A word on something I know nothing about
The Economist weighs in on The sad case of Terri Schiavo:
The Schiavo bill is an extraordinary piece of federal interference in the judicial system. In order to get it passed, the Republicans had to limit their bill to Mrs Schiavo; but it will surely justify a surge of similar heart-breaking requests. The bill also specifically tells the federal judge to examine the case “notwithstanding any prior state-court determination”. The Republicans, who are usually stern defenders of states’ rights, may come to rue the day when they urged the federal system to ignore them.
In short, for a mixture of motives—some sincere, some political—the Republicans have over-reached themselves. In the meantime, Mrs Schiavo’s case should remind any Americans who do not want to put their families through a similar ordeal to start writing their living wills right away.
I don’t know, and I don’t think, there’s a ‘correct’, ‘right’, or ‘moral’ course of action to take (legal pleadings notwithstanding). Letting me die by starvation or continuing to feed me through a tube in the vain hope that someday, somehow, there might possibly be a way to revive my brain is a choice I hope my family will never have to make. Using this poor woman as a political pawn, I hope, will come back to bite politicians in the arse later on (I’m lookin’ at you, Tom DeLay and George Bush), but knowing that the collective memory of the population tends to resemble that of a goldfish, I doubt that’ll happen.
In
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There are an amazing number of ironies in this case:
- A hospital in Texas just pulled the plug on a 8 month old baby. They were allowed to do this because of a bill Shrubya signed while he was govenor. A cynical look at the reason they used? The mother was not able to pay the bill…
- Another way to look at it is, how sick do you have to be to get Congress to pass a bill to pay for your health care? The answer is brain dead and two weeks to live…
- Republicans in Congress do not like it when states would assert their rights like this and express outrage at attempts to over override them, at least that was the way it was when Democrats were in charge…
- Republicans in Congress usually do not like it when judges become advocates for a cause, except this time Congress is criticising the judge because he did *NOT* act as an advocate…
- One rumor is that the only reason Shrubya cut his vacation short to fly home to sign this bill is that he was guaranteed the judges in the case would not intervene. This way he was able to show on paper he was continuing to pander to Fundamental Christian causes without actually having the “desired” result…
I read about all the legal ironies in this. It’s staggering. I almost wonder why people need to find skeletons in politicians’ closets when they do things like this openly.
I mean, come on, Jeb Bush trying to take over custody?!
Maybe Jeb could grant an emergency divorce to Terri and marry her himself. She would make a great first lady for him to cheat on.
Meow!!!!
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