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.\

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As the left continues to obfuscate by mixing embryonic and adult stem cell research and success, this success emerges on a thread by wagglebee.

In research being carried out at University College London Hospital and Barts and the London NHS, Patients suffering a heart attack will undergo regular treatment of an angioplasty to remove blockage to an artery, and then will receive an injection into the artery of stem cells harvested from the bone marrow in their hip, under local anesthetic. The whole procedure will take place within five hours of their attack.

Adult Stem Cells Used to Treat Emergency Heart Attack Patients

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[8mmMauser]

And this, also from wagglebee...

WASHINGTON, November 8, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Moments after the hearing of oral arguments in the partial-birth abortion case before the United States Supreme Court today, a pro-life lawyer involved in the case is predicting a "major victory". Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), said that he is convinced the ban on partial birth abortion will be ruled constitutional.

Supreme Court Partial Birth Abortion Case - "I'm Convinced Kennedy will vote with Us"

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[wagglebee]

The left simply uses the generic term "stem cells" and makes no distinction between embryonic and adult/umbilical cord stem cells. As a result, much of the public is uninformed when they are told that the pro-life movement is opposed to "stem cell" research.

[8mmMauser]

Without muddling the terms, something for which the left is gifted, they wouldn't have much of a case. But that is how they catch the unaware.

[T'wit]

>> How would you term the action taken by the Congress regarding the Schiavo case?

Congressional enforcement of federal guarantees of the rights of life, liberty and property, per Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, by authority of Section 5: "The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."

One should say, "attempted" enforcement, since the effort was nullified by the judicial branch and had no effect whatsoever on the case. Congress indisputably had the constitutional authority to act, so that's not an issue. Nothing actually came of it, so that's not an issue either. But shame on the judiciary for butting in, and more shame on the judiciary for taking away an innocent citizen's basic rights!

This 1865 lithograph, accompanying an article on the 14th Amendment (ratified in 1868), conveys that freed slaves were now U.S. citizens with all the rights and privileges of citizenship, and that no state could lawfully deprive any individual of life, liberty and property.

If you wish to call it "intervention," that doesn't change the fact that it did not delay the court-ordered death of an American citizen by one minute. "Intervention" is the wrong word because it is meant to deceive. It hides the history of the litigation and leaves the false impression that the feds were gratuitously butting into a private matter. But it wasn't a private matter and Michael Schiavo himself initiated government intervention in 1998 -- seven years earlier!

Law School dean Gary Amos was so outraged by judicial misbehavior throughout the case that he stated that, apart from two or three dissents, every single judge involved including all nine sitting members of the Supreme Court, "must" be impeached.

Prof. Amos's essay is linked at #199 above. See also this forcefully argued dissent by Judge Wilson in the 11th Circuit: Judge Wilson's "strong" dissent (see pages 11 through 21)

[bjs1779]

"We" doesn't compute.

I used the term "we" as in "nation", not "we" meaning you or I. "We" won WW11.

[T'wit]

>> Congress "came between" the courts and the parties, or at least attempted to do so.

The intervention was earlier, when the courts "came between" Terri Schiavo and her rights, so to speak. Congress merely authorized the courts to review the case de novo. In Judge Wilson's words, "The entire purpose for the statute was to give the federal courts an opportunity to consider the merits of Plaintiffs' constitutional claims with a fresh set of eyes."

[T'wit]

No argument. But I still can't quite believe that "we" as a country deserve grief due to the immoral actions of some individuals. Edmund Burke made that very point, as did one of my favorite mentors, Albert Jay Nock, in "The Myth of a Guilty Nation." Otoh, Jefferson agreed with your point when he said somewhere (beware: quotation from memory :-) ), "I tremble for my country when I consider that God is just."

[T'wit]

Meanwhile, I hope you caught that Wilson dissent linked above. You were, after all, the one who remembered it :-) I'd never seen it, but a friend dug it out after you mentioned it.

Same friend wonders if you could find that illegal Greer order to deny Terri oral hydration and nutrition? You have a knack for finding things.

[bjs1779]

I would probably make the same remark in 1939 Germany. I do tend to look at it from what I think God might think I admit. It's biblical on how God sees nations. Often times I don't enter the whole equation in what I say, but be assured that 30 million babies killed since 1973 is in there.

[bjs1779]

Same friend wonders if you could find that illegal Greer order to deny Terri oral hydration and nutrition?

That might have to wait until tomorrow. If someone wants to hunt it down tonight, make sure you show his previous rulings and how it suddenly changed in his last order.

[T'wit]

>> 30 million babies killed since 1973 is in there.

I agree, just as sadly. I'm afraid the figure is significantly higher now. Or anyway, I usually see figures like forty or forty-five million. That would put this country's abortion industry way ahead of Hitler and Stalin in the extermination business, and second only to Mao Tse-tung.

[T'wit]

>> ...make sure you show his previous rulings and how it suddenly changed in his last order.

Good point!

[8mmMauser]

Time might prove me wrong. But when I notice the same descriptives coming repeatedly in the same time frame from different sources, I am alert as this is a technique we have seen before when the left and allies build new terms for their pet topics. We know the left uses words as tools to effect actions and not necessarily for their intrinsic meanings. If it disappears, I admit to being wrong, if it repeats, perhaps I am right. Not a big issue with me, just one more shred to consider.

[8mmMauser]

...and other pandering (e.g., the Terri Schiavo intervention)

This phrase alerted me. You see, the article with the phrase reading like a Ludlam title saturated the news media yesterday, and is there again today in multiples.

Punished for apostasy

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[T'wit]

I am less forgiving. The word "intervention" itself was false, as was the claim that Republicans in Congress had no business butting in and were merely pandering to religious nuts. This was unrelieved propaganda that buried every distinction under a foot of mud. Obviously it worked. We watched the Democrats spin it every day. You linked stories from scores of congressional campaigns, many of them earlier in this very thread.

They all bore false witness, they intended to, and they did it for political gain. I think we may say of these people what Prof Amos said of the judges: they made themselves accomplices in murder.

[8mmMauser]

The Terri Factor anew? Is this a crucial reason for rejecting a presidential candidate, a right to die kill?

Nashville landscaper Michael Bernard, 55, said Frist lost his support for a possible run for president when he weighed in on the right-to-die case of Terri Schiavo.

"Some of his statements were way off base. He's just too conservative," Bernard said.

Exit poll cool to Frist as White House hopeful

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[8mmMauser]

More from Thomas Sowell...(Repeat from earlier, but renewed today)

Remember how absolutely certain the mainstream media were that Terri 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 Schiavo?

Last in A 4 Part Series: More Ways The Media Affect Elections

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