Posted on 03/21/2005 2:14:44 PM PST by BigFreddie
TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - A federal judge weighed the fate of a brain-damaged Florida woman on Monday, acting hours after the U.S. Congress and President Bush intervened to push the highly charged right-to-die case back into court.
U.S. District Judge James Whittemore began a hearing shortly after 3 p.m. EST to consider a request from Terri Schiavo's parents to reinstate tube feeding for their 41-year-old daughter that was halted three days ago. CNN reported that the judge gave each side 30 minutes to make their case.
Spurred by Christian conservatives who have embraced the case for prolonging Schiavo's life as representing the "culture of life," Congress rushed though special legislation to move the case to federal courts for a fresh review. Bush cut short a Texas holiday to sign the law shortly after 1 a.m. EST.
The extraordinary intervention by the Republican-controlled Congress into a legal dispute was criticized by Schiavo's husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, and by some Democrats as politically motivated meddling in a bitter family matter that has already been decided by state courts.
Bush, whose re-election last November was attributed in part to strong support from the religious right, thanked lawmakers for giving the parents "another opportunity to save her (Schiavo's) life."
"This is a complex case with serious issues. But in extraordinary circumstances like this, it is wise to always err on the side of life," Bush said in Tucson, Arizona.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Is this the same Judge appointed by old "it all depends on
what the meaning of "is"is. (Clintoon?) Too bad Bush didn't have the political forsight to REMOVE EVERY SINGLE BLACK ROBE that unusually good Liar installed back when he was
first elected.
Of course, the whole discussion about the "shunt" ignores the fact that Terri had an electronic stimulator placed in her brain prior to that scan. Even the quacks who testified in the case picked that up.
Um. How exactly do you think people look at CTs? Do you think that CTs look different if they're "on the internet" as opposed to if they're... sent from one computer to another on a hospital's private network?
Okay, Dr. - go ahead and tell us how you'd just as soon look at a .jpg on a web site as look at an actual CT.
"Software to read the CT"? What that fancy software does is.... render the CT to your screen. Then, you look at it, which is presumably what CodeBlue did.
Now, if this were like a 200 x 120 JPG maybe you'd have a point because of loss of detail. But the scan he examined is a 640 x 480 PNG not a JPG.
It appears to have some noise but in terms of the feature level it does not look qualitatively different from the typical CT slice you'd look at on your screen. Presumably at that size the real limitations are with the resolution of CT algorithm itself, not how it's being rendered here. Tell me what imperfections you see in the reproduction that make you think CodeBlue's analysis of it will be flawed? More to the point, what is your problem with CodeBlue's analysis exactly?
(Note, I'm open to Codeblue being wrong, he's very opinionated and has taken very controversial stands before.)
Now, obviously looking at one slice is not the same thing as looking at the whole series. And here's where you get a "touche", I hadn't realized he was looking only at one slice. as CodeBlue says,
I am not saying that I do not want to see the entire CT -- I do! This is all they are providing us with; and if THIS is what they based this case on, they have made a HUGE error.
However, the point stands that it's silly to think that looking at a CT slice "on the internet" (even if it's a slightly noisy 640x480 PNG like this is) is somehow infinitely worse than looking at it after it's been imported from one machine to another... over the (private) internet at some hospital. Let's just put it this way: doctor X looking at only this slice in the "real place where the CT was taken" (or, wherever exactly you think it's best to look at CTs) does not enjoy the huge advantage over CodeBlue looking at the PNG over the (gasp) "internet" that you were implying he does.
But let's grant that he's got a noisy 640x480 PNG of the slice in question, instead of the actual CT set. What features were or could have been lost in the process of exporting this slice to PNG that, you think, could reverse the conclusions he's drawn? and/or what 3d details of the remaining CT and structure sets would invalidate his conclusions? I'm open to suggestions (and CodeBlue is too; go comment there if you've got any ideas).
Mistakes? Well, he claims the implant is a shunt and goes off on a whole discussion about it. A mistake no doc who has reviewed the CT made.
Enlarging a CT slice with a resolution limitation (one that's intrinsic to the CT algorithm) doesn't, really, uh, help very much.
I mean, it makes everything BIGGER, but CodeBlue could open the PNG in Gimp or whatever and do the same exact stuff. You think he couldn't?
Anyway, can you see the features of Pac-Man "better" by enlarging him to be 10 feet by 10 feet and scrutinizing him by the square inch? If you think so, you're only misleading yourself.
But again, you're right that since he doesn't have access to the whole series there are things he can't do. But as compared with Doctor B who looks at only this slice, I still say he's on basically an even keel.
Well, he claims the implant is a shunt and goes off on a whole discussion about it. A mistake no doc who has reviewed the CT made.
Touche on the shunt issue, retroactive to post #22.
I voted on the poll. I am chilled to the core by the indifference idiots like those who have polled no display. It just illustrates that we are basically sojourners in a pagan, selfish society. We value sex above all else.
"My party is demonstrating that they are for states' rights unless they don't like what states are doing."
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Republican congressman of Connecticut, on the Schiavo case.
[from NY Times article below]
G.O.P. Right Is Splintered on Schiavo Intervention
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
ASHINGTON, March 22 - The vote by Congress to allow the federal courts to take over the Terri Schiavo case has created distress among some conservatives who say that lawmakers violated a cornerstone of conservative philosophy by intervening in the ruling of a state court.
The emerging debate, carried out against a rush of court decisions and Congressional action, has highlighted a conflict of priorities among conservatives and signals tensions that Republicans are likely to face as Congressional leaders and President Bush push social issues over the next two years, party leaders say.
"This is a clash between the social conservatives and the process conservatives, and I would count myself a process conservative," said David Davenport of the Hoover Institute, a conservative research organization. "When a case like this has been heard by 19 judges in six courts and it's been appealed to the Supreme Court three times, the process has worked - even if it hasn't given the result that the social conservatives want. For Congress to step in really is a violation of federalism."
Stephen Moore, a conservative advocate who is president of the Free Enterprise Fund, said: "I don't normally like to see the federal government intervening in a situation like this, which I think should be resolved ultimately by the family: I think states' rights should take precedence over federal intervention. A lot of conservatives are really struggling with this case."
Some more moderate Republicans are also uneasy. Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the sole Republican to oppose the Schiavo bill in a voice vote in the Senate, said: "This senator has learned from many years you've got to separate your own emotions from the duty to support the Constitution of this country. These are fundamental principles of federalism."
"It looks as if it's a wholly Republican exercise," Mr. Warner said, "but in the ranks of the Republican Party, there is not a unanimous view that Congress should be taking this step."
In interviews over the past two days, conservatives who expressed concern about the turn of events in Congress stopped short of condemning the vote in which overwhelming majorities supported the Schiavo bill, and they generally applauded the goal of trying to keep Ms. Schiavo alive. But they said they were concerned about what precedent had been set and said the vote went against Republicans who were libertarian, advocates of states' rights or supporters of individual rights.
"My party is demonstrating that they are for states' rights unless they don't like what states are doing," said Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut, one of five House Republicans who voted against the bill. "This couldn't be a more classic case of a state responsibility."
"This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy," Mr. Shays said. "There are going to be repercussions from this vote. There are a number of people who feel that the government is getting involved in their personal lives in a way that scares them."
While the intensity of the dissent appears to be rising - Mr. Warner made a point Tuesday of calling attention to his little-noticed opposition in a nearly empty Senate chamber over the weekend - support for the measure among Republican and conservative leaders still appears strong. In interviews, some conservatives either dismissed the argument that the vote was a federal intrusion on states' rights or argued that their opposition to euthanasia as part of their support of the right-to-life movement trumped any aversion they might have to a dominant federal government.
"There's a larger issue in play," and Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, "and that is the whole issue of the definition of life. The issue of when is it a life is a broader issue than just a state defining that. I don't think we can have 50 different definitions of life."
Other Republicans who supported the Schiavo bill said they were wrestling conflicting beliefs. Senator George V. Voinovich of Ohio, a former governor and a strong advocate of states' rights, decided to support the bill after determining that his opposition to euthanasia outweighed his views on federalism, an aide said.
Senator Tom Coburn, a newly elected conservative Republican from Oklahoma, said: "This isn't a states' rights issue. What we're saying is they are going to review it. The states are not given the right to take away somebody's constitutional rights."
Representative Tom DeLay, the Texas Republican who is the House majority leader, bristled on Sunday when he was asked about how to square the bill with federalist precepts.
"I really think it is interesting that the media is defining what conservatism is," Mr. DeLay said. "The conservative doctrine here is the Constitution of the United States."
The Republican Party has long associated itself with limiting the power of the federal government over the states, though this is not the only time that party leaders have veered from that position. Most famously, in 2000, it persuaded the Supreme Court to overturn a Florida court ruling ordering a recount of the vote in the presidential election between Al Gore and George Bush.
But now the Schiavo case is illustrating splinters in the conservative movement that Mr. Bush managed to bridge in his last campaign, and the challenges Mr. Bush and Republicans face in trying to govern over the next two years, even though they control Congress as well as the White House.
"The libertarian streak in me says, you know, people should have the right to die," Mr. Moore, of the Free Enterprise Fund, said. "But as so many conservatives, I'm also very pro-life. Those two philosophies are conflicting with each other."
Bob Levy, a fellow with the Cato Institute, argued that Democrats and Republicans alike were being "incredibly hypocritical" in this case: Democrats by suddenly embracing states' rights and Republicans by asserting the power of the federal government.
"These questions are not the business of Congress," Mr. Levy said of the Schiavo dispute. "The Constitution does not give Congress the power to define life or death. The only role for the court is once the state legislature establishes what the rules are, the court can decide if the rules have been properly applied."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
