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.
You are not worthy of our protection.
Nothing knee-jerk here. You just want to cover up a murder.
Stuff happens.
They'd be singing a different tune if her name were Tehiri al-Shaifo.
True. I said that he was a human being like the rest of us because I don't believe that the fact that he wears a robe makes him any more wise or good than we are.
That would be really nice if her husband hadn't ordered her caretakers not to attempt any therapy or communication with her at the risk of their jobs. Several have been fired for that. None of them were allowed to testify in court on her behalf.
I think his post should be left where it is, so that all might know the great mind at work.
I kind of wonder if we couldn't run our society pretty well for several weeks with just Peoples' Courts while we eliminate this bunch of black robed ayatollahs and their running dog lackeys.
Oooops. I forgot. I shouldn't let those kinds of lapses occur. Thanks for reminding me. ;-)
Are you going to move the goalposts every time I answer your question?
Anyway I know where you're going, you think Michael Schiavo was responsible for Terri's injuries, something that neither you or I will ever know. And before anybody posts the link again, I've read terrisfight, know about the bone scan, etc. If there were a criminal case there to make it would have been made. Unfortunately right now it's all speculation.
Get real. This has been in the courts for years.
There have been.
This is a probate court judge putting down someone.
Kind of like the traffic magistrate shooting drunk drivers you know. Not that there should be anything against that, but isn't the death penalty far beyond their statutory authority?
LOL! Then you're in for a big surprise.
Because we don't like the decision doesn't make it wrong.
If you haven't you will be sticking her into the same dilemma Schiavo faces. Do you think that's polite?
We shall see.
You have that backwards. We don't like the decision because it is wrong.
Yeah, it means a judge decides whether or not the contempt citation is warranted.
It's been in and out of the courts over the course of fifteen years.
That is not a fifteen-year investigation.
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