Posted on 03/19/2005 6:03:33 AM PST by mathprof
Congressional leaders are playing a dangerous game with their intrusion into the hotly publicized fight in Florida over maintaining life support for a severely brain-damaged woman. With state legislative and court appeals being exhausted, the House and Senate began some grim one-upsmanship to stop the removal of the feeding tube from Terri Schiavo. She is the 41-year-old woman who has been in a persistent vegetative state for the last 15 years, with her parents contesting that sad diagnosis. They also challenged the careful decisions by Florida's trial and appellate courts, based largely on the testimony of her husband that their daughter would have chosen to die rather than live indefinitely in such condition.
Congress seized the issue in the closing hours of its March budget debate. After bungled attempts to grant federal court review of the case, leaders of the two houses blamed each other for Ms. Schiavo's potential demise. They then landed on the ghoulish gimmick of postponing removal of her feeding tube by subpoenaing her to a House hearing and inviting her to a separate hearing in the Senate. The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, said that criminal law protects witnesses called before Congress "from anyone who may obstruct or impede a witness's attendance or testimony."
After considering the issue yesterday, the state appellate judge presiding over the case ordered the removal of Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube to proceed, finding Congress's intervention created no "emergency" requiring postponement. No doubt this is not the end of this painful drama. Meanwhile we can only lament the Republicans' theatrical effort to expand their so-called pro-life agenda to include intervening in a case already studied and litigated exhaustively under Florida law. Congress's rash assumption of judicial power and trampling on established state and federal constitutional precedents in "right to die" cases is nothing short of breathtaking.
or an Islamic terrorist.
Actually, the owners and managers of the New York Times should be rounded up and commited.
Yes. If I were god forbid to have a brain injury today, my wife is by far in the best position to know my wishes. If she finds another guy down the line, she still is in the best position to know my wishes at the time of my incapacity.
Ergo, the law, technically, requires that she be kept alive.
So what was it you were arguing ~ that we kill her anyway?
You really dont seem to understand what a Congressional subpeona and contempt for Congress are, do you?
In this country you don't get to kill people just because they are brain damaged. Maybe that stuff flew in the USSR and Nazi Germany, but not here!
Besides, the method is BARBARIC, INHUMANE and beyond justification.
Was your daddy a mobster, or what?
Uh, that's exactly how it works.
There are no machines. For you to say so suggests you know nothing of this case, or you just wish to take the opportunity to dip your spear in Terri's blood.
I guess that's only a question for you.
As far as Terri's concerned her husband won a 1.2 million dollar lawsuit to pay for her care including rehab and therapy. About 3-4 months later, when the first check was cut from the award, he ordered her rehab and therapy stopped. He has since spent $700,000 of that in court trying to get her food and water stopped.
Are you saying that you didn't see any response from Terri in that video? A "vegetable" can't laugh or make any sounds like that at all. There is a medical definition of persistent vegetative state you know. Tell me this though; if vegetables aren't worth feeding are meatheads? What's the cost to society to let meatheads run around spewing out verbal inanities about subjects they know nothing about? Gas the meatheads!
There was no power of attorney.
I thought we were over that crap.
If you have her written power of attorney, by all means, produce the document. It would be news to a lot of people. I'd love to see it myself.
Moderator, please remove that post as it is deeply offensive, contributes ntohing to the discussion and is inflamatory.
Though I guess it does illustrate the kind of vermin that we are dealing with.
Private parties are paying the medical expenses. You're not going to save taxpayer dollars by killing this woman you know.
Get real. There have been some hearings during a fifteen-year period. It's not a 15-year investigation.
It sometimes happens that you get a sociopath on the bench.
I'm sure they carried stories on it.
How do we remove the Times feeding tube?
How about some DIFFERENT evidence, like an MRI?
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