Schiavo issue haunts Crist

St. Petersburg Times ^ | November 1, 2006 | ADAM C. SMITH

[8mmMauser]

Republican gubernatorial front-runner Charlie Crist says he was perfectly clear in opposing governmental intervention in the Terri Schiavo case.

He spoke out loudly.

And he was silent.

Loudly silent.

The day after limping through a tough nationally televised debate, the Republican attorney general wanted to talk about his plans to slash taxes. Instead reporters questioned him about his debate assertion that, “Yes, I did’’ speak out against Congress trying to force the reinsertion of the severely brain-damaged woman’s feeding tube in 2005.

Crist did not publicly express his opposition to the Schiavo intervention until April 2006, more than a year after the Pinellas woman’s death. But he maintained on Tuesday that he forcefully expressed his opposition from the start.

“I spoke loudly,” Crist said in Tallahassee. “I think it’s important that when issues like that come up and you believe that government is the appropriate place for it that you act that out, and you walk the walk, and don’t just talk the talk.’’

The attorney general noted that his office “by not going to court and pushing the agenda on that issue, that was speaking out louder than anybody else did in Florida.”

This is one of many issues — from insurance reform to abortion and civil unions — where Crist has been accused of ambiguity or trying please all sides.

Contrary to his comments Tuesday, during the Republican gubernatorial primary in August he stressed to the weekly newspaper of the Florida Baptist Convention that his office helped the governor’s office with legal work to keep Schiavo alive, even though he personally had qualms.

“I don’t remember that, but I’ll check on it and see,” Crist said when asked about that interview with the Florida Baptist Witness.

Gov. Jeb Bush came to his would-be successor’s defense. “He spoke out to me,” Bush told reporters. Crist, however, said he never directly talked to Bush.

There are few issues in the political realm so black and white as the Terri Schiavo case. People either supported the state and federal government intervening to keep her alive or they didn’t.

But Crist is the second statewide candidate recently to face questions about how he acted during the Schiavo end-of-life controversies that erupted in 2003 in the Legislature and in 2005 in both the Legislature and Congress.

Democratic Attorney General candidate Walter “Skip” Campbell, a state senator from Broward County, has been on the defensive this week for having voted to keep Schiavo alive and later criticizing the governmental intervention. Crist’s involvement in the Schiavo case may be the only common ground between the Schindler family, Terri

Schiavo’s parents and siblings who fought to keep her alive, and her husband, Michael Schiavo, who insisted his wife did not want to be kept alive in a persistent vegetative state. Both sides have criticized Crist.

“When he said in that debate that he’s going to be a leader, my heart dropped. He’s not a leader, he’s a follower,’’ Michael Schiavo said Tuesday. “If he really wanted to stand up he would have said, 'No, this is wrong. The government should stay out of this.’ ... Charlie Crist did not say a word, he was nowhere to be found. He’s a coward.’’

Terri Schiavo’s father, Bob Schindler, wrote an essay in August accusing Crist of snubbing the family’s pleas for him to help their efforts. “Florida Atty. Gen. Charlie Crist let my daughter die. He had it within his authority to save her life, but he turned a blind eye to her suffering,’’ Schindler wrote.

The Florida Democratic Party issued a release saying Crist “lied” about his role in the Schiavo case, but at a brief campaign stop at Arco-Iris restaurant in Tampa on Tuesday, Davis would only say that Crist “misrepresented his position.”

“I was up fighting George Bush and the entire United States Congress, both political parties, and Charlie Crist was unwilling to take a position,” Davis said.

Davis, trailing in polls and campaign money, is hoping his debate performance Monday night will cut Crist’s advantages. No statewide viewership numbers were available Tuesday, but in the Tampa Bay area about 152,000 households tuned in — a ratings jump for that time slot on WFLA — and that doesn’t include those who watched on MSNBC.

- Tallahassee bureau chief Steve Bousquet and staff writer Alex Leary contributed to this report. Adam C. Smith can be reached at asmith@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8241.\

[8mmMauser]

In a secret ballot in which 4,779 lawyers participated statewide, the attorneys favored retaining Chief Justice R. Fred Lewis and Justices Barbara J. Pariente and Peggy A. Quince, who are on the ballot seeking to be retained for six-year terms.

Lewis, Pariente and Quince were on the bench in 2000 when the Florida Supreme Court voted 4-3 to order Katherine Harris, then secretary of state, to accept the manual recounting of ballots sought by Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in his race against Republican George W. Bush.

Lewis, Pariente and Quince were joined by Justice Harry Lee Anstead in favoring the statewide recount , but the ruling was later reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Snip...

Since the retention system was instituted in 1976, no justice has ever lost a retention vote. If a justice is voted out, a replacement would be chosen through the state's Judicial Nominating Commission.

Three judges seek retention on Florida Supreme Court

8mm

[8mmMauser]

The Terri Factor as per the World Socialists...(In case anyone still wonders,)

Santorum was the only US senator to fly to the bedside of Terri Schiavo last year, associating himself with the Christian fundamentalist campaign to vilify Terri’s husband, Michael Schiavo, after he decided to take his brain-dead wife off of life support and allow her to die.

The Democrats in the 2006 elections: the second party of reaction and war

8mm

[8mmMauser]

I won't quote the Terri passage as an excerpt here because of the language which is salty, typical of the libs.

Libs claim as usual the monopoly on intellectual "savvy."

It is a hit piece on George Allen and in support of hero/coward Jim Webb. I mentioned earlier my very personal epiphany with Webb a couple decades ago, and see this as part of an overall strategy of the libs to place a happy face of conservative grin on any ingrained lib who will hold still for this temporary transplant.

Webb will do it for a dollar or less.

As some political experts have put it, George Felix Allen began this campaign season evaluating his upcoming senate reelection race in Virginia as nothing more than a speed bump in the road before running for president in 2008, a Republican Southern alternative to John McCain of Arizona.

Now the speed bump has attained the level of a ponderous mountain that appears increasingly difficult for the once confident Allen to climb. Yes, there is that unfortunate element for Senator Allen in the form of a steady population increase in Northern Virginia.

Those well read, politically savvy suburbanite professionals commute to and from the District Columbia, where they work. They identify in large numbers with the Democrats.

George Allen Lets His Goon Squad Speak for Him

8mm

[8mmMauser]

More from Thomas Sowell on Human Events, as he pins the tail on the media donkey...

Remember how absolutely certain the mainstream media were that Terry Schiavo was for all practical purposes already dead because she had been classified as being in a "vegetative" state?

Just recently a woman in a "vegetative" state was discovered by scientists to be able to respond to statements. But have you heard anything about it, much less anything about its relevance to Terry Schiavo?

If the media had been on the opposite side of this issue, it would have been front page news across the country and on TV 24-7.

Reporting the news is very different from filtering the news or spinning the news. Too many people in the mainstream media have become filterers and spinners, especially during an election year.

Cast of Characters: Part IV

8mm

[8mmMauser]

This from CNN!

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Ron Branson's crusade is launched daily from his garage in a nondescript house in California's San Fernando Valley.

Branson, his wife, Barbie, and attorney Gary Zerman, have waged a years-long, low-budget fight against judges and -- Branson says -- "a judicial system that just doesn't work."

Branson's weapons are his computer, where he publicizes his crusade through his Web site jail4judges.org, and the ballot box. His idea for a "judicial accountability" initiative will be voted on Tuesday in South Dakota.

Snip...

"It was just totally futile to go through the courts any more, and that's why I left that process and I decided to write this initiative and go directly to the people," Branson told CNN. "I'm a voice of a system gone out of control."

Much of the public frustration was galvanized in the case of Terri Schiavo, a severely brain-damaged woman in Florida who was the object of a legal tug-of-war between her husband and parents.

State and federal courts allowed her husband, Michael, to have her feeding tube removed, despite attempts by Florida officials -- prompted by her parents -- to take control of her medical care. Congress hastily passed a measure ordering the federal courts to intervene.

State ballot measures challenge judges' power

8mm

[8mmMauser]

The Terri Factor and Terriphobia...

..................

Jodi Kantor, writing in the New York Times earlier this week, spotted an outbreak of Bushenfreude in the suburbs of Seattle, formerly "a stronghold of socially liberal Republicanism," where Democrat Darcy Burner is giving incumbent moderate Dave Reichert a run for the money. Their overall fund-raising totals are roughly equal: $2.47 million for Reichert to $2.41 million for Burner. But factor out the PACs, and Burner's winning the money race. She's raised $1.85 million from individuals, compared with $1.25 million for Reichert. Some of that Democratic cash is doubtlessly coming from folks like the die-hard Republican with a Harvard MBA and a job at Microsoft who told Kantor: "The Schiavo case. Tapping people without a warrant. Whether or not people are gay … Let people be free! It's not government's job to interfere with those things."

The Return of Bushenfreude

8mm

[T'wit]

>> The judge had the discretion to use extrinsic evidence to create an advance directive.

I like your way of putting it. Yes, Judge Greer "created" Terri's "advance" directive for her from flimsy, stale, unsupported and highly suspicious "evidence" provided by Michael's brother and sister-in-law. Btw, Scott and Joan Schiavo admitted that their dusty recollections from ten years or more earlier came back to them after meeting privately with Michael's attorney, George Felos. Far be it from me to suggest that the testimony was rigged, but we can at least observe that all evidence from all other sources except three people named Schiavo was discarded by Judge Greer.

I say "stale" because the law was changed after Terri's injury. It was impossible for her to give informed consent. Impossible!

>> The Attorney Ad litem laws need to be empowered too.

Are you referring to guardian ad litem? Judge Greer ignored the existing laws. For most of the case he made himself Terri's G.A.L., which is not permitted unless he were a close relative of the ward. He did not have the ward's interest at heart and would not even visit her and try to ascertain her needs for himself. He fired the one G.A.L. (Pearse) who tried to represent Terri, which is the statutory duty and the whole purpose of a guardian ad litem.

Net: Terri never had legal representation.

Greer was literally judge, jury and executioner.

[8mmMauser]

The Terri Factor and the Eugene Register Guard...

(Molly Ivens in the rag I grew up reading!)

May I remind you what this election is about? Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, unprecedented presidential powers, unmatched incompetence, unparalleled corruption, unwarranted eavesdropping, Katrina, Enron, Halliburton, global warming, Dick Cheney's secret energy task force, record oil company profits, $3 gasoline, FEMA, the Supreme Court, Diebold, Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004, Terri Schiavo, stem cell research, golden parachutes, shrunken pensions, unavailable and expensive health care, habeas corpus, no weapons of mass destruction, sacrificed soldiers and Iraqi civilians, wasted billions, Taliban resurgence, expiration of the assault weapons ban, North Korea, Iran, intelligent design, Swift Boat hit squads, and on and on.

Let's not lose sight of the real issues

8mm

[amdgmary]

Vote for Terri on Nov 7

[8mmMauser]

Mother Jones and the Terri Factor...

And, stem cell issue which Mother Jones forgets to differentiate into the two almost diametric areas, Adult Stem Cell and Embryonic Stem Cell. Well, the lefties don't always use words for their definitions.

But beyond that stem cell issue raises other questions of life and death and of privacy that increasingly lie just below the surface of political debate. Every so often they emerge in highly charged debate that eventually draws the local, state and federal governmental agencies, the Congress and the court system into deciding whether a person should live or die, whether the state can intrude on an individual's privacy the case of Terri Schiavo providing the most recent example.

The Stem Cell Question

8mm

[T'wit]

>> The battle is over, terri is dead,

The battle just started. With Terri's death, the case moved out of Greer's jurisdiction and into the dock of history. It will not go away. People never forget injustice. They will be investigating and discussing this case long after we here are gone.

[8mmMauser]

The Terri Factor in Idaho...

The left is frantic in hoping and dreaming to defeat us at the polls. They invoke their Terriphobia again here. May we all vote for Terri on Tuesday!

The commentator asks, "Am I blue"? I hope it expresses her mood on Wednesday.

Is there a sea change afoot? I hope so. I think so. I believe it to be. The tide nationally is turning against the Republicans and the stranglehold the Fundamentalist Christian Right has had on that party since the Reagan era. The Terry Schiavo debacle, the Mark Foley scandal, the Larry Craig outing, the mass exodus of manufacturing jobs, the erosion of civil liberties, Abu Ghraib, warrantless wiretapping, record budget deficits, and the dramatic failure of the war in Iraq – all of these are taking their toll on the party that claimed it was best able to protect us. Five years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, what do we most want protection from? Arrogant, belligerent one-party rule.

Idaho Teeters on Verge of Political Sea Change

8mm

[T'wit]

>> May I remind you what this election is about?

It's about $1.85 gasoline. 4.4% unemployment (phenomenally low!) and an all-time record-high stock market.

[8mmMauser]

The battle just started. With Terri's death, the case moved out of Greer's jurisdiction and into the dock of history. It will not go away. People never forget injustice. They will be investigating and discussing this case long after we here are gone.

[8mmMauser]

The Terri Factor in New Hampshire...

Bass fishing may fail to produce a lunker to these Terriphobes.

The Republican majority will not allow a solution to Iraq to be honestly discussed, refuses to enact lobbying reform, permits ridiculous spending like the Alaskan bridges to nowhere, shifts tax benefits to oil companies while denying climate change and ignoring the national security risk caused by such dependence on oil.

And they determine the priorities in Congress: worrying about Terri Schiavo and gays is more important than working any of these issues. No rational voice can be heard on any of these because other Republicans chair the committees and set the agenda.

Congressman Bass must be defeated

8mm

[T'wit]

>> Idaho Teeters on Verge of Political Sea Change

The writer teeters on the verge of mental breakdown.

[8mmMauser]

The Terri Factor in San Jose...

Do they know the way??

Is this the perspective of Americans of Vietnamese origin?

Ever since the GOP took over Congress in 1994, and especially the last six years when they dominated all three branches of government, republicans have been riding rough shod over this country, largely unchallenged and virtually unimpeded.

They impeached Bill Clinton unsuccessfully, but still managed to distract the country for the better part of a year and divide America along the so-called “family values.” They stole the election in 2000, fair and square. They used Terry Schiavo, comatose for 15 years, as a wedge issue on life and death matters. They botched the aftermath of Katrina.

VietAm Votes May Swing S.J. Election

8mm

[T'wit]

So long as one white rose blooms in a garden, Terri's story will be told.

[8mmMauser]

Highly recommend taking a look at this thread all about Greer! Thanks, FairOpinion and FV.

The Florida judge who presided over the Terri Schiavo case and ruled her feeding tube should be removed told a bioethics symposium that lawmakers are ill-equipped to make right-to-die decisions.

Schiavo Judge: Death Issue Private

8mm

[Aussie Dasher]

Crist has blood on his hands.

I couldn't vote for him.