Posted on 03/24/2005 5:26:02 PM PST by Congressman Billybob
By the time you read this, Teresa Schiavo may be dead of starvation as required by Florida Judge George Greer. Thousands of people have produced millions of words on this subject. I should write nothing, unless I have more to offer than the MSM (mainstream media). I do.
Personal experience colors what I say. On 1 January 1994, my mother was taken to Mission Memorial Hospital in Asheville with serious injuries from an auto accident. She’d suffered both a heart attack and a stroke after the accident. She was in a coma, but still alive.
Seven years before, her life was saved in that same excellent hospital, by emergency surgery to repair an aorta aneurism. She spent a week in intensive care, and told both her sons that she did not want to be “hooked up to tubes again.” In 1994, my brother was in a different hospital after the accident; decisions on my mother’s care rested on me alone.
Four different medical specialists were called in. I took their advice. I talked to all the grandchildren. Ultimately I made not just one decision, but a series of them, leading directly to my mother’s death, four days later.
I have not yet steeled myself to write the complete history of those four days. Someday I should, because advances in medical care mean that many more Americans will face similar decisions about family members. I understand what Terri Schiavo’s family are going through except the extraordinary time those burdens have been on their shoulders and their hearts.
That said, what can I offer on this subject? For the best medical discussion, I recommend Charles Krauthammer’s excellent column this week. On the legal side, events now are a direct consequence of a legal failure seven years ago, and the arrogance of judges who cannot admit error and merely dispense with the case, rather than take the tougher path and decide it.
The attorneys for Terri’s family should have filed for her divorce from Michael Schiavo seven years ago. He was clearly guilty of adultery. She was clearly blameless. I’m unaware of any divorce action brought by a “next friend” for a woman who cannot speak. But I am aware of divorces the other way – husbands and wives who obtained divorces from spouses who were profoundly disabled, or in prison, or who had disappeared. Turnabout is fair play.
Had Michael been removed as the husband, he would not have been named, or continued, as her guardian. Therefore, what is happening now would not have occurred.
Then there are Michael’s reasons for bias. He had three personal reasons at home (a “wife” and two children). He had hundreds of thousands of reasons in the bank (a million-dollar malpractice settlement). But Judge Greer also had reasons for bias.
In Florida, judges are subject to retention elections. In his last election, Judge Greer received substantial contributions from at least five lawyers who have represented Michael over the years. This is a matter of public records in Florida. None of the MSM have bothered to research and report on this.
Speaking of bias, ABC had its own mini-Rathergate this week. ABC touted a “memo circulated among Republican Senators” which sought to make political hay from Terri Schiavo. The memo is a fraud. It contains references any Senator or staffer would have known not to use concerning legislative business. It also lacks the standard cover sheet and initials of sender for all intraSenate memos. This fraud story was broken by www.Powerline.com; they have the details.
Like CBS, ABC rushed to broadcast with a forged document because it didn’t ask competent experts whether it was false. ABC was in a rush (dare we say biased?) to attack the Republicans. The bias has continued in an ABC poll that misstates the facts of the Schiavo case to produce false results. A day after this memo was exposed as a fraud, Lanny Davis cited it as true on Fox News. Given Davis’s history, that was predictable.
Lastly, on the Internet I’ve seen a brain scan of Terri Schiavo She has a larger gap of fluid than in a normal brain. But I’ve also seen the scan of a woman with a similar void – who was given up for brain dead – who recovered, and who corresponded with me and others and released her medical records, to present an alternative to the assumptions of “experts.”
What we have here is a gross failure of common sense and decency in state and federal courts. Terri Schiavo should be in the physical custody of her parents, who love her, not in the hands of her “husband,” who wants her dead. Her soul now and forever is in the hands of God.
About the Author: John Armor is a First Amendment attorney and author who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
Don't apologize, I have been saying the same thing about all the GOP with far less restraint.
Denial of the fullness of Last Rites to a Catholic is egregious.
That is...I just don't have the words to say it.
Not only is her right to life being violated, but her 1st amendment right to religious practice is as well.
I fear for my autistic grandson should anything ever happen to his parents and I am no longer here to care for him.
Yeah. But this whole affair makes me feel like chuck heston at the end of 'planet of the apes.'
All I want to do is scream 'God **** them all to ****'
Words fail me as well. I have used more expletives in the past few days than I have in years. It is an attempt at catharsis on my part.
I'll make a resolution too. If Terri starves to death then I'll cease to be an active Republican and become an active member of the Constitution Party.
Are you Vietnamese? I only ask because your FR name is Zack Nguyen. If so, chào anh.
We must not give up, in believing, hoping for, praying for a miracle. One of Terri's friends said that when discussing Karen Quinlan, Terri said "Where there's life there is hope". Terri is still with us, let's not give up hope.
What we have here is a gross failure of common sense and decency in state and federal courts.
That is true, but there is more. What we also have here is the naked face of evil, which understands fully that we are in its power, even if only momentarily, and which is determined that while it has us in its grasp it is going to inflict as much misery, pain, terror and death as it can.
"And all that time, he kept from them, his knowledge that she did not want to live that way; he kept that denial of her wish, for nearly 8 years."
Did the possibility ever dawn on you that in those first years they were busy trying to save Terri, flying her out to California for rehabilitation, and the topic never came up? Why would it. At that time they thought they still had some hope for Terri's rehabilitation. As the years passed, it became much more obvious that that wasn't going to happen. When Michael got to the point where he was convinced by doctors that nothing was ever going to improve for Terri, and after he and the parents had their falling out and had competing ideas about what to do about Terri, that's when the subject had to be discussed seriously. The parents wanted one thing; Michael knew what his wife had said in casual conversation (heard also by 2 others besides himself) and he wanted to honor Terri's wishes which were different than the parents. Under FL law, the spouse makes the decision, and Michael did. You don't give up hope on a loved one right away. It's as time passes that you become more and more reconciled that there will be no improvement, ever. So, use some logic here about how things really play out in life, rather than the story you'd prefer to concoct in order to slam Michael. By the way, all this stuff is in the court transcripts. Go read up.
The system did not break down; it has been deliberately and systematically subverted.
He denied her wish, and he did so, for nearly 8 years.
During all of which time, he failed to reveal in probate, her wish, and then petition in probate, for opportunity to see if things improve.
Changes to wishes and wills of incapacitated people, are made in probate; especially life and death cases.
Quite true, you shameful COSsack, the Schindlers foolishly did encourage Michael to date, which of course would backfire when he succumbed to his gonads and begot two bastards with a wife still inconveniently living. They certainly share the blame for sowing seeds of evil. But again, Michael wasn't hostile at the time to letting Terri live.
"Just in case" would be why.
Quite clearly the fact that they resorted to experimental treatment shows that they had little hope in conventional medicine at the time; any sane person would be thinking about the "just in case" scenario.
"when he succumbed to his gonads and begot two bastards with a wife still inconveniently living"
You know you're a really viscious doozy. You didn't happen to be by the U.S. District Courthouse this evening, were you?
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|
GREER DONOR |
AMOUNT |
POSITION |
ACTION |
|
Lawyers For |
Hamden Baskin III Felos & Felos Deborah Bushnell Gyneth S. Stanley Steven Nilsson Beth Wilson
|
$500 & $500 |
Michael Schiavo’s Lawyer[s] |
Greer |
|
|
Daniel Grieco
|
$300 |
Employer of Michael Schiavo at time of Feb. 25, 1990 then attorneyOf record for Michael up until the malpractice award, |
Incident when injuries occurred to Terri,Reappeared as attorney for selected pleadings |
|
State/County |
Frank Nagatani |
$50 and $50
|
DCF Attorney |
Squashed |
|
|
Bernie McCabe |
In-Kind |
State Attorney |
Allowed underling to appear in campaign ad for Greer |
|
|
Everett Rice |
$500 & In-Kind |
Sheriff/State Rep |
Didn’t conduct criminal investigation into what really happened to Terri or allegations of abuse after initial incident |
|
|
John Carassas |
$100
|
Deputy Attorney General |
Florida Deputy Attorney General, involvement with |
|
|
James Hellickson
|
$150 & In Kind |
Assistant state attorney in office of Bernie McCabe, Pinellas/Pasco State Attorney |
|
|
|
Paula Shea |
In Kind |
Assistant Pinellas Public Defender |
Appeared in Greer Campaign Ad |
|
|
Andrew
|
$100 |
Officer in Guardianship monitoring program and Guardian ad litem pool |
Was supposed to: |
|
Misc. People w connections |
Richard La Belle
|
$100 |
Member of Board of Directors of |
Supposedly ACPD |
|
|
Battaglia, Ross, Disus and Wein
|
$250 |
Principal Kelli Crabb is past chairperson of Hospice Foundation of Florida Suncoast and member of Board of directors |
|
|
|
Gus Bilirakis
|
$40 cash |
Former Hospice Board member and of American Hellonic Education Progressive Assoc. (AHEPA) |
Felos past Governor |
|
|
Divito and Higham
|
$250 and $250 |
Law firm employed by St. Petersburg/Venice |
Terri’s Dioceses |
BUMP
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