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.
"How long will it take before it's all the joooozzzze fault?"
And I'm sick and tired of all those fools that insist Jebby properly exercised the full extent of his executive power to save her. If he had it would have provoked (oh dear!) a constitutional crisis, which by the way need not be resolved in favor of an incorrect judiciary. Well, by not acting he created a consitutional crisis anyway (It's not over either) and abdicated his responsibilities. He is a wimp. Pure and simple. You guys go vote for him..he is toast.
An EO would not have saved her life by reinserting the feed tube. And IIRC that was done on a one-time eo already in 2003.
" 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? "
Your buddy cannot tolerate oral food and feeding him by mouth would be very harmful.
Terri's case was different- it appears that the feeding tube may have been redundant, if we are to believe the sworn affidavits of the health care professionals who actually cared for her.
They fed her soft food and water ( behind Michael Schiavo and Judge Greer's back ) and she apparently tolerated it well- no aspiration pneumonia resulted.
Her parents pleaded with Judge Greer to allow them to document Terri's ability to swallow soft foods by getting a swallow test and he denied their motion.
I thought this was urban myth until I read their pleading on line.
When your buddy recovers and is able to eat normally , I am sure that you would be as outraged as the rest of us, if Judge Greer ordered that once the feeding tube comes out, your buddy would also be forbidden to eat regular foods.
Both pathways for nutrition were officially blocked , by court order, for Terri.
Basically, if the law says you die, you die. That's axiomatic. Of course in my innocence I always believed that the law didn't have the power to say an innocent person must die, and that if anyone tried to kill an innocent person, the law--meaning those whose duty it is to enforce the law--would step right in and intercede. Silly me. Silly, silly me. This is why I'm not a high-priced laywer, making six figures, living in a big mansion, and driving a BMW. I just don't have the brains for it.
"Removed Greer? How?"
Read carefully and then go to post #11 for the basis for misfeasance and incompetence.
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.
A majority of congressmen are lawyers, so they are trained to obey judges. They can't think outside the legal box.
It was Karl Rove. It's a grand Rovian conspiracy.
Elizabeth: Right! That's it. Any last requests, Blackadder, before I chop your block off and put it on top of the crimble tree?
Edmund: [still searching his person, comes across the novelty death warrant] Er, well, there is one, actually, Ma'am: You know how much I've always been a great admirer [motions his hand to and fro between she and Melchett] of you both -- I was wondering if I could just have your autographs, erm, to keep me company during the final, tragic, lonely hours... [he has already handed her a quill]
Elizabeth: Oh, all right. [signs]
Edmund: Ah, there. Thank you, Ma'am. [moves to Melchett] And, Lord Melchett [gives him the quill]...just there... [Melchett signs] Thank-- [looks astonished] Oh! Dear me!
Elizabeth: What is it?
Edmund: Why, this piece of paper that Your Majesty has just signed turns out to be some sort of death warrant!
Elizabeth: Oops. ...and I can't go back on it without destroying the whole basis of the British Constitution...
Edmund: I fear not!
If ever there was a time for an elected representative to take his shoe off and start beating it against something this was one of those times. But instead of elected representatives we have these bastardized things in America called "professional politicians". Who won't chance anything because they want to move up to the next rung. Well, my good friends, when getting ahead politically means allowing a woman to be brutally starved to death we have a major problem with the people in elected office who are supposed to be protecting that woman.
Jeb Bush was like a man that sees a child drowning in a lake but sees a sign that says "no swimming" so he points to the sign and says "sorry, can't help ya".
Probably because you haven't looked for any. Try reading the Florida constitution for starters, then if you aren't tired read the US constitution, and follow up with a good dose of the Federalist papers to get at what power the founders really intended be vested in the judiciary vs the executive and legislative branches. They envisioned checks and balances but not a co-equal branch. That is precisely why courts below the SCOTUS, all funding for courts, and all federal judges including SCOTUS are the province of the Executive and Legislative branches and why they invested civilian control of law enforcement and the military in the Executive. They fully intended for the Executive to be able to limit Judiciary power to prevent precisely what we witnessed in Terri's case. They expected of course an executive with the will to perform.
If Randall Terry and his bunch were so anxious to see someone act, consequences be damned, why didn't Randall and his followers take up arms on their own and storm the hospice?
That's the challenge Jeb Bush was faced with. It's easy for loudmouthed back benchers like Terry to talk. Ultimately, he faces no risks and he bears no responsibility. He can just yammer like any other idiot on a street corner.
It's far more difficult for people like Jeb Bush who have positions of authority and a duty to consider all of the ramifications of their actions.
"Now, there you go again!," Ronald Reagan!
If the view that you espouse here can elect Jeb Bush to other offices or higher offices, so be it. Get busy electing him, for you will need to create "a new base" of support.
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