Category: Songs of the Shining Wire

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? From Judge George Greer himself, of course:

Greer dismissed Iyer’s charges, noting that they — along with a similar affidavit given by Heidi Law, another nurse who formerly took care of Terri Schiavo — were “incredible to say the least” and that “[n]either in the testimony nor in the medical records is there support for these affidavits as they purport to detail activities and responses of Terri Schiavo.”

First, it’s important to review both affadavits to see how dumb that argument is. Iyer specifically states in her affadavit that her comments to Terri’s chart had been repeatedly removed, and Law says notes she provided the nursing staff routinely went into the trash. Both sworn affadavits corroborate the fact that Michael would not allow nurses to perform any kind of therapy for Terri in the period from 1995 to 1997, and the hostile attitude Michael had towards Terri. When two different people who worked with Terri at two different times give essentially the same testimony, a court should give some consideration to their presentation.
However, Greer dismissed them with little if any consideration, and you can almost feel the contempt he had for their testimony in this curt dismissal:

The remaining affidavits deal exclusively with events which allegedly occurred in the 1995-1997 time frame. The court feels constrained to discuss them. They are incredible to say the least. Ms. Iyer details what amounts to a 15-month cover-up which would include the staff of Palm Garden of Lago Convalescent Center, the Guardian of the Person, the Guardian ad Litem, the medical professionals, the police and, believe it or not, Mr. and Mrs. Schindler. Her affidavit clearly states that she would “call them (Mr. and Mrs. Schindler) anyway because I thought they should know about their daughter.” The affidavit of Ms. Law speaks of Terri responding on a constant basis. Neither in the testimony nor in the medical records is there support for these affidavits as they purport to detail activities and responses of Terri Schiavo. It is impossible to believe that Mr. and Mrs. Schindler would not have subpoenaed Ms. Iyer for the January 2000 evidentiary hearing had she contacted them as her affidavit alleges.

Why is that so impossible to believe? Staff comes and goes at hospitals and hospices; it’s more than just possible that the Schindlers couldn’t remember their names by 2000, it’s probably very likely, considering the vast number of nurses and caregivers that the family had encountered the previous nine years. I’ve dealt with the highly professional and wonder staff at Fairview University Medical Center in Minneapolis for over two years, and I haven’t a clue as to the names of the nurses and technicians who have assisted the First Mate during that period. The Schindlers couldn’t very well subpoena people whose names they couldn’t recall and whose notes had been expunged from the official records. As far as the cover-up including the facility which Michael paid to house Terri, did the judge even consider their financial stake in continuing to receive compensation for Terri’s care?
This is why Congress wanted the federal court to take a de novo look at the Terri Schiavo case — so that Terri’s fate could be considered by a finder of fact besides George Greer for the first time. Media Matters for America blunders into the truth of why so many of us have so many problems with Greer’s handling of the case, although true to form, MMFA can’t recognize the truth with both hands and a flashlight.

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 Islam in the Netherlands will have to adapt to the Netherlands,” he said. The native Dutch must accommodate the newcomers as well. “I do think the Dutch population should be open a little more.”
He noted that a government video showing topless women on a beach and homosexuals embraced in a kiss, meant to demonstrate the reality of life in an open and permissive culture, had been edited to avoid offending prospective Muslim immigrants.

The last paragraph in that excerpt brings up a lot of questions about the Netherlands and its approach to immigration. First, it’s important to understand why European countries have had to market themselves to immigrants. Their birth rates have declined so steadily that their social programs have reached a breaking point. There aren’t enough younger workers to fund the promised benefits their older populations expect to see, and the political calamity that would result from a default will create a complete meltdown of Dutch society. Immigration is one key component to resolving this — but not the only one, to which I’ll return in a moment.
So how do the Dutch attract immigrants, especially those who will work cheap? They create government videos depicting Dutch reality: open homosexuality and nudity, which fairly represents Dutch openness towards sexuality in general. Nothing wrong with that, although I think it’s hilarious that a government chooses to promote itself that way. However, when that doesn’t get the response needed to keep their economy afloat, what does the Netherlands do? They edit the tape — and then market themselves to the one group of people that their sexual laissez-faire almost guarantees to offend.
That kind of self-destructive decisionmaking makes me question whether the Dutch really believe in their open society, or if they simply are too lazy to defend any set of beliefs beyond their nanny-state benefits. Euthanasia provides another example of this, because a state that faces increasing pressure to fund the cradle-to-grave socialism that the Dutch (and the rest of Europe) have promised have an swfully big incentive to move the more costly of its citizens towards the end stage of that spectrum as quickly as possible:

In a luncheon interview yesterday with editors and reporters at The Washington Times, Mr. van Eenennaam emphasized that he takes no position on how U.S. courts and medical authorities should deal with Mrs. Schiavo’s illness. The disagreement between her husband and her parents, he said, presents unusual difficulties.
Under Dutch euthanasia law, the advice of medical experts in similar cases “weighs very heavily in the final decision.”
Critics of the Dutch law have raised alarms over a new drive by Dutch medical authorities to authorize euthanasia in cases in which a patient hasn’t given his consent, and in cases of mental suffering not based on physical ailments.

So far, the Dutch have resisted going that far, but who are the government to tell someone who is in such unbearable psychological pain that they can’t kill themselves? And why wouldn’t the insistence of medical physicians that a patient cannot ever be helped by their care eventually trump that person’s irrational insistence on staying alive? As resources become more scarce and more physicians feel comfortable insisting on these changes, don’t be surprised to see the Dutch parliament and courts start carving out mechanisms for these in the near future.
Interestingly, the one group that will probably object to euthanasia at all will be the Muslims the Dutch imported to solve their worker crises. The Netherlands will rightly but incompletely blame this on a failure of assimilation, one they started the first time they edited their videos to attract workers antagonistic to Western culture. The complete truth will be that the expansion of euthanasia shows the decadent nature of European socialism, one which the Muslims oppose and which they will use to eventually overtake Western culture on the Continent unless Europe wakes up from its socialist slumber and starts retooling their economy for dynamic capitalism. Once it does that, the need for cheap Muslim labor will drop and the Muslim incursion will marginalize itself.
Perhaps then, the Dutch will quit focusing their medical efforts on how to kill people as kindly as possible and start focusing on how best to preserve life.

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 each of legal briefs and argument.
The Schindlers can now appeal this decision through the federal courts, but the appellate route appears more bleak. First, it’s time-consuming, and Terri may die of dehydration at any time. Second, Michael Schiavo’s lawyers will certainly challenge the Constitutionality of the Congressional action at the same time in answer to any appeal, and the appellate courts may not be unsympathetic to that argument.
I’ll keep praying, but I’m not optimistic, nor am I surprised. If an order to restart nutrition and hydration would have been forthcoming, it would have come yesterday afternoon.

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, the judge who has presided over Terri’s fate from the beginning. The other court decisions have been appellate decisions, which do not permit arguments on findings of fact, or at least have not in this case. The appelate courts merely find on procedure. In fact, Terri has not had another venue in which to argue for her own interests at all.
Hulse and Kirkpatrick then use this loaded language:

Ms. Schiavo’s mother, meanwhile, issued a national appeal for parents to call their Congressional representatives and pressure them to vote for the bill to prolong her daughter’s life.

Terri’s life isn’t being “prolonged” by her feeding tube any more than mine was when my wife cooked my breakfast this morning. The verb prolong gives a clear innuendo that her treatment somehow artificially extends Terri’s life, and that she would die without extraordinary treatment. However, that simply isn’t the case. Terri Schiavo is not terminally ill, and wasn’t dying until Judge Greer ordered her feeding tube removed. She isn’t even in a coma. She is profoundly disabled, no question, but so are thousands of other Americans who require feeding tubes to stay alive.
The Paper of Record then manages to completely whiff on the facts of the case:

Ms. Schiavo, who is 41, suffered extensive brain damage 15 years ago when her heart stopped briefly, probably because of a potassium deficiency. Since then, she has remained in what doctors have described as a “persistent vegetative state.”

That statement is flat-out untrue. Terri wasn’t diagnosed as PVS until well after her heart attack. In fact, one of the components of Michael Schiavo’s malpractice suit was a fund to provide Terri with therapy, as it had shown promise and improved her condition. Not until years later did anyone claim Terri was PVS (I believe it was 1998, but you can check here for a timeline).
The Gray Lady claims itself as the leading journalistic resource for the United States. However, their writing leaves much to be desired, and it should come as no surprise to their dwindling readership that their biases come through shiningly clear in what supposedly should be the objective news section. Even their research comes up short. Remind me again how the Exempt Media has the advantage due to the layers of editors and fact-checkers employed to screen out exactly what we see in this article.

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 the case for federalism that most Democrats have. I’ve missed most of the GOP arguments, unfortunately, just out of luck as I’ve caught the debate at the moments when they spoke. Tom DeLay now has the floor, and he spoke stirringly. “A young woman in Florida is being dehydrated and starved to death,” he said. “For fifty-eight long hours, her mouth has been parched and her hunger pains have been throbbing. If we do not act, she will die of thirst. However helpless, Mr. Speaker, she is alive. She is still one of us, and this cannot stand.”
DeLay demanded the vote, and Hastert called the vote. Barney Frank, acting in charge of the opposition, called for a individual vote. They have 12 minutes left, and the ayes lead 121-36 so far.
UPDATE: 9 minutes left, and 23 of 60 Democratic votes cast have supported the bill, an important point. Let’s be careful about making this sound too partisan. 133-41 to pass so far.
UPDATE II 11:36 PM CT: 200-55 for passage, and Democrats split 46-52 for the bill. Only three Republicans voted against it. The bill needs to get printed by the Senate and taken to the White House, where Bush will immediately sign it, perhaps in the next one to two hours. A federal court has remained alerted to a possible emergency application for injunctive relief, which may mean by the time we wake up tomorrow, an order for resumption of nutrition and hydration will have been executed.
UPDATE III: Official count was 203-58, with five Republicans voting nay.
UPDATE IV: AP reports the vote here:

While Terri Schiavo lay in her hospice bed early Monday, the U.S. Congress gave a boost to the hopes of the brain-damaged woman’s parents that her feeding tube would be reinserted. …
An attorney for Schiavo’s parents filed a request for an emergency injunction with a federal appellate court to have her feeding tube reinserted once the bill passed. He also planned to make a similar request with the federal district court in Tampa.

It shouldn’t take long to see how the federal courts will receive this.
UPDATE V: Bush signed the bill early this morning, and the Schindlers filed a lawsuit in federal court with a request for an emergency order restoring Terri’s feeding tube.

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 Tuesday to campaign for his Social Security reform efforts before returning to the ranch on Wednesday to meet with Mexican president Vicente Fox. The White House says those plans won’t change, although Bush will depart from DC for those appearances rather than Texas. That indicates that Bush expects to have a bill to sign tomorrow, probably in the late afternoon. It also demonstrates Bush’s commitment to seeing this case resolved by a federal court rather than the Florida state courts, at least for a fresh look at the evidence.
It’s possible that an emergency injunction request could be filed by the Schindlers in federal court on Sunday night, if a judge can be found. If so, the doctors could restore food and water to Terri as soon as tomorrow evening, if the timing and the courts cooperate.

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.

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 a restart of her nutrition and hydration. It’s possible that one of the lower courts could rule over the weekend, but more likely that Congress will act first to reconcile differences between the Senate and House bills passed last week. The earliest we can expect that kind of action will be Monday morning, almost 72 hours after Terri’s food and water were withdrawn.

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, as a Congressional subpoena should, in theory, overrule a state court’s order when that order will make a federal witness unavailable to Congress.
UPDATE, 3:24 PM: The AP reports that the tube has been removed:

Doctors removed Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube Friday despite an extraordinary, last-minute push by Republicans on Capitol Hill to use the subpoena powers of Congress to save the severely brain-damaged woman.
Schiavo’s family issued a statement on their Web site confirming that the tube had been disconnected. It is expected that it will take one to two weeks for Schiavo to die, provided no one intercedes and gets the tube reinserted.

I doubt this will be the last development today. I’ll keep checking in as often as I can. Keep checking in at Blogs for Terri for comprehensive coverage.

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 Congress to fully understand the procedures and practices that are currently keeping her alive. The subpoena will be joined by a Senate investigation as well.
“This inquiry should give hope to Terri, her parents and friends, and the millions of people throughout the world who are praying for her safety. This fight is not over.”

If Drudge is correct and Terri herself will be subpoenaed, then it amounts to an open-ended stay for the removal of her feeding tube. If Terri is under subpoena, then the law states that nothing can be done to her which will prevent her testimony. That means the tube stays in until Congress calls her to testify.
As Wilford Brimley notes in Absence of Malice, subpoenas are powerful things indeed.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, Pekin Prattles gets Dr. Cranford to reply to the NRO piece by Father Robert Johansen:

An MRI was never recommended because, in this case and other patients in a permanent vegetative state, the CT scans were more than adequate to demonstrate the extremely severe atrophy of the cerebral hemispheres, and an MRI would add nothing of significance to what we see on the CT scans. Plus the MRI is contraindicated because of the intrathalamic stimulators implanted in Terri’s brain. A PET scan was never done in this case because it was never needed. The classic clinical signs on examination, the CT scans, and the flat EEG’s were more than adequate to diagnose PVS to the highest degree of medical certainty …

The Duke accepts this answer as definitive, and I’m no medical expert. However, if the two tests that so far have been refused would confirm the diagnosis, what’s the harm in performing them? I had an MRI done when I had my first significant migraine (up to then, I had no idea what my brief dizziness spells were), and neither test are particularly intrusive. Why not satisfy everyone and allow them to be the last word?
UPDATE II: Congress has indeed issued subpoenas to both Terri and Michael Schiavo:

As a deadline loomed, U.S. Senate Republicans sought to keep severely brain-damaged Terri Schiavo alive Friday with an invitation to bring her to Washington, and an attorney for her parents said they hoped the move would buy them more time.
The Senate Health Committee has requested that Terri Schiavo and her husband, Michael, appear at an official committee hearing on March 28. Earlier Friday, a House committee was issuing congressional subpoenas to stop doctors from disconnecting the tube. …
“It is a contempt of Congress to prevent or discourage someone from following the subpoena that’s been issued,” David Gibbs, the attorney for her parents, said. “What the U.S. Congress is saying is, ‘We want to see Terri Schiavo.'”
“The family is prayerfully excited about their daughter going before the United States Congress for the whole world to see how alive she is.”
He said that despite her brain damage, she would be able to travel. A statement from the office of House Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., on Friday said the purpose of the hearing was to review health care policies and practices relevant to the care of non-ambulatory people.
Frist’s statement noted that it is a federal crime to harm or obstruct a person called to testify before Congress.

That should effectively block the starvation of Terri Schiavo until Congress reconvenes, giving them plenty of time for further intervention and a forum to air all of the issues and clear up any misunderstandings about Terri’s condition and diagnosis. I fail to see the harm in waiting a couple of more weeks to determine what her status is and what the best and most humane course of action would be. Congress has done the right thing.
Also, as Doc Weasel notes in the comments, I misquoted Brimley. It should read, “Wonderful thing, a subpoena.”