Who on earth would ever make a crazy statement like that?

Let's be careful when we talk about who is disengaged.

At the time of the senate vote, there were only three Senators on the floor -- it passed by voice vote.

Where were the GOP Senators who have such moral scruples that everything had to be stopped and the entire concept of Federalism turned on its head?

Perhaps they were disengaged.

Having said that, the entire conversation today on this makes it very clear what the GOP was after -- political gain; nothing but votes, and to pay back the theocons for their votes in November.

Many on here are speaking to the evidence presented in court, and the right ignores it and responds by speaking to the politics of this.
Little of the conversation from those on the right on this board is dealing with the moral or legal issues any longer. For the most part, most of you on the right are talking about the political move -- talking Democrat versus republican, right versus left. You have given up any veneer of concern for Ms. Schiavo in your posts and are now gloating over what you think is a political "gotcha" by the GOP in Congress

So sad.

So sad, tragic and horrific that Ms. Schiavo's existence is being used this simply for partisan politics.

This, from www.salon.com


The Schiavo vote: Forget federalism, again

At 12:20 a.m. today, the House of Representatives passed emergency legislation to extend the life of Terri Schiavo. Schiavo's parents have run out of legal options in Florida courts, and there is no legal jurisdiction for a federal court to take the case. At least, there wasn't until now. Under the bill adopted by the Senate Sunday and the House this morning, a single federal court in Florida will be granted jurisdiction to hear a lawsuit "on behalf of Theresa Marie Schiavo for the alleged violation of any right of Theresa Marie Schiavo under the Constitution or the laws of the United States relating to the withholding or withdrawal of food, fluids, or medical treatment necessary to sustain her life."

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist called the measure "a unique bill passed under unique circumstances that should not serve as a precedent for future legislation." Now, where have we heard that before? Oh, right, it was in another case from Florida in which Republicans chose political expediency over their oft-proclaimed faith in federalism. When Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the vote count in 2000 and handed the presidency to George W. Bush, they warned that their intrusion into a matter traditionally left to the states was based on legal reasoning "limited to the present circumstances." As in Bush v. Gore, Republicans backing federal intervention in the Schiavo case have to go out of their way to say they're not setting precedent because they're trapped by their own political interests into doing that which they would usually abhor. In Bush v. Gore, Republican Supreme Court justices anxious to put Bush in the White House had no choice but to embrace an equal protection argument they otherwise would have rejected out of hand. In the Schiavo case, Republicans in Congress anxious to appease the religious right have no choice but to ignore the tenets of federalism they usually trumpet. Their message in both instances: We're doing this now because we can, but don't expect to get away with it yourself if the shoe is ever on the other foot.

Bush will sign the legislation this morning, and the administration is eager to put its best "compassionate conservative" spin on it. "We ought to err on the side of life in a case like this," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said over the weekend. "I think most people recognize that this case involves some extraordinary circumstances."

Oh, yes. We're certain that George W. Bush and and each and every one of the other Republicans who scrambled back to Washington from God-knows-where for this weekend's macabre political theater did so solely out of concern for the life of Terri Schiavo. We're sure that, when Tom DeLay went off about Schiavo's "murder," he did so without any thought of scoring cheap political points off of her family's tragedy. But if you're one of those awful cynics who would raise a question about politics at a moment such as this, you might be interested in the memo that was distributed to Republican senators late last week -- the one that calls the Schiavo case a "great political issue" for the GOP. As ABC News and the Washington Post reported, the memo reminded senators that their "pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue."

We're glad someone is.

-- Tim Grieve


jf

it's not Terri's life that matters so much as all the lives that teeter on the seam of life and death and how we as a society should respond to them.

And that's why most every state has enacted advance health directive laws.

All judges without exception are appointed in Canada, in keeping with British traditions, based on their demonstrated competencies as barristers and solictors of the Canadian Bar Association. I have never heard of complaints that our judicial system or that its judges are being bought by third parties. The exception being unfortunately a couple of scandals involving Quebec provincial court judges. Actually whenever a judge's integrity has ever come under question the system is pretty swift in investigating and, if necessary and warranted, rescinding their appointment to the Bench and/or throwing the book at them in a court of law.

Not that anyone cares, but that's the way it is here.

Renauda,

U.S. judges aren't "bought" either. You'll hear of corruption rarely, and judges who give even the appearance of impropriety pay dearly. You'd be amazed at some of the restrictions on the judiciary. I wish they were all appointed (federal ones are, many state judges are elected), but not everyone would agree with me there.

As for whether Congress is bought and sold, I really can't believe anyone questions this, what with all of the money flying.

Cha-ching!

But hey, if you want to believe Congress is truly not beholden to special interests and isn't for sale to the highest bidder, go for it.

My kid believes in Santa, and I haven't set him straight either!

Wasn't me who suggested judges could be bought, I simply illustrated another way of having an independent but accountable judiciary. Isn't that what Jack requested?

I have no comment re Congress, but I suspect it is no different a reality than our legislature with respect to the intergrity and propriety of individual memebers.

All the same thank you for pointing out the difference.

If a Nobel Prize nominated physician/scientist spent ten hours with her, and determined that he could help her and have her capable of speaking within months, then why shouldn't he be given the chance?

The issue has been tried and appealed with plenty of expert testimony on both sides. At some point you say DONE...no more appeals. We are past that point. There is always another expert who will say his piece for a price.

This case has been in litigation for 12 years.

jf

Luke's Dad, where are you getting that?

Renauda, I stand corrected. I guess I misunderstood you. The posts are really flying on this one. . . .

I suppose making sweeping assumptions about "wingers" and "rtlifers" is easier than facing the plain truth that you could be wrong. You are, I believe, a good person at heart, however.

Oh, and this ABC poll (or whatever) that was posted somewhere here has questions that appear more like statements. The kind that lay out a premise that only a fool should disagree with and asks you if you disagree with it. I would think that most people (who happen not to know much about all this) are going to take the high road on that one.

Actually, the Florida courts have only ruled on this case once on the facts and there is reason to believe the judge had, shall we say, a predisposition. The other 19 odd times this case was ruled on the law.

The questions are certainly biasedly framed in the poll -- and we all should distrust these. The stats really don't matter anyway.

A statistician would drown in lake that has an average depth of only 6".

Yes, in the one hole that was 12'.

JB:

You sure about that?

What's the standard of review the appellate courts exercised?

On what basis do you claim the judge had a "predisposition?"

"Actually, the Florida courts have only ruled on this case once on the facts and there is reason to believe the judge had, shall we say, a predisposition."

Careful, JB. There are those among us who might argue that you're concocting conspiracy theories. Well, they probably won't, since you're agreeing with them.

Yes, JB, it was decided on the facts just once. HOwever, mind you, this case, as any *other* case that is appealed, was dissected and scrutinized with a fine tooth comb for evidentiary irregularities, mistakes in procedure, abuse of discretion, and any other mistake the judge may have made. Yes, even though none of them tried the case de novo, i.e. starting over with fresh fact finding, they had opportunity to review every last tad of evidence in the record (which was massive) to determine if the fact finder (the judge) erred. Having done that, all of those other jurists who reviewed this found no such mistakes. Pretty remarkable.


On a side note, I heard the GAL speaking on the radio last night. He was the MD/JD assigned to the case to do the nitty gritty fact finding that judges don't have the time to do or are even allowed to do, and report back to the court. He talked about how he spent hours and hours with Ms. Shciavo in her room, talking to her, stroking her hair, doing everything he could to elicit reponse from her, and concluded that there was nothing there. He finally concluded that any eye movements, head movements and the like, (which he admitted, were initially diconcerting) were random and without any meaning.

When the topic in question is how you would like to be treated in a variety of terminal situations, I guess I'm happy I am asked to respond to hypotheticals...

Dr. William Hammesfahr was asked in the late 90's to do an independant review of Terri. He spent 10 hours with her. His report can be found all over the web. He has stated that he could have Terri speaking and eating on her own within a few short months. If one of the most brilliant men in the field of neurology says he can rehab her, shouldn't we slow everything down and give him his chance?

I just read his report, and he is clearly biased against Michael Schiavo and convinced that he caused the condition by trying to strangle her to death. (see the other Schiavo thread).

This about the guardian ad litem.

Guardian hasn't forgotten time with Schiavo, and never will
Kansas City Star ^ | Fri, Mar. 18, 2005 |


TAMPA, Fla. - (KRT) - Two dark scenarios haunt Jay Wolfson even now, a year and a half after his brief appointment to be a neutral arbiter, a guardian, an unbiased observer, the one man asked by the state of Florida to stand in Terri Schiavo's shoes.

One is that the severely brain-damaged woman is in a terrible lightless place, aware of nothing but a yawning, endless hopelessness.

The other is that even though he never elicited a response from her, despite all the pleading and cajoling he did at her bedside, that he might have missed some subtle, nearly invisible signs that she was somewhere in there, aware.

"Imagine not having hope and being aware that's all you had was no hope. The horror. It's like not being, but knowing that you're not," said Wolfson recently in his Tampa-area office. "That's one thing. The other is, what if she's knocking on a door somewhere and I was walking through all the wrong corridors and I missed it. What if?"

Wolfson was appointed by a Florida court in the fall of 2003 to be Schiavo's guardian ad litem, or guardian at law, to deduce Schiavo's best interests and represent neither her husband nor her parents but Terri Schiavo herself.

This makes Wolfson one of the very few people to have spent extended time with Schiavo and gauged her level of awareness without having a vested interest at stake.

In the end, after long hours at Schiavo's bedside and after poring over 30,000 pages of legal documents, Wolfson concluded that Schiavo was indeed in a permanent vegetative state.

It wasn't the conclusion he'd hoped to make.

"You want to weigh in on life as opposed to death," Wolfson said. "You want some way to elicit a response."

Wolfson was appointed Schiavo's guardian after the Florida Legislature passed "Terri's Law" in 2003, a move that allowed doctors to reinsert her feeding tube, despite a judge's ruling that it should be removed. The law has since been struck down as unconstitutional.

Wolfson, who has a law degree and a PhD and is a distinguished service professor of public health and medicine at the University of South Florida, was asked to decide whether Schiavo's feeding tube should be removed and whether more tests should be done to assess her ability to swallow.

He scoured 13 years' worth of legal documents and extensively interviewed Schiavo's husband, Michael, and her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler. His time with Schiavo was spent trying to determine whether she was aware of and interactive with the world.

At first, walking into Schiavo's room, he was struck by her presence, even though he knew in advance that she drifted between wakefulness and sleep.

"She's a person, like you or I, and the first disconcerting part is that she's awake," said Wolfson.

When awake, Schiavo's eyes rolled about the room. She made random noises that sounded like groaning or the start of a laugh or cry.

But court documents said Schiavo's cerebral cortex, where reason and emotions are housed, had degenerated to fluid. So Wolfson set about trying to determine whether Schiavo's noises and jerks were merely reflexive or if they indicated something more.

He played Elton John CDs for her, and Bach and Mozart and music from the late 1980s, when she was in her 20s, prior to her collapse. He held her hands, squeezing them, and stroked her hair and face.

He put his face close to hers and tried to make eye contact, pleading desperately, trying to will her into giving him any kind of sign.

"I would beg her, `Please, Terri, help me,'" he said. "You want to believe there's some connection. You hope she's going to sit up and bed and say, `Hey, I'm really here, but don't tell anybody.' Or, `I'm really here, tell everybody!'"

But Schiavo never made eye contact. When Wolfson visited her when her parents were there, she never made eye contact with them either, he said. And for all of Wolfson's pleadings and coaxing, he never got what he most wanted: a sign.

"I felt like there was something distinctive about whoever Terri is," said Wolfson. "But I was not clear that it was there, inside the vessel."

Wolfson was dismayed to learn Friday that Barbara Weller, an attorney for the Schindlers, claimed that Schiavo tried to speak. "Terri does not speak," he said. "To claim otherwise reduces her to a fiction."

One thing Wolfson never doubted was that for all their intense, mutual antagonism, both Michael Schiavo and Terri's parents love and adore her.

She was cared for incredibly well, Wolfson said. Her hair was always combed, and after 15 years of being incapacitated, she never developed a bedsore. In fact, Wolfson said until about seven years ago, Michael Schiavo had Terry's makeup and hair done regularly, and her clothes changed every day - to the point that hospice staff protested that he was being overly demanding about her care.

Also, Wolfson concluded, Schiavo would never have tolerated the enormous, "omnipresent" acrimony between her husband and parents.

In the 38-page report he wrote afterwards, Wolfson said the best decision for Schiavo could be made only if both sides agreed to fresh, independent medical testing. If the new testing showed she couldn't swallow on her own and that Schiavo had no hope for improvement, then the feeding tube should be pulled.

Both parties were on the verge of agreeing to these new conditions, Wolfson said, but once the Florida Supreme Court struck down Terri's Law his efforts were moot.

Wolfson still refuses to give his personal opinion on whether Terri's feeding tube should or should not have been pulled.

But he will say, as a parent of three sons, that after doing everything one can, sometimes the time comes to let go.

"When it evolves beyond that person into issues that are other people's issues or are broader issues, it becomes less objectifiable," said Wolfson. "It's hard to be objective anyway. This is the kind of thing you don't wish on anybody."

Luke'sDad,

Asked *by whom* to do an "independent" review?

If Michael or the parents asked him to do this review, then it wasn't independent, right?

More to the point, the parents had at least one opportunity to designate two doctors to examine Terry. (Michael also appointed two, and the court appointed the fifth one). One of the doctors the parents picked wasn't even a neurologist; he did radiology and something else, IIRC.

The court's decision as a result of those examinations came out in 2000, so it undoubtedly took into account the testimony and examination of this fellow in the late 1990s.

Sounds like there's some quackery surrounding this so-called independent expert.

I believe that he was asked by the court, and I'm sorry, it was 2001, not the late 90's. 1999 was the year he was a Nobel Prize Nominee. I don't know what year it was that he was lauded by the Florida Courts for his work and help with cases involving those with injuries, suffering from strokes, etc.... But I do know that it's happened. A man that has been nominated for a Nobel Prize for his work in Neurology, who has been asked by the court for help and assistance in similar cases and been held up by the courts for his fine work, and this is quackery?

Maybe you're right, but maybe you're wrong. Me? I say give the guy with the knowledge and experience in this field (recognized by the Nobel committee as one of the best ever in Neurology), the benefit of the doubt and let try.

...and after all this hoopla, the feeding tube has yet to be reinserted. She's been without food and water since Friday. Could any of you been happy about going without food and WATER for this long?
...and Congress could have just said, "put that damned feeding tube back in," but no, they left it back up to the courts which do a very good job of stalling. Just another reason for my grave suspicion about the judicial branch.

David, did you read the piece about the GAL and his comments? Given Terri's condition, I would be most grateful to finally have this invasive measure of artificial sustenance of my non-life removed.

"Congress could have just said, 'put that damned feeding tube back in.'"

No, they couldn't. Even this Congress recognized that they did not have Constitutional authority to do that.

Nope, maybe you could post a link, but I have certainly told my kids and everyone in my family never to let what\s happened to this woman ever happen to me.

And I have discussed this case ad nauseum with many people who assure me that:
1) Terri Schiavo is not "gone" as both my wife and mother in law were before they passed.
2) Though they have no written evidence that Terri would like to be living this way, she may want to die and just can't tell anyone. And the rhetorical question, WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD EVER CONSIDER THIS A LIFE THEY WOULD CONSIDER LIVING? And, ARE THEY NOT CONDEMNING THIS POOR WOMAN TO LIVE MOST OF HER LIFE IN THIS STATE? and FOR WHAT GOOD PURPOSE?
3) There does seem to be some evidence that Terri does react with her caregivers and parents. Some think this evidence of a life that's worth preserving even though it's been going on for FIFTEEN YEARS and if that feeding tube is not reinserted this woman will die of natural causes as she would have FIFTEEN YEARS AGO under normal NATURAL conditions.
4) Terri Schiavo's chances of ever regaining more than she has are slim and none.
5) Apparently there WAS or IS some $$$ motivation for Michael Schiavo to remain "married" to Terri and therefore his character may be more open to question, though again having been so close to a similar situation myself I will not judge him.
6) I still maintain that Terri Schiavo's parents are a couple of inhumane sickos who deserve a kind of social defamation reserved for better known sickos and crazies, and believe me, their numbers out there are LEGION!

We could and probably should do a thread on here about people who just wont let go, who believe that miracles are or should be more common than they are, who will not accept physical realities for what they are, etc. I ask you all in all honesty, is this LOVE? Is this an expression of FAITH?

I realize that this involves some judgment calls that may be difficult, but we are seeing here more respect shown to poor dumb animals in their time of need than has been shown to this woman. I heard the groaning tape suggesting that this woman was still alive and conscious. It sounded to me like an anguished cry to LET ME DIE. Meanwhile I heard the father trying to talk to her as if she were still normal. What a sicko! It made me VERY ANGRY.

The link to the guardian ad litem's report is in one of the other threads.

"There does seem to be some evidence that Terri does react with her caregivers and parents."

The guardian ad litem disagrees. He says that they are seeing what they want to see, and that he could not, after extensive attempts, get her to react. He ultimately concluded that her "reactions" and "responses" were random, and not related to the stimuli.

On your analysis, David, I agree entirely.

I hope we all remember this. We are dealing with real human beings here. Neither side is evil; both are acting their sense of compassion and love even if we think they may be misguided.

All of the conspiracy theories, all of the attacks on the characters of either party and especially all of the crass politics are unimportant.