Posted on 04/04/2005 4:34:38 AM PDT by goldstategop
When it comes to a judiciary run amok, the other two branches of government are in a persistent vegetative state.
Terri Schiavo died today. Her fate was sealed by an adulterous mate, a homicidal judiciary and conservative politicians who could pass for eunuchs.
Whenever a judge – almost any judge, anywhere – issues an edict (however bizarre or detached from reality and the law), elected officials lose bladder control when contemplating the possibility of actually doing something about it.
In San Francisco earlier this month, California Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer, with a wave of his imperious hand, reversed a decision of 61.4% of the electorate.
Kramer struck down the state’s marriage law and redefined matrimony in California to include homosexual couples. In so doing, he also nullified a 2000 referendum, passed overwhelmingly by the voters, defining marriage a la Genesis.
Stripped of its legalese, Kramer’s reasoning came down to this: I think it’s a denial of equal protection for individuals whose unions are characterized by acts of sodomy not to be able to wed. Therefore, bleep you -- state voters, Judeo-Christian morality and the obvious meaning of words (like “marriage” and “family”).
This particular exercise in judicial authoritarianism is being appealed.
At least no one is dying (as yet) from Kramer’s decision. The same can not be said in the Terri Schiavo case.
The starvation death of Mrs, Schiavo was an exercise of a family’s right to privacy, judges tell us. Interesting.
The same mythical privacy right (alleged to be lurking in the First Amendment’s “penumbra”) which gives a woman the right to kill her unborn child, now gives a husband – claiming he’s fulfilling his wife’s wishes – the power to have his disabled spouse put to death in a way in which we don’t even kill dogs in this country.
Terri Schiavo wasn’t comatose. She didn’t need a respirator to breathe. If she was being “kept alive by artificial means,” so too is the dialysis patient, and the diabetic, who will die without regular injections of insulin.
Terri was conscious much of the time. She smiled and seemed to recognize her parents. She tried to form words. Experts testified that, with therapy, her condition could improve.
Dr. William Cheshire, an eminent neurologist employed by the state of Florida, believes Terri was misdiagnosed and that instead of being in a persistent vegetative state, she was in a state of minimal consciousness, and that she felt pain and visibly reacted to it.
But, in his omniscience, Pinellas Circuit Judge George Greer has ruled that Terri was a non-person kept alive with a feeding tube, and that, if she could communicate, she’d say: “Oh, please kill me. How I long for the excruciating experience of being starved to death over two weeks.”
The judicial demigod further determined that Terri’s parents (they who gave her life and valiantly fought to sustain it) should have no say in deciding Terri’s fate.
Instead, Greer ruled, the adulterous spouse (who prevented Terri from receiving therapy and who a nurse testified would lovingly inquire, “When is the bitch going to die?”) should speak in her behalf. (“That right, your honor, my wife repeatedly told me that if she was ever disabled – and I was living with another woman and stood to benefit financially from her demise – she’d want to die a slow and agonizing death.”)
The urge to play God isn’t limited to this Pinellas Court pipsqueak. The Florida Supreme Court, U.S District Court, 11th. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court all either concurred with Greer’s Auschwitz decision or refused to consider the case.
In the meantime, Republican politicians went through the motions. The Florida Legislature passed and Governor Jeb Bush signed Terri’s Law, providing for the protection of Mrs. Schiavo’s inalienable right to life. Greer and his colleagues declared the law unconstitutional.
Thereafter, Congress passed a special law giving federal courts the power to review the case independent of precedent. The federal courts declined. (Honor among tyrants?)
Congress even took the extraordinary step of issuing a subpoena for Terri, to keep the brain-damaged woman out of the clutches of her judicial executioners. Greer ruled that the Congress of the United States lacked the authority to thwart his will.
Then, throwing caution to the wind, Governor Bush went to Judge Greer and argued that he should be allowed to take Terri into protective custody, under a law giving a state agency the authority to intervene in behalf of a vulnerable adult “suffering from abuse or neglect that presents the risk of death or serious physical injury.”
Greer held the governor had no such power. (Now there’s a shocker!) Instead of sending state troopers to the hospice to rescue the starving woman – thus fulfilling his mandate – the twice-elected governor went, hat-in-hand, to the man who’s been doggedly trying to kill Terri, to ask for permission to save her life.
Even without statutory law, Governor Bush had the power to stop the horror.
The Florida Constitution provides: “All natural persons, male and female alike, are equal before the law and have inalienable rights, among which are the right to enjoy and defend life and liberty … No person shall be deprived of any right because of … physical disability.”
As the state’s chief executive, with primary responsibility for enforcing its laws, Bush took an oath to “support, protect and defend” Florida’s Constitution. What part of that duty did he not understand?
In a test of wills, Bush failed. When attempting to stare down judicial autocrats -- legislators, governors and presidents almost always blink.
I know of only one man who didn’t – former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who was willing to lose everything (except his integrity) for constitutional principle.
Known as the Ten Commandments Judge, Moore had the courage (in the face of successive Supreme Court misinterpretations of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause) to display a massive Ten Commandments monument in the Alabama Judiciary Building.
You can’t do that, Federal District Court Judge Myron Thompson squealed. Putting the Decalogue in a public place violates “separation of church and state” (words artfully inserted into the First Amendment, by successive liberal courts). Thompson’s assault on the Constitution was upheld by the 11th. Circuit Appeals Court. (Is this beginning to sound familiar?) On appeal, the Supreme Court let the judgment stand, but will soon rule on other Ten Commandments cases.
You can see why judges (who’ve assumed godlike powers) wouldn’t want God’s law – with its injunction against murder – publicly displayed. To do so would acknowledge that our legal system, our Constitution and our nation were established on the Creator’s covenant first enunciated at Sinai – just as the Founding Fathers said they were.
Judges prefer a relativistic universe, governed by their personal philosophies and whims, to one anchored in eternal rules of right and wrong.
When he refused to bow and grovel before the federal judiciary, Moore was suspended as Alabama’s chief justice. In November 2003, he was tried before a judicial ethics panel.
Moore’s position was elegant in its simplicity: I took an oath to defend the Alabama Constitution, which acknowledges God as the foundation of our laws. Therefore, as the state’s chief judicial officer, I am bound to affirm that truth, which I have done with my Ten Commandments statue. And, by the way, I’m not required to go along with the federal judiciary’s convenient misinterpretations of the Constitution.
Based on his intransigence here, Moore was removed from office.
If Jeb Bush had followed Roy Moore’s example, what exactly could Judge Greer have done? Held him in contempt (surely not in the same degree that most sane people hold Greer)? Sent Pinellas County deputies to arrest him?
It would have provoked a constitutional crisis, fainthearted conservatives wail. Good.
In case they haven’t noticed, we are in a constitutional crisis created by activist judges intent on mandating homosexual marriage (thereby deconstructing the American family), taking God out of the Pledge of Allegiance, abetting pornographers in flooding the country with filth, enshrining abortion-on-demand as the penultimate right, making Americans subject to foreign laws, and rewriting our history to transform America into one (secular) nation, under their heel.
To save the Constitution and representative government will take a thousand Roy Moores, all echoing the words of Thomas Jefferson (author of our nation’s founding document) “To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions (is) a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.” It has.
Exactly. The Men in Black have successfully staged a coup d'etat.
Well......I said I was trying to be nice! I figured the French fit in nicely with their delusional ilk. Besides, the little terrorists would just find their way back... wouldn't they? Ok.. fire up the ovens, build the gallows and GET A ROPE!
This is what the framers feared...Our most potent enemies are those within our country!
Naw...... too easy.... too peaceful. (/sarcasm) Now.... fireants...hmmm. We could be imaginative with that. :)
Please provide the URL (web address) for the patient record on Terri Schaivo you posted. I want to verify its authenticity.
You gotta be kidding! Well, go here and read to your hearts content.
I had a real nightmare with all this. I dreamed that I came upon a car wreck and everyone in the car was severely injured. A cop took out his pistol and just started "putting everyone down" like dogs. When I yelled at him to stop....he looked at me as if I was nuts. He was putting them out of their misery....and saving the state a great deal of money. I think I had an overdose of Greer on FR, before going to bed.
Point being....something HAS to be done about this...and it disturbs me that many people are so cavalier about our renegade justices. (Freepers being the exception) It doesn't affect them (yet) so they don't care. Pretty scary.
The generation coming up has no sense of patriotism, has the "me" mentality and never learned what our constitution really is..... and a total lack of understanding what sacrifices were made to keep our country free.
Do you know how many federal judges there are? And do you know the phrase that the AP begins most of its black-robed clown alerts with?
Ann Coulter has it right: "Polls claim that a majority of Americans objected to action by the U.S. Congress in the Schiavo case as "government intrusion" into a "private family matter" – as if Judge Greer is not also the government. So twisted is our view of the judiciary that a judicial decree is treated like a naturally occurring phenomenon, like a rainbow or an act of God."
Very true! It's not just Jeb. Every executive and legislator goes to the lawyers to ask permission before they do anything. What they really need to do is consult Constitution scholars. Don't they wonder about a conflict of interest when they ask lawyers about judicial questions?
Truer words have not been written.
The reason I asked that question is that the climate that has existed, and still exists, regarding Terri’s life and death has placed an atmosphere of doubt over everything and anything that is either posted on the Internet, or written in the media. I live here in Pinellas County, work here, and vote here and I have been following Terri’s story since the beginning of the 1990’s, when the lawsuits began. While I was against removing her feeding tube, I was and am vehemently against the federal government usurping the rights of the citizens of Florida. The truth about Terri’s life will make a difference in how I and my family vote in the next elections.
That being said, I found interesting, and some conflicting information at the site you attached, but what struck me the most was the report of Dr. Jay Wolfson, DrPH, JD, Guardian Ad Litem for Theresa Marie Schiavo. The last two paragraphs of his report to the governor are so very telling, especially for those of us who have followed Terri’s life for so long. He wrote,
”Until and unless there is objective, fresh, mutually agreed upon closure regarding measurable and well accepted scientific bases for deducing Theresa's clinical state, Theresa will not be done justice. There must be at least a degree of trust with respect to a process that the factions competing for Theresa's best interest can agree. To benefit Theresa, and in the overall interests of justice, good science, and public policy, there needs to be a fresh, clean-hands start.
The Schindlers and the Schiavos are normal, decent people who have found themselves within the construct of an exceptional circumstance which none of them, indeed, few reasonable and normal people could have imagined. As a consequence of this circumstance, extensive urban mythology has created toxic clouds, causing the parties and others to behave in ways that may not, in the order of things, serve the best interests of the ward.
What a great article. I agree 100% with it, and also your comment. It's going to take a lot of effort our part to force a change. They've gone too far this time, and everyone knows it. Even the Village Voice got it right. In the court of world opinion, we've lost the high moral ground. The lack of support was bad before, but what about the future? America cannot claim to be acting on moral principles, because we obviously don't have any. We're screwed, unless we demonstrate that we won't put up with corruption and murder. We need to fix this now!
We're going to have to expend the same amount of energy that the Schindlers did to save their daughter.
Annie, it's TIME for you and every other American to get your gun" and put these little despotic twits out of office. Also, it's time that Governor's and Presidents upheld their Oaths of Office or they should also be removed. Enough is Enough when you start starving and dehyrdrating a human being to DEATH!! The reason? : INCONVENIENCE. OUTSTANDNGLY SHAMEFUL.!!
An atrocity is right. Furthermore, the Constitution gave Terri Schiavo, just everyone else, the INALIENABLE RIGHT TO LIFE .... (In otherwords, Judge Greer has NO AUTHORITY to give away or transfer Terri Schiavo's or anybody else's right to life. Even Terri didn't have the right to give her riht to life away". In addition the Florida state constitution declares unequivocally that in the State of Florida, "the supreme executive power shall be vested in a govern...". The word supreme means highest in authority. There can be no executive authority in the state higher than the governor. No state law can create an executive authority higher than the highest in the Florida constitution. Therefore no court order based upon such a law can constitutionally create such an authority. Whatever happened to those Governors that "swear to uphold the laws of the Constitutions of their States"? They are NOW afraid of these local judicial nitwits? UNBELIEVEABLE!!
Govern = Governor! Sheesh, a few spelling errors there.
No, they never once reviewed the evidence. They refused. They thumbed their noses at the law that entitled Terri to an evidentiary review (a de novo hearing.)
Do we stampede over States Rights because we don't like this case?
States' Rights do include the right to violate citizens' rights. Slavery is an example of that limitation. So is murder. Terri's rights were violated on many levels, culminating in her murder. That is not a State's Right.
Do we Ignore the sanctity of Marriage because we heard that the Husband might have conflicts of interest?
Please don't redefine "sanctity of marriage." Adultery resulting in two bastards is not sanctity of marriage. Murdering your spouse is not sanctity of marriage. Abusing your spouse, stealing from your spouse, and dehumanizing your spouse is not sanctity of marriage. A marriage license is not a bill of sale.
It happens every DAY in this country but there are no cameras to record it.
It used to happen every day in Germany. Sometimes, there were cameras.
. They did not have health insurance. This tragedy is part of life.
There may still be some live links as I haven't tried them all. Just click on "Court Documents" on the left. You'll need PDF to read them. There are also videos of Terri on the front page.
Ping!
They are going to have to join forces with others who have already begun to work on this effort.
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