Posted on 10/17/2003 9:20:22 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Thursday that his legal team has been unable to find a basis for him to intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo, who is expected to starve to death as soon as this weekend after her feeding tube was removed at the direction of her husband yesterday. "The legal office has been talking to people trying to find some strategy where my office can intervene in a different fashion that will yield a different result," Bush said Thursday. "So far we have not found that option." Gov. Bush's comments came before Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, met with him privately to present a letter from Florida's Thomas More Law Center citing a legal basis for the state to intervene to stop what one attorney described as "the execution of Terri Schiavo." "We're waiting to hear from Gov. Bush" on the Thomas More letter, Mr. Schindler told national talk radio host Sean Hannity Thursday afternoon. Schindler said Gov. Bush's response is "probably is our last hope." By Friday morning, Bush's office gave no hint that he had reached a decision. Thursday night Mr. Schindler told Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes" that his daughter could die as early as this weekend if medical staff begin administering morphine to counter the pain of her starvation. The Republican governor's caution over the legal technicalities of the case stands in marked contrast to the actions of Democrats, who often take a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later approach when an issue of importance hangs in the balance. In April 2000, for instance, the Clinton administration didn't let the law interfere with its plan to return 6-year-old boat boy Elian Gonzalez to Castro's Cuba. Instead of waiting for Gonzalez's legal case to play out in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, Attorney General Janet Reno executed White House plans to have the boy kidnapped from the home of his Miami relatives at machine gunpoint. Normally Clinton-friendly legal powerhouse attorneys Alan Dershowitz and Lawrence Tribe were horrified, publicly condemning the raid as unconstitutional. Gov. Bush reaction? He called the action "unconscionable" but showed no interest in pursuing legal sanctions against the White House. When Republicans in Congress called for a congressional investigation into the Clinton administration's abuse of power in the Elian case, top aides to then-presidential candidate George Bush derailed the idea. "A top Republican Party official told The Daily News that Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh informed Senate Republicans on Thursday that the candidate wanted the hearings scrapped because the issue is a political loser," reported the New York paper a week after the raid. As it turned out, voter backlash over the Elian raid among Florida's Cuban-American community gave President Bush his razor thin margin of victory in the 2000 election.
Beware what you ask--you seek a man on horseback.
And you might not like what happens after you get the man on horseback.
Dear God in heaven...if I was suffering in a hopelessly vegetative state, I might indeed prefer the morphine to being sustained day after day, for years on end by a machine in such a painful existance.
I do not argue this point much because I believe that I am ahead of the curve on this. Society is not yey ready to give up this type of terminal punishment for wrongdoing. But I do not believe that it is the deterrent that they say it is.
It jus seemed to me that to respect life, one cannot pick and choose which to repect. to make that decision is a judgment that we really never were given the power to do.
I think it is more for the victim. An eye for an eye and all that Old Testament stuff.(not a bible wonk)
Anyway, the statement felt like the right thing, and serious offenders really are in hell while in long captivity. Death is too easy for them.
now, to get to your point which I belive is the current case of Terri.
The legal precedents are to, when a family member is deemed to never recover and to be totally incapacitated and would die without medical intervention then this decision of life or prolonged dying can be made by the family menber with legal standing.
As I understand, the girls family has been using every method possible to take that standing away from the son in law. Every method.
Up to now, none of the accusations seem to have merit. the legal system there has not agreed to them and the courts have ruled to allow this under protection of law.
Therefore, it cannot be called murder.
I suppose I would call it mercy killing. It is more to the point.I do not know if I would do this to my wife. I really do not know, but I have thought about doing something like that to a brother of mine. he has passed now, but he sure would have been spared a lot of misery if I had done what was on my mind. (I would have been arrested for murder however)
Fine.
Perhaps when you are suffering in a hopelessly terminal state of existance, hooked up to machines with no chance of recovery.....THEN you can petition the Governor to make sure NOBODY allows you the grace to die naturally without artificial means to extend your suffering longer.
When a person can't eat or drink and is hooked up to a machine to sustain them for over 10 years..that is articificial.
Gov. Bush's office: 1-850-488-4441
HA! I live in Texas.
And, Arnie won anyway.
Oh fer crying out loud, are you talking about a different case here? Terri is not dying, at least she wasn't until they started starving her to death! She doesn't have a terminal illness like cancer or AIDS. She is brain damaged, but she is conscious, she laughs, smiles, cries and tries to speak... and according to many doctors, she can improve with therapy (which has been denied to her by her husband in the last 10 years)
Please get your facts straight. Intentionally STARVING SOMEONE TO DEATH is not "letting them die naturally", just as if you purposely witheld food from an infant, it wouldn't be "letting them die", it's MURDER.
LOL! sure sounds like murder to me. But Hawking's is not what we have with this poor girl.
I am not a doctor and nobody has access to the medical records. In view of that I cannot comment on her condition exactly, but must assume that she meets or exceeds the legalities involved in deciding this issue. (regardless of what the girls family is representing as fact as they are hostile witnesses in this argument)
Common sense is all I really have to decide how I feel about this and my common sense says that others who are in a much more informed position, (other than the girls family) have looked and delved deeply into this matter numerous times.
That is really all I can say and others here have the same info. it is just that others have sided with the family with no legal standing in this issue and they are most definitely hostile to this son in law.
More than one judge has decided over the past years in the man's favor.
If law enforcement, (a tool of justice) had any reservations about this man, they would have stepped forward, don't you think?
If the judges that have made decisions in this case had any reservations at all, they would have delayed or not made any judgment wouldn't you think?
I just can't see this any other way, but perhaps I am wrong. I don't feel wrong, but I have been wrong before, I will admit.
I would need to talk to the son in law to be sure, and his words are a bit scarce in any of the media reports. in fact, he is not defending himself at all. I assumed this to be an effort to keep himself out of the spotlight and probably on his lawyers advice.
They sure are beating him up in the internet press.
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