Kathryn J. Lopez uses the famed un-named emailer to advance her agenda:
This e-mail seems right:
Regardless of the severity of brain damage, it seems to me the moral principle still abides:
1. No human life should be contingent as to whether or not another person gives it credibility or not.
2. If a family member wants to terminate a human life where the human in question is not able to speak for him or herself, and another family member wants to sustain that life, defer to the family member that wants to keep the human in question alive.
3. A fortiori should this be the case where the family member wanting to keep the human in question alive is willing to care for that human in question. (in this case, the parents)
4. It remains true, no matter how many different circumstances one raises, the only direct cause of Schiavo’s death was government action, i.e., a court order. …
John Derbyshire promptly rips her a new asshole (which, by my count, would give her seven):
Some comments on that e-mail that seemed right to you, Kathryn:
“Regardless of the severity of brain damage, it seems to me the moral principle still abides…”
Regardless? Regardless? So all those things we heard about Mrs. Schiavo’s condition not really being as bad as the husband & the doctors said, was just cynical propaganda? In fact, however bad her condition actually was, the right-to-life side would have held the same position? Then wasn’t it dishonest of them to raise the issue of Mrs. Schiavo’s actual neurological status? Even if she had had no functioning cerebral cortex at all (which seems, in fact, to have been pretty nearly the case) the right-to-lifers wouldn’t have budged — “regardless”? Which right-to-lifers — names, please — made this clear at the time? It sure wasn’t clear to me.
“1. No human life should be contingent as to whether or not another person gives it credibility or not.”
So if anyone, in any condition, has a metabolism that can be kept functioning somehow, that ought to be done, regardless (!) of what any person — spouse, parent, eminent neurosurgeon, judge — thinks? Start building some real big warehouses — you’re going to need them.
“2. If a family member wants to terminate a human life where the human in question is not able to speak for him or herself, and another family member wants to sustain that life, defer to the family member that wants to keep the human in question alive.”
This is not currently the law in the state of Florida. If the people of Florida, in their collective wisdom, would like it to be the law, get lobbying. It seems like a fair principle to me… provided you can iron out a definition of the term “family member” that will not produce results just as rancorous as the Schiavo case (which I doubt — see next point).
And what if ALL family members wish to terminate a Schiavo-type life? Should that life then be terminated, even in violation of our reader’s point (1)?
Read Derbyshire’s entire response. K-Lo is nothing more than a mouthpiece for idiocy. Still, she continues on:
The medical examiner said today that the video interaction everyone saw of Terri Schiavo and her parents wasn’t impossible. It seems what we learned today is that she was clearly in a very bad way and that, in fact, she was not going to get better
Rick
John,
You are a very judgmental, un-nuanced scold, for one who professes liberterian sentiments.
Of course, if I agreed with you on this issue, it’d be “Great blog! Open mind! If more ____ were like you I’d ________!! Keep it up!”
But have you ever, seriously considered the “opposing side” in the Schiavo case other than from Randall Terry’s pronouncements. Like from, say, Nat Hentoff?
Now, back to the breaking outrage.
Cordially…
John Cole
Yes. I thought he was wrong. Same with Ralph Nader.
But I know what is motivating the fools and false prophets like Randall Terry and K-LO- a political agenda. Not concern for Terri Schiavo.
Jeff
It’s truly terrifying to me that I find myself saying “John Derbyshire makes a lot of sense”, yet he seems to be the sanest NROite regarding the Schiavo affair.
Glen
John,
I thought at the time that “video interaction” was not Terri responding to Mom, but Mom putting her face in the path of where Terri was allegedly “looking” — VERY allegedly as it turns out.
BTW, via World O’Crap, Mark Furman has a book coming out this month in which he alleges the PV and the rest of it were a scheme by Michael Schaivo to get Terri’s money. Printed and ready to ship–or to be shredded. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Rick
But I know what is motivating the fools and false prophets like Randall Terry and K-LO- a political agenda.
John,
Anything you–or K. Lopez– truly, deeply feels is a political agenda, then? Just want to be sure of the lingua franca here.
Or do you have some particular insight into K-LO, and know she doesn’t believe that to which she puts her name?
This may seem to be like hectoring you, but I’m just spotlighting the baying-at-the-moon stuff in this case that got you your buzz around the ‘sphere. Some’s been good for you, some of the rest was pitying.
IOW, I’m suggesting you–in this case–behave quite similarly to your bete noirs: the Christers and homophobes.
But I’ve said, and you’ve pled guilty–that high dudgeon is spoken here. Maybe it’s the volume that’s so grating.
Cordially…
Inspector Callahan
“This was not about Terri Schiavo. This was about a political agenda for them, and they will lie, slander, smear, and attack to get their way.”
I guess I just don’t understand this type of reasoning.
Please assume this is a given: I agree with K-Lo on most of what she says about this, but I have no political agenda. How to explain me? If I don’t have a political agenda, what pigeonhole do I belong to?
Look, it’s one thing to say you disagree with the Randall Terry’s and Laura Schlesingers of the world; it’s another thing to hint that anyone who doesn’t agree with you on this has some nefarious political agenda.
So much for agreeing to disagree.
TV (Harry)
Some a-hole named Rick
John,
I’m going to insult you a little bit. Probably in a snarky manner. It’s just the way I usually do things. But it’s ok because I sign off..
Cordially….
John Cole
Inspector and Rick- You aren’t columnists with an agenda, and I would recommend not believing everything K-LO writes.
At any rate, it is right there in front of you- this wasn’t about Terri Schiavo still being mentally alive and alert, this was about keeping her alive no matter what:
The moral principle, which she may honestly adhere to, is the foundation of the pro-life movement. KLO wasn’t motivated out of concern for Terri, but out of deference to an agenda that supports what she believes is moral. If this were truly simply a moral issue, she would be fine- people are free to define their own concept of morality within reason.
But KLOisn;t content with that- she wants all of us to adhere to her version of morality- even if it is based upon a foundation of lies.
Inspector Callahan
Hey, a-hole (aptly named, by the way),
Are you going to comment on the substance of Rick’s post? Or just post a drive-by ad-hominem?
TV (Harry)
John Cole
Ahole-
He wasn’t insulting me. He was challenging me.
Everyone here has thick skin.
W.B. Reeves
Spot on John. What’s particularly fascinating about the reaction from the so-called “culture of life” mob is their complete lack of shame. I’d chalk up their inability to recognize their own hypocrisy and immorality to the usual ethical blindness of religious fanactics, except as you cogently point out, they took great pains to conceal their true argument throughout the Schiavo tragi-farce.
If they really believe that the truth comes from God’s lips to their ears, why did they hide their light under a bushel?
Could it be because they knew that if they were honest most people would reject their view?
Could it be that, understanding this, they chose to make more politically palatable claims? Claims they did not themselves believe and which, in light of their true views, they must have considered immoral even as they mouthed them?
Could it be that, fearing public rejection, they chose to advance their particular “gospel” by deception and stealth rather than proclaiming the good news?
Too bad Jesus didn’t practice this brand of “Christianity.” He might have landed a job working for some theocratic non-profit rather than being nailed to the cross.
Rick
But KLO isn’t content with that- she wants all of us to adhere to her version of morality- even if it is based upon a foundation of lies.
John,
Seems like everyone is guilty of that, from Randall Terry to Peter Singer. From you to me, and every “a-hole” between or beyond. Or beneath.
My use of Singer is done so advisedly. Prominent among the things setting you off on Schiavo was Terry’s camera hogging prominence. Thus, he became the poster boy.
Never mind anyone else, especially such surprises as Jackson, Hentoff and Nader. And the Ds in Congress that voted to say “waitaminnit here.”
If the Terry tarbaby clings to the K.Lopez side, I suggest that Dr. Peter Soylent Green Singer is the poster boy for yours.
I think there must be more persuasive ways of advancing a viewpoint. If not persuasive, because I haven’t experienced or witnessed any mind-changing here, at least more high-brow.
Or does everything in your ‘hood have to be Hatfields and McCoys?
Makes for lively times, to be sure.
Cordially…
John Cole
Umm, what about the third side. The one that says that people and their families should make these decisions.
You know, the side that went to great pains to make sure the legal system in Florida adequately prepared to address intra-family squabbles and saw fit to abide by the determination of the court system.
You know, the side that thought this was an awful family matter that had been settled until a bunch of KLO like lunatics rolled into town and made a three ring circus out of her death.
Yours is nothing more than a dressed-up version of the culture of death smear, when you try to equate my position with Pete Singer. I am not distorting K-Lo’s position, I am merely outlining the idiocies of it. If that is a tarbaby for her ‘side,’ it is completely of her own creation.
Jim Anchower
This was never about morality – this was about control. It always is.
It is not moral to allow a human being to suffer for how long Schiavo suffered. The “culture of life” is just clever “framing”.
This country is in trouble.
gswift
No Rick, not everyone here is like that. Nice attempt at projection though.
You see, some of us acutally strive for some level of intellectual honesty. Some people prefer to be subject to reality.
The problem is that the BlogforTerry nuts, the creationists, etc.feel no such compulsion. They’ve got their agenda, and with Jesus in their corner nothing mundane as reality is going to derail that agenda.
Years of medical exams, multiple diagnoses from independant experts and neurologists from the Mayo Clinic say PVS, but they don’t care. A goddamn autopsy shows a brain half it’s normal size, and they cry conspiracy.
150 years of advances and observations in biology, chemistry, and biochemistry have repeatedly buttressed Darwin, but they don’t care. They’re special little flowers planted here 6000 years ago by God himself, and no one is going to tell them different.
You see Rick, this is why it’s obvious the agenda is political. It’s never enough for the nuts to have the freedom to think as they please. For EVERYONE must conform to their beliefs, even when the facts are overwhelmingly against them.
Shawn
I for one am grateful for the whole episode. It made me really think about those end of life decisions and finally sit down and make up a living will. My husband and parents weren’t too happy about it, but at least they won’t have to worry about all those pesky questions coming up. I have all the answers right here.
* In the event I lapse into a persistent vegetative state, I want medical authorities to resort to extraordinary means to prolong my hellish semiexistence. Fifteen years wouldn’t be long enough for me.
* I want my husband and my parents to compound their misery by engaging in a bitter and protracted feud that depletes their emotions and their bank accounts.
* I want my husband to ruin the rest of his life by maintaining an interminable vigil at my bedside. I’d be really disappointed if he waited less than two decades to start dating again or otherwise rebuilding a semblance of a normal life.
* I want my case to be turned into a circus by losers and crackpots from around the country who hope to bring meaning to their empty lives by investing the same transient emotion in me that they once reserved for Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy and that little girl who got stuck in a well.
* I want said losers and crackpots to spread vicious lies about my husband, calling him a murderer and abuser.
* I want to be placed in a hospice where protesters can gather to bring further grief and disruption to the lives of dozens of dying patients and families whose stories are sadder than my own.
* I want the people who attach themselves to my case because of their deep devotion to the sanctity of life to make death threats against any judges, elected officials or health care professionals who disagree with them.
* I want the medical geniuses and philosopher kings who populate the State Legislature to ignore me for more than a decade and then turn my case into a forum for weeks of politically calculated bloviation.
* I want total strangers – oily politicians, maudlin news anchors, ersatz friars and all other hangers-on – to start calling me “Shawnie,” as if they had known me since childhood.
* I’m not insisting on this as part of my directive, but it would be nice if Congress passed a “Shawnie’s Law” that applied only to me and ignored the medical needs of tens of millions of other Americans.
* Even if the “Shawnie’s Law” idea doesn’t work out, I want Congress – especially all those who claim to believe in “less government and more freedom” – to trample on the decisions of doctors, judges and other experts who actually know something about my case. And I want members of Congress to launch into an extended debate that gives them another excuse to avoid pesky, unimportant issues such as national security and the economy.
* In particular, I want House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to use my case as an opportunity to divert the country’s attention from the mounting political and legal troubles stemming from his slimy misbehavior.
* And I want Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to make a mockery of his Harvard medical degree by judging my medical condition on the basis of a snippet of dated and demeaning videotape. I request that the footage of me drooling be left intact to demonstrate my higher brain function.
* Because I think I would retain my sense of humor even in a persistent vegetative state, I’d want President Bush – the same guy who publicly mocked Karla Faye Tucker when signing off on her death warrant as governor of Texas – to claim he was intervening in my case because it is always best “to err on the side of life.”
Plagierized and modified from Living Will is the Best Revenge
Ben Lange
The moral principle applies because we have no way of determining Terri’s wishes on the matter. Her husband’s claim that she wouldn’t want to live “like that”, in addition to being very vague, and the type of claim people make all the time when they’re young and don’t think anything like that will actually happen to then, is so compromised by his clear conflict of interest as to be 100% unreliable. He got his way because he had a better lawyer, because the Schindlers never imagined a judge would order their daughter’s execution.
ppgaz
Jesus H Christ, as they say.
Will there never be an end to the Terri bullshit?
Not as long as someone, somewhere, can still squeeze a drop of bathos out of it, I guess.
Welcome to the Bathosphere, where every citizen always clutches a hankie and is ready to dab a tear.
Okay, so since everyone else is still repeating the same lines they were saying while — sniff — poor Terri was still with us ….
This case was never any of your damned business. The fact that it was on tv doesn’t make it your business. It was the family’s business, just like it is in the thousand cases a day just like it played out in hospices and hospitals across the land, playing out as we speak right now.
It’s about voyeurism, and nothing else. Always was.
Rick
You know, the side that went to great pains to make sure the legal system in Florida adequately prepared to address intra-family squabbles and saw fit to abide by the determination of the court system.
John,
Notwithstanding the fact that the arguments you and your agreeing correspondents here have their obverse on other sites, suggesting yours is the culture of death and Peter Singer and Soylent Green and necrophilia, etc., well, I’m just too darn big for that, I is, I is.
Damned few appeals to reason on either side, just raging. But I wish to take up the point I led off in italics. And I’m sure you’ll correct me if I’m wrong.
The “state” intruded into the Schiavo marriage/bedroom/sickroom when the husband sought and obtained official permission to end Terri’s feeding. That’s effectively what you state at the top, except I’ve put a little English on it for those who think the parents were the ones bringing in Big Bro.
Now the parents, and all the hangers-on since up through the Congress and the President, sought a fresh review of the judge’s “finding of fact” that Michael acts in Terri’s interest, and that Terri stated a wish not to live in such a condition.
A fresh review of “fact,” in hopes of overturning that original finding.
Forget Randall Terry and crucifixes and other frightening apparitions. Essentially, isn’t that the case?
Because from that comes a chronology that isn’t flattering to Michael’s purported altruism, and the soundness of the judge’s finding. Forget about slanderous or libelous allegations peddled in the fever-swamps; the parents’ last card to play was to have some higher court look at the details once again, and be open to the possibility of overturning a finding.
But that’s something the legal priesthood is loathe to do, thus the dodging that went on. Wouldn’t even review the case, like a couple more weeks would’ve mattered; there was no indication that whatever Terri Schiavo was, she/it was in no way suffering with a feeding tube.
Someone above noted “150 years of advances and observations in biology, chemistry, and biochemistry have repeatedly buttressed Darwin, but they don’t care.” Yeah, well, cheap shot that it is, it draws a smirk from someone like me that just toured the Holocaust Museum, and it’s Nazi medicine exhibit in the basement.
Like I said, cheap shot, but there’s still such a thing as “Blinded by Science.”
In the Schiavo instance, the System showed it would rather do harm than dare audit itself.
Cordially…
ppgaz
Yes, of course, Rick. Another court should undertake to spawn another pile of papers to add to the mountain of papers and litany of proceedings.
Another inquiry, to add to the reams of material from the Guardian Ad Litem and the voluminous inputs from every side of the matter. The continual parsing and re-parsing of the same facts and the same findings.
Forever and ever, amen.
No life in this country should go without the complete and exhaustive, decades-long inspection and inquiry by courts, lawyers and doctors, and witch doctors and lay preachers and faith healers and pundits and columnists and politicians and 700 Club television broadcasts and Larry King interviews and prayers, an ocean of prayers from every person of faith and snake handler and tongue-speaker and two-bit publicity seeker ….
You’re right. In the best of all possible worlds, there would never be an end to it. Ever.
Sojourner
Good grief, Rick. What harm did the System do this woman? The woman was cognitively dead. No ifs, ands or buts. Reality-based people understood that. They understood the parents’ grief but didn’t think that keeping a body going to put off the inevitable loss of her physical presence was appropriate.
Does this country really want to spend $80k or more per year to keep a body going with absolutely no hope of recovery? While at the same time, 40 million fully functioning Americans cannot get decent health care because they lack medical insurance?
At what point do people have to be adults, come to terms with the fact that their daughter is gone, and let it go? How much does society owe this family?
Sorry, those of us who felt it was long past time to let her go had all sorts of good arguments and hard science to support our case. You just choose to ignore it.
HH
In all fairness, almost no one comes out clean in this:
AP:
More:
The “bulimia” charge (as well as the “heart attack” claim) was of course repeated uncritically by the portions blogosphere and Air America, etc. at minimum.
I’d say an apology by all parties involved to the nation would be best (a more popular opinion than most pundits or bloggers think, I imagine).
Rick
“Let her go.”
Soj,
She was pushed. And neither you nor ppgaz really takes up the issue of what was sought: a delay. Maybe it would’ve been some months, but in the span since Terri’s collapse, that matters little.
Just another “authority” to review the finding. But that’s just theocracy’s nose under the tent to some “reality-based people.”
I believe it worthy of some note that the parents and siblings purportedly were willing and able to take up the financial burden. So again, what was the harm? Other than to the “dignity” of a particular court or judge.
Hey, you guys are disputing *my* findings, and life still goes on. Same diff.
Cordially…
John Cole
Just another “authority” to review the finding.
Do you really expect me to believe that if just ‘one more authority’ on top of the thousands of hours of review that had already taken pace had been able to review this case, come to the same conclusions, everyone would have been satisfied?
What exactly did this one more authority have that the dozens before him/her didn’t?
Sojourner
“She was pushed.”
No. She was GONE. There was nobody left to push.
The case had been in the courts for 8 years. How many years would satisfy you? Give me a number. It wasn’t like there were new facts popping up that would change anything.
How many authorities would satisfy you? Give me a number. You still aren’t satisfied even though the autopsy confirmed the physical state we already knew from the CAT scans. How many does it take?
$80k a year? A number that will go up significantly should her physical health start to fail. Yeh, right. The Schiavos tried caring for her in their own home before giving up. So what happens when they decide they can no longer afford it? Does the legal battle then start all over again? Or does the state get to pick up the tab?
Dignity of the court or judge? How about the law of the land? I thought that was important.
ppgaz
The suit was settled for $1.1m, HH. Which I suspect is about as close to the $2m you assert as are any of the factoids in your post.
The money was largely spent on her care, was it not? Please submit a full accounting.
To my knowledge, the diagnosis of the woman’s collapse was not the husband’s responsibility. What does it matter? Was there evidence of foul play? I am not aware of any.
Are you asserting that only bulimia or an eating disorder can be the cause of a potassium deficit? Evidence, please.
“Hypokalemia is frequently encountered in clinical medicine and has been estimated to occur in approximately 20% of patients admitted to general internal medicine service. Symptoms may be absent, identified only on routine electrolyte screening, or may range from neuromuscular weakness, rarely progressing to frank paralysis or sudden cardiac death.”
HH
“Are you asserting that only bulimia or an eating disorder can be the cause of a potassium deficit?”
No, apparently Michael Schiavo and his lawyers it seems, were and others repeated same. For one reason or another, this poor woman was apparently accused by her own husband and many, many others (I well remember Randi Rhodes’ spiel on it) of having an eating disorder based on scant evidence which has today been dismissed. It doesn’t matter who did what with the money, it was still untrue.
HH
The first post has a bad link, sorry, feel free to delete.
ppgaz
Give it up, HH. What exactly do you want? Besides attention, I mean?
Jon H
Rick writes: “Just another “authority” to review the finding. ”
And then another, and another, and another, and another, until one says what you want to hear.
HH
We still don’t know if Terri wanted to die of thirst if she were put in that position but it doesn’t take John Edward to figure out that she probably didn’t want to be called a bulimic in a court of law based on flimsy, yet strangely unchallenged evidence. It’s a sidebar to the story at least.
Sojourner
It doesn’t take John Edward to figure out that a shy girl like Terri once was wouldn’t want to be the sole act in this three-ring circus.
Rick
Do you really expect me to believe that if just ‘one more authority’ on top of the thousands of hours of review that had already taken pace had been able to review this case, come to the same conclusions, everyone would have been satisfied?
What exactly did this one more authority have that the dozens before him/her didn’t?
While John H makes the very good point above that the Schindler’s would’ve wished to pursue the matter like the Democrats doing a recount, I direct some attention to my earlier Plea for Knowledge (boy, did I come to the wrong blog or what?). Because, as I said, the parents were down to their last card.
So far, no disputing my spin on the outline of the last minute Federal intervention, and what was being sought.
And John, the reason for how the Schiavo matter got kicked up that high was because no judge was revisiting the finding that a). Michael was a guardian acting in her interest(s), and b). The case for her having expressed a wish for euthanasia was compelling.
Judges were subsequently involved, as you note, but as is their wont, they were ruling on subsequent procedural issues and charges; not revisiting the finding establishing Michael’s guardianship.
There appear to be strong grounds to question that, and there’s no need to rehash them here. But nothing to do with slanderous abuse charges.
Neither were the Schindlers claiming that Terri wasn’t terribly afflicted. They were no Monty Python pet shop owners, saying their daughter was only “resting.”
All the other clatter and vileness concerned peripheral skirmishes. The entire point was an instruction to the judiciary open its collective mind in order to affirm or reject an original finding. The Constitution was thus shaken to its very foundation. Why, more paperwork would’ve been created. Another Gulag.
We’re only talking life and death here. Diminished, deep twilight, edge of extinction life, but human nonetheless. If Terri was found–again, after further review–to have expressed herself so to Michael, then what befell her weeks ago would be befalling her now.
Success in obtaining such a pause, and a fresh review, seems to distress some people, as if it were something retrograde.
The controversy summoned forth atavistic and primitive sentiments on both sides, but more alien to me are the ones so adamant and urgent for that manner of death, while a last chance review would be a capitulation to theo-Fascism.
The occasion of the Schindler’s winning guardianship, of course, would’ve been a calamity too alarming to contemplate. The terrorists will have won.
Crocodile tears about her condition don’t persuade, because since she had, at very best, just the barest flicker of cognition, then she wasn’t suffering, and certainly no awareness of undergoing indignities. The concept of time was therefore of no account to her.
There was plenty of discredit to go around in the furies surrounding her last weeks. I really don’t care about measuring which “side” gets more discredit, because no one was elevated by the dispute.
At best, it brought some clarification of thinking, for good or ill. Because this situation will come round again, and death will be an even easier option the next time, having now the hang of it.
Just beyond that, more comprehensive euthanasia beckons. And again, Science, Reason and the Enlightenment will be summoned in service. Just as in the last century.
Cordially…
Sojourner
Oh my! In place of the snarky Rick, we’re now getting the soulful one. I prefer the snarky one.
Multiple witnesses testified to Terri’s position on euthanasia. No evidence has been found to suggest that Michael Schiavo was not acting in her best interest. I doubt that there’s anything that would convince you otherwise.
Contrary to what you claim, the Schindlers were quite adamant in their belief that Terri would become more functional with more therapy. That claim was clearly disproved by the autopsy.
“The Constitution was thus shaken to its very foundation. Why, more paperwork would’ve been created. Another Gulag.”
This is an incredibly amusing statement from a guy who has no problem with what Bush and the Repubs are doing to the Constitution and the American people.
“We’re only talking life and death here. Diminished, deep twilight, edge of extinction life, but human nonetheless.”
That depends on how you define human. It’s not a definition that I agree with. Being human is more than having a breathing body.
“Success in obtaining such a pause, and a fresh review, seems to distress some people, as if it were something retrograde.”
No. It reflects a fear that we could find ourselves in this position. That we might be thwarted in following through a love one’s wishes by the government and assorted whackos who feel they have the right to intrude on a family’s personal business.
“urgent for that manner of death, while a last chance review would be a capitulation to theo-Fascism.”
Urgent seems a peculiar word to use since Terri has been cognitively dead for more than 15 years and her case has been to the Supreme Court not once but twice.
“The occasion of the Schindler’s winning guardianship, of course, would’ve been a calamity too alarming to contemplate. The terrorists will have won.”
Yes, it would have been a calamity because it would mean that parents have the right to override their children’s interests and turn them into breathing property. For those of us who believe in human dignity, yes, it would have been a calamity.
Michael Schiavo did good by his wife and he deserves credit for fulfilling her wishes.
If another person comes along who has lost 50% of his/her brain, I have absolutely no problem with the same outcome.
Rick, are you willing to pay more taxes to cover these living corpses you seem so enamored of? It’s interesting that the issue of who gets to pay for the honor of carrying out the right-to-lifers’ wishes never seems to come up.
I don’t care to pay for it. I’d rather see my tax dollars go towards health care for poor people, something the right-to-lifers typically don’t care to do.
“And again, Science, Reason and the Enlightenment will be summoned in service. Just as in the last century.”
I can only hope that we will, in fact, return to Science, Reason, and Enlightenment. It would be a tremendous improvement over the belief-based hysteria of the science-phobic.
gswift
“Someone above noted “150 years of advances and observations in biology, chemistry, and biochemistry have repeatedly buttressed Darwin, but they don’t care.” Yeah, well, cheap shot that it is”
Ah yes, pointing out facts is now a “cheap shot.”
“it draws a smirk from someone like me that just toured the Holocaust Museum, and it’s Nazi medicine exhibit in the basement”
And once again Rick you illustrate my point. In the fundie revisionist mind, Darwinism drove the Holocaust, and people who think brain dead people should be allowed to die are the equivalent of Peter Singer.
God forbid reality intrude into that little world of yours.
ppgaz
Facts have no place in the faith-based world.
Faith depends on mystery. Facts and reality dispel mystery. Without mystery, the priests have nothing to preach to us about.
No mystery, no gig.
Rick
And once again Rick you illustrate my point. In the fundie revisionist mind, Darwinism drove the Holocaust…
How wrong you are. I’m nominally Christian, but not practicing. I can scarcely represent “Fundies.”
The virtues many here proclaim in casting away Schiavo’s life were similarly brandished in pursuing other rational acts of social and racial hygiene. Pardon me for withholding approval, as the flaw lay in the legitimate questions regarding the original finding, which as we see were not subject to revisiting in all the following court actions.
Sojourner may find comfort in approving of a single judge’s finding of fact, but that merely turned the “property rights” over to someone who stood to take possession of a recently enlarged estate. It should be cold comfort.
But cold is a pretty common sensibility with too many erstwhile altruists.
Cordially…
gswift
“The virtues many here proclaim in casting away Schiavo’s life were similarly brandished in pursuing other rational acts of social and racial hygiene.”
It’s all so clear now.
Withdrawing a Brain Dead Woman’s Feeding Tube = Peter Singer + Nazi
HH
Seeing as they wrote about it so recently, you’d think Pandagon would at least mention the bulimia thing.
And where was Al’s “boring correction” yesterday?
bago
The whole of the difference between the creatures we kill for food and the ones we kill for mercy or fun is intelligence.
If one is able to show an awareness of their lives, then they are truly alive. A rock doesn’t ponder its existence, and so we pay it little heed.
Chickens can live for years with most of their head cutoff. Cattle fall for that herding ruse every time.
Without the ability to go meta, there is no purpose.
Jon H
“Yeah, well, cheap shot that it is, it draws a smirk from someone like me that just toured the Holocaust Museum, and it’s Nazi medicine exhibit in the basement.”
Never mind the centuries-long history of antisemitism in Europe. Never mind the ideas of racial inequality that long predate Darwin.
Sojourner
“Sojourner may find comfort in approving of a single judge’s finding of fact, but that merely turned the “property rights” over to someone who stood to take possession of a recently enlarged estate. It should be cold comfort.”
No, I find comfort in science. I find this shrieking and moaning over a person with a dead mind repulsive, especially when it comes from people like Rick who resent paying taxes to help those who need it and could truly benefit from it.
This sanctimonious worship of the cognitively dead is the height of hypocrisy. Screw the kids on poverty. Let’s not care about them. But, oh, look over there – there’s a body with no functioning cognitive brain!!! Let’s spend our resources keeping it alive.
Makes me want to puke.
Rick
Sojourner,
I share your nausea, for an entirely and, sad to say, remotely different set of principles.
Sanctimonious worship of science and state process entails many more dangers than the review sought by the Schindlers. It’s nice that your fearless of those dangers, but I suppose it’s just that you’re more oblivious.
Cordially…
Nash
Three things late into the fray:
First, the early drive by via a-hole comes just close enough to a satire of my own style that I feel compelled to disassociate myself from such behavior. My name-calling is going to be in my own given, official name, Nash.
Second, I agree with Rick that it’s facile to suggest that the good and bad guys (how ever you define them) all lined up on one side of the political fence. Not that you are doing so, John, but Rick is in the right in complaining that we are quite suggestible. You could find people who agreed or disagreed with you on this one on both sides, politically, and all honor or dishonor doesn’t accrue to one side.
And third:
Strong grounds apparent to you, maybe, but not to the ones charged with telling us what the words in our laws mean. If Congress wanted a review of the underlying facts in the case, they should have written a law that said so and the Supreme Court, which you are under no obligation to listen to but the Congress is, agreed. Leahy asked Frist flat out did he mean it to say they should retry the facts. Frist sighed and said no. That’s end game on that specific contention, as far as I’m concerned.
Rick
Nash,
Go post. This takes layman me far afield from my interests, let alone expertise, but what Congress and the President sent forth was a directive for a “de novo” review.
I can perceive the meaning in that Latin: what a golfer would call a mulligan. And the appellate court above Greer just fussed over the propriety of the procedure that was followed earlier (contentious stuff, but no the thrust of this last card), but pointedly didn’t examine the circumstances of the original finding.
A review of the finding would not have been tantamount to reversal, but one side hoped too ferociously that it would, and the other behaved ferociously as it that were true.
I think the judicial system tended to its self-image, reputation and mystique, rather than to justice.
Now, do I understand some folks here disagree?
Cordially…
P.S. Can’t say I recognized any style in re: you dissociation. But I’ll be watching you now!
Nash
Where did your 11:46 go, John?
John Cole
I put it in the other thread. Sorry. I realized I had posted it in the wrong thread and moved it. I will delete your other comment so as not to confuse us all.
Sojourner
So, what are you saying? That the science was wrong in the Schiavo case? That given enough time, therapy, and money, Terri Schiavo would have come back?
Exactly what condition do you think Schiavo was in? Was she conscious? Was she responding to the people around her?
Can you name a condition where she should have been taken off life support? Or should every measure have been taken to keep her alive for as long as possible? And for what purpose?
Should people in ERs with flat EEGs be kept on life support just in case the science is wrong?
Please clarify.
Nash
Thanks, John.
Rick, this is the floor exchange between Levin (I was wrong, I said Leahy earlier) and Frist in re the Schiavo bill under discussion:
Can’t get much more definitive than the word of the majority leader. You may recall that the House version mandated a stay for the expressed purpose of “re-trying” the facts. That was not in the Senate version and the Senate’s final version was the one the President flew back from Texas to sign.
So, no
is incorrect. A de novo review of the facts was most definitely not what the President woke up to sign as the law of the land.
BTW, I admire the yawning in writing technique you frequently effect.
Nash
Without the broadbrush labeling of positions you love to use but chide John for, I’d agree with this. I’d have loved for the law to insist the entire thing be examined from the start just one more time. I have both selfish as well as altruistic reasons for feeling that way.
What can I say, I’m human.
Rick
Nash,
Again, fine detective work. But the floor quotation isn’t the totality of the case. Myself, I’ll stop yawning and look further this evening, but this CNN story includes a “fresh look” reference. “Stay” was mentioned, but I didn’t say it either.
Just a Federal review of/from the original finding.
Cordially…
P.S. OK, I’ll bite: what is ‘yawning in writing’ technique supposed to be/resemble?
Nash
Rick, the full text of Sen. Bill 686: For the relief of the parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo in the form that became law.
One excerpt relevant to our discussion is from Section 3. Relief:
Sen Levin asked Sen Frist if this section mandated “declaratory and injunctive relief” (a stay, in short). Sen. Frist said it did not. So, quite apart from what any court said subsequently, one of the three co-sponsors of the bill said that he and the bill’s author had no intention that a stay was required. (A stay equaling reinserting the tube while the rest played out.)
Another excerpt germane to your point is from Section 2 Procedure:
Here is your “new look.” However, this section was the one found to be unconstitutional by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals when they denied the petition for rehearing en banc. Finding this section not severable (meaning the rest of the Act couldn’t go through without it), Birch wrote an opinion in concurrence with the denial. Justice Tjoflat was the justice who wrote a dissenting opinion. As we know, the Supremes didn’t take it up.
So, I acknowledge that Frist and Bush thought they were asking for a new look. Problem is, they asked in an unconstitutional and fatally flawed manner.
Rick
Nash,
Well, there’s federalism for us, then. We’re at the mercy of any ol’ state judges, should we be incapacitated w/o a living will.
Just for hell of tossing hand grenades, I came across this info on Judge Greer.
Bottom line: when his rulings were appealed, they were overturned 76% of the time. Makes Kennesaw Mountain Landis’ record stellar by comparison. Sheds some light–if true–in that while I noted the Schindler’s were playing one last card, I had no idea it was such a high one.
Hard to understand how a bill directing judges–going the extra mile–to review a case can violate the Constitution. Seems more protective of lower court judges, that the citizens the Constitution is supposed to protect.
Are you in the legal profession, and equipped to ‘splain? Heck, explain that yawningly bidness, too.
Cordially…
Rick
Please clarify.
Sojourner,
I’m no more enthralled with the science of the case than are you in the religious argument.
The late controversy about T. Schiavo did not **center** on her condition, but on her guardianship and wishes. Her blood relatives opposed M. Schiavo, and the judge’s finding of fact.I believe with ample reason, given the chronology and appearances. It could’ve been explained, as John Cole attempted to me. Might’ve been true, but there’s no knowing now.
A review of Greer’s reasoning in turning her fate over to Michael, contrary to John Cole’s spluttering rage, was no threat to the Republic, nor advance of theocracy.
A review could’ve been made, and Greer upheld, and Terri would still be dead by this date.
Win-win situation.
Cordially…