Free Republic

Schiavo findings won't be rushed Despite conflicting calls for thoroughness and quick results, Jon Thogmartin won't let appeals from the public force his hand. LARGO - People around the world have talked about the life and death of Terri Schiavo, but Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner Jon Thogmartin will get the last word. For the past month, he has been working on her autopsy. She has taken over his office and consumed his working hours. He appeared for an interview in blue scrubs, looking every bit the wiry medical examiner with his bald head and tiny wire-rimmed glasses. "That's her and that's...

Protecting family members and others who cannot defend themselves is fundamental to a civilized society. Terri Schiavo’s family, and many others, tried to protect her because that is what wild animals and civilized humans do for their own kind. When a migrating goose is ill or injured, other geese stay with the downed goose until it can fly again or dies. They do not drown the disabled goose so they can conveniently resume their flight. The concept that physicians should not kill unborn babies or hasten the deaths of patients came from Hippocrates, a 400 BC Greek pagan. As Western...

Tonight on Hannity & Colmes at 9 PM EDT, the family of Terri Schindler Schiavo will appear. In their first interview since her death, Terri Schiavo's family speaks out about life without Terri, their private battle, and their message to America. Don’t miss this emotional interview with the Schindlers! Oliver North will also be on from Fallujah in Iraq and Chris Simcox, organizer of the Minutemen Project will also be on the program.

I read Vivek Thuppil's column concerning the Terri Schiavo case ("Republicans use Schiavo case for political advancement," The Triangle, April 29, p. 15). It makes for compelling reading, assuming it is fact-based. However, as the Schindler family attorney for a number of years, I can tell you Mr. Thuppil's fact-assumptions are not accurate. Consider these assumptions, for which there is factual support: Terri collapsed in February, 1990 of unknown reasons. She did not have a heart attack. Her tox screen was negative. No doctor ever diagnosed her with bulimia. She collapsed in the early morning hours on a Sunday morning,...

Friday, May 6, 2005 11:02 p.m. EDT Mark Fuhrman Probing Schiavo Case Famed detective Mark Fuhrman, whose independent investigation into the Martha Moxley murder led to the conviction of Kennedy-cousin Michael Skakel, is probing the Terri Schiavo forced starvation case. "He spent a month on the ground in Tampa," revealed Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity Friday night. "He's talked to many of the principals involved investigating the case and he's coming out with a book." Hannity said he personally contacted Fuhrman in March to suggest he probe a myriad of unresolved questions about Ms. Schiavo's condition, including a 1991 bone...

I humbly submit that it is time for another event similar to the discrediting of CBS's phony documents story, which began here in Free Republic. My reply to this will have details.

I'm quite upset over the far-left-wing media's shoddy reporting re: Terri's actual condition. She'd be alive today in her minimal level of consciousness and still able to feel pain if the old media had reported accurately on her actual condition. What I'd like to see in the aftermath of the Terri Schiavo fiasco: Congress holds hearings on the matter. The far-left-wing media is shamed over its shoddy reporting about Terri's actual condition, and the far-left-wing media suffers a severe blow to its credibility regarding the question of how it managed to a) overlook numerous conflicts of interest among the pro-death...

Even at this late date, after Terri Schiavo is dead and gone, the media keep getting the facts wrong about the case. On the CBS Evening News, correspondent Joie Chen said that Rep. Tom Delay and other Republicans were "infuriated by court decisions not to enforce the reinsertion of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube after lawmakers passed a law in a nearly unprecedented effort to do so…" That's not what the law said. The law declared that the federal courts would have jurisdiction to establish the facts in the case. The federal courts were not ordered to come to any conclusion,...

This is how a recent Associated Press news release started, “The No. 3 Republican in the Senate said Sunday that embattled House Majority Leader Tom Delay needs to answer questions about his ethics and ‘let the people then judge for themselves’.” There’s just one problem with the assertion made by the Associated Press. Senator Rick Santorum didn't say anything about Congressman Delay answering questions about his ‘ethics’. “I think he has to come forward and lay out what he did and why he did it,” Santorum said. “And let the people then judge for themselves.” Where is all this talk...

How do we know she is really dead? We couldn't believe any thing else "they" have told us??? In either case, Terri is an eternal being and therefore more alive than she has ever been! American needs to wake up. The state of Florida passed a law, without public being informed, that food and water would be considered "medical treatment", that's how they legally succeeded in denying Terri's basic human right. Tell others. Keep getting the truth out. To honor her and others whose lives are at stake, Lights for Life is and idea for all of those who stand...

Three weeks will soon have passed since Terri Schindler-Schiavo was forced to die an inhumane and tragic death. Thousands who were against Terri's killing claim they find themselves awake at all hours of the night trying to come to terms with what happened to Terri. Many state they are suffering from overwhelming depression, frustration, and feelings of powerlessness. Others find themselves struggling to understand how America stood by and allowed Terri to be publicly murdered and not receive judicial or police protection. Only a few short weeks ago, we witnessed thousands upon thousands of people from all over the world...

How's this for 'In your Face' ? You're not going to believe this, but on the other hand - given the bizare circumstances of everything else related to Terri Schiavo's death, you probably guessed it already. George Felos is apparently seeking speaking engagements, for money of course, to further the cause of judicial homicide and social acceptance of active euthanasia. - from a reader's email George Felos has enlisted the help of a talent agency to help sell his death package. (...) He fought successfully in U.S. courts at every level—and overcame the Congress and both Governor Bush and President...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - When word of Terri Schiavo's death arrived at the state House floor, Rep. Dennis Baxley told colleagues, "her death is not in vain." Now Baxley and other lawmakers are working to make true on that promise, brainstorming legislation that would apply the lessons of her story. Even legislators who did not want the government to intervene to keep the brain-damaged woman alive say they'll work to prevent a tragedy like hers from happening again. "There are some things that we could do and possibly should do," said Sen. Jim King, one of the nine Republicans who helped...

I'm sure many of you have heard of Wikipedia, the so-called "Free Encyclopedia". For those that haven't, here's a quick run-down. The founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, made his fortune in the dot-com boom from his company Bomis. Bomis made its money both as a search portal, and by the sale of "erotic images". Wales is a self-admitted admirer of Ayn Rand and her Godless philosophical system called Objectivism. Wikipedia originated from Nupedia, one of the first attempts for an internet-based free encyclopedia. Unlike Nupedia, however, which required highly qualified contributors and implemented a rigorous system of peer review, Wikipedia...

Two weeks after the death of Terri Schiavo, friends and relatives gathered for a memorial service Friday evening at the Southampton church that she attended as a child and in which she was married in 1984. Schiavo's parents, brother and sister took part in the service at Our Lady of Good Counsel attended by about 500 people, including uniformed students of Archbishop Wood Catholic High School, from which Schiavo graduated. The Rev. Clemens Gerdelmann gave a brief but pointed homily in which he said that man should not abuse the free will given by God. ''If Terri's death has taught...

Over the past several decades, we have gotten used to judges being above the law, so it was perhaps inevitable that we would now be asked to get used to the idea that judges are above criticism. In the wake of the Terri Schiavo case, where a Florida judge ignored Florida law and congressional subpoenas, and where federal judges ignored congressional legislation duly signed by the president, some people dared to suggest that judges had overstepped the bounds. Immediately there has been a firestorm of reaction by those who think it is just fine to have judges make social policy,...

The Department of Children & Families released dozens of pages of documents Friday showing it investigated complaints that Terri Schiavo was being abused and exploited by both sides of her family, but could find no evidence that she was. The records of 89 complaints logged at DCF's abuse hotline date back to 2001 and included allegations that Schiavo, who at that point had been in a persistent vegetative state for more than a decade, was both being mistreated by her husband and her parents for financial gain. The records were released under order from Pinellas Circuit Court Judge George Greer...

The End is GreerA pilgrim showed up on the last day at the last hours and contributed that single statement. The End is Greer indeed. The dust already settles and time will soon obscure our memories of the most dramatic event I would ever have imagined, the collision of good and evil in sunny Pinellas Park. Separation of Church and State is oxymoron here as we bore witness to the State sponsored murder of an innocent, an event to lock the State and our religion in a death grip. (Focus on this post is the political and our own roles...

It appears there will be a happy ending to the story of Ora Mae Magouirk, the 81-year-old Georgia widow whose family has been at loggerheads over her medical care, visitation privileges and whether she should be "allowed to die" but now is reaching agreements on key issues. Today, attorneys on both sides agreed Magouirk's brother and sister, A.B. McLeod, 64, of Anniston, Ala., and Lonnie Ruth Mullinax, 74, of Birmingham, will be allowed to visit their sister during regular visiting hours at the University of Alabama-Birmingham Medical Center in Birmingham, where she is receiving treatment for an aortic dissection. Moreover,...

Top conservative leaders gathered here a week after Terri Schiavo's death to plot a course of action against the nation's courts, but much of their anger was directed at leading Republicans, exposing an emerging crack between the party's leadership and core supporters on the right. And yesterday they issued an ''action plan" to take their crusade for control of the nation's courts well beyond Senate debates over judicial nominees, pressing Congress to impeach judges and defund courts they consider ''activist" and to limit the jurisdiction of federal courts over some sensitive social matters -- a strategy opposed by many leading...