October 22, 2003
"Do I wake or do I sleep?" With those words, David Gelernter expresses his fundamental disconnect with a society that seems to obsess with nightmares, especially the kind from which it feels impossible to wake. He recalls the Roe v. Wade decision to legalize abortion and deduces that the various ways that followed in which we dispose of life in an ever-easier fashion all spring from this historical point. While I agree with a lot of what Gelernter wrote -- and I have tremendous respect for his opinions -- I disagree with this conclusion. As I wrote in my last post, all of these are symptoms of the existentialism and nihilism that has plagued the world since at least the aftermath of World War II, and perhaps World War I. I felt that my post was incomplete, however, in that I didn't explain the link fully how they are linked...
October 25, 2003
Like me, Mickey is unsure how he feels about the Schiavo case, but he's sure how NPR feels about it: "Bias" isn't quite the right word, actually. A biased report might interview all sides but slant the story to favor one point of view while quoting only unconvincing generalities from the other. That was Thursday's NPR Schiavo story. Wednesday's story transcended mere bias, covering the case as if the anti-death side didn't even exist, so there was no need to even try to find out what they were thinking. All Things Considered on Wednesday covered the Schiavo story by interviewing three "experts" who were all opposed to the parents and Giv. Bush's order to restart the tube feeding, speaking to no one with an opposing point of view. Afterwards, ATC spoke at length with a Dr. Sherwin Nuland, who makes the insulting insinuation that Terri Schiavo's parents oppose her starvation...
The Dissident Frogman posts on the the depravity of putting guns and bombs into the hands of your own 5-year-old and training him to kill, or especially to commit suicide: In my book, anybody putting a gun in the hands of his 5 years old son or strapping an explosive belt around her 10 years old daughter is not fighting for freedom, resisting oppression, showing resolve or absolute despair. ... For any given parents and group to successfully and repeatedly overcome this instinctive behavior and voluntarily put their offspring at risk, it does not take resolve, pride or despair but a mental pathology, a religious or political fanaticism. This is true whether you're talking about Palestinian fanatics or white-supremacist mouthbreathers in Idaho. It's bad enough that fanatics strap bombs on themselves ... but to celebrate when your 12-year-old takes out a few civilians while blowing himself to pieces is just...
October 28, 2003
Mickey Kaus describes a chilling story he heard on NPR's Day to Day: I heard an eye-opening interview on NPR's Day to Day with a woman who says she was near to being diagnosed as being in a "persistent vegetative state" and was trying desperately to signal her doctors and nurses while they debated the most convenient time to kill her--sorry, I mean, exercise her "right to die." Kaus then asks a very pertinent question: How does a) the number of innocent people who will be executed under death penalty procedures compare with b) the number of innocent, live patients who will be killed under a tendentious diagnosis of PVS? I'd guess the ratio is probably one to 100, maybe 1 to 1,000. But the American left makes a huge (and legitimate) fuss about the former while it actually promotes the latter. I doubt many will get to the heart...
October 31, 2003
Power Line posts a provocative essay on the death penalty, using a column by George Will as a springboard: He reaches this conclusion after juxtaposing the views of Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (pro death penalty) and attorney-novelist Scott Turow (against it). Romney cites three reasons why the death penalty should be used in some instances -- its deterrent effect will prevent some murders; it expresses and reinforces society's "proportionate revulsion" against the most heinous crimes; and its presence can induce criminals to turn state's evidence in order to avoid execution. Deacon argues, in a dispassionate and intelligent manner, that the death penalty saves lives overall. After all, murderers kill in prison, and have been known to kill when released from prison. The death penalty removes that oportunity. In Will's column, Governor Mitt Romney argues that the death penalty is a deterrent, which may have been true at one point but...
December 8, 2003
Another dead baby has been found abandoned in Minnesota. I don't need to post the details of this poor child's short life and tragic death, only to say that the baby only lived between one and five days and was abandoned on the shore of Lake Pepin. I don't need to do so because the details, such as are known, are depressingly familiar: the corpse of the baby is found by strangers, abandoned as garbage, with the usual call from authorities for information about the mother so that the child can be identified and the mother treated by professionals. When the mother is found, probably a frightened teenager, she will have a heartbreaking story of fear and hopelessness that will mitigate the barbaric abandonment of her infant child. The litany has become a complete process of its own. Impending childbirth may be the most hopeful event of our human existence....
January 16, 2004
Local prosecutors resolved a tragic and infuriating case yesterday by virtually guaranteeing a vicious murderer gets out of prison in less than 20 years: Tekela L. Richardson, accused of beating a 79-year-old St. Paul woman to death June 17 while stealing her vehicle, pleaded guilty Thursday to intentional second-degree murder. ... Under a plea agreement, prosecutors will recommend that Richardson receive a 25 1/2-year prison term as called for by state sentencing guidelines. That would require her to serve at least 17 years. However, District Judge M. Michael Monahan reminded Richardson that he is not bound by the plea agreement, and that she cannot withdraw her guilty plea if he decides to give her a longer sentence. She will be sentenced March 15. In my native California, murder during a robbery is automatically first-degree murder, and the only two options are death or life without parole. California has many issues,...
February 11, 2004
My good friend Haddayr Copley-Woods writes another excellent column today for the Minnesota Women's Press, this time on events in her neighborhood and the related murders of two young people: one an innocent bystander in a gang shooting, and the other the originally intended target who was murdered months later. Well, they finally did it. This time, the person aiming to kill Timothy Oliver, 18, got his man instead of a little girl doing homework in her living room. The paper didn’t say what many readers probably thought about the South Minneapolis shooting: “Oh—a gangster. Someone who doesn’t matter.”Certainly Brian Keith Edwards—the man who allegedly shot Oliver—believed he didn’t matter; so did Myon Burrell, the first man who tried to shoot him. In fact, Burrell thought both Oliver and Tyesha Edwards, the 11-year-old girl he shot and killed more than a year ago, were throwaway people. Even if he didn’t...
November 30, 2004
The Netherlands admitted today that Dutch doctors have carried out euthanasia without requests from the patients or their families. The hospital where these killings took place had requested that the government promulgate a "protocol" for killing newborns they judged doomed, and the admission formed part of the request: A hospital in the Netherlands - the first nation to permit euthanasia - recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives. The announcement by the Groningen Academic Hospital came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether to legalize euthanasia on people incapable of deciding for themselves whether they want to end their lives - a prospect viewed with horror by euthanasia opponents and as a natural evolution by advocates. Unfortunately, opponents also saw it as a natural...
December 2, 2004
Hugh Hewitt addresses the Groningen Protocol debate in his latest Weekly Standard on-line column, "Death By Committee". Hugh has led what little media attention that Groningen Academic Hospital's announcement of killing four babies has generated, and he marvels at the sharp outbreak of widespread apathy he sees: Incredibly, the nation's elite media has turned a collective blind eye to this story, though the Los Angeles Times did, on the day following the Drudge headline, find time to put on the paper's front page, above the fold, the story that Salmon and Steelhead May Lose Protection, but not a column inch of ink for a radical leap past Kevorkian land into the regions of Mengele. LAST WEEK I marveled at the casual manner with which the Target Corporation announced that the Salvation Army could no longer place its kettles and ring its bells outside the giant retailer's 1,500+ stores. It was...
December 6, 2004
Maureen Down inveighed against the upcoming holiday season in a poisoned-pen missive that tripped the bitterometer to new records, even for MoDo. In fact, she expressed a desire to "rip [Frosty the Snowman's] frozen face off." Apparently, Dowd has all the Christmas spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge on a bad night (pre-Ghosts, natch): I've never said this out loud before, but I can't stand Christmas. Everyone in my family loves it except me, and they can't fathom why I get the mullygrubs, as a Southern friend of mine used to call a low-level depression, from Thanksgiving straight through New Year. ... I've given a lot of thought to why others' season of joy is my season of doom - besides the obvious fact that yuppies have drenched the holidays in ever more absurd levels of consumerism. I think it has to do with how stressed out my mom and sister would...
February 23, 2005
I have received a ton of e-mail the past two days, mostly from people I don't know, scolding me as one of the "big guns" of the blogosphere for not posting on Terri Schiavo and the plight of her family. Some have even gone so far as to imply that if she dies, her death would be my fault for not having posted about the case. I cannot tell you how rude and wrong that is, for in the first place, I am not a member of the Terri Schiavo family, and that's where this decision belongs. Second, I blog -- I am not God, and neither are the rest of you. Some people need to get a grip, for goodness' sake. As a Catholic, I believe in the sanctity of life, which means I naturally sympathize with the parents of Schiavo, who want nothing more than to keep their...
February 24, 2005
After reading your comments and e-mails from last night and this morning, I want to make a couple of points more clear. One, the reason I don't get into the details of the Schiavo case is because, as you can see from the comments section here and the e-mail I've been getting, most of them are hotly disputed and not easily reconcilable. I'm taking a more philosophical approach because that's where I'm most comfortable. Again, what this boils down to is a family dispute over both Terri's condition now and her state of mind before she became comatose. Both sides have legitimate and valid points on these issues, and they're further complicated by the lack of clear instructions from Terri herself. Under these circumstances, where the parents have essentially agreed to take over primary care of Terri, I tend to sympathize more with them and on the side of life...
March 9, 2005
Last November, the Netherlands medical community reported that doctors occasionally practiced euthanasia on children and babies and wanted the government to codify rules and practices for doctors to use. The proposal, called the Groningen Protocol, sought to allow doctors the final choice as to when to end a child's life, even if the parents objected (from the original AP story): Under the Groningen protocol, if doctors at the hospital think a child is suffering unbearably from a terminal condition, they have the authority to end the child's life. The protocol is likely to be used primarily for newborns, but it covers any child up to age 12. The hospital, beyond confirming the protocol in general terms, refused to discuss its details. "It is for very sad cases," said a hospital spokesman, who declined to be identified. "After years of discussions, we made our own protocol to cover the small number...
March 10, 2005
The main currency of a blogger -- perhaps the only currency -- is credibility. If we expect to be taken seriously, then we need to make sure we get our facts straight, and if we make a mistake, to acknowledge it. Of course, none of us like to admit we missed something important (heck, who does?), but when we do we need to correct the record. Last night I posted about Dutch euthanasia and the Groningen Protocol. In doing so, I used my original source material, an AP wire report that first brought the practice to my attention. The blog PBS Watch and CQ reader Superhawk both pointed out to me that the AP report contained a substantial error -- that the protocol could be used to override a parental objection. But that isn't what Groningen proposed, as PBS Watch noted (emphasis mine): The Groningen Protocol has five criteria: the...
March 15, 2005
CNN reports that a Texas court allowed doctors to override a mother's wishes and euthanize a severely afflicted five-month-old baby from a withdrawal of medical care: A critically ill 5-month-old was taken off life support and died Tuesday, a day after a judge cleared the way for doctors to halt care they believed to be futile. The infant's mother had fought to keep him alive. Sun Hudson had been diagnosed with a fatal genetic disorder called thanatophoric dysplasia, a condition characterized by a tiny chest and lungs too small to support life. He had been on a ventilator since birth. Thanatophoric dysplasia is an unpleasant and rare form of dwarfism that occurs once in about 35,000 births in the US. CNN does not properly describe the prognosis of the disease, however. It is not always fatal, although nearly so in the neonatal stage. Usually, thanataphoric dwarves (the name is Greek...
March 16, 2005
Hugh Hewitt links to a shocking article on the Terri Schiavo case in National Review today that calls into question the entire premise of her husband's case to remove her feeding tube. According to a number of board-certified neurologists, Terri never got the requisite testing to certify her as suffering from persistent vegetative state (PVS), and the doctor who has testified to her diagnosis has a long track record of right-to-die activism. Father Robert Johansen, a Catholic priest working on behalf of the Schindlers, explains: I have spent the past ten days recruiting and interviewing neurologists who are willing to come forward and offer affidavits or declarations concerning new testing and examinations for Terri. In addition to the 15 neurologists affidavits Gibbs had in time to present in court, I have commitments from over 30 others who are willing to testify that Terri should have new and additional testing, and...
March 17, 2005
National Review has another excellent article about the Terri Schiavo controversy, as Andrew McCarthy weighs in on the court's plan to remove Terri's feeding tube. McCarthy took a lot of flack early in the war on terror for questioning our outright ban on torturing terror suspects. His e-mail overflowed with indignation from people who lectured him on descending to the level of the savages we oppose. If so, McCarthy asks today, how do we explain the treatment Florida has in mind for Terri Schiavo? On Friday afternoon, unless humanity intervenes, the state of Florida is scheduled to begin its court-ordered torture-murder of Terri Schiavo, whose only crime is that she is an inconvenience. ... It will not produce a scintilla of socially useful information. It will not save a single innocent life. It is not narrowly targeted on a morally culpable person the torture-victim is herself as innocent as...
As I drove home today, I spent a while thinking about Terri Schiavo, who faces death by starvation and dehydration by court order unless either Congress or the Florida state legislature intervenes in time. A parallel sprang to mind, one that I don't know that I've seen before -- but it seems to me that Terri has become the new Elian Gonzalez. Gonzalez, as most will recall, was a small boy rescued from the seas that claimed his mother as the two of them fled Fidel Castro's oppressive regime. Since his mother died, he had no obvious guardian to make decisions for his welfare, only some extended family living in Florida. The helplessness of the little boy grabbed the nation's imagination, and when the Cuban government demanded the return of Elian to his father in Cuba, Americans divided passionately on the subject. One side could not imagine the government --...
March 18, 2005
According to The Corner, Congressional panels have issued subpoenas to the health-care providers for Terri Schiavo -- and more importantly, one for Terri herself to testify before Congress on her state: Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert (R-IL), House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA), released the following statement regarding the Committee on Government Reform's inquiry into the long-term care of incapacitated or non-ambulatory adults: "The Committee on Government Reform has initiated an inquiry into the long term care of incapacitated adults, an issue of growing importance to the federal government and federal healthcare policy. The committee's inquiry arises out of the case of Terri Schiavo, who is currently being kept alive in a hospice in Florida. Later this morning, we will issue a subpoena, which will require hospice administrators and attending physicians to preserve nutrition and hydration for Terri Schiavo to allow...
A Florida circuit court has issued an injunction prohibiting the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, the AP reports: A state judge on Friday temporarily blocked the removal of the feeding tube for severely brain-damaged Terri Schiavo as legal wrangling continued over efforts by congressional Republicans to keep her alive. Pinellas Circuit Court Chief Judge David Demers ordered that the feeding tube remain in place past a 1 p.m. EST deadline while fellow Judge George Greer, who is presiding over the Schiavo case, deals with conflicting legal issues. This sounds pretty temporary; the legal issues, though, certainly involve the federal subpoena, which Greer cannot overrule. It should keep Terri alive until at least the 28th. More as it comes through. UPDATE: Judge Greer has ordered the tube removed anyway, countering the Congressional subpoenas. This may create a jurisdictional issue that will allow the case to be heard in federal court,...
March 19, 2005
The Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from Congress to restart Terri Schiavo's feeding tube while lower courts rule on the legality of the subpoenas issued for her appearance on March 28th: The U.S. Supreme Court late Friday denied without comment a House committee emergency request to have Terri Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted. The decision came after the committee requested the court's ruling in order to buy time as lower court appeals on subpoenas issued by the committee are considered. The severely brain-damaged Florida woman had depended on the feeding tube for the past 15 years before it was removed Friday afternoon. Without the tube, she will likely starve to death within a week or two. In a statement, Republican congressional leaders vowed to work through the weekend in order to save Schiavo's life. The SCOTUS appeal would have given Terri's supporters the most direct and quick route to...
5:19 PM CT: Senator Frist gets up to introduce the compromise legislation which will allow a federal district judge to hear Terri's case as a civil-rights case. 5:20 - Asking for the adjournment procedure which will call the House into session. 5:22 - That's interesting. The adjournment just involved Rick Santorum and Bill Frist. It seems like an anticlimax for such a moment ... but if it keeps the ball rolling, great. Trey Jackson has the video of the Tom DeLay news conference announcing the compromise....
President Bush has changed his schedule to return from his Crawford, TX ranch to Washington DC in order to sign any legislation produced tomorrow that will restore nutrition and hydration to Terri Schiavo: President Bush is changing his schedule to return to the White House on Sunday to be in place to sign emergency legislation that would shift the case of a brain-damaged Florida woman to federal courts, the White House said Saturday. "Everyone recognizes that time is important here," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. "This is about defending life." ... During previous travels, Bush has had legislation flown to him overnight by military plane for his signature. But in this case, McClellan said that the fact that a woman's life is at stake made it necessary for him to travel to the bill. Bush had a full schedule set up for this week, traveling on Monday and...
March 20, 2005
House Democrats blocked attempts to hold an approval by acclamation of the compromise legislation that would allow the Schindlers to take the case of Terri Schiavo into federal court, forcing the bipartisan coalition of Congressment to round up at least 218 members for a session that would begin at one minute after midnight tomorrow morning: House Republicans, seeing Congress as a last hope for brain-damaged Terri Schiavo, failed during an extraordinary Palm Sunday session to pass legislation aimed at prolonging the Florida woman's life. Once Democrats refused to allow the measure to go ahead without objection, Republicans began scrambling to bring lawmakers, who had just started their Easter recess, back to Washington. Majority Republicans called a recess after the four-minute session and said they planned to meet as early as one minute after midnight on Monday if they get at least 218 of the 435-member House to attend. Will...
The debate in Congress over the bill to extend federal jurisdiction to the parents of Terri Schiavo in their efforts to save her life. I've bounced in and out of the debate, mostly amused to hear some of the arguments opposing the bill. For instance, I've heard at least one representative try to inject race into the argument, claiming that Terri only gets this attention because she's white. Another got up and claimed that the bill offered Terri "all of the Medicare" she wanted while Congress spent their time denying it to others. Yet another objected, in the one minute accorded her, being yanked out of her place of worship to suffer the indignity of being forced back to Washington. Most, however, debated sensibly about the effect of the particulars of the bill and the case at hand. As I write this, at 11:15 PM CT, the Democratic whip makes...
March 21, 2005
Carl Hulse and David Kirkpatrick report on the Congressional action taken yesterday to allow Terri Schiavo's parents access to the federal courts for a new trial. Unfortunately but predictably, this "news" report contains half-truths, loaded language, and a flat-out falsehood, all of which reveal the biases of the reporters. Consider the lack of context for this passage: With just a few senators on hand for an emergency session on a rainy Sunday, the Senate quickly approved the legislation. Its authors hope the measure leads to a federal court order to resume providing nutrition to Ms. Schiavo over the objections of her husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo. A series of state court decisions have sided with him. It might be somewhat accurate that a series of state court decisions have sided with Michael Schiavo, but all of those involving finding of fact have been decided by one man, George Greer,...
ABC News conducted a poll over the weekend about the Terri Schiavo case which purports to show that the American public strongly opposes any intervention in the Schiavo case, and support for Michael Schiavo's right to cut off Terri's food and water. Gary Langer writes the following analysis of the poll: The public, by 63 percent-28 percent, supports the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube, and by a 25-point margin opposes a law mandating federal review of her case. Congress passed such legislation and President Bush signed it early today. That legislative action is distinctly unpopular: Not only do 60 percent oppose it, more -- 70 percent -- call it inappropriate for Congress to get involved in this way. And by a lopsided 67 percent-19 percent, most think the elected officials trying to keep Schiavo alive are doing so more for political advantage than out of concern for her or for...
March 22, 2005
CNN reports that federal Judge James Whittemore has refused to issue a temporary injunction to restore Terri Schiavo's feeding tube: A federal judge in Florida has ruled that he will not order a feeding tube reinserted to Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman who is the center of a national legal battle over her life. The case likely will be appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia. Presumably, the interpretation here on Whittemore's part is that a de novo look at the evidence has little likelihood of a winning argument for Terri's parents. However, it almost sounds like Whittemore treated this as an appeal rather than the square-one approach called for by the law Congress passed. Whittemore should have treated this case as a fresh filing, and therefore should have restored nutrition and hydration to Terri while both sides presented evidence and testimony, not just 30 minutes...
March 23, 2005
Terri Schiavo's parents have lost their emergency appeal to the Eleventh Circuit to get their daughter food and water, leaving them with only a Supreme Court emergency appeal to stop her death by dehydration: In a 2-1 ruling early Wednesday, a panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta said the parents "failed to demonstrate a substantial case on the merits of any of their claims" that Terri's feeding tube should be reinserted immediately. "There is no denying the absolute tragedy that has befallen Mrs. Schiavo," the ruling said. "We all have our own family, our own loved ones, and our own children. However, we are called upon to make a collective, objective decision concerning a question of law." In his dissent, Judge Charles R. Wilson said Schiavo's "imminent" death would end the case before it could be fully considered. "In fact, I fail to see any harm...
March 24, 2005
The Washington Times editorial board met with the Dutch ambassador to the US, Boudewijn van Eenennaam, who discussed a wide range of issues with the board. The Times headlines his defense of euthanasia, but van Eenennaam also discusses the problem of assimilation the Dutch now have with their significant Muslim population: "Almost without us noticing, we had schools in Rotterdam and The Hague that were 80 percent and 90 percent Muslim," he said. Today, in a nation of 16 million, there are 1.6 million Muslims, many of whom are second- and third-generation Dutch citizens whose parents and grandparents were guest workers who arrived to stay. The mistake, he said, was that the Muslim immigrants had been welcomed to the Netherlands with almost no conditions. There was no requirement that they learn the Dutch language or assimilate into the European culture. "We were too tolerant. ... There is strong support that...
I received an e-mail from Bart M this morning with the following message: You published a link to a Michelle Malkin article which repeated a slime on Schiavo's husband. I suggest reading the following to appreciate just how scurrilous Ms. Malkin's opportunistic hit piece was[.] The link was to this Media Matters post, and as you might imagine, I took the reference with a huge, Lot's Wife-sized grain of salt. Sure enough, our friends at Media Matters have the spin cycle going pretty hard trying to discredit the nurses who have brought affadavits forward regarding the behavior of Michael Schiavo during his guardianship of Terri Schiavo. Not only does Media Matters take all the news agencies to task for giving Carla Iyer airtime during this debate, they link to another affadavit from another nurse who corroborates Iyer's testimony, while claiming their testimony is "incredible". Where do they get that idea?...
The Supreme Court has refused to hear the appeal of the Schindlers to get food and water restored to Terri Schiavo: The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to order Terri Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted, rejecting a desperate appeal by her parents to keep their severely brain-damaged daughter alive. The decision, announced in a terse one-page order, marked the end of a dramatic and disheartening four-day dash through the federal court system by Bob and Mary Schindler. Justices did not explain their decision, which was at least the fifth time they have declined to get involved in the Schiavo case. I'm not surprised by this action. I always felt that the only hope Terri had of getting relief was at the district court level. Once Judge Whittemore ignored Congress' express desire for a de novo retrial, I knew the effort was doomed. I'll post more later. I hear that Jeb Bush...
March 25, 2005
Now that the federal court has ruled against the Schindlers again this morning in their fight to save their daughter from death, Terri's supporters have renewed their calls for Governor Jeb Bush to step in and do something -- some say even if he has to break the law to do it: The Rev. Patrick Mahoney -- a Christian Defense Coalition representative who is frequently on hand across the country for controversial matters of concern to religious conservatives -- called for Gov. Bush to send Florida law enforcement officers to "come in and take Terri." "A citizen of your state is being brutally murdered," he said. "You need to intervene." Mahoney was organizing the prayer vigil Friday. "We are here on Good Friday to ask Gov. Jeb Bush to intervene to save the life of Terri Schiavo," he said in a statement. "The governor has it within his power to...
March 28, 2005
When does advocacy turn from focusing on an injustice to focusing on yourself? After spending Saturday taking phone calls on our radio show and reading today's USA Today article about the increasingly chaotic demonstrations outside Terri Schiavo's hospice, I would say that the time has arrived. Randall Terry, the radical anti-abortion activist who had mostly disappeared from national view over the past few years, has suddenly grabbed the stage in Florida, and his followers have stopped taking their cues from Terri's family: Tension mounted outside Woodside Hospice here, where Schiavo was in her 10th day without food or water. Bobby Schindler, Schiavo's brother, told the protesters they aren't helping his family by getting arrested. Karl Henderson, 25, of Denver Bible Church, took issue with Schindler. "We should be able to take her water if she's dying," he said. "You're not speaking for our family," Schindler said. Randall Terry used his...
After the passions have cooled a bit, Congress intends on taking up the central issues that surrounded the Terri Schiavo case to determine whether federal action is needed to protect the rights of the disabled under guardianship regarding so-called "end of life issues". The New York Times report makes clear that partisanship does not appear to be a problem, as both parties have called for hearings to make sure people like Terri have better protection in the future: On Sunday, lawmakers of both parties agreed that Congress has a role to play in such cases and should contemplate legislation that would give added legal recourse to patients like Ms. Schiavo. While it is difficult to predict whether such a measure could pass, the Schiavo case has clearly pushed thorny questions about end-of-life care to the fore on Capitol Hill, as well as in state legislatures around the nation. The Republican-controlled...
March 29, 2005
Today brought out two more voices of the right-wing theocracy threatening America, according to Paul Krugman, arguing to reconnecting the feeding tube for Terri Schiavo and to stop her deliberate starvation and dehydration. The first right-wing Bible thumper to speak out today comes from a religious background (WARNING: ACLU members should protect themselves from any contact with Christianity before proceeding): As Terri Schiavo entered her 12th full day without food or water, the Rev. Jesse Jackson prayed with her parents Tuesday and joined conservatives in calling for state lawmakers to order her feeding tube reinserted. ... "I feel so passionate about this injustice being done, how unnecessary it is to deny her a feeding tube, water, not even ice to be used for her parched lips," he said. "This is a moral issue and it transcends politics and family disputes." ... Jackson said he asked Michael Schiavo for permission to...
March 30, 2005
After watching Terri Schiavo struggle to stay alive for thirteen days without food and water, the Eleventh Circuit appellate court has finally decided that she may have some rights to due process after all. The court agreed to hear the Schindlers' appeal to reinstate her feeding tube in a dramatic thirteenth-hour development: A federal appeals court early Wednesday agreed to consider a petition by Terri Schiavo's parents for a new hearing on whether to reconnect their severely brain-damaged daughter's feeding tube. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled without comment on Schiavo's 12th day without nourishment. Last week, the same court twice ruled against Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, who are trying to keep her alive. ... [T]he court will consider the request for a new hearing, rather than whether previous Florida court rulings have met legal standards under state law, which is what federal courts have done...
March 31, 2005
The AP reports that Terri Schiavo has died this morni