Frist Says Courts in Schiavo Case Acted Fairly

Reuters ^ | 4/5/05 | Thomas Ferraro

[Crackingham]

U.S. Senate Republican leader Bill Frist said on Tuesday that courts had acted fairly in the Terri Schiavo "right-to-die" case, differing sharply from a vow of retribution by his House of Representatives counterpart, Tom DeLay.

"I believe we have a fair and independent judiciary today," said Frist, now trying to resolve a battle with Democrats over judicial nominations that threatens to tie his chamber into knots. "I respect that."

Frist and DeLay, as the Senate and House majority leaders, had led a charge for emergency legislation calling on the federal courts to review the Schiavo case. President Bush flew back from a Texas vacation to sign the bill into law. But federal courts refused to intervene and let stand a Florida state court order to remove a feeding tube from the brain-damaged woman. Schiavo's husband had said she would not have wanted to live in her condition, but her parents fought against the tube's removal. Schiavo died last week after spending 15 years in what courts had ruled was a persistent vegetative state.

DeLay, a Texas Republican, said afterward: "We will look at an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at the Congress and president when given jurisdiction to hear this case anew."

In a written statement, DeLay said: "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."

Frist, asked about the furor over the case, told reporters, "I will let members (of Congress) ... speak for themselves."

But the Tennessee Republican said he believed the courts "acted in a fair and independent way."

The Schiavo case was unique, Frist said. "Our bill said, 'let's let the courts take another look,"' he said.

[don-o]

You should be grown-up enough to realize that results are usually slow in coming. If you remove yourselves from the game like this, you are abandoning your fellow citizens,

32 years of abortion on demand - 50 million babies (potential, at least taxpayers). 24 of those years under Republican Presidents. All the while, the Judiciary metastasizes. (Remember Souter, and Howard Phillips who was the one voice warning of him. Howard was dismissed as a nutball.)

And if Bill Frist indeed said that the courts did their job in the TS case, it bodes ill. Actually, they did do a good job at what they have been doing for years; i.e. legislating from the bench.

Frist and the Repubs need a wake up call, now! Change slow in coming, eh? Well, there is no change at all from the sleigh ride down the slippery slope.

[Saundra Duffy]

I can't stand to look at the Republicans on TV. They make me sick. Jeb Bush could have saved Terri but you know the polls were showing that most people didn't give a hoot. Later, Zogby poll showed that majority of people hated what happened to Terri. Jeb shouldn't have paid attention to the polls anyway when it comes to SAVING INNOCENT TERRI FROM THAT HEINOUS DEATH!! Jeb is toast.

[k2blader]

Delay's right. Frist's wrong. End of story.

[don-o]

Gonna make it big, because this is the real deal.

And if we get President Hillary, it will be their fault, for leaving us behind and abandoning 32 years of campaign promises, not ours for being angry at being betrayed.

[California Patriot]

Losing Congress or the White House will not be a "wake-up call." These people are weak for other reasons than political popularity. They need to be convinced that they are betraying us, and/or that they are WRONG. Nothing else will accomplish much.

Also, the Democratic party has become so insane that letting them have either Congress or the White House for even two years would do enormous damage to the country -- even if the lesson you want were taught to the GOP.

You seem to be one of the many FReepers who walk away from the game if you don't win. Real men, and real citizens, like real athletes, keep playing even when it looks terrible.

Third-party, or staying home, or voting Democratic, none of these is a valid option. These are cowardly, useless responses.

[California Patriot]

You're ignoring the Democrats. They're far-out extremists. It is illogical to let the Democrats win because you're angry at the GOP for not stopping the Democratic program. The problems you point out are all very real. They are also, primarily, to be blamed on the Democrats.

[California Patriot]

I agree with you in spirit. But "philosophers" is far too respectful a word. A true philosopher is a "lover of wisdom." These people are lovers of anger and ego. They are also cowards and fools. They are a disgrace to Free Republic, and to the American republic.

With "conservatives" like this, we'll all be enslaved within a decade by Hillary and the Rats.

[Nick Danger]

the skill of lawyers should not be relevant to define an act of barbarism so obvious an affront to God and all humanity.

I don't think you appreciate the spot the Schindlers' lawyers put the judge in. He's not a philosopher king, able to rule on any subject he wants. He's there to rule on the case the Plaintiff brings.

The one thing I think Whittemore might have done differently is reject the plea in its entirety on the grounds that it was not responsive to Public Law [whatever], which called for a de novo hearing of the matter. Instead the Plaintiff brought what amounted to an appeal of a state court decision, which the federal court lacks jurisdiction to hear.

The trouble is, I'm not sure Schindler or his lawyers would have gotten the message. Whittemore put substantially the same message in the decision he did write, albeit a bit more subtly. They for sure did not get that message. Instead they wasted the better part of a week taking their totally-flawed plea up the chain to the Supreme Court.

[don-o]

These people are weak for other reasons than political popularity.

Uh, what reasons?

As to your insults.....sticks and stones, and all that. Millions swallowed spit to defeat the boogeymen - Gore and Kerry. Those same millions are getting the message from the action of the folks we have elected. Those same millions will not forget in 2008, if Frist goes wobbly.

Take that to the bank.

[California Patriot]

Conservatives are more than 30 percent of the base. They're well over half, I'm sure. Also, I'm not a centrist, moderate, or RINO. I'm hard-right, believe you me. But a true fighter against the Left must consider what is still big enough to stand up to them. The Republicans are the only institution in this country with the ability to stand up to the Left. They DON'T, for the most part, but no one else even CAN. Therefore, we have to keep playing the game. Also, the GOP does prevent some even worse damage from being done. And that matters.

I agree with you that the GOP "could easily have avoided" this problem. But they haven't. So the question is what we patriots should do. I say we have no choice -- if we're serious -- but to fight within the system. The GOP system.

[California Patriot]

Frist won't run in '08. He doesn't have the stones for it. If he does run, he will get nowhere, and that's exactly where he should get.

It's fine to actively oppose Frist, even to demand that he be fired as majority leaders.

It is not fine to withhold support from Republican senators, or the Republican '08 nominee, when faced by the Democrats.

Why are they weak? Because 1) many of them disagree with us on some of the issues; 2) many of them are afraid of being called names by the media and by their colleagues; 3) many of them are lazy; 4) many of them just don't understand what we're up against.

Our goals with these people should be to replace them with GOOD Republicans when possible. Often, it isn't. So we also need to work on items 1-4 that I laid out.

[Vicomte13]

Perhaps.

But the GOP cannot CONTINUE to do more damage.

They went off the cliff with Terry Schiavo.
The trust is not there and there are broken bones.

But they can still survive if they will do the smart thing and pass the Nuclear Option. That will stabilize their base and re-establish their bona fides. The DEMOCRATS are not stopping the Republicans from passing the nuclear option. Neither are the hard-core RINOs. There are only three of them. There would have to be five of them. But there aren't.

The REPUBLICANS are standing in the way, quietly but stubbornly, of getting that Judicial slate in there.
They are doing it because the party leadership is not expending whatever political capital it takes in order to pass it.

They are making a calculation: that the pro-lifers won't REALLY leave. "Where else will they have to go?" they are asking themselves.

It's a game of chicken.
Trouble is, the pro-lifers were NEVER playing a political game, at all. Millions of motivated by the obvious - because they have said so all along: the belief that human life comes from God and is sacred, and that concerns for the sacredness of life trump law and process and politics and everything else.

If the Republicans aren't pro-life when they CAN be, folks like me are going to assume that they are not pro-life. I am already there, frankly, but I keep hoping that the GOP Senate will pull a rabbit out of its hat and show that I have not just been a duped rube for all of these years, part of the GOP's "Black Bloc".

But with Frist's backing further away from the Nuclear Option, I think that I am a duped rube, a fool, a trusting moron from the sticks who REALLY BELIEVED the Republicans thought that the sacredness of life was the MOST IMPORTANT thing, like I do.

Folks like me will walk down the road with people of different religions we even distrust - Catholics and Evangelical Baptists, for example, sitting in the same bleachers here - but we never were bluffing or playing a game, or worrying all that much about money or the economy, gun control or anything else. Those things pale by comparison.

[supercat]

DeLay risks losing the House with his crusade against the judiciary.

Not if he exposes what really went on behind the murder of Theresa Marie Schindler. To be sure, any RINO House members who are caught up in the corruption may get kicked out, but to them I'd say good riddance. If the Republican Party shows that it stands for integrity, it will gain voters. If it shows that it puts party first, it will lose voters.

[itsahoot]

Lott is spineless, Frist is spineless, McConnell is spineless......you guys are sure hard to please.

Ask yourself why Don Nickles (Ok)retired when they passed over him?

[PatriotGirl827]

Good post.

[itsahoot]

They dont care about squat but their moral crusade. Without morals, what difference does it make? The euthanized and aborted will still be dead, right?

[michigander]

Pfffft.
What did you expect?
He (and DeLay) voted in 1997 that it was an issue to be decided by the individual states as long as no federal money was being spent.

[itsahoot]

Go for it. You show them. My way or we put Hillary in. Some real brilliance here.

I guess the gutless wonders that caused them to leave, bear no responsibility? Why not go after the traitors, instead of the patriots, that won't follow them?

[supercat]

The plea filed by the Schindlers' lawyers with the Federal District Court was the most misguided, stupid, incompetent piece of lawyering we shall see for some time. They literally gave the federal judge no 'out.' Even if he had been predisposed to ordering the re-insertion of the feeding tube, they gave him no legal basis for doing so.

I haven't seen the briefs in question, but the law but the Schindler's lawyer in a very bad spot, because he couldn't very well argue that Terri hadn't received due process without impugning Greer, but the arguments which would impugn Greer would be counterproductive for arguing the likelihood of success in a de novo trial.

If the Schindlers merely had to show that a de novo trial would have had a different result, the right plea would have been obvious: that Judge Greer had excluded evidence because of statutory deadlines which might have altered his findings. Even if Judge Greer was technically correct in refusing evidence presented outside the proper timeframes, evaluation of such evidence, as would be permitted in a de novo hearing, would likely cause the court to produce a different finding from Greer's.

Were it not for the necessity of proving a Fourteenth Amendment violation, this would have been the perfect plea. Judges don't like to question the competance or integrity of other judges, but under this pleading Judge Whittemore wouldn't have had to. He could have reached a different finding from Judge Greer without any implication that Judge Greer had done anything wrong. Even if he had found that none of the evidence that Greer found "clear and compelling" was anything close, he wouldn't have had to say so; he could merely say that the new evidence which Greer had unfortunately, though legitimately, excluded tipped the scale in the other direction.

The problem with a plea like this, though, is that it wouldn't satisfy the legislation's requirement of showing that Terri's Fourteenth Amendment rights had been violated. Indeed, as the legislation was written, I don't really know what sort of pleading could have done the trick.

What would you have suggested?

[sport]

"I believe we have a fair and independent judiciary today," said Frist, now trying to resolve a battle with Democrats over judicial nominations that threatens to tie his chamber into knots. "I respect that."

I do not believe that the Republicans have the backbone to stand up to the Democrats on this. I believe that Frist has run a bluff and his hand has been called by the Democrats.

I believe that the Democrats will be able to stall until the '06 elections.

I believe that the Democrayts will gain control of Congress in '06 and hillary will be President in '09.

I know I have been screwed by the Republicans because one of the reasons I voted for President Bush and Mel Martinez was to get judges that would do their duty under the Constitution.