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.
Not doubting you - but do you have a link? I havent seen that one.
BTW: No one was allowed to give Terri food or water BY MOUTH. So what Jeb Bush, George Bush, and Phil Brennan all agree on is that it was legal to forbid an innocent American citizen to take water BY MOUTH.
I don't recognize such an order as legal, and I am horrified and revolted that I have a President (and probably a governor in MY state of N. Dakota) who do.
I'm glad. But some people still don't.
What planet is Brennan on?
We live in a nation governed by an out of control pack of scumbag activist judges. And the judges only get away with their mischief because they find themselves surrounded by politicians who are spineless enablers, and media boot-lickers like Brennan. The Constitution has nothing to do with it.
I have a buddy who just got out of the hospital after kidney failure; he had a feed tube inserted because by mouth he could have choked/died.
Should I have asked Jeb to step in an override a doctors order so I could give him a spoonful of stuff?
I don't understand your point, I guess.
I agree. President Bush and Governor Bush did all that they could do. Now we are watching the Pope die with dignity AND with nourishment and hydration. This should show those right to die people what it means to die with dignity. One does not need to be starved to death or dehydrated to die with dignity. We die when God decides, not when man decides.
I will never again vote for anyone who isn't 100% pro-life. I will never again vote for anyone named Bush. I will never vote for Condi Rice, and I was willing to overlook her pro-choice leanings, just a few weeks ago.
Somebody got the US Congress to back down about those subpoenas, and it wasn't a lousy lawyer, doctor or judge. Somebody convinced Gonzalez not to get involved, somebody convinced the FBI not to get involved. Somebody made Jeb Bush sit on his hands.
It can't be the President, since he said the strong have a duty to protect the weak.
Agree with you 100%.
Removed Greer? How?
If anyone should have been removed it should have been Michael for a conflict of interest as her guardian since he had other interests (g'friend and kids) already that conflicted with his prior committment (Terri)
Go with that it is way more polite than what I was thinking.
As I watched this mess, I kept thinking of Gavin Newsom, the SF mayor who broke the law to marry gays. He kept saying he was obeying the Constitution. I had nothing but scorn for him.
His job as mayor was to enforce and obey CA law, not apply his standards of right and wrong. Jeb was in the same position.
This is the fault of Greer, lousy lawyers, and a legislature that wouldn't pass the correct law to stop this.
"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."
Let's hope he does.
Unfortunately, the law has been PERVERTED by communist judges.
What to do? I am not smart enough to figure this out.
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