Posted on 11/07/2007 7:41:35 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
On the matter of Terri Schiavo’s right to life, which occupied the attention of the media and Congress in 2005, Thompson called that a family decision, “in consultation with their doctor,” and “the federal government should not be involved.” Thompson added, “the less government the better.” ...
In the case of Terri Schiavo, a severely disabled person, there was a family dispute. Her estranged husband wanted her to die and he eventually succeeded in starving her to death. Her parents had wanted her to live. ...
There was no moral justification for killing Terri because she had an inherent right to life and there was no clear evidence that she wanted food and water withdrawn. The morally correct course of action would have been to let her family take care of her. Nobody would have been harmed by that.
“Meet the Press” host Tim Russert brought up the death of Thompson’s daughter, who reportedly suffered a brain injury and a heart attack after an accidental overdose of prescription drugs. Apparently Thompson and members of his family made some decisions affecting her life and death. Thompson described it as an “end-of-life” issue.
Bobby Schindler says he doesn’t know what the circumstances precisely were in that case and that he sympathizes with what Thompson went through. However, he says that it is not comparable at all to his sister’s case.
“What no one is recognizing,” he told me, “is that my sister’s case was not an end-of-life issue. She was simply and merely disabled. Terri wasn’t dying. She was only being sustained by food and water. She had no terminal illness. She wasn’t on any machines. All she needed was a wheelchair and she could have been taken anywhere. She didn’t even need to be confined to a bed.”
(Excerpt) Read more at aim.org ...
I believe the LA Times story has been pretty well-established to be the Hillary-Huma rumor.
On the other hand, doesn’t the following possibly point to investment/manipulation of the market against Thompson?
“Another reason Thompson is tanking, at least on here, is just the massive short interest that has piled up. I mean there are people putting some serious $XXXX figure wagers, and hundreds of lots short on him.
Most contracts just draw 1 to 50 size lot orders. There are some people out there who *really* have no faith in Thompson.”
I was on the parents side, and I prayed that the State of Florida, and the judicial system of Florida would spare her life. But I said it was a State problem that the Federal government had no place in, but I got called some of the worst names in the book here. Death Monger is probably one of the most benign.
In fact if I have time later this weekend, I will pull some of those posts up, and see if any Fred supporters have changed their tune.
I must say, that there were a few Terri supporters that understood my point but just honestly disagreed.
the federal government was right to get invovleved in ending slavery and should get invovlved if all else fails in ending the murder of an innocent person...Terri and the unborn too. The constitution proclaims the right to life...that is the basic responsibility of government, federal or not.
FYI, we don’t have a candidate yet. Start bossing people around to get them to vote for Duncan Hunter. Or wait...you might just run them off. Shhhh....just don’t say anything for a few months and then when Republicans actually have a candidate chosen, you can start preaching your “UNITE!” sermon.
“just don’t say anything for a few months and then when Republicans actually have a candidate chosen, you can start preaching your “UNITE!” sermon.”
I think with everything at stake in this election, not just national security including a coming showdown with Iran, but the future make up of the Supreme Court and the other federal courts hanging in the balance, the message of unity is one we can’t get out soon enough.
I agree that the law seems screwed up. I also agree that it’s the government’s function to protect life (setting aside, as you say, cases of convicted criminals who get the death penalty — that’s a different discussion).
There still seems to me to be a problem with defining what protecting life means when it comes to medical technology. Terri was only on a feeding tube — but do you believe families have the right to turn off life support such as breathing machines in the case where someone is in a vegetative state?
“Right now that message is being used to coerce people into abandoning their own skills of listening and reasoning and choosing....in favor of a lust for power and nothing more. It is actually causing division.”
I’m not raising the issue of unity to coerce anyone into supporting a particular candidate for the primary, though I have opinions on who are most electable candidates are. I’m just preparing for the general election and some short-sighted conservatives potentially sitting on their votes. I don’t think we’re the ones causing division by bringing this up. We wouldn’t even be raising this issue if it wasn’t for blowhards like Dobson threatening to subvert the election.
My wanting to head that off as early as possible isn’t about a lust for power but out of a passion for protecting this nation from socialists and seditionists who don’t give a rip about defending the nation but see the White House and Congress as being vehicles for their social experimentation and implementing their far left world view.
Jeb Bush should have done the right thing. Instead, he wimped out.
Does Dobson have the right to vote according to his own conscience or did he sign over his voting rights to the Republican Party for the crime of supporting their pro-life candidates in the past? See, once again the tactic is to insult voters. Republicans have to get over that if they ever want a chance at winning. It is the job of the Party and their candidate to appeal to voters, not to insult them. "I'm not Hillary and that should be enough, you Blowhard..." just isn't going to win everyone.
In the end the candidate who appeals to voters on principles is going to come out ahead of the candidate who asks voters to compromise their principles...or to sacrifice their principles for the sake of party power. That's why the Democrats have the lead. This isn't hard.
Under your definition, the gov’t doesn’t have the moral right to stop someone from murdering you. Two can play that game. This is not an issue of all things are federal or nothing is federal. There are some unalienable rights given to us by God which no gov’t has the right to take away. One is the right-to-life for the innocent. Gov’t has a duty to protect that God given right.
"Surging"? He hardly seems to have the energy to move his lips, let alone his trunk. legs, and feet.
Huh?? What definition? If somebody murders you, generally, is it a state offense or a federal offense?
BUMP
“Thompson is finished”
I think we voters will have something to say about that.
Just what spontaneously comes to mind:
(1) "Inalienable right to life" --- "...to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men" -- do these phrases sound familiar? Are they relevant to the purposes of government?
(2) What part of Terri Schindler Schiavo's family? Her estranged, trust-fund-embezzling, adulterous husband who wanted her dead? Or her parents, brother and sister who upheld her right to simply go on living (and were willing to pay for it)? And
(3)Shouldn't the government stay out of this, specifically the County Probate Judge (!) who (by what authority?) ordered her death by starvation/dehydration?
>>I couldn’t agree more.
The excruciating, two-week murder of Terri Schiavo should have been stopped by Governor Jeb Bush.<<
Dittos.
This is two threads now with titles implying that Thompson is finished because of something he said, yet most of the posters strongly agree with what he said. Is it a tongue in cheek thing?
Little catch in your all-or-nothing principle?
In the United States murder is an issue of duel-sovereignty. So it is not an absolute that states can do whatever they want. And just because states handle something, does not mean they have free reign to step on unalienable rights or even structural issues. For example, each state handles its own congressional elections, both state and federal. But they are still confined within certain parameters. The federal gov't stepped into the Shiavo case only as a last resort. Without that option states would be free to murder their own citizens if they wanted to. Congress has the authority to define federal jurisdiction on the crime of murder. They use it. For example they expanded federal jurisdiction on the crime of murder on Indian reservations.
I understand the overlap, For example, the Oklahoma city bombing. The murder of the federal agents on duty fell under both federal and state law. That conviction got MacVeigh the death sentance, not for every murder.
However, when the beltway snipers murdered an off duty FBI agent, federal law didn’t apply because the woman was not on duty.
Like it or not, we have a constitution in this country. I thought conservatives were supposed to be in favor of State rights under the 10th amendment.
I think you analogy to begin with is no less than the Wookie defense that avoids answereing the question I posed because you cannot answer it and be consistent.
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