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.
Fox and Friends is interviewing a congressman from GA, Westmoreland),who just had the best quote re: Terri Schiavo. They were asking him about a lot of things. When asked for an opinion about the Schiavo case he exressed that we seem to have our priorities screwed up.
We have a woman alive in Florida who should be kept alive and people have been allowed to kill her On the other hand we have a scumbag who has admitted molesting and killing a little 9 yr old girl that police say is on suicide watch and being visited every 15 minutes. He then said, "Heck, give him a gun and tell him you'll be back in a few minutes".
Kinda puts it in perspective.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
If Terry Schiavo required a machines to breath or pump flood, efforts obviously artificial, I might agree with the NYT editorial writer. But, the woman requires only what we all require: food.
Wonder what would happen should we execute criminals by handcuffing their hands behind their backs, covering their mouths with duct tape, and then, we shove the murderers down into an old fashioned root cellar, padlock the doors, and simply walk away. What would the NYT and the Democrats say about that?
We have finally given them something to pin on us.
Just as Elian Gonzalez' father's rights were paramount in gaining custody in him being sent back to Cuba...so too is it LAW that Terri's husband's wishes supercede any say of the parents.
If you want that changed...change the law. There is no right of the Legislature to trample on the Judicial branch in this case.
From the same people who were complicit in Stalin's intentional state-based starvation of 10 million Ukrainians in the 1930's. The Times is always supportive of homicidal monsters.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Judge Greer is getting away with bloody murder and a bunch of Republican limp wristed men and women are standing around and letting this happen! How can people sleep or eat while Terri is being treated in such an unbelievably cruel ghoulish manner?
Uh oh, now you went and stepped in it. Get your Nomex® undies on...
Democrats pull out all the stops to see the innocent (babies, Terri, US soldiers) killed and the worst of the worst (murderers, terrorists) coddled and celebrated. Party of death indeed.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
You can always count on the Slimes to take the wrong side.
Stalin and Greer are birds of a feather. Stalin said he was just following the law, too when he decided to thin out the Ukrainian population by forced starvation.
But let one father try to save his unborn child from abortion and we will hear soon enough about how fathers have no rights.
I'm waiting for the editorial in the Times that will site an instance when the courts...ANY courts...have over-stepped their bounds. Our mullahs wear black robes too.
Wow - I have NEVER seen so many stories posted on this site over one woman. All the experts say her vegitative state is persistant and she will not recover from it. I dont mean to sound harsh, but let her die!! If I was in her condition I would never want to be kept alive indefinitely. These right-to-lifers remind me of cancer patients who have had serious operations and spend every second of the rest of their lives in excruciating pain, but doctors refuse to put them out of their misery.
If Terry Schiavo required a machines to breath or pump flood, efforts obviously artificial, I might agree with the NYT editorial writer . . . and you. But, the woman requires only what we all require: food.
Give her the food. Let the parents deal with the quality of life issues.
i think rush had it right friday when he described how the feminists see these issues as threatening to their "right to abortion":
rush related a story about a yound woman incapacitated, pregnant by her boy friend, and on life support. the boy friend wanted very much to keep his girl friend alive until the baby was born, and to raise it.
but the feminists demanded that she be unplugged and die, killing the baby.
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