Dr. Keys is so fundamentally off base here it's not funny. This is a horrible argument that only advances big government. I see so much hypocrisy here it's mind boggling. All of you who whine and bitch and moan about the government "knowing what is best for you" on so many issues, but think that if you're terminally ill it should be able to force you to stay alive and suffer for several months to several years. Hypocrisy to its very core!
Many of you also do not approve of even medical marijuana. You would force terminally ill patients to use cheap quality artificial pain killers or dangerous natural ones like injective opiates. Whatever happened to the concept of dying with dignity? Have none of you that support Keys's argument here seen a loved one or pet waste away because someone kept them alive longer than their body naturally could sustain? I have, and I swore that I would never allow that again.
So ultimately, f*$% off Ashcroft and your big government loving administration. Let the people have control over their bodies and their lives. Oh wait, that would imply we should actually be a free society in deed and not just name and wishful thinking alone. I think the ramifications of a society that is actually free in deed and not words alone are too great for many of you to handle.
What will be more entertaining is when the right to kill people is extended from doctors to your local Democrat precinct committeeman. All he needs to do his come over, decide that as a libertarian you are not capable of living a 'meaningful existence', and sign your death certificate. Then some local cop will come out and 'execute' the death certificate.
If the true scope of Federal power is to be found in the Declaration of Independence rather than in the Constitution (which is what I understand Dr. Keyes to be saying), then there is no need to "cite the particular Article and Section of the United States Constitution which gives the federal government the power to force people to live." But even if we confine ourselves to the provisions of the Declaration of Independence for a description of legitimate Federal powers and just disregard the Constitution, doesn't the issue of assisted suicide involve at the very least a conflict between the "unalienable" right to Life versus the "unalienable" rights to "Liberty" and the "pursuit of Happiness," and isn't there some room for debate as to which of these "unalienable" rights deserve priority?
The whole notion of looking to the Declaration of Independence as a descriptive tool in defining the boundaries of the U.S. Government's power in our federal system would have come as a real shock to our Founding Fathers. Even Marshall would have blushed at this approach.