Posted on 06/22/2005 8:06:02 PM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
"Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" asked Joseph Welch in his famous confrontation with the pathologically cruel Joe McCarthy. "Have you left no sense of decency?"
More than a half-century later, I would ask the same question of Florida's governor, Jeb Bush.
In an abuse of power that has been widely denounced, and has even appalled many of his own supporters in the Republican Party, Governor Bush has tried to keep the Terri Schiavo circus alive by sending state prosecutors on a witch hunt against her husband, Michael.
The state attorney who has been pushed by the governor into pursuing this case told me yesterday he has seen nothing to indicate that a crime was committed. Nevertheless, the inquiry continues.
Governor Bush asked Bernie McCabe, the state attorney for Pinellas County, to "take a fresh look" at this already exhaustively investigated case to determine, among other things, whether Michael Schiavo had perhaps waited too long to call for help after discovering that his wife had collapsed early one morning 15 years ago.
Mr. McCabe did not seem particularly enthusiastic about his mission. "I wouldn't call it an investigation," he told me in a telephone conversation. The word "investigation," he said, "is a term of art in my business."
He then explained: "When I conduct an investigation, it would mean that I have a criminal predicate. In other words, that I have some indication that a crime has occurred. That's my job...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
What part of multiple witnesses do you not understand?
____The part where they present obkective evidence.
Judge Greer who Columbia Law University determined to have a 79% error rate.
He's a columnist, not a reporter. Bias comes with the territory. Or are you one of those who thinks Ann Coulter is an objective neutral commentator?
"No evidence of a crime" means the power of the state should not be conducting a criminal inquiry of a citizen. Period. This smacks of trying to find a crime for political purposes.
"Evidence of no crime" is not only proof of a negative - by definition, impossible - but it is not a standard to be applied to any citizen. Go ahead - prove you haven't committed any crime.
No, I do not.
Who knows why any date in particular was selected for anything. The topic here is the effort by the New York Times to use the death of an innocent person to foster a political advantage TO OUR OWN DISADVANTAGE~!
It's simply not about them, and it's really not about Schiavo when it comes from the NYT.
Rather, it's just another excuse for a petty political attack against Republicans, FreeRepublic, Conservatives, and the Bush family.
Frankly, neither you nor I should ever trust the ethics or attention to medical detail of any physician. They can be very dangerous.
That's why we perps people like Jackson and OJ off.
I'm sorry, but what does that mean?
That's why we perps people like Jackson and OJ off.
A very apt description.
We agree. If you review the legal history in the Schiavo case, I have no doubt you will come to the same conclusion as mine: he is guilty but the euthanazis and PC police got involved.
Back when Dr. Kervorkian (Dr. Death) was euthanizing people, my wife and I discussed what would happen if we ever became brain dead. We both agreed and promised each other we'd "pull the plug" if we knew there was no way the person would come out and have a reasonable quality of life. My wife made me promise I'd do it.
If this were to happen today and the media got ahold of it ... I would be the Michael Schiavo of the moment. No one would know what we had talked about, just as NONE of you know what went on with them.
But you know something, I wouldn't care how many people cried and put up posters and websites ... I would do what my wife's wishes were. My wife would never forgive me if I let her be used by the media and the anti-death crowd as a symbol for something she does NOT want and then caved in and forced her to continue on in a state she would not want to be in.
Anyway, that's how I feel. You guys see Terri as a symbol, maybe Michael saw her as a human being and was granting her what he KNEW she wanted.
I am reminded of this version of a living will my husband and I have agreed to ;~D
I, being of sound mind and body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by artificial means.
If a reasonable amount of time passes and I fail to sit up and ask for pizza and a cold beer, it should be presumed that I won’t do so ever again. When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my spouse, children and attending physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes and call it a day.
Under no circumstances shall any video footage of me in a vegetative state be plastered all over on national TV.
Under no circumstances shall the members of any Legislature or Congress enact a special law to keep me on life-support machinery. It is my wish that these boneheads mind their own damn business, and pay attention instead to the health, education and future of the millions of Americans who aren’t in a permanent coma and who nonetheless may be in need of nourishment.
Under no circumstances shall any politicians butt into this case. I don’t care how many fundamentalist votes they’re trying to scrounge for their run for the presidency in 2008, it is my wish that they play politics with someone else’s life and leave me alone to die in peace.
I couldn’t care less if a hundred religious zealots send e-mails to legislators in which they pretend to care about me. I don’t know these people, and I certainly haven’t authorized them to preach and/or crusade on my behalf. They should mind their own damn business, too.
If anyone goes against my wishes, turns my case into a political cause and enlists the ‘aid’ of self-serving charlatans such as Randall Terry and Jesse Jackson, I hereby promise to come back from the grave and make his or her existence a living hell.
All the facts in the case and MS's actions demonstrate that Schiavo had absolutely no right to end his wife's life. She was in no way at the end of her life...she was a living breathing human being. She was not suffering from a fatal illness - and cancer was not ravaging her body. She was ravaged by the withholding of food and drink in her last days.
Abominable and barbaric!
You are not keeping to the facts of Terri's case. She was not at the end of life. She was deliberately murdered by the withholding of food and drink.
Here is a case of another who was in a similar predicament to Terri's, but in his case, a loving and supportive wife stood by her man...and yes...miracles do happen!
http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050523/NEWS40/50513042
I didn't assert ~anything~ about Terri being at the end of life.
That said, her being PVS at such a young age makes her case sadder, not more hopeful.
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