departure from principles of federalism and respect for sound and orderly judicial administration by saying that, in this case, the life at stake is unquestionably innocent. For in many of the death penalty cases, the claim has also been that the prisoner had at least unfairly, and perhaps even incorrectly, been condemned to death.

What we have is many of the the same political leaders who denounced the Supreme Court's decision forbidding states from executing those who committed their crimes as juveniles now feel free to parachute in on a case that had been within a state court's purview for 15 years.

ding ding ding. key bit, here. especially when paired in the following bit with capital punishment. one person is innocent, free from moral wrongdoing, so we must protect their life. the other is evil, has broken our laws and rejected our moral authority, so we must end his.

The bill that might be considered in the Florida Senate on Wednesday would prohibit the suspension of food and water from patients in a persistent vegetative state when the sole purpose of such a suspension was to end the life of the patient, or if there was any conflict regarding the decision, and if the patient left no living will to express his or her wishes in such a circumstance.

But isn't this a bit late in the game? They're not backdating this, are they?

Amuse yourself with the NRO language here:

Here's what I find fairly extraordinary about all of this. The Congress and President of the United States thought this issue important enough to drop everything and focus entirely on this single case in enacting legislation designed to address what they viewed as a matter of critical national importance. You are free to disagree with their assessment if you choose, but it strikes me as the height of judicial arrogance that the District Court and at least six of twelve judges of the Eleventh Circuit do not view the legislation enacted as sufficiently important enough to extend Terri Schaivo's life a few days in order to allow a more careful examination of the issues in the case. The Justice Department's theory of the case today was to request a short stay in order to more fully vent the issues. But the courts, in their infinite wisdom, saw fit to decide the matter in hours, based on hurriedly thrown together briefs and no more than a short argument before a district court. Sometimes I wonder about Marbury v. Madison.

Of course, one reason there may have been only two public dissenters on the Eleventh Circuit is that the legal claim (as opposed to the moral claim) is particularly weak. Even Judge Tjoflat's opinion is focused exclusively on whether a writ should issue to keep Terri Schiavo alive so as to allow for additional proceedings in federal court. To date, not a single federal judge has even hinted that there is much merit to the legal claims at issue. Faced with that reality, and the fairly unprecedented nature of the legislation at issue, it would not surprise me that many judges would take a pass.

...

Yes, Judge Bill Pryor has very strong pro-life views. But, as I and many others argued in defense of his confirmation, he is also a firm believer that judges should apply the law, irrespective of their personal beliefs. That is what good judges are supposed to do. If Pryor felt the legal case for overturning the Florida state courts was weak, I have little doubt he would have voted accordingly, no matter how much he would regret the end result.

Some years ago, in a forum on euthanasia, my guest was the Reverend Robert L. Barry, who had studied the subject extensively. Father Barry argued that the deprivation of food and water brings on physical pain whatever else the human condition.

Was the court system in Florida, then, acquiescing in death by pain for Mrs. Schiavo? A doctor consulted by one television analyst brushed aside the question, in language not readily transcribed by a layman. He seemed to be saying that Mrs. Schiavo would not suffer pain as the term is commonly understood.

But that question was not directly accosted by the judge, who said only that Terri's rights had not been abrogated. It was unseemly for critics to compare her end with that of victims of the Nazi regime. There was never a more industrious inquiry, than in the Schiavo case, into the matter of rights formal and inchoate. It is simply wrong, whatever is felt about the eventual abandonment of her by her husband, to use the killing language. She was kept alive for fifteen years, underwent a hundred medical ministrations, all of them in service of an abstraction, which was that she wanted to stay alive. There are laws against force-feeding, and no one will know whether, if she had had the means to convey her will in the matter, she too would have said, Enough.

"You may be Terri's last hope. We would ask that [Bush] use some executive authority to intervene," Mahoney said.

"Some executive authority". I love these people's concepts of law. Sure, send in the National Guard. If they're not all in Baghdad. Force the doctors to put the tube in at gunpoint. Show how much you love life!

the salient part:

The thing is, there's this little legal theory known as "textualism," which holds that the actual engrossed letter of the law should be applied -- not, among many other things, the history of how the law has been used or the intentions of those crafting the law. Or, as Antonin Scalia wrote, "It is the law that governs, not the intent of the lawgiver." Either Scalia is right -- he holds to as pure a version of textualism (or at least he professes to) as possible -- or he is dead wrong; you just can't have it both ways. McCarthy, for one, has said that "Ideally, Justice Antonin Scalia would be nominated to become chief justice," and it's probably safe to assume that the other three hold Scalia in the same high regard. So how do they square such a clear-cut departure from Scalia's strict theory of interpretation?

indeed!

there's an important bit here. also, attacking justices who don't rule your way as "activist" is not the same and has nothing to do with invalidating their legal arguments and reasonings.

another example: watch the language change when those who originally say that "justices should follow the law and never interpret"(which of course, one would presume that the judge's job is to interpret and apply the law as written) then suddenly attack those judges who show that there's nothing in the written laws to prevent, say, the right of gay folks to legally wed.

We speak of slippery slope arguments dismissively, as if these were arguments that true first class minds would have no truck with. But it depends what weight you give to politics. First class political minds heed them all the time (e.g., the Declaration of Independence).

Who is driving all before them on such issues? Christians praying in the street, Congress, the President? Or a band of pro-death lawyers and sympathetic judges? Clearly not the former.

Time to take a stand.

Sad, really.

"If a prisoner comes forward with new DNA evidence 20 years after his conviction suggesting his innocence, there is no doubt that the courts, in our state or all across the country for that matter, would immediately review his case. We should do no less for Terri Schiavo."

True on the one hand (and how strange it is to suddenly care about prisoner rights, is it not?). On the other hand, this ISN'T DNA evidence, and this all too easily smacks of desperation tactics in an admittedly desperate time. Why wasn't this addressed earlier? It's going to go back to Greer's court anyway.

wtf

He knows he's a hypocrite. They all know they're hypocrites.

then his daughter - who hasn't spent much time with him but loves him from a distance - arrives and insists that as his next of kin, he be resuscitated: his lover it turns out is not actually his wife and has no legal say, even though she's been closest to him all this time and knows his mind

cue furious and bitter argt between the lover and the daughter abt who cares more: it turns out he can be kept alive but will probably never be conscious again - the lover says "i said goodbye to him yesterday, it's your turn to care for him now, if you know how" and just walks out. daughter suddenly realises implications. end of ep.

http://forum.rockridgeinstitute.org/?q=node/710

Submitted by D. Tree on Tue, 03/22/2005 - 07:57.

The way fundamentalists in congress are using the Shiavo case reveals some interesting contradictions in radical convervative policies.

1) It's anti-marriage:
(Should the Federal Government intrude on a private matter between husband and wife? Should a spouse's family have precedent over their significant other?)

2) It is anti-State's rights
(For states like Texas where execution rates are high, this should be troubling. I guess the aren't capable of deciding life-or-death issues!)

3) It is Government Activism:
(Who's really guilty of being an activist now? This shows that the fundamentalists actually want judicial activism: they are looking for a judge who will put their personal beliefs above the law)

Of all the issues this case raises, I think the Activism one is the most potent: we are seeing fundamentalist activism in action, and Americans should be wary of any judicial nominees submitted by this administration. They have proven their goal is not to interpret our laws and constitution, but to change them.

Does anyone else see the potential here?

maybe this sort of thing has to hit folks in the face, up close and personal, before they pay attention.

Oh, I see, and you're related to the family how? Your field of medical expertise is what, again? OH WAIT YOU'RE A FUCKING ACTRESS IN A SHITTY SHOW. My bad.

Meanwhile, Peggy Noonan on the warpath. OH JOY.

I believe she is already in a hospice.

Well, she is a notorious right to lifer so I'm not exactly surprised.

But at the Vatican Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, a bioethicist like yourself, said "starving" Schiavo to death would be a "pitiless way to kill" someone.

The people in the Vatican are the same as the people in the United States: they run the gamut. He represents the radical right-to-life segment of thinking. But he’s not the only voice in the Catholic Church. He undoubtedly wrote that speech the pope gave. And now he says, “See? The pope said it!”

So you’re saying providing Schiavo with food and water is not morally obligatory?

For 400 years the Roman Catholic moral tradition has said that one is not obliged to use disproportionately burdensome measures to sustain life.

And in this case, you view this as disproportionately burdensome?

Fifteen years of maintaining a woman [on a feeding tube] I’d say is disproportionately burdensome, yes.

The editorial page of The New York Times said she has been "exploited" by the religious right in this country.

I agree with that. First of all, this is not a fight about a feeding tube in a woman in Florida. This is a fight about the political power of the Christian right. The argument from Bishop Sgreccia is like saying, “Tom Delay just said, ‘In America we never stop feeding tubes'.” That doesn’t make it true. The fact of the matter is that feeding tubes are removed every day in hospitals around this country. We solved this question medically in the United States in 1984 when the American Medical Association said that patients who are terminally ill and/or in a persistent vegetative state, it is ethically acceptable to remove all medical interventions, including artificial nutrition and fluids. That’s the official statement of the American Medical Association.

I dunno. His daughter has been in a persistent vegetative state for what, 15 years now? It's not as if she were in a car accident last week, or even last year.

I'm in complete understanding of how hard this must be for Terri's parents, but for all intents and purposes she's been dead these 15 years. No talking, no interaction of any kind. She's never going to give them grandchildren, remarry or even say their names for the rest of her "life."

They're not losing Terri now — they lost her when she had her heart attack and suffered the severe brain damage that caused this tragedy. I mean hell — her upper brain is 60-70 percent liquified according to recent scans. It's too bad that they aren't using this as a platform to speak out against eating disorders; that's what I like to think I would've done.

so i say, "fuck 'em and fuck what they might think." seriously.

Intellectually I completely sympathize with you, Sugarpants, but let's face it, saying this:

for all intents and purposes she's been dead these 15 years

...would not immediately result in him going, "Oh right, I've been wrong all this time, my apologies." He's *heard* this many times and chooses not to agree with it, and if we don't respect the fact that he has this belief, then where does that leave us? If he chooses not to respect other beliefs in turn, that is his problem rather than anyone else's.

Also, yes it's been 15 years but only now is it the case where:

*) the feeding tube has been removed and not rapidly reintroduced

*) the chances of reintroduction legally are now increasingly slim

*) the debate has fully and completely entered the national arena

I'm sure he was feeling just as emotionally overwrought the previous two times it was removed, but the collective 'we' were not there to see it, or the avenue for him to say it less immediately there for him to use if he so wished.

Regardless of whatever bullshit went down, whoever the parents ended up willingly associating themselves with or not, if we do not at least have some true sympathy for the fact that a father and mother are going to see their daughter actually breathe her last -- to acknowledge that it's goddamned awful to see this -- then those hysterics like Noonan and Lopez saying we worship death or are Nazis or crap like that, while no more correct, gain a rhetorical point regardless. Talking about what they 'should' have been saying all this time is wish fulfillment, and the past can be regretted, but not changed.

It sounds callous, I'm sure, but I believe it would have been better for them emotionally if Terri had died a long time ago as a result of her heart attack. Instead, they've had years and years to avoid facing the fact that their daughter is gone (if not truly dead), and I can't imagine that's a healthy way for parents to live for such a long period of time. All the affirmations from the "jesus freaks" has only enforced that, I'm sure.

Ah yes! The televisual argument for retroactive abortion.

And now they'll likely spend the rest of their miserable lives wrestling with what will be in their deluded eyes the "fact" that Terri was murdered by not only Michael, but also the American Left.

Yeah, isn't she supposed to die today and be resurrected on Sunday if they want the full parallel there? Otherwise, it just doesn't work properly.

BOO YA

or the ones who think that the Sermon on the Mount/"feed the hungry"/"heal the sick" might be onto something?

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/03/25/schiavo/index.html

"A Florida state judge will rule by noon Saturday on a motion filed by Terri Schiavo's parents, who contend that their brain-damaged daughter has expressed the wish to live.

"She managed to articulate the first two vowel sounds, first articulating AHHHHHHH and then virtually screaming WAAAAAAAA," the motion said."

Yes, I know! Her compassion for the poor, her good deeds over the past years, the way she turned water into wine, and the way she threw money lenders out of the temple....CREEPY.

and now craigslist is having some fun

Isn't this more important news though?

don't ask who fellates who.

(which i think was a rejected Who album title).

http://www.mtv.com/shared/media/news/images/t/Twisted_Sister/sq-dee_yelling_take_it_vid.jpg

14 minutes ago
U.S. National - AP

By MIKE SCHNEIDER, Associated Press Writer

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - Terri Schiavo's parents ended their federal appeals to keep their brain-damaged daughter alive, leaving their last legal hope with a state judge who has ruled against them repeatedly, their lawyer said Saturday.

The state judge was expected to announce a decision by noon Saturday on a motion by the parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, claiming Schiavo tried to say "I want to live" just minutes before the feeding tube was removed a week ago.

The parents say Schiavo said "AHHHHH" and "WAAAAAAA" when asked to repeat the phrase "I want to live." The motion before Pinellas Circuit Judge George Greer, the judge who ordered Schiavo's feeding tub removed, was considered a long shot.

"There is nothing that can brought back to the court federally that will in any way help Terri," said David Gibbs III, the Schindler's lead attorney.

"Time is moving quickly, and it would appear most likely — absent the state court stepping forward — that Terri Schiavo will pass the point that she will be able to recover over this Easter weekend," Gibbs said.

and just who are the folks wanting to cap any awards by pushing thru their tort reform, scorning the "frivolous lawsuits"?

Woah.

now all we need is to have that one merge with the other montage(the one featuring the Columbia crew, the patriotic tearful dog, and Hulk Hogan), and we'd REALLY be getting somewhere!

Schiavo Case Tests Priorities Of GOP

By Shailagh Murray and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, March 26, 2005; Page A01

A week after their unprecedented intervention in the Terri Schiavo case, Republican congressional leaders find themselves in a moral and political thicket, having advanced the cause as a right-to-life issue -- only to confront polls showing that the public does not see it that way.

"How deep is this Congress going to reach into the personal lives of each and every one of us?" asked Rep. Christopher Shays (Conn.), one of only five Republicans in the House to vote against the Schiavo bill.

Republican lawmakers and others engaged in the debate say an internal party dispute over the Schiavo case has ruptured, at least temporarily, the uneasy alliance between economic and social conservatives that twice helped President Bush get elected.

"Advocates of using federal power to keep this woman alive need to seriously study the polling data that's come out on this," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, who has been talking to both social and economic conservatives about the fallout. "I think that a lot of conservative leaders assumed there was broader support for saying that they wanted to have the federal government save this woman's life."

[...]

The fracas over congressional involvement has taken many GOP lawmakers by surprise. Most knew little about the case and were acting at the direction of their leaders, who armed them with the simple argument that they just wanted to give Schiavo a final chance, and that they wanted to err on the side of life. But because of the rush to act and the insistent approach of the leadership, Republicans had no debate about whether their vote could be seen as federal intrusion in a family matter, or as a violation of the separation of powers between the judicial and legislative branches. Both issues are concerns of many voters responding to polls, and of some legislators themselves.

Republican leaders knew from the outset they were entering new and possibly rocky terrain. DeLay said that he told Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) two weeks ago, "We have to do something for Terri Schiavo," but that the chairman was reluctant because, as DeLay recounted, "we don't have a precedent for doing private bills in these matters, and he didn't want to violate that precedent."

The majority leader's response to Sensenbrenner: "Be creative."

[...]

Rep. Bob Beauprez (R-Colo.), who represents one of the toughest districts for Republicans and is exploring a run for governor, flew back to vote for the Schiavo bill and said he has no regrets.

"If civil rights issues are a federal issue, and I agree they are, how about the issue of life?" Beauprez asked. "If I'm going to be the only one standing up at the end of this that said, 'I stood for life,' I'm happy to do that."

And they're both victims of activist judges!

ihttp://www.sebastianbach.com/archives/jcsp1.jpg

Anyhow, it's all fish-in-barrel stuff, but it's fun.

also, this interesting CJR post sums up a lot of what the coverage of the story has turned out.

yeah, but I'D STILL HIT IT!!!

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2005/03/balance-and-tipping-point.html

...What is especially appalling about the media treatment of the Schiavo case is how ardently, and unmistakably, it has adopted the supposedly "pro life" side of the argument. This ranges from outrageous bomb-throwing like that from Fox's John Gibson, to fingerpointing from MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, and Rush Limbaugh, to subtler bias like the omnipresent "Fight For Terri" label that is being used by half the networks to accompany their coverage logos.

We're seeing reporters credulously refer to highly dubious medical claims waved by Schiavo's parents -- including the recent claim that she indicated to them she did not want her tube removed -- as though they had anything other than the thinnest veneer of truth to them. We're watching news anchors openly accuse Michael Schiavo of being a bad husband. If there's a propaganda line out there that isn't being parroted in the mainstream media as fact, it might only be Bo Gritz's buffoonery. And they're working on that.

They're wallowing in it. Cheering it on. Even if it is only the viewpoint of about 20 percent of the country, at best, that politicians and reporters have any business, as Knute Berger put it, poking their ugly noses inside the dying room.

This is the way "balance" manifests itself in journalism nowadays.

Now, there is such a thing as real balance. Real balance is a genuine striving for truth: a willingness to both recognize and honestly explore the multiplicity of viewpoints as well as facts that are part of the naturally complex nature of truth. It is complicated and hard work. Of course, real, hard truth is elusive and rare; but the striving is what brings us closer to it.

However, a genuine balance does not countenance obvious falsehoods where it encounters them. It does not treat misinformation as a legitimate "counter" to reasonably established facts, as though a falsehood were just another opinion. It does not put lies on an even footing with facts.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what we have gotten, in increasing doses, as standard practice from the nation's press for the past decade. As I argued previously regarding the growth of "intelligent design" as a right-wing religious stratagem:

The key piece of illogic is one that has especially lodged itself in the media in recent years: The notion that a demonstrably true fact can be properly countered by a demonstrably false one -- and that the two, placed side by side, represent a kind of "balance" in the national discourse. This is the Foxcist model of Newspeak, in which "fair and balanced" comes to mean its exact opposite.

This kind of "balance" is a direct product of the right-wing myth of the "liberal media". Having worked in the media for many years, I can attest that it may often exhibit a bias, but it is not a liberal one; it is a self-interested one. And having dealt with many ideologues of all stripes in my various media capacities over the years, one of the distinguishing characteristics of movement conservatives that I observed is their knee-jerk and oft-shouted belief that any position contrary to or critical of their official party line is, by definition, "liberal..."

...By Sunday, after nine days of legal defeats for Schiavo's parents in their effort to have her feeding tube reattached, much of the optimism was gone. Last week's unity among the demonstrators had splintered, and an undercurrent of anger ran through them.

Their ire was directed at Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband, who successfully petitioned the courts to have her feeding tube removed; at state judge George Greer, who has ruled consistently in his favor; and increasingly, at President Bush (news - web sites) and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

"If Gov. Bush wants to be the man that his brother is, he needs to step up to the plate like President Bush did when the United Nations (news - web sites) told him not to go into Iraq (news - web sites)," Randall Terry, a protest organizer, said of the governor. "Be a man. Put politics aside."

[...]

Terry, a spokesman for the Schindler family, said he thinks there's still time to keep Schiavo alive.

"She's still conscious," he said. "She's still responding, and she's still fighting for her life. She is hanging on. That is her message to Gov. (Jeb) Bush and the world. She wants to live."

Husband seeks autopsy on Terri Schiavo
Fight over brain-damaged woman moves to Washington

Monday, March 28, 2005 Posted: 10:58 PM EST (0358 GMT)

PINELLAS PARK, Florida (CNN) -- Terri Schiavo's husband has asked that an autopsy be performed on his wife after she dies so that a full report can be done on the extent of her brain damage, an attorney for Michael Schiavo said Monday.

[...]

Terri Schiavo, who hasn't had water or nutrients since March 18, is likely to die by week's end, doctors have said.

[...]

Terri Schiavo's sister said she "is wide awake and very responsive."

"She recognizes me," Suzanne Vitadamo said Monday. "She's weaker but she's still trying to talk..."

God, no one is going to come out of this in a good way.

L.A. Times: Rep. Tom DeLay Took His Own Father Off Life Support in 1988
2005.03.26

Exposing a previously unknown episode, the Los Angeles Times reported late Saturday that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who this week championed political intervention in the Terry Schiavo case, agreed to his own family’s decision in 1988 to take his father off life support and allow him to die.

The DeLay's father, 65-year-old drilling contractor Charles DeLay, was badly injured in a freak accident at his home. Tom DeLay was a junior congressman from Texas at the time. The patient was being kept alive by intravenous lines and a ventilator.

"DeLay has denounced Schiavo's husband, as well as judges, for committing what he calls 'an act of barbarism,' in removing the tube," the L.A. Times reported. "In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as the congressman quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die."

This account was assembled from court files, medical records, and interviews with family members, the paper said.

Doctors advised that DeLay’s father would "basically be a vegetable," the congressman's aunt, JoAnne DeLay, told the newspaper.

When his kidneys failed, the family decided against connecting him to a dialysis machine. "Extraordinary measures to prolong life were not initiated," said his medical report, citing "agreement with the family's wishes."

His bedside chart carried the instruction: "Do Not Resuscitate." On Dec. 14, 1988, the senior DeLay died.

The Times noted similarities between the DeLay and Schiavo cases: "Both stricken patients were severely brain damaged. Both were incapable of surviving without continuing medical assistance. Both were said to have expressed a desire to be spared life sustained by machine. And neither left a living will."

http://slate.msn.com/id/2115860/

The immediate crisis has apparently passed. But all through Easter Sunday, one had to be alert to the possibility that, at any moment, the late and long-dead Terri Schiavo would receive the stigmata on both palms and both feet and be wafted across the Florida strait, borne up by wonder-working dolphins, to be united in eternal bliss with the man-child Elián González.

Personal observations from the Conservative Right:

This weekend I spent Easter with my father in East Knoxville. We, of course, attended Sunrise Service and regular Easter services at his pretty traditional U. Methodist Church. This means I went to Sunday School (taught by the pastor - a bizarre ex-marine who also spent time in the army). The only topic of discussion was Terri Sciavo.

I'm not going to say that these folks are absolutely typical of the rest of "Christian America", but they are pretty close. By and large everyone of the 10 or 12 30-40-somethings thought that the family should just let it go and that they would never want to be kept alive themselves.

The predominant feeling was that the husband had all the rights to make decisions for her because that is the way God intended it. Oddly enough, there was also some lively discussion on wether or not the "soul" resided in the body or the mind (i.e. does a body in a vegetative state have a soul or is it already just an empty shell). The paramedic in the crowd said that he didn't think that we should ever try to revive someone after more than 2-3 minutes, he'd seen the results too often. Still, no one was writing their congressman or anything.

Don't know what to make of this except that it plays well to what Krugman is saying about the extremists running the show while the majority just looks on and shrugs.

http://www.alternet.org/story/21561/

I think the most fundamental thing is perhaps the hardest psychologically for people to make. We have to acknowledge that resources available for medical care are limited. They are not infinite. The problem is that individuals, physicians and patients all behave as if resources are infinite and cost is no obstacle. You hear doctors say cost shouldn't be an object. They say, "We have to do everything that might possibly benefit the patient."

The patients feel like there is no limit because insurance picks up the tab up to a million dollars, sometimes two. Now health insurance is becoming unaffordable to many people and Medicare is in trouble financially. I argue we should be trying to get the most health care for the most people as opposed to getting every last minute of life for an individual who may have a terminal illness. But words like "rationing" are taboo. We can't talk about it. It is almost as bad as being liberal in today's political debate. The truth is, if we reflect, we acknowledge that we'll have spent hundreds of thousands for one patient to prolong a week of life in an intensive care
unit as opposed to spending that on other things like prenatal care and preventive services, on things that might save more lives.

Jackson joins fight over feeding tube
Husband to seek autopsy
Tuesday, March 29, 2005 Posted: 4:00 PM EST (2100 GMT)

PINELLAS PARK, Florida (CNN) -- The Rev. Jesse Jackson arrived Tuesday at Terri Schiavo's hospice and called on Florida lawmakers to have the brain-damaged woman's feeding tube reinserted.

"This is one of the profound moral, ethical issues of our time, the saving of Terri's life," the civil rights leader said. "And today we pray for a miracle."

Schiavo, 41, hasn't had water or nutrients since March 18 and is likely to die by week's end, doctors have said.

Jackson said he contacted Schiavo's husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, to request a visit with her, but "he said he thought no."

Michael Schiavo had no immediate reaction to Jackson's comments.

Schiavo has said his wife would want the tube removed, and he has called on outsiders to stop trying to violate her wishes.

Jackson said he is "sensitive" to the struggles and pain that both Michael Schiavo and Terri Schiavo's parents and siblings, the Schindlers, are undergoing.

He said it is his belief that Terri Schiavo should be kept alive. "While law is important, law must be tempered with mercy to have justice," he said.

Jackson said he spoke with several state senators, pushing them to pass emergency legislation, and plans to contact more senators.

While he has sided with the Schindlers, Jackson said in a statement last week that he had "serious misgivings about the appropriateness of Congress intervening with the legal court process on a specific, individual matter."

That statement followed congressional legislation signed by President Bush that allowed federal courts to review state court decisions in the case. (Full story)

The federal courts refused to overturn the state courts' decision. (Full story)

In his statement, Jackson added, "a consistent moral and ethical position would extend a feeding tube to all who are confronted with starvation -- to demand public, government policy to feed the hungry."

Jackson traveled to Florida at the invitation of Bobby Schindler, Terri Schiavo's brother.

While Jackson was speaking to reporters, an apparent protester slipped past police into the heavily guarded hospice before he was arrested by police.

Officers used a Taser stun-gun to apprehend the man, who police said was Dow Pursley, a family therapist...

Protesters in Schiavo case flood Florida abuse hot line

The Associated Press
Posted March 25 2005, 8:59 PM EST

TALLAHASSEE -- Hundreds of protesters trying to keep Terri Schiavo alive are calling the Florida Department of Children & Families hot line each day, and officials are concerned they could be jamming the line for people who are trying to report abuse unrelated to the case.

``The Department of Children & Families appreciates the concern expressed in a number of heartfelt calls to the abuse hot line on behalf of Terri Schiavo's well-being. Inadvertently these callers may be putting other neglected, abused and vulnerable citizens at risk,'' said DCF spokeswoman Zoraya Suarez on Friday.

shameless.

Eventually they reached the room and he asked the orderly to leave him alone with her for some 'personal prayer time.' The orderly obliged and left him there. Tom noticed that the lights were somewhat dim. Why not, he thought. It's not like this vegetable will need them. Tired after a long day with some of the fundamentalists outside the hospice he threw himself into a chair and began to think the situation over. He knew he'd already won big points with the religious crowd, but he hoped to find a way to score even bigger. Leaving the hospice and claiming that Terri had spoken to him through prayer was one idea that came to mind, but he immediately dismissed it as a little too outlandish. He needed something simple.

Heh, she's certainly livelier than my wife is, he thought to himself bitterly. He cast his eyes over at the faintly stirring Terri, who was staring at the ceiling with those lovely dark eyes and drooling quietly to herself. I have to admit, she was a beautiful woman once. But now she's just old. Terri here, though... the lack of intelligence notwithstanding, she has a simple charm to her. A simple charm that a down home Texan like myself might appreciate.

Tom quietly chastised himself for such thoughts. Granted, he may have become bitter after years of loveless marriage, and the semi-private hospital room did afford him some freedom to exercise thoughts that might otherwise accidentally slip out in public... but. But what? Tom took a moment to wrestle with his conscience. Lord, I know this to be wrong, but....

'It's a crying shame that such a lovely young lady might suffer such a painful death without a few final... comforts,' he said to himself, slightly surprised that he'd managed to work up the courage to entertain the notion. Still, was it not his duty as a good Christian to ease the suffering of this woman? He was, after all, only trying to elicit some sort of response. She would not respond as much as some women would, but then, Tom liked them that way. 'I suppose, my dear, that your last worldly affair might save me some rohypnol.'

Tom stood and checked to be sure that the door was closed and latched before he unbuckled his belt as quietly as possible... not an easy task with the giant buckle he had that complied with all Texas rules and regulations for belt buckle sizes. Without letting his pants slip he moved to sit beside her on the bed. Terri still didn't respond. Tom tentatively reached out a hand to fondle her breasts through the flimsy hospital gown, immediately feeling his member stiffen as he did so. He gently found her nipples through the gown and pinched them, though he got no response from her. Good...

He slowly removed what he could of the gown, though he was too busy keeping his pants on to do a proper job of turning her over to remove the whole thing. Instead he managed to get most of the front of her uncovered and let his hands wander and explore her, pausing a moment as he came across the hole where her feeding tube was missing. Idle thoughts flitted through his mind as he fingered it, but they fled and he continued his searching, until he found her surprisingly neatly trimmed bush.

As he gently tickled her glorious labia he found it impossible to resist rubbing himself through his clothes. All the while he was watching her face intently, hoping for some sign of life. But not too much life, he cautioned himself. Persistently vegetative women tell no tales.... Fortunately she was still contentedly drooling... from both sets of lips! He brought his fingers to his nose and took a good whiff of the acrid goodness thereupon.

Suddenly he heard a few sets of footsteps outside! With all the quickness he could muster he re-buckled his belt and tried to rearrange Terri's gown to hide their activities. He quickly knelt at the bedside and pretended to pray as the door opened. Mary Schindler, Terri's mother, stepped in, leading a small girl behind her. 'Hello Tom,' she said quietly. 'This is little Elizabeth, she's the daughter of one of our church friends and she wanted to meet Terri. I have to go attend to the rally, but could you handle the introduction?' With a weak smile she shoved Elizabeth into the room and closed the door behind her.

Elizabeth managed a meek 'hi' and stood staring at Terri's lifeless corpse. Did I say lifeless? I meant life-filled corpse.

Tom made a brief introduction and asked Elizabeth her name. 'I'm only 8,' she replied meekly again, as she scratched at her elbow through the sleeve of a nice church dress. 'What's wrong with her?'

'She's sick, Elizabeth. Her brain is hurting, and she needs Jesus's love to heal her.' Suddenly a wicked idea occurred to Tom. 'She needs your love too, Elizabeth.'

'My love?'

'Yes, my dear! The love of a small girl is... very special!' He quietly whispered his plan to Elizabeth, who was visibly upset at the notion.

'But... but mommy says good Christians don't touch each other there! And and and girls aren't supposed to do that to girls especially!'

'Oh Elizabeth, that's so wonderful that your mommy taught you that! But you remember how Jesus died for our sins? Well if you do this, you'll be like Jesus... you'll be sinning to save Terri, and your life will be as glorious as our savior's was.'

Elizabeth had some difficulty with the conflicting stories she had heard and began to cry, but slowly moved to Terri's bedside and began to reach under the gown. 'Will this really save Terri?' she asked between sobs.

'Oh yes, my dear, of course it will!' Tom slowly stood and unbuckled his belt again. 'You know, Elizabeth, that's a lovely dress. Why don't you take it off? We certainly wouldn't want it to get dirty.'

Elizabeth removed her dress and went back to peeking under Terri's gown, looking for the hidden treasures therein. Tom helped her remove the gown again and instructed Elizabeth to touch Terri's breasts, then to explore Terri's pussy. Terri continued to drool.

'This smells funny,' complained Elizabeth. 'Do I really have to taste it? And why are you holding your wee wee? Did you hurt it?'

'Yes, Liz, I hurt it. Get your face in there or Jesus will be sad.' Tom was busy stroking his member furiously. Terri had been attractive to him, but Elizabeth's unspoiled body, still a little chubby with baby fat, had him hornier than he had been in years. He breasts had not begin to bud yet, and her tiny pussy lips were unbearably adorable.

He instructed Liz to lay on top of Terri, but just as Elizabeth was moving to the side of the bed, Terri moaned and began to stir again. Elizabeth, though she was keen to help Terri recover, screamed, grabbed her dress, and ran from the room. Tom quickly put his dick back in his pants and put Terri's gown back, knowing that trouble would not be far behind.

As he'd predicted, it wasn't long before footsteps came pounding from down the hall. This time his visitor was Jeb Bush, who was clearly winded and sweaty as he stuck his head in. 'What the hell just happened in here?'

Tom thought fast. 'Terri began to, uh, speak, and the child, who was acting like all small children and showing me her panties... yes, that's it. She became terrified and fled!'

Jeb looked at Tom suspiciously. 'You were molesting them, weren't you Tom?'

'I most certainly was not!'

'Oh, really? That's a shame. I was thinking I'd join you...' With that, Jeb dropped his pants, revealing his enormous five inch cock. Tom, with understanding and love in his heart, removed his pants as well and reached out to give Jeb's wang a gentle tug. 'Lets give the old girl one last farewell,' suggested Jeb.

Tom moved to the head of the bed and tapped the end of his penis against Terri's forehead. She didn't seem to notice, so he slipped it into her mouth slowly. The excess drool made for the perfect lubrication and he had no difficulty sliding it deep into her throat. Fortunately she had lost her gag reflex, so he was able to fit all four inches down her throat with ease, and began to pound her face, balls slapping against her cheek.

Jeb, meanwhile, had positioned himself between her legs and was gleefully thrusting his member into her yawning vagina. As he fucked the mindless warm body, he spotted the unused feeding tube and a bag connected to the floor. 'Hey Tom,' he called, 'lets give her a stay of execution!' He quickly, and ineptly, reinserted one end of the tube into the feeding hole in her stomach, then tore open the top of the empty bag and began to pee into it. The yellow liquid quickly found its way into her stomach. 'Yeah, you like that, don't you bitch?'

Tom found himself nearing orgasm and grabbed the bag away from Jeb. 'I hear, my lovely woman, that you're unable to swallow. Lets see if we can't find a way around that.' Tom pounded his cock furiously as he aimed for the feed bag, spraying his hot cum into it and watching it dribble down into Terri's stomach. He then collapsed in post coital bliss.

Jeb, nearing climax himself, instead ripped the tube out of her stomach and inserted his cock into the hole. Although he felt the slight tingle of the stomach acid on the head of his mighty dick, he still found it pleasurable enough to continue thrusting until it erupted, spraying semen directly into her. With his energy spent, he moved across the floor to cuddle with Tom, kissing him gently, and managing to mutter an 'I love you' before he fell asleep, happier than he'd been in a long time.

send out Laura Bush! surely SHE'LL straighten all this out!

Um, xpost. I suppose.

March 29, 2005
List of Schiavo Donors Will Be Sold by Direct-Marketing Firm
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and JOHN SCHWARTZ
NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON, March 28 - The parents of Terri Schiavo have authorized a conservative direct-mailing firm to sell a list of their financial supporters, making it likely that thousands of strangers moved by her plight will receive a steady stream of solicitations from anti-abortion and conservative groups.

"These compassionate pro-lifers donated toward Bob Schindler's legal battle to keep Terri's estranged husband from removing the feeding tube from Terri," says a description of the list on the Web site of the firm, Response Unlimited, which is asking $150 a month for 6,000 names and $500 a month for 4,000 e-mail addresses of people who responded last month to an e-mail plea from Ms. Schiavo's father. "These individuals are passionate about the way they value human life, adamantly oppose euthanasia and are pro-life in every sense of the word!"

Privacy experts said the sale of the list was legal and even predictable, if ghoulish.

"I think it's amusing," said Robert Gellman, a privacy and information policy consultant. "I think it's absolutely classic America. Everything is for sale in America, every type of personal information."

Executives of Response Unlimited declined to comment. Gary McCullough, director of the Christian Communication Network and a spokesman for Ms. Schiavo's parents, confirmed that Mr. Schindler had agreed to let Response Unlimited rent out the list as part of a deal for the firm to send an e-mail solicitation raising money on the family's behalf.

The Schindlers have waged a lengthy legal battle against their son-in-law Michael Schiavo to prevent the removal of the feeding tube from their daughter, who doctors say is in a persistent vegetative state.

Mr. McCullough said he was present when Mr. Schindler agreed to the arrangement in a conversation with Phil Sheldon, the co-founder of a conservative online marketing organization, RightMarch.com, who acted as a broker for Response Unlimited.

"So the Schindlers do know the details," Mr. McCullough said on Monday. How much attention they paid to the matter is hard to assess, he added. "The Schindlers right now know that their daughter is starving to death, and if I ask about anything else, they say, 'I don't want to hear about it.' "

Direct mail and mass e-mailings are ubiquitous fund-raising tools of interest groups on the left as well as the right, and others in the direct-mail business defended the sale of lists like the roster of donors to the Schindlers as a useful way for potential donors to learn of causes that might appeal to them.

Pamela Hennessy, an unpaid spokeswoman for the Schindlers, said she was initially appalled when she learned of the list's existence.

"It is possibly the most distasteful thing I have ever seen," Ms. Hennessy said. "Everybody is making a buck off of her."

Ms. Hennessy, who operates the Schindlers' Web site, www.terrisfight.org, said the family had not released any of the names or e-mail addresses gathered there. "Obviously these people are enterprising, and they are taking advantage of this very desperate father," she said.

On Sunday, as the Schindlers gave up on their legal battle and their daughter passed her 10th day without food, others continued to rally supporters and solicit money in an effort to restore the feeding tube.

"This time, we have a real chance to break through the 'roadblocks' that the enemies of life have been putting up in front of us," said a mass e-mailing from RightMarch.com, asking supporters to urge Gov. Jeb Bush to intervene somehow.

The message added: "We're asking you to give a donation to help with our activism efforts to save Terri's life. Battles cost money; resources cost money; media costs money; we could go on, but you get the picture."

Mr. Sheldon - whose father, the Rev. Lou Sheldon, founder of the Traditional Values Coalition, has also sent appeals urging support for Ms. Schiavo - apparently played a dual role as a partner in RightMarch.com, which is working with the anti-abortion activist Randall Terry, and as a broker for Response Unlimited. Mr. Sheldon did not respond to phone calls yesterday.

"I think it sounds a little unusual right now because of the situation where she is in the process of dying," said Richard Viguerie, another major conservative direct-mail operator. "If you came across this information six months or a year from now, I don't think you would give it too much thought."

we'll, they're certainly right about this. i just wish progressive efforts had more funding.

http://www.deathocrats.org/protestors4.jpg

BEST RIFF ON METAL GEAR SOLID, EVER!

http://thefucksociety.com/robin/terri.html

BEST RIFF ON METAL GEAR SOLID, EVER! And just wait till you see what they use for power-ups and for the end boss fight!

Nat Hentoff in the Voice

http://www.2trak.com/morans.jpg

I rather like how the family is watching the tree branch get sawed slowly out from underneath them.

I know this is a joke but it's regrettable.

So what exactly is the 'pro-life' position? If you don't have a living will with a DNR clause, you cannot be disconnected? Who is to pay for this? Have any of them addressed the morality of using resources (money, time, expertise) that could actually prevent human suffering on people who have ceased to suffer?

As I’ve said before, I hate that this Schiavo case rose to a level of congressional involvement—these are heartbreaking issues families should deal with; if they can’t, courts should deal with fairly. Whether the latter happened is questionable at best, and there entered the real public debate.

...which is funny in that all you have to do is check the blog archives and see her essentially pleading -- almost flat out demanding -- that Congress act. She made a couple of noises last week that maybe she was perhaps 'naive' about a few things and now is apparently starting to try and distance herself from the cheerleading she happily encouraged. Combined with the sharp cutback in her posts every other minute, or so it seemed, on the matter -- one wonders if she came to a realization or her colleagues leaned a bit -- and an interesting comment or two about all the negative mail they've apparently received from their subscribers (in some cases rapidly becoming ex-subscribers) and the result's...intriguing. You have to read between the lines but still, they goofed, and now are looking elsewhere for things to talk about. Even Andy McCarthy's been reduced to rehashing his legal arguments as a timekiller that is affecting nothing.

http://www.eyecandyforthebrokenhearted.com/morans.jpg

Inevitable SP episode is on now

xp oh yeah hahahahah

SYMBOLISM

He never asked for this desire, this sick lust for the half-living that nearly drove him to madness. Like a rusted car struggling to start after years of rotting away, his grunts seemed like the cries of a dying soul, clinging to what little beauty and pleasure it could before finally breaking free of this mortal coil and spiraling into the endless nightmare of schizophrenia.

The shutters clanked and cracked from a heavy gust outside. The clouds were beginning to break apart just in time for the sun to slowly drift away from the sky, leaving only darkness to hide the twisted actions taking place inside. With a face as grim as the reaper, Arnold methodically reached a climax, leaving his residue to dry away into a sticky mass on the dry and unused vaginal wall of his unwitting victim. Perhaps victim was too strong a word, for though she was the subject of his lustful abuse, her vegetative state left her only a half-person who would never know or feel pain like he did.

The squeaks and squeals of his water pipes struggling to serve their only purpose served as the perfect soundtrack to tonight, thought Arnold as he washed his hands, unable to clean away the near-endless scars of his sin. Laughing hysterically, he began to load two barrels into his 12 guage. The only thing that would shine in the dim light of a dying lamp, Arnold paid special attention to his 12 guage. Perhaps it was his most prized possession because, deep down, he realized it was his final means of escape from the hellish prison of existence.

A sharp pain entered his jaw bone as he bit down hard on the barrel of the weapon. A tear struggled to escape from his eye, and slowly dripped across his pale cheek, and landed alone on the cold broken linoleum floor. Terri, still quivering from the twisted ravages of Arnold's desire, remained blissfully unaware of the fate of her assailant, and could tell no one of the events that transpired. The pipes stopped their creaking, as if to prepare for it, and like lightning the silence was broken with a bang. For a brief moment Arnold could see the light, but soon everything faded to black and he could feel himself fade away.

The police would arrive the next morning, after receiving a call from a neighbor, and would discover Terri's sexually ravaged form sound asleep on the cold floor. They would also find the body of Arnold Schwarzenegger, or what was left of him, in his chair and the wall behind it. The chief could almost swear he saw a smile of relief in the dead lips of Arnold's body before they loaded him into the body bag.