Posted on 04/02/2005 9:25:17 AM PST by RedBloodedAmerican
"If Governor Bush wants to be the man that his brother is, he needs to step up to the plate like President Bush did when the United Nations told him not to go into Iraq," said Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue and an advocate for Terri Schiavo. "Be a man. Put politics aside."
Pardon me, but what would Mr. Terry have Jeb Bush – or, for that matter, his brother the president – do beyond what he has already done? Both men did everything within their legitimate powers to stop the judicial execution of Terri Schiavo. They were stopped by an out-of-control judiciary and constitutional limitations on their official duties.
In working with Congress to exercise its legislative authority in the case by transferring jurisdiction from the Florida courts to the federal judiciary, the president went out of his way to craft a solution to the gut-wrenching tragedy unfolding in Florida. He was stymied in his efforts to come down on the side of life, as he put it, by both the Florida and federal courts. Both he and the Congress found themselves facing a vexing question of state vs. federal rights.
Moreover, the federal courts given jurisdiction by Congress simply stepped aside and sided with the state courts, putting their stamp of approval on a judicial record shot through with the most egregious errors and omissions.
At that point no president subject to the Constitution had any authority to prevent the obscenity being perpetrated by Michael Schiavo with the enthusiastic backing of Judge George Greer and his judicial cronies. George Bush had run out of options.
There are those who would have had him apply the full power of the federal government, using armed force to wrest Terri from her executioners. Nothing would have delighted me more, but we live in a nation governed by the Constitution and there is nothing in that document that would permit such an action.
And had he so acted, the consequences would have been almost as politically explosive as President Lincoln's attempt to resupply the Fort Sumpter garrison, which started the shooting in a bloody war that would kill 600,000 Americans before it ended.
Florida's Governor Jeb Bush weighed in early on the controversy, seeking to protect Terri from her husband and all those right-to-die fanatics who had mounted an unholy crusade to kill Terri Schiavo and use her death to advance their cause. After the Legislature passed and the governor signed what came to be known as Terri's Law, the courts stepped in and quashed it as violative of the Florida constitution, and the matter was back to square one.
Faced with Judge Greer's order to cut off Terri's nourishment and hydration by removing her feeding tube – an order that was in reality a judicial death warrant – the governor sought to have the Legislature step in again and pass a law that would have saved Terri's life. He won the support of the Florida House but ran up against a stone wall in the Florida Senate. Despite the most vigorous lobbying, Jeb Bush was unable to move the Senate.
He then attempted to use his executive authority by having the state agency charged with protecting the disabled to take Terri into its custody and reconnect her life-giving feeding tube despite Judge Greer's prohibition against such an act. He went so far as to order state officials to seize Terri but found himself facing local police and sheriff's deputies who swore that they would resist. What was looming was a potential shooting war between local and state police.
Despite that real possibility, some of Terri's more belligerent supporters insist that Jeb Bush follow through and use force to free Terri. They ignore the possibilities inherent in such a confrontation between bodies of armed men.
According to those who know Jeb Bush, a deeply religious Roman Catholic, he is appalled by the spectacle of a court deliberately violating Terri's religious and civil rights and the ordeal to which she is being brutally subjected. In addition to the anguish he feels over Terri's ordeal, he is tortured by his inability to do anything to save her beyond praying and calling on the people to pray with him.
When the secular forces who targeted an innocent woman in pursuit of their immoral political agenda have gotten their wish and Terri is in a place where they can no longer reach and torture her, Jeb Bush will have an opportunity to see that the rampant corruption endemic in this case is vigorously investigated and those responsible for this atrocity are prosecuted to the full extent of the law they so wantonly abused.
That's when we need to hold his feet to the fire – not now, when he is powerless to do what he and so many of the rest of us so desperately wanted done.
The problem(s) were lousy lawyers on both sides, lousy laws, lousy doctors and a lousy judge.
8 years of a dictator (Clinton) was enough for me. I don't want another, esp. from the GOP.
I'm hoping that whatever Jeb does in the days to come changes the attitudes of those who are so critical of him now.
Just wondering...What do you think would have happened if the Pope himself went to give Terri water? Just been on my mind today. I'm not blaming Jeb Bush or Pres at this point. I think they tried.
I'm shocked to learn that Phil Brennan has never heard of the Fourteenth Amendment.
well, being Florida, they probably would ask to see his visa first. Then they would make sure he isnt trying to sneak any Italian (or Polish) vino in. Then, if he crossed onto the Hospice property, they would arrest him. Not even the Pope is (or should not be) above the law in America.
I'm shocked to learn that Phil Brennan has never heard of the Fourteenth Amendment.
"At that point no president subject to the Constitution had any authority to prevent the obscenity being perpetrated by Michael Schiavo with the enthusiastic backing of Judge George Greer and his judicial cronies. George Bush had run out of options."
So some keep asserting. Show me the provision in either constitution, U.S. or Florida, which allows the courts to nullify acts of the other two branches or denies the executive the same separate and equal authority? You can't find them because they do not exist.
The solution to the tyranny of the JUDICIAL OLIGARCHS is to get candidates in Republican executive branch primaries to promise to do what Jeb Bush refused to do - to use the constitutional power the executive holds equal to the other two branches to NULLIFY unconstitutional laws and judicial decisions by not enforcing or countermanding them. EXECUTIVE NULLIFICATION, practiced by Presidents Jefferson and Jackson, has atrophied from disuse since the early days of the republic. The trend was set by enforcement of the widely unpopular in the north Dred Scot decision (1857) by a northern Democrat president (Buchanan) who was friendly to slavery which led to civil war. Plessy and the busing cases after Brown were equally unconstitutional as was removing prayer from schools, but we all had to bow and scrape because we have been led to believe the courts were the final word, no matter how wrong and unjust.
We should not fear that Democrat presidents and governors would do the same. Errors by chief executives are only until the next election. Errors by the Supreme Court are for the lives of the justices and often beyond through stare decisis and the interest of members of the courts, regardless of by whom appointed, to conserve and accrue their own power.
It is interesting to note that when Judge Greer enlisted the willing assistance of the Pinellas County Sheriff's executive police power for enforcement of his concentration camp which Governor Bush used as and excuse for not acting because of a possible armed conflict that Governor Bush had the Florida constitutional power to resolve the dispute in his favor by suspending and replacing both the sheriff and Judge Greer for interfering with the lawful duties of the Department of Children and Families but he did not use it.
FLORIDA CONSTITUTION
ARTICLE VIII - County Government
Section 1
(d) COUNTY OFFICERS. There shall be elected by the electors of each county, for terms of four years, a sheriff, a tax collector, a property appraiser, a supervisor of elections, and a clerk of the circuit court;
ARTICLE IV - Executive
SECTION 7. Suspensions; filling office during suspensions.--
(a) By executive order stating the grounds and filed with the custodian of state records, the governor may suspend from office any state officer not subject to impeachment, any officer of the militia not in the active service of the United States, or any county officer, for malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, drunkenness, incompetence, permanent inability to perform official duties, or commission of a felony, and may fill the office by appointment for the period of suspension. The suspended officer may at any time before removal be reinstated by the governor.
ARTICLE III - Legislative
SECTION 17. Impeachment.--
(a) The governor, lieutenant governor, members of the cabinet, justices of the supreme court, judges of district courts of appeal, judges of circuit courts, and judges of county courts shall be liable to impeachment for misdemeanor in office.
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Three threads (mine) that should come to everyone's attention are these:
Why Judicial Appointments Do NOT Matter (Schiavo)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1371395/posts
OPEN LETTER TO HUGH HEWITT RE: TERRI SCHIAVO and the JUDICIAL OLIGARCHY
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1368633/posts
SCHIAVO v. SCHIAVO - "Conservative" Judge Birch Proclaims JUDICIAL OLIGARCHY (full opinion)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1374897/posts
A point which I drew from this last one is in my comment after the judge's opinion:
Judge Birch fails to appreciate when he states, "An act of Congress violates separation of powers if it requires federal courts to exercise their Article III power “in a manner repugnant to the text, structure, and traditions of Article III."[" - ] that that necessarily implies that Congress and the President are likewise not bound by decisions of the courts that conflict or usurp their Article I and II powers or are repugnant to the plain language of other parts of the Constitution they are sworn to uphold and enforce. It is more evidence that judicial appointments of the "right temperament" will not curb the excesses of the courts as the position of all-powerful judge seems to corrupt absolutely in the absence of will and true independent action of the other supposedly separate and equal branches.
Maybe you should ask him and post his response to you hear on this thread. Be sure to PING me :)
How long will it take before it's all the joooozzzze fault?
I'm sick and tired of all the lame excuses.
Terri Schiavo died slowly and barbarically for two weeks while the politicians watched, and now she's dead. That's forever.
You mean throw them a bone? I wouldn't.
Contrary to what the author of this article has written here, this was not Jeb Bush's first involvement in the case. In 1999, Bush actually signed into law a bill passed by the Florida legislature in which nutrition and hydration were defined as extraordinary medical care that does not have to be maintained for all patients as a matter of course.
That law gave Michael Schiavo all the "ammunition" he needed to starve Terri to death.
"Errors by chief executives are only until the next election"
So this justifies it to you?
Jeb did all he could = BS
Terri Schiavo died slowly and barbarically for two weeks while the politicians watched...
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Even convicted criminals get a humane needle...she deserved that to say the least. The law needs to be improved, an understatement I know.
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