Posted on 10/10/2005 9:31:15 AM PDT by conservativebabe
So, Mr. Chief Justice, will it be us or them?
Given his first case, we'll know soon enough if new Chief Justice John Roberts is with us or them.
It's a control case, a who's-in-charge case. Us or them.
The people of Oregon -- me and you, 'cept they live there and we live here -- have twice affirmed through referenda that if a mentally-with-it dying person wants to skip the last part, it's OK for the doctor to prescribe and the pharmacist to fill a fatal prescription.
The Oregon Legislature, being the servant of the people that it is, did the necessary paperwork in 1997, including the law providing that no criminal or civil penalty could befall the doctors and the pharmacists for their part in carrying out the dying person's wishes. Janet Reno, then attorney general of the United States, said in response to a question from Congress that it was Oregon's business.
All makes sense to most anybody who's sat with a dying relative or friend, and most of us of many years have done so. In such circumstances, I'm sure not gonna be the one saying, "oh, don't be silly ..." if there's a deathbed declaration that the time is now.
But I'm not John Ashcroft or Alberto Gonzales.
When Mr. Ashcroft ascended to the attorney general's office in 2001, he lost no time finding a way to thwart the people of Oregon.
His tool was a routine housekeeping chore assigned the attorney general by the federal Drug Control Act of 1970. The act requires docs and pharmacists to have a federal license to handle drugs; the AG's in charge of the licenses. Mr. Ashcroft parsed the wording of the license requirements, found meaning in phrases Ms. Reno hadn't divined, and announced he'd yank the license of any doctor or pharmacist who followed a patient's dying request.
The people of Oregon appealed and have won through the federal appellate court level. Mr. Gonzales, who's since replaced Mr. Ashcroft, carried the case to the Supreme Court. The arguments were the first heard by the Roberts court.
You should note here that the issue of great import to you and I -- the range of options available to us in the most of trying of exceedingly personal circumstances -- is not being argued, or at best peripherally.
No, the arguments are about what Congress meant with this phrase or that when it wrote the Drug Control Act 35 years ago, and how much control that grants a federal bureaucrat. Paper-shuffling stuff, when core human issues are on the line.
History dictates pessimism.
The question of balancing power between the states and the central government bedeviled us even as we became "us." It is the question that split the revolutionaries of the 1770s into political parties as they turned from guns to pens.
It is the reason they added the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
The Tenth, of course, was the first of the amendments to become a dead letter, done in primarily by Congress's power to regulate commerce among the states, and the Supreme Court's 200-year-willingness to endorse ever broader definitions of "interstate commerce."
The court's also been mostly willing to endorse executive branch power grabs, like the one Mr. Ashcroft's launched.
So, Mr. Chief Justice Roberts, will your court continue the tradition?
Will it be us, or them?
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Footnote: In the eight years of its operation, 208 people have used the alternative offered by the Oregon Death with Dignity law.
Have at it folks.
Why does he make you want to barf?
I think Roberts will be declaring with his vote on this issue whether he is really a strict constructionist or simply an authoritarian conservative. And I'm wondering whether the Court will delay the release of the opinion until after Miers' confirmation hearings.
How about this. You want to die? Do it yourself.
I'm a pro-life as they come, but we've gotten into a lot of problems as a country by trying to take the shorter road. I don't like Euthanasia at all, but I can't find any provision in the constituion forbidding it. If the people of Oregon feel it important for someone to end their life, then the feds should drop it. Conservatives can't have their cake and eat it too.
Mainly because he is a liberal hack. Of course, being from my local paper, I would know that and you would not.
You are right though about Roberts and whether or not he will turn out to be a strict constructionalist.
So, given that about 10 constitutional principles collide in this one, which do you think is the position that a "strict construtionist" should take?
What does that have to do with the seperation of powers and the 10th amendment? Or are you OK with judicial activism so long as you approve of the outcome?
The 10th amendment. This issue is not discussed in any way shape or form in the constitution, and should thus be left to the states.
The federal role in the matter is clearly not in the Constitution. Of course, the new right doesn't seem to mind that much if the judicial activism is in their supposed best interest.
For instance does the state's right to off its citizens override due process and equal protection?
How about this... Watch a loved one slowly wither away from painful and agressive cancer of the liver and colon, have a massive stroke in his last days, come down with pneumonia in the hospital, and stand there helpless knowing that he is in incredible pain and you're not able to do a damn thing about it.
THEN we'll see if you are against humane and painless assisted suicide.
No, but the state is not offing its citizens.
Generally, I agree with you that this case will tell us a lot about Roberts. You do miss one alternative though, the third alternative is minimalist. That is, there are so many years of bad law on the commerce clause, he's not going to try to reverse all of them in his first case.
Even if he is a minimalist, I would like to see some expression of concern about the commerce clause issue. If he's not even concerned about it, he's a clunker and Bush is 0 for 1.
I saw we just starve them to death instead of using drugs. We all know and have learned that being starved to death is a painless, wonderful, calm, and peaceful way to die.
Well okey dokie. If you say so (I mean your statement - this issue is not discussed in any way shape or form in the constitution). I suspect, however, it is not quite so simple as that.
Euthanasia will probably grow into a social event.
Like Terry Schievo (sp)?
No, it is handing out license to private individuals to do it for them.
This law is about able-minded terminally-ill people being allowed to die on their terms.
I so sick of hearing about Terri Schiavo.. the comparison is apples to oranges.
And you would be correct, insofar that the Court has spent the last 50 years reading into the constitution things that aren't there. So yes, this probably clashes with a whole bunch of invented constitutional provisons - just not with any of the provisions the exist in the actual written constitution.
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