Jeff, I think this is a clear-cut case showing that what is "legal" is not necessarily "lawful," let alone just -- as in "justice." What is missing in this long string of court decisions is precisely what you point to in the above: Virtue.
We must continue to pray for Terri, and hope that justice will be done.
The Clinton legacy continues. We saw it real time with Elian and Waco and Monica, etc. Now we see the lingring after effects of a judiciary, appointed by Clinton. Now instead of torching innocent women and children at Waco, we are starving them to death in FL.
"A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.... While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.... If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security." - Samuel Adams
"We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."- James Madison
"[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen onto any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man." Samuel Adams
"[I]f we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity." Daniel Webster
"Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants."- William Penn
"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles." Patrick Henry
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."- John Adams, Oct. 11, 1798
This is probably not a new observation, but I think we are seeing a judges rebellion, judges basically telling non-judges to stay out of their business. They aren't at this point interested in any bottom-up review of the case, they aren't at this point interested in Theresa Schindler as a human being, their priority is defending their turf from anyone outside their guild.
I am sick at my stomach, to be frank. I'm not afraid for her, death isn't the end, and death isn't to be feared. I am more afraid for what this means, for what this case reveals about the moral state of affairs among the living.
The end of life comes for us all, and at the end, as the fight comes to a close, there are difficult decisions to be made as we try and decide how to continue that final fight. It can be difficult at the end to know whether and how to proceed. But I can easily promise that I will never stand by and allow food and water to be cut off. Refuse some further procedure, and the disease takes its course. Refuse food and water, and you have become complicit in killing someone you claim to love.
Its odd, the attack on 9/11 was a kind of watershed, an event that forced people to choose where they stood on some very key issues. People who I had previously admired, or tolerated, who chose wrong I have been unable to ever again see in the same light, I have lost respect for individuals and institutions and whole countries because of it.
This is another such event. People are forced to choose, to defend her, or to be complicit in her death, and those who choose wrong, and those who have refused to choose, are marked in my eyes, I will not be able to look at them in the same light again.
There is something almost biblical in the way the entire world stands by to watch this woman's death as we approach Easter, as men in suits studiously wash their hands of her and turn away.