** LIVE VOTE ** FLORIDA SENATE [SCHIAVO] (18-21 DEFEATED)

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[Zeppelin]

Haha, no hard feelings. And it looks like you were right. The dude I was defending got suspended. Not sure what he said that set the admin off, but yeah, he's toast. Anyway, keep on FReepin on...

[Raquel]

"I am suspicious that there is a deep, dark, snaky underbelly to this whole thing."

You're not alone. Those propagating death will stop at nothing, say anything, bribe anyone, and exploit many, just to get what they want. For instance, there is an article in the NY Post today that discussed ABC's national poll relating to this issue. Yet, the question posed was one that suggested that Terri is brain dead, a vegetable with no chance of survival (I'm paraphrasing). The media is very much in line with the death culture, it's pathetic. I'm so upset right now that Terri will die because of the liberal/nazi machine, I don't know what else to do. One thing we can't do is give up. Once people get the truth, they'll see how outrageously dangerous the death culture truly is.

[Vicomte13]

I understand your desire to support Governor Bush regardless of the outcome.

I am afraid I am not with you on this.

Governor Bush has the power to intervene. Perhaps it will be called illegal, by some, but he cannot be stopped from doing it. Perhaps there will be an effort to impeach him, for abuse of power or direct defiance of a Florida Court, but once again, I don't believe that the votes exist in both houses of the Florida legislature to successfully impeach him and remove him from office.

Which means that he in fact has the power to act and save her life, at political cost (but no other cost) to himself.

I expect him to do that.
If he will not do that, I will not consider him to have acted on principle, and my view of him will be irretrievably diminished. From my perspective, when he was the only man who had the power to save an innocent woman's life, a woman being judicially murdered, he flinched. What cost to himself, really, for doing the right thing here? Vilification, perhaps. A bad reputation with some people.
To me, those concerns simply do not justify allowing an innocent woman to die.

Now, I happen to think he will do the right thing, and is girding up for it. He has a little time - not much - to frame the issues right and let a prosecutor start to bring forward serious questions of impropriety on the part of the husband, and sloppy review by judges, etc. And then he can do the right thing.

But from my perspective, there is only one right path, and although taking that path will certainly come at some risk and political cost to him, I expect my leaders to take the right path and accept the consequences. That is why I vote to put them there. If they flinch when they have to stand firm, they do not have the mettle to be there. I don't want my leaders to "try". When they have the power - and Bush does here - I expect them to ACT. A life is in the balance. Bush can do the right thing. If he does, he is Presidential material. If he does not, he will have failed the great moral test of his public life.

That's how I see it.
We are judged by our toughest decisions.
If he acts boldly and infuriates the left, and - according to them - breaks the law, the WORST that can happen is that he'll be pushed out of office, and retire to his mansions with his many millions. If he does not act, an innocent woman dies.
He must act, or he has failed.

[Timeout]

***...they cannot be blamed for evil.***

Your post reminded me of a piece I read on National Review's website earlier today. Meghan Cox Gurdon presents a terrific parody of "Fahrenheit 451" (NOT Moore's movie...the book). If you haven't read it, F451 is "Ray Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad".

---

Here's what Megan Gurdon wrote:

SCREWTAPE REVISITED

"Don't slink along the walls, boy, come in!" The voice is richer than the nephew remembers, vinous and lordlier, but with a reassuring tinge of malice just beneath the surface.


"By his tail, Uncle, this is fine," gasps Mildew, stepping cautiously into the center of the vast chamber that is his uncle's new office. The walls are hung with scarlet velvet; the temperature an agreeable Fahrenheit 911.

Screwtape stands in one corner behind a magnificent expanse of polished wood. "These desks are only given to the highest ranks," he says proudly. "Solid wormwood!" At the familiar name, the visitor flinches and slows his approach. Screwtape chuckles. "Shame about your brother, really," he murmurs, and just the tip of a red tongue flickers from his lips. "But let us hope you are made of more ambitious stuff?"

Mildew exhales loudly, as one bursting some inner restraint, and smiles. "Oh, I think so, Uncle. It is why I have been so eager to see you. Why I am so honored to see you — here."

"Wormwood," Screwtape repeats, pouring out two glasses of old Pharisee and handing one to his nephew. "It came with the promotion. So did the chairs. Sit down. They're Corinthian leather."

Mildew laughs politely and raises his glass. "To the Father of Lies."

"To the Father of Lies."

They drink, and put down their glasses. Screwtape looks hard at his nephew, his fingers moving the stem of his glass back and forth along the polished surface of the desk.

"I wonder, young Mildew, if you understand why I have been promoted — one might say exalted, even — to such heights?"

"I have heard," Mildew begins, and blushes. "The fact is, Uncle, I have heard things that seem impossible. Is it really true that you have found a way to get them to eat — "

" — their young?" Screwtape interrupts with a hungry smile.
"Yes. Yes! I have found the key, the key, my boy, to unlocking the worst in the human heart. Oh, massacres are entertaining enough, and reasonably productive. Rapine and thieving and savagery and the usual nonsense go a good distance to wrecking men's souls, but not in sufficient numbers. Not for us to win for good — that is, ha-ha, for ill. We must forever be stoking grievances, feeding pride, and constantly thrusting and parrying with the Enemy and his agents. No, the beautifully corrupting key that I have found is vanity."

"I've read about that," Mildew says, remembering. "In first year college, Know Thine Enemy 101, I think it was. All is vanity, saith the preacher," the nephew quotes, his mouth twisting as if he has bitten a bad snail.

Screwtape grimaces companionably. "Indeed. Fortunately most of them don't bother with that any more."

"But how do — "

Screwtape presses on. "What does Man want? He wants sex, he wants comfort, he wants to be young. He does not want to be told he can't have what he wants, or to be inconvenienced, or, worse, to be told his desires are wrong. This is where the Enemy's agents end up doing our work for us, Mildew, countless times!" Screwtape chortles. "Man is a creature of appetites, Mildew. Remember that."

"Appetites, yes, but eating their young, Uncle? I feel sure that I read somewhere that humans are naturally revolted by cannibalism. The Enemy's doing, no doubt, but still, there it is."

Screwtape fixes his nephew with a shriveling glare. "We are not inducing them to broil the little tykes, dear boy, this is no fricassee of first-graders." He sighs heavily, a sufferer of fools, but then brightens, clearly distracted by a pleasing thought. "That's an idea, though. Must get Singer to write something up for me on that...excellent. Now, where — "

"Not broiling them."

"Yes. My achievement, the reason for this — " Screwtape gestures largely about the handsome apartment — "is that I have managed, by appealing to man's love of self, his vanity, to convince millions that it is not cannibalism, but progress, to turn tiny human infants into medicine. The strong picking the weak apart, cell by cell, to be consumed by the strong? Brilliant!"

The uncle pours another red gout of Pharisee into each glass, and leans forward. "There are some envious others — " he continues softly, glancing around as if to suggest malevolent eavesdroppers," — who begrudge my rise. To them I say," and here Screwtape raises his voice, "Vanity is a rusty key that was left lying about, and it was I alone who saw what it could unlock at this point in human history."

"It is true," Screwtape continues with a shrug, "that much of the groundwork was already laid. We had already convinced people of the rightness of destroying inconvenient life. Now they talk quite coolly of "blastocysts," and "clumps of cells" and "surplus embryos." My genius was to recognize that they needed just a little push to be convinced, with their mania for recycling, that by harvesting something that would otherwise be chucked out, they are doing a positive good! Think of it: They believe they occupy "the moral high ground." Oh, the profits for us — "

"But Uncle," Mildew interjects, very respectfully, "there is one point I do not understand. Humans have shown great resistance to the genetic modification of fruits and vegetables — "

Screwtape sees where this is going, and gives what might almost be called a tender smile, were not so many sharply-pointed teeth involved.

"All of Europe was up in arms over plans to make a more tender ear of corn, Uncle, do you remember? Frankenfood, they called it. Gigantic monster tomatoes were inflated and displayed for countryfolk. I do not mean to contradict you, Uncle, but if people fear an altered cob, surely they will not accept a genetically modified human being? After all, that's what this cell-picking is about, isn't it?"

"Do you think," says the uncle witheringly, "that people who believe that life on earth is the only one they have, that once they die there is nothing, that there are no consequences to their choices — one of Our Father Below's most successful slogans, by the way, choice — do you think, my boy, that they will hesitate if we give them the chance to cut and sew their medical destinies for the mere price of another's life? As Our Father pointed out to the Enemy during that unfortunate incident involving the man Job, "A person will give up everything in order to stay alive."

Mildew tries to hold his uncle's eye, but cannot. He looks down and fiddles awkwardly with his tie.

"No, my boy," Screwtape continues in kinder tones. "We are on the brink of wondrous things. This is better than the 18th century, when we convinced whole societies that black-skinned persons were things rather than people — "

"Bought and sold and damnation aplenty," Mildew nods, impressed, "but it didn't last."

"No thanks to Him," Screwtape snaps. "But we are winning now, I can feel it, Mildew. Think of this: In some rich societies, people are not just destroying blastocysts, not merely dismantling children in the womb, they are euthanizing newborn babies!" Screwtape pats the place where his heart would be, were he to have one. "That's one of my father's, you know. Euthanize. So clean, so modern-sounding. He got a bonus for that one. But not wormwood."

"The one I love," Mildew interjects enthusiastically, "is The Right to Die. It's so devilishly clever."

Screwtape looks thoughtfully into his empty glass. "It has potential, once we get the strong to use it regularly against the weak in the guise of being humane." The uncle frowns. "Unfortunately we're running into some difficulties with that slogan. This Florida case is not going as hoped. Right to Die tests well in some markets but the Enemy, blast Him, will keep enlisting these poisonous little brutes with their claptrap about the Culture of Life and whatnot. Things may improve when we are rid of that turbulent chief priest of His. It can't be long now."

Screwtape shakes his head as if to clear it.

"More wine? Let's finish the bottle, with a toast to a glorious future. These are heady times, Mildew, and we can use the Enemy's words against Him. He wants these creatures to believe that each one of them has value. The Enemy actually does value them, however tiny or aged, however mewling or puking or cleft of palate, if you can imagine it.

"The wonderful thing for us? It is increasingly easy to take that Enemy-given sense of intrinsic worth and twist it into cruel self-interest. With man's vanity, and a little medical breakthrough here and there, we can tempt them the prospect of a life without illness, inconvenience, or parasitical relatives. It will, for humans, be heaven on earth."

Screwtape chuckles darkly. "And afterwards? Why, we'll get to meet them down here. In person. And the loveliest bit of all is that their good intentions will have brought them here."

Uncle and nephew, grinning, raise their glasses once more.

"To the Father of Lies!"

[Rodentking]

You are right on. Act, then wait to see who you have to apologize to or tell to buzz off.

I see no real point in "asking" Judge Greer anything. He made up his mind when his devil buddies Felos and Schiavo first talked to him.

Leaders ACT.

[Salvation]

Get those dim sinators out of there next election!

[Former Fetus]

Phone: (850) 487-1111

I called DCF. As soon as I mentioned Terry, the lady who answered the phone told me that she was not allowed to talk about it, just acknowledge the request. I was about to hang up when she whispered:"please, pray for us". It gave me hope that the people at DCF want Terri to live.

[Moonmad27]

The Dems are counting on people who support Terri to refuse to vote for Republicans in the future. See how far you will get with a Dem in office.

[CaptSkip]

'Nuf said. Not trying to be a jerk.

Then you must simply be a natural . . .

Hey, come on "C on the F"...I'm sure you can do better, and I've been called worse.

But I stand by my critique and suspicion of "Canary" and the post in question. I also think I was fair and gentle in my responses.

Apparently the mods had similar suspicions since the account was banned.

[planekT]

If God is with him, he will do the right thing. It may not be in the form that you or I expect.

[jacquej]

when we go to sleep tonight, please let us pray this childhood song I remember for Terri...

"When at night I go to sleep,
Fourteen angels watch do keep.
Two my head are guarding:
Two my feet are guiding:
Two are on my right hand;
Two are on my left hand;
Two who warmly cover;
Two who o'er me hover;
Two to whom 'tis given
To guide my steps to Heaven."

[Brad’s Gramma]

Oh my gosh! You can BET we're going to be praying for them. Thanks for that report!

[Soul Seeker]

"More wine? Let's finish the bottle, with a toast to a glorious future. These are heady times, Mildew, and we can use the Enemy's words against Him. He wants these creatures to believe that each one of them has value. The Enemy actually does value them, however tiny or aged, however mewling or puking or cleft of palate, if you can imagine it.

Removing God was the key to the present Culture of Death.

This paragraph in particular strikes me because it's at the heart of what influences the Father of Lies. The highest Angel did not rank as high as the souls God created in his image. Vanities made the FOL's incapable of accepting status below God, but below our life form? Intolerable. So he destroys what God loves, and uses the same vanities that brought about his Fall to bring about ours.

I do recognize evil as an actual being. He's been quite active this week. I'm not frightened of him, per se, though recognize his power exceeds mine, though not my God. I'm broken hearted that our culture has degraded to the point a majority believe his lies without question.

Of course I recognize to some on this board, and including those in the MSM, this sounds like pure lunacy. But I would respond it is lunacy to state Death is preferable to Life. That Starvation is a euphoric Death. That Judges should be able to dictate who lives and who dies. Worse, that polls should be the final arbiter. If that isn't the definition of insanity what is?

[planekT]

Simply beautiful. Thank you.

Those fourteen angels certainly watch over Terri.

Another poster reminded me today that her life does not end with her death.

It is a most comforting thought in this circumstance.

[E.G.C.]

BTT!!!!!!

[Boardwalk]

I am opposed to all removal of feeding tube decisions based on a PVS, when there is no PVS.