Free Republic

Three decades after his far from untimely passing, Spaniards dust off their memories of former dictator Francisco Franco. But this time he's coming back as a panto villain, in hopes of drawing a torrent of boos and hisses to distract a public that is becoming increasingly critical of Spain's ruling leftists. There's something stirring inside the tomb, and a whiff of nastiness sours the air. Should we fear the return of the undead - or is it a case of Resurrection Men digging up a corpse for their own nefarious purposes? The question is one that bears asking as...

Michael Schiavo is co-writing a book with author Michael Hirsh to tell his side of the end-of-life case that divided much of the country. Schiavo's wife Terri suffered a brain injury in 1990 that left her in what some doctors called a "persistent vegetative state." She died March 31 after a bitter court battle between her husband and her parents. Hirsh expects the 280-page book, "Terri: the Truth," to be available just before the first anniversary of Terri's death. Dutton Publishing publicity manager Jean Anne Rose confirmed that the company is publishing the book in March. Michael Schiavo's decision to...

Police may be on the brink of finally finding the remains of Judge Joseph Crater - and possibly solving the most enduring mystery in New York City history, investigators said yesterday. A letter probably penned more than half a century ago has pinpointed a spot under the Coney Island boardwalk where Crater - last seen leaving a Times Square watering hole 75 years ago - is buried, they said. The letter was written by an elderly woman who died of natural causes in June, they said. Upon her death, family members opened a safe-deposit box, where they found a letter...

Profile of Natalee Holloway Missing: Natalee Holloway participated in a trip with 125 seniors from Mountain Brook High School to Aruba in the Caribbean. In the early morning hours on May 30, 2005 Natalee was seen leaving a nightclub and getting into a vehicle. She failed to turn up Monday morning for her return flight home and she has not been seen since. Foul play is suspected in her disappearance. Profile: Natalee Holloway was born on October 21, 1986 to Beth and Dave Holloway. She grew up in the close-knit community of Mountain Brook, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. She...

Lima, Jul. 26, 2005 (CNA) - The President of the Pontifical Council for Heath Care, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, recalled the Terry Schiavo case this week and said “they killed her” by denying her food and hydration.According to the cardinal, “Food and hydration are never considered medicine.”  “To remove them means euthanasia, it means killing, and so this woman was killed by hunger and starvation.  Let’s stop with the euphemisms—they killed her,” he stated.“Law consists of a rational ordering that seeks the common good and not the common evil,” Cardinal Lozano noted, “but many times there are laws that are...

Terri Schiavo, may she rest with God in Peace, was starved to death by the State of Florida, carried out by the so-called Hospice, to prove a point: her husband, who had moved on with his life 14 years 11 1/2 months earlier, wished it, got a lawyer (George Felos) who promotes "death", found a Judge (Greer) who would agree and would appoint a Dr. (whose brother belonged to the same pro-death organization as George Felos to declare her a vegtable, unworthy of life. Proving the point that people who are inconvenient can and will continue to be murdered by...

Oh! Well, it's OK to have Murdered Her Then. Mr. Thogmartin has told us that, after fifteen years of a patient lying in bed recovering, Terri Schiavo might have fully recovered from any abuse she endured. Miraculously he was also unable to see whether or not this person had, fifteen years ago, a heart attack or not. Of course, I’ve never met anyone whose cardiologist was ever unsure, say 24 hours after the incident, that a heart attack had occurred or not. No, in my experience cardiologists can tell you precisely how many nano-seconds the heart attack lasted. Continuing, the...

LARGO, Fla. -- An autopsy on Terri Schiavo backed her husband's contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding that she had massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind, the medical examiner's office said Wednesday. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused. But what caused her collapse 15 years remained a mystery. The autopsy and post-mortem investigation found no proof that she had an eating disorder, as was suspected at the time, Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner Jon Thogmartin said. Autopsy results on the 41-year-old brain-damaged woman were made public Wednesday, more than two...

We all watched Terri Schiavo die. Now former LAPD homicide detective and New York Times bestselling author Mark Furhman investigates to find out what really happened. Later this month, Furhman's newest book, Silent Witness: The Untold Story of Terri Schiavo's Death, will be released. It will prove the controversy over Terry Schiavo's death is far from over. And it's not over yet. Despite her death, the controversy lingers. In Silent Witness, Mark Fuhrman applies his highly respected investigative skills to examine the medical evidence, legal case files, and police records. [NewsMax will have among the first copies.] With the complete...

During the tumultuous final weeks in the life of Terri Schiavo, the young woman who died in a Florida hospice in April, press reports in the nation’s media typically focused on the bitter conflicts among members of her family over her treatment, disagreements among consultants over her state of consciousness, and the increasingly intense arguments in legislatures and the courts over her guardianship. Since her death, the case and the story of her death and dying have been mined for their bearing on our ongoing culture wars and for the debate over the place of “values” in our politics. In...

The case for starving and dehydrating Terri Schiavo to death was built on hypocrisy and deception.The culture of death revealed its face in the propaganda campaign for Terri Schiavo’s demise. Perhaps the most noteworthy fact of the entire ordeal, other than the killing of an innocent woman by starvation, was how thoroughly the American people were lied to throughout the entire affair. Consider, for instance, the major media claim that death by starvation and dehydration is painless. According to the New York Times: “Patients who are terminally ill and conscious and refuse food and drink at the end of life...

A federal judge who declined to review the lawsuit Terri Schaivo's parents filed to prevent her painful 13 day starvation death may have had a conflict of interest. Federal District Court Judge James Whittemore of Tampa was charged by Congress to take up the case and issue a temporary restraining order preventing Terri's death. He refused. However, it appears Judge Whittemore, who became the subject of condemnation from Congressional leaders after his decision, possible should have recused himself from the case. Whittemore served in the 13th Circuit Court of Hillsborough County, Florida from 1990 to 1999. According to a report...

"The Schiavo case will probably be the turning point, in our ability to make our case to Americans about the incredible invasiveness of Republicans, when it comes to (citizens) making personal and private decisions," he said. By contrast, the Democrats should be viewed as "the party of individual freedom ... individual and personal responsibility," he said. One problem, however, is that while Dean may speak officially for the Democratic party, he's only one of many players. Sunday, he struggled to explain why so many Senate Democrats barely raised a whimper when the Schiavo intervention bill was sailing through the chamber....

Rami (RAH-ME) is a retired American Veteran who served in the United States Army for many years, was an honored civic leader and has made his home in sunny California. Rami is a married and successful businessman, and has recently been diagnosed with a syndrome called Aphasia, making it difficult for him to communicate effectively. In October 2003, Rami approached his family for help, stating the physical, financial and mental abuse inflicted on him by his wife, Robin, of three years, that he was afraid of her and desperately wanted a divorce - she is 20 years his junior. Rami's...

Ora Mae Magouirk, the 81-year-old Georgia widow at the center of a contentious family fight over her medical treatment and right to live, (link broken in original) died of a stroke today at approximately 8 a.m. Eastern, at a nursing home in LaGrange, Ga., according to her nephew, Ken Mullinax of Birmingham, Ala. Mullinax told WorldNetDaily that his aunt's condition had improved considerably since her ordeal last month, but took a turn for the worst Wednesday when her vital signs began to weaken. On Sunday an apparent stroke hit her, causing her to have difficulty with speaking, and her blood...

Ironically, if Terri Schiavo's feeding tube had been reinserted and she had been allowed to live on, it would have done very little damage to the purported "right to die." It would have set no precedent for cases in which a patient has left written instructions, in which a patient's heart is unable to beat or lungs are unable to breathe without the aid of a machine, in which a patient was already suffering a terminal illness, or in which a patient's closest family members are united as to what the patient wanted. What made Terri's case stand out was...

Terri Schiavo's parents on Wednesday thanked Pope Benedict for Vatican backing in their failed campaign to keep their brain-damaged daughter alive and gave him a framed picture of her."I can't even tell you how I felt," Terri's mother, Mary, told Reuters in an interview with other family members in St. Peter's Square just minutes after meeting the Pope."When I gave it to him he said: 'I know, I know about Terri' to me. I couldn't imagine the Holy Father saying to me 'I know, I know about Terri'. It was the most I could have ever, ever hoped for," she...

... Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said a more thorough search of the site in the upscale Mansur neighborhood of Baghdad had begun after intelligence reports suggested human remains were buried under the rubble. ...