Tom McMahon

Michael Schiavo’s World

An excerpt from Chuck Colson:

Joking aside, Michael Schiavo’s world is a dangerous and scary place, a place where the “survival of the fittest” is taken to a whole new level—a place where a badly brain-damaged woman should have her food and water taken away simply because she is badly brain damaged and her husband says she would not want to live that way. It’s a place where it’s easy for even a registered nurse like Michael Schiavo to confuse food, which everyone needs, with the kind of life support, like a respirator, which his wife did not need. It’s a place where, as Schiavo is accustomed to saying with a straight face, taking someone’s food away is not starving her to death; it’s simply allowing her to die peacefully and painlessly. (Why a hospice needs to administer morphine to a person dying painlessly is something that Schiavo does not bother to explain, like so many other issues.)

A Matter Of Life And Death

Excerpts from The Evangelical Outpost on how Michael Schiavo got away with killing his wife:

While he was still married to Terri, Michael cohabitated with Jodi Centonze, a woman with whom he shares two children. He later married Centonze in January 2006. Under Florida state law, if Michael had attempted to marry Jodi while Terri was s still living, his action would be considered “illegal, bigamous, and void from its inception.” In fact, if a marriage license were found showing that Michael and Jodi had secretly married before Terri’s death, he would have been denied guardianship of his invalid wife. Yet because Florida repealed common law marriage laws in 1968, Michael Schiavo was able to live like a bigamist without having to suffer the legal consequences.

Florida is also a "no fault" divorce state, which means that a history of infidelity is of no concern to the courts. While adulterous conduct might be used in determining the "moral fitness" of a parent seeking custody, it apparently can’t be used as evidence of lack of “moral fitness” to be a husband. Even though he committed adultery, sired illegitimate children, and openly shared Terri’s marriage bed with another woman, he was still considered fit to undertake his role as a “husband.” By giving Michael Schiavo guardianship over his “wife”, the courts proved that the marriage laws in Florida can be as absurd as those in India.

Social conservatives spend an inordinate amount of hand-wringing over the threat to traditional marriage posed by the legal recognition of same-sex relationships. Gay marriage is, of course, a legitimate concern. But it would take an army of homosexual rights activists several decades to do as much damage to the sacred institution as heterosexuals have done by tolerating no-fault divorce and the repeal of common law marriage. The looming threat pales in comparison to the present danger of destructive marriage laws which have, for at least one young woman, literally become a matter of life and death.

One Year Ago: March Madness

One Year Ago: March Madness

That Darn Brain Damaged Florida Woman

From a newly-discovered (by me, anyway) satire site, BlameBush:

Florida Woman is Brain Dead, Autopsy Confirms

An autopsy performed on the Brain Damaged Florida Woman, or "Terri Schiavo" as her ignorant parents call her, confirms that she is in fact brain dead, and chances of a full recovery are slim at best. This must be tragic news for the right-wing cons who have maintained all along that she was a living human being, and thus deserving of the same rights to life and liberty typically reserved for cop killers and terrorists. Science trumps superstition once again. Progressives: 9,974, Religious Zealots: 0.

The Terri Schiavo Grave Marker (Corrected Version)

The Terri Schiavo Grave Marker (Corrected Version)

Satire

Love Acts The Part

Love Acts The Part
                                     -Emmet Fox

In his book 50 Ways to Create Great Relationships, Steve Chandler admits that it took him a long time to let that sink in. Love acts like love would act. It doesn't act some other part. In our ordinary lives, we know this. We can spot a young couple in love a mile away. We can spot it in the old couple who are still genuinely fond of each other. We can do this because love acts the part. We can even spot this love in people long dead  --  through their photographs. One reason I get such a kick out of photos of old-time radio comedian Fred Allen and his wife Portland Hoffa is that you can just tell they're still in love, many years after their wedding. And you can tell this in the recordings of their long-ago radio broadcasts. Their affection for each other almost literally leaps out at you from the speakers in the radio. You can tell this because love always acts the part.

You can tell the love in life's tougher situations, too. Love takes care of you when you are sick. It visits you in the hospital. It comes to the funeral when your loved one dies. Love doesn't forget to call. It doesn't forget to visit. Because love always acts the part. It doesn't act some other part.

If someone says "I'm sorry I never visited you when you were in the hospital for 6 months, but I still love you.", you know it's not true, because that's not how love would act. The not-coming-by-for-6-months is a different part, one that love doesn't act.

Jessie Arbogast

In that long-ago summer before 9/11 Jessie Arbogast was in the news because he was saved from a shark attack by his uncle. But unfortunately Jessie lost so much blood that he suffered a brain injury similar to our son Ryan. That's a picture taken in 2004 of Jessie with his parents David and Claire Arbogast. David Arbogast gave up his job as a tile setter three years ago and became Jessie's full-time caregiver.  They take care of him at home and Jessie interacts with his brothers and sisters with smiles and laughter.

Love Acts The Part. Love takes care of you, even when it isn't easy. Love is there for you, even when all seems hopeless. And when it gets knocked down, love picks itself off the ground and carries itself with as much grace and dignity as it can muster.

And love doesn't act some other part. It doesn't win money for your care, then try to keep it for itself. It doesn't abandon you. It doesn't run off with someone else. And of course, it certainly doesn't starve you to death. It wouldn't think of denying you water until you died a slow, slow painful death of dehydration. And love wouldn't make your grave marker a grotesque monument to its own ego. That's all acting out some other part, but that part isn't love.

Because what is true is true always: Love Acts The Part.

UPDATE 6/30/2005: Charlie Sykes of WTMJ radio in Milwaukee read part of this post on his morning show to-day. Thanks, Charlie!

Terri Schiavo's Final Hours: An Eyewitness Account

An excerpt from Father Frank Pavone:

Brothers and sisters to describe the way she looked as peaceful is a total distortion of what I saw. Here now was a person, who for thirteen days had no food or water. She was, as you would expect, very drawn in her appearance as opposed to when I had seen her before. Her eyes were open but they were going from one side to the next, constantly oscillating back and forth, back and forth. The look on her face (I was staring at her for three and a half-hours) I can only describe as a combination of fear and sadness … a combination of dreaded fear and sadness.

Her mouth was open the whole time. It looked like it was frozen open. She was panting rapidly. It wasn't peaceful in any sense of the word. She was panting as if she had just run a hundred miles. But a shallow panting. Her brother Bobby was sitting opposite me. He was on one side of the bed I was on the other facing him. Terri's head in between us and her sister Suzanne was on my left. We sat there and we had a very intense time of prayer. And we were talking to Terri, urging her to entrust herself completely to the Savior. I assured her repeatedly of the love and prayers and concern of so many people.

We held her hand and stroked her head. During those hours, one of the things I did was to chant, in Latin, some of the most ancient hymns of the Church. One of the chants I used was the "Victimae Paschali Laudis," which is the ancient proclamation of the resurrection of Christ. There, as I saw before my eyes the deadly work of the Culture of Death, I proclaimed the victory of life. "Life and death were locked in a wondrous struggle," the hymn declares. "Life's Captain died, but now lives and reigns forevermore!"

And then we had just times of silence … just sitting there in silence trying to absorb what was happening.

More Thoughts on Terri Schiavo

From George Neumayr:

Under judge-made law, euthanasia has become America's most astonishing form of premeditated murder, a cold-blooded crime in which husbands can kill their wives and even turn them into accomplices to it through the telepathy of "their wishes." To wonder if we're on the slippery slope sounds like an obtuse moral compliment at this point. The truth is we're at the bottom of the slope and have been for quite some time, standing dumbly as the bodies of innocent humans pile up around us. As we sift through them -- puzzling over how they got so numerous -- we're reduced to mumbling sophistries about compassion and consent.

This is the "humane holocaust" of which Malcolm Muggeridge wrote, a culture that kills the weak, from deaf unborn children to mute disabled women, and calls it mercy. Those responsible for this humane holocaust look into the mirror and see Gandhi, but it is Hitler who glances back. If someone had taken the passages of Mein Kampf that speak of euthanizing "unfortunates" and inserted them into the columns from newspapers and magazines cheering Schiavo's death, would anyone have known the difference?

From Frank Salvato:

Greer’s tenure presiding over the Schiavo case offered a plethora of questionable decisions.
Why did he admit hearsay evidence as fact? Why did he assume the role of Terri’s guardian in the face of a conflict of interest and against Florida judicial canon? Why did he refuse to appoint a Guardian ad Litem for Terri in light of Michael Schiavo’s compromised moral and ethical positions? Why did he fail to enforce Florida law that would have provided Terri therapy until her demise? Why did he allow Michael Schiavo to spend money designated for Terri’s care on legal services designed to end her life? Why did he allow Terri to be admitted to a hospice under false pretenses? Why did he fail to order confirming MRI and PET scan evaluations? Why did he admit into evidence the testimony of a biased medical panel some of whom were right-to-die advocates? And why didn’t he recuse himself in the face of his flagrant bias against the Schindler family when petitioned to do so? These glaring transgressions against Florida law, US law and Florida judicial canon should have sounded an alarm; instead they were upheld in court after court after court.

An even more disturbing fact is that the federal judiciary – whether you agree or disagree with how they came to be included in this case – refused to even address the inequities of Greer’s court. Charged with reviewing the case de novo, the federal judiciary did nothing of the sort. Instead they engaged in a deadly game of indignance with the legislative and executive branches of our federal government. They refused to hear arguments and gave no cause. They played constitutional politics while a life hung in the balance. Terri’s life clock clicked onward toward her hour of reckoning and the tyranny of judicial activism donned the dark shroud of death.

From Mary Mostert:

Terri went 60 hours without food or water before a different judge issued an emergency stay because new evidence had come to light, and her feeding was resumed. She died almost exactly 5 years later with Felos leading the legal battle to withhold food and water from Terri. Two years ago, Felos had already been paid over $400,000 out of Terri’s $1 million malpractice award. Bobby and Suzanne had visitation rights reinstated only on condition that they would not try to spoon feed their sister. Greer was reported to have said: "I don't want anyone trying to feed that girl!" In 2003 Judge Greer rejected a request by Robert and Mary Schindler asking that their daughter be allowed an eight-week trial of speech, occupational and physical therapy to teach Terri to swallow food so she could be spoon-fed once the feeding tube is removed.” ...

In 1861 it took a Civil War to reverse the U.S. Supreme Court Dred Scott decision, that declared people of African descent were not real people or citizens under the U.S. Constitution. How fitting it is that Jesse Jackson, a black man, in a last minute effort tried to rally black legislators in Florida to support a white woman’s right to food and water and life! Terri didn’t just die. Unelected judges in defiance of the US Constitution and the elected representatives of the people ordered her death.

Would You Rather Be OJ's Girlfriend Or Michael Schiavo's Fiancee?

From (who else?) Ann Coulter:

Opinions about the Schiavo case seem to break down less on morals than on basic knowledge of the facts of the case.

There are a lot of telling facts, but two big ones are:

• The only family member lobbying for Terri's death is her husband, who is affianced to a woman he's been living with for several years and with whom he already has two children. (Today's brain twister: Would you rather be O.J.'s girlfriend or Michael Schiavo's fiancee?)


• Terri's husband has refused to allow her to be given either an MRI or a PET scan, which are also known as: "The tests that could determine whether Terri is even in a permanent vegetative state." (I believe his exact words were, "PET scan? MRI? What do I look like, a guy who just won a $1 million malpractice settlement?")

On the basis of these facts, Pinellas County Judge George Greer found that it was Terri's wish to be starved to death. She requires no life support; all she needs is food and water. If being (a) on a liquid diet, and (b) unresponsive to one's estranged husband are now considered grounds for a woman's execution, wait until this news hits Beverly Hills!

So What Would You Do?

An excellent, thought-provoking piece by Therese over at Exultet:

Living next door to the Schiavos

What if you lived next door to Michael Schiavo and his household? Would you let your children play with his children? Would you speak to him? The mother of his children? Would you hire him? Would you do business with whoever employs him?

What are the charitable actions, the merciful attitudes, to pursue in living next door to a man whose heart is filled with such anger and evil? Do we shake his dust off our shoes, put him out from among us? Or do we extend our hand?

This is a dramatic example, but I'm sure you found out, as I have, how many hearts around you harbor cruelty and disdain for life, expressed in mean and callous water cooler conversations and dinner table discussions. Our response to them is, in a way, a proportional one to actually living next door to Terri's murderer.

Next Time It Will Be Easier

From National Review:

Why not kill Mrs. Schiavo quickly and efficiently, by depriving her of air to breathe? In principle, that would have been no different from denying her the other basic necessities of life. Why not give her a lethal injection? The law would not have allowed those methods; but the reason nobody advocated them was that they would have been too obviously murder. So the court-ordered killing was carried out slowly, incrementally, over days and weeks, with soft music, stuffed animals, and euphonious slogans about choice and dignity and radiance. By the time it ended, no one really remembered how many days and hours it had gone on. The nation accepted it, national polls supported it, and we all moved on to other things.

Next time it will be easier. It always is. The tolerance of early-term abortion made it possible to tolerate partial-birth abortion, and to give advanced thinkers a hearing when they advocate outright infanticide. Letting the courts decide such life-and-death issues made it possible for us to let them decide others, made it seem somehow wrong for anyone to stand in their way. Now they are helping to snuff out the minimally conscious. Who's next?

I kept asking this exact same question of the pro-death supporters and I never got a straight answer from any one of them either.

The Essence of Civilization

From Best of the Web:

This morning President Bush offered his condolences to the family of Terri Schiavo:

The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak. In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in the favor of life.

"The strong have a duty to protect the weak": Didn't that use to be a liberal sentiment? To be sure, some prominent left-liberals--Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, Sen. Tom Harkin--joined the effort to save Mrs. Schiavo, and 47 House Democrats out of 100 voted in favor of the law that would have done so had the courts not defied it. But it seems clear that liberalism is not as compassionate as it once was.

Introducing McMahon's Law

Here, for the first time anywhere, I present to you McMahon's Law:

Whenever a blogger posts at length about a hateful e-mail he has received instead of responding to the legitimate arguments advanced by the other side, that blogger has lost the debate.

Here's a generalized example of how I have seen this played out over and over on the web:

1. The Blogger asserts His Viewpoint on The Issue of the Day.
2. The Opposition responds, and the usual back-and-forth ensues for a couple of rounds.
3. The Blogger is unable to respond to the strongest points made by The Opposition, and is starting to lose the debate.
4. It will be at this point that The Blogger will reveal in a very lengthy post that he has received hateful e-mails from members of The Opposition. Generally, these hateful e-mails will disparage The Blogger's puppy, sick child, or dead beloved parent/grandparent.
5. Immediately The Supporters of The Blogger will flood the post with comments about what a Wonderful Person The Blogger is, and how Evil the members of The Opposition are.
6. The Blogger will then respond in kind, telling The Supporters what Wonderful People they are, and then revealing some heretofore unmentioned Wonderful Quality about the Puppy, Sick Child, or Dead Grandmother.
7. Immediately The Supporters of The Blogger will flood the post with another round of comments about what a Wonderful Person The Blogger is, and how Evil the members of The Opposition are.
8. The Blogger will then mention how traumatized he has been by the hateful e-mail sent by The Opposition.
9. The Supporters will then offer ritual forgiveness of The Opposition, admonishing them with some biblical phrase about Not Judging People.
10. If a member of The Opposition attempts to re-start the debate, this is immediately trumped by comments of the "Haven't You People Done Enough Already To The Poor, Traumatized Blogger?" variety.
11. The whole thing winds down, with The Supporters pleased at what Wonderful People they are. The arguments advanced by The Opposition are never addressed.

Sound familiar? What a bunch of crud. If You Can't Stand The Heat, Stay Out Of The Kitchen. Weird, odd, or hateful e-mails and comments are just part of the territory when you blog on controversial topics -- I get that kind of stuff all the time. Everybody does. It's like comment spam or offers from Nigerian banks. It's the stuff you brush off, not something you use when you don't have an effective rebuttal. And from this point on, anyone who does this will have forfeited their debate to their opposition. Clear enough?

Mugs-A-Plenty: Pray For Terri

Mugs-A-Plenty: Pray For Terri

Indeed.

The Spiritual Health of Nations

From Dennis Boyles:

If you ask me, the widespread grieving for Terri Schiavo is not only an indicator of the political significance of moral values but also a barometer of the nation's spiritual health. Did people go too far to try to pretzel-twist the judicial process and cheek-slap states' right? Maybe — but I don't think so, and anyway that's not the point. The alternative to being passionately engaged with the terrible fate of Terri Schiavo is to mutter a few words about how "sad and tragic" it all is and just move on. That's certainly what the New York Times and most Europeans would like to see. However, in the grim arc of two lifetimes, we've seen very often what happens when you shrug off one death, let alone many, many more. In fact, we saw it in France, where all those enlightened rationalists live, less than two years ago when 15,000 weak and elderly men and women were left to die in a summer heat wave while government services shut down and their families all went on holiday.

By the end of August 2003, 15,000 French people had died of simple neglect. That's the equivalent of five 9/11s in four months. One such event is all it took to transform America. In France, massive death received a massive shrug. I've reported this before, of course, but I still can't get over it: As a result of what happened during those awful weeks, nothing changed.

The Myth of the 19 Judges

From Thomas Sowell:

When a case goes up to a higher court on appeal, the issue before the appellate court is not whether they agree with the merits of the decision of the lower court. In a criminal case, for example, the issue before the appellate court is not whether the defendant was guilty or innocent, but whether the trial was conducted properly.

In other words, the defendant is not supposed to be tried again at the appellate level. So, no matter how many appellate judges rule one way or the other, that tells you absolutely nothing about the fundamental question of guilt or innocence.

Similar principles apply in a civil case, such as that of Terri Schiavo. Liberals can count all the judges they want, but that does not mean that all these judges agreed with the merits of the original court's decision. It means that they found no basis for saying that the original court's decision was illegal.

I'm Kind of Afraid To Get Up These Mornings

Will the First Blast of News be that Terri Schiavo has died? Not to-day, I guess. Will it be tomorrow? The next day? The day after that?

Anybody else have this fear?

People Make Their Own Quality of Life

From Orson Scott Card:

People make their own quality of life. There are people who are desperately unhappy in the midst of freedom and plenty, and people who are quite cheerful despite devastating deprivation and loss.

My wife was once at a gathering of church women, when one of them started complaining about how desperately hard it was to choose just the right dining room set for her new home. She seemed genuinely distressed. And the other ladies commiserated. But my wife knew that one of the women was suffering through the breakup of her marriage, and another was worried because her husband was probably going to be laid off. Every one of them had problems that made choosing a dining room set almost laughably trivial.

But to that one woman, the dining room problem was the worst thing in her life. It’s as if she had a certain amount of misery she was determined to feel, and settled on whatever came to hand to be miserable about.

March Madness

March Madness

(via My View of the World)

The Law Exists to Serve Mankind

From Clayton Cramer:

What should be the goal of law? I would argue that the goal of law should be justice. As an example, the law prohibits stealing--and yet few people raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition would punish a starving man for stealing a loaf of bread to feed himself and his family. (In practice, this is almost unheard of--I have only once seen someone steal food.) In this respect, both "result-oriented" liberals and "result-oriented" conservatives share a common perspective that justice is the goal, not the mechanical functioning of the legal process.

I would argue that there is nothing just about killing a woman simply on the word of her husband, who has reasons to want her dead, apart from his supposed concern for Terri's welfare. Recast this situation in domestic violence terms, and watch how quickly liberals would be justly angry at allowing Michael Schiavo to beat his wife.

Now, I understand that law is necessarily an imperfect attempt at justice, and I agree that there are going to be situations where following legal procedures exactly is going to produce unjust results. But the sentiments of Instapundit, and many others, seem a little more concerned about the following of legal procedure, and not enough concerned about the injustice of the results. The law exists to serve mankind, not the other way around.

More Schiavo Around The Web

Susan Konig:

Watching Terri Schiavo's tragedy unfold in front of the world, I think of the videotape where her mom moves her daughter's head to be able to look into her face and suddenly Terri's eyes brighten and she seems to smile. Her mother, Mary Schindler, is there saying, "I'm here." What else is a mother to do? Some say Terri is not cognizant of anything going on around her and that her expressions are just reflexes. Tell that to any mom whose baby smiles for the first time and hears from the "sage" onlooker, "It's just gas, babies can't smile." Baloney. Mothers know differently.

Pia de Solenni:

Sure, the polls are indicating that a strong majority of Americans side with Michael Schiavo. But at the same time, politicians have been hearing from constituents who feel strongly that Terri deserves basic human treatment in the form of food and water. Politicians know that those who actually contact them represent a greater voting force than the abstract populace of unscientific polls. These are people who have taken the time to become acquainted with the facts and the questions surrounding Terri’s death sentence. As the facts become known to individuals, one by one, there’s a general understanding that this situation requires more attention before Terri’s life is taken from her.

Eric Cohen:

When the district court's decision to allow Michael Schiavo to remove the feeding tube was challenged, a Florida appeals court framed the question before it as follows:

[W]hether Theresa Marie Schindler Schiavo, not after a few weeks in a coma, but after ten years in a persistent vegetative state that has robbed her of most of her cerebrum and all but the most instinctive of neurological functions, with no hope of a medical cure but with sufficient money and strength of body to live indefinitely, would choose to continue the constant nursing care and the supporting tubes in hopes that a miracle would somehow recreate her missing brain tissue, or whether she would wish to permit a natural death process to take its course and for her family members and loved ones to be free to continue their lives. (emphasis added)

Now, one could surely read this as an effort to get inside Terri's once competent mind. But more likely, it expresses the court's own view of Terri's now incompetent and incapacitated existence as a meaningless burden, a barrier to her husband's freedom.

Schiavo Around The Web

Thomas Sowell:

No murderer would be allowed to be killed this way, which would almost certainly be declared "cruel and unusual punishment," in violation of the Constitution, by virtually any court. Terri Schiavo's only crime is that she has become an inconvenience -- and is caught in the merciless machinery of the law. Those who think law is the answer to our problems need to face the reality that law is a crude and blunt instrument. Make no mistake about it, Terri Schiavo is being killed. She is not being "allowed to die."

Pat Buchanan:

One wonders if our young, so many of them cheated of a knowledge of history in schools they are forced to attend, are aware of how closely our elites approximate, in belief and argument, the elites of Weimar and Nazi Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1920, Dr. Alfred Hoche, professor of psychiatry at the University of Freiburg, and Karl Binding, a law professor at Leipzig, authored The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life. They urged a national policy of assisted suicide for those "empty shells of human beings" -- the terminally ill and mentally retarded, and those with brain damage and psychiatric conditions. In October 1933, The New York Times quoted the Nazi minister of justice as saying that ridding Germany of such poor creatures would make it "possible for physicians to end the tortures of incurable patients, upon requests, in the interests of true humanity." "If we desire a certain type of civilization," said George Bernard Shaw, "we must exterminate the sort of people who do not fit in."

Jonah Goldberg:

Usually when one side accuses the other of hypocrisy, it is being hypocritical, too. Liberals who have rejected states' rights as everything from quaint to flat-out racist are suddenly scandalized that Republicans want to interfere — "intrude," "meddle," "bully" — in the Schiavo case. This is a very difficult argument to square with the Democrats' decades-long commitment to making the federal government, particularly federal courts, the final arbiter of every local issue imaginable.

Peggy Noonan:

Why are they so committed to this woman's death?

They seem to have fallen half in love with death.

What does Terri Schiavo's life symbolize to them? What does the idea that she might continue to live suggest to them? Why does this prospect so unnerve them? Again, if you think Terri Schiavo is a precious human gift of God, your passion is explicable. The passion of the pull-the-tube people is not.

Schiavo Around the Web, Part 2

James Q. Wilson:

Many people, myself included, have allowed life-support systems to be withdrawn from parents who have no hope of recovery. My mother was going to die from cancer, and after all efforts had been made to help her, my sister and I allowed the doctors to withdraw the devices that kept her alive. She was dead within hours.

My case, and that of countless other people who have made that decision, differs from that of Terri Schiavo in two important ways. First, the early death of my mother was certain, but no one could say that Ms. Schiavo would die soon or possibly at any time before she might die of old age. Second, all the relevant family members agreed on the decision about my mother, but family members are deeply divided about Terri.

These differences are of decisive importance. When death will occur soon and inevitably, the patient does not starve to death when life support ends. Since there was no chance of our mother living more than a few more days, what my sister and I did could not be called murder. When death will not occur soon, or perhaps for many years, and when there is a chance, even a very small one, that recovery is possible, people who authorize the withdrawal of life support are playing God.

David Limbaugh:

The decision to kill Terri Schiavo is not in deference to Terri's intentions, about which there is way too much doubt, but to godlessness, humanism and death. It is to quench society's lust for death. This case marks a turning point in the Culture War, where society is making a giant leap toward the dark side, embracing the lie over truth and death over life. In our relentless quest to become like gods, we are crossing another sacred line, and it is hard to imagine how we might return.

Robert Novak:

In Washington, I was engaged during a Saturday night dinner party in debate at a level of intensity I had not seen since the bitter '60s and '70s. My dining companions, mostly mainstream Washington journalists a generation younger than I, were passionately opposed to the congressional intervention. These disparate activities suggest crosscurrents that do not fit conventional politics. This is not the cold, analytical debate over Social Security. Involved here is a private decision to take a life. Debate about abortion has turned to private decisions taking the lives of indisputable human beings -- increasingly important as life and death questions are posed about an aging population.

Ann Coulter:

Liberals' newfound respect for "federalism" is completely disingenuous. People who support a national policy on abortion are prohibited from ever using the word "federalism." I note that whenever liberals talk about "federalism" or "states' rights," they are never talking about a state referendum or a law passed by the duly elected members of a state legislature – or anything voted on by the actual citizens of a state. What liberals mean by "federalism" is: a state court ruling. Just as "choice" refers to only one choice, "the rule of law" refers only to "the law as determined by a court."

Steamrolled

Steve Sailer got an interesting message from a lawyer. Some excerpts:

I have been following the case for years. Something that interests me about the Terri Schiavo case, and that doesn't seem to have gotten much media attention: The whole case rests on the fact that the Schindlers (Terri's parents) were totally outlawyered by the husband (Michael Schiavo) at the trial court level.

This happened because, in addition to getting a $750K judgment for Terri's medical care, Michael Schiavo individually got a $300K award of damages for loss of consortium, which gave him the money to hire a top-notch lawyer to represent him on the right-to-die claim. He hired George Felos, who specializes in this area and litigated one of the landmark right-to-die cases in Florida in the early 90s.

By contrast, the Schindlers had trouble even finding a lawyer who would take their case since there was no money in it. Finally they found an inexperienced lawyer who agreed to take it partly out of sympathy for them, but she had almost no resources to work with and no experience in this area of the law. She didn't even depose Michael Schiavo's siblings, who were key witnesses at the trial that decided whether Terri would have wanted to be kept alive. Not surprisingly, Felos steamrollered her.

A Court System Totally Out Of Control

From The American Spectator, a great short article by Ben Stein:

Here is what makes me furious about the Terry Schiavo case, short and sweet.

The courts of the United States can find a right for the abortion industry to take a fully formed, totally healthy baby at nine months' term, out of his mother's womb and murder it by putting scissors through his brain and grinding them about.

They do this without one single word of support from any Congressional act of any kind ever.

They can find a right of savage murderers of innocent women who drown them for a lark to avoid the death penalty because they are old enough to drive and to kill but supposedly too young to be executed. Again, there is not one syllable in any Congressional act that sanctions this protection of the guilty.

But with the Congress and the President of the United States pleading for the life of a woman who is not brain dead, who responds to words and to touch, who is not on life support, whose parents beg for her to be kept alive, whose nurses give affidavits that she can be rehabilitated, with a specific law commanding the courts to review the case to keep this poor soul alive, the courts instead find no rights for her.

This is a court system totally out of control, obviously committed to death, obviously bound by nothing beyond its morbid obsession with its own omnipotence and its fascination with the letting the innocent die. This is simply terrifying. The Falange followers of Francisco Franco had an evil cry: Long live death. Obviously, Justice Kennedy was listening.

The Crime Of Being Disabled

From William G. Stothers:

First thing:Terri Schiavo is not terminally ill. She is severely disabled with a brain injury. She is not hooked up to any life-support systems. For 15 years she has relied on a feeding tube for food and water. Her organs function normally.

So why does anyone want to kill her? "Kill" is the correct word here. Removing her feeding tube will cause her death. She will die by starvation and dehydration.

For those of us in the organized disability rights movement, it looks like Schiavo is being put to death for the crime of being disabled.

Disability makes many people uncomfortable. How many times have you said, or heard someone say, "I would never want to live like that." Or, "I would rather be dead than be like that."

People have said that to me. I am severely disabled and use a motorized wheelchair as a result of having polio 55 years ago.

Michael Schiavo: Trying To Have It Both Ways

From the Opinion Journal:

According to news reports, Mr. Schiavo lives with a woman named Jodi Centonze, and they have two children together. Surely any court would consider this prima facie evidence of adultery. And this is no mere fling; a sympathetic 2003 profile in the Orlando Sentinel described Centonze as Mr. Schiavo's "fiancée." Mr. Schiavo, in other words, has virtually remarried. Short of outright bigamy, his relationship with Centonze is as thoroughgoing a violation of his marriage vows as it is possible to imagine.

The point here is not to castigate Mr. Schiavo for behaving badly. It would require a heroic degree of self-sacrifice for a man to forgo love and sex in order to remain faithful to an incapacitated wife, and it would be unreasonable to hold an ordinary man to a heroic standard.

But it is equally unreasonable to let Mr. Schiavo have it both ways. If he wishes to assert his marital authority to do his wife in, the least society can expect in return is that he refrain from making a mockery of his marital obligations. The grimmest irony in this tragic case is that those who want Terri Schiavo dead are resting their argument on the fiction that her marriage is still alive.

Do Democrats REALLY Want To Be The Party Of Death?

Now some House Democrats are trying to kill Terri Schiavo.

UPDATE: "Time is not on Terri Schiavo's side," DeLay said. "The few remaining objecting House Democrats have so far cost Mrs. Schiavo two meals already today."

A Superpower Drops Everything To Save One Woman's Life

By Judith Apter Klinghoffer:

THE TERRY SCHIAVO CASE MAKES ME LOVE DEMOCRACY

No, I am not a right to lifer. I am a pro choice absolutist. Moreover, my daughter is so sick of hearing me tell her I do not want any extraordinary measures to prolong my life that she promised to throw me down the stairs if things go wrong.

And yet, I find the specter of the most powerful people in the only superpower drop everything to focus on the destiny of a single badly disabled woman edifying.

This is democracy and this is progress. If you do not believe me just compare it to legalized honor killings in Jordan, Pakistani tribal customs which consider gang rape of a woman a just verdict or the enslavement of girls to repay debts in Ghana. In fact, the valiant efforts to end those practices once and for all are the best indicators of democratic progress.

We have come a long way baby and for that we should be truly grateful.

Don't Let This Woman Die

Peggy Noonan on Terri Schiavo:

A final note to the Republican leadership in the House and Senate: You have to pull out all the stops. You have to run over your chairmen if they're being obstructionist for this niggling reason and that. Run over their egos, run past their fatigue. You have to win on this. If you don't, you can't imagine how much you're going to lose. And from people who have faith in you.

Bill Frist and Tom DeLay and Jim Sensenbrenner and Denny Hastert and all the rest would be better off risking looking ridiculous and flying down to Florida, standing outside Terri Schiavo's room and physically restraining the poor harassed staff who may be told soon to remove her feeding tube, than standing by in Washington, helpless and tied in legislative knots, and doing nothing.

Issue whatever subpoena, call whatever witnesses, pass whatever emergency bill, but don't let this woman die.

Do You Really Believe?

David Limbaugh on Terri Schiavo:

Do you really believe that Terri's husband, Michael, who is living with another woman with whom he sired two children, is refusing to relinquish guardianship of Terri to her parents because he is irreversibly committed to carrying out Terri's wishes?

Do you believe that disabled, but conscious and self-breathing people who can't physically feed themselves or verbally express their desire to live, but who have left no written legal directions as to their destiny in such circumstances, should be starved to death? ...

Do you really believe that Terri's parents would insist on keeping her alive if they believed she were miserable and didn't want to go on living?

Either Way, It's Cruel

Mary Madigan on the Terri Schiavo case:

If someone legally chooses to die, and if the courts are willing to kill them, kill them quickly and painlessly. If we object to cruel and unusual punishment, shouldn't we also object to cruel and unusual compassion?

A Columnist Has Second Thoughts On Terri Schiavo

A short excerpt from John Grogan:

Sometimes even newspaper columnists change their minds.

In the matter of Terri Schiavo, the permanently brain-damaged former suburban Philadelphia woman caught in a life-and-death tug-of-war, this columnist has changed his.

I no longer so blithely believe Schiavo's feeding tubes should be pulled and her life allowed to end. I'm no longer so sure her parents do not deserve a say in their daughter's future. I no longer am totally comfortable assuming her husband, Michael, who now has two children by another woman, is acting unselfishly.

That's not to say I have changed my opinion about the right of all of us to die with dignity when life has lost all meaning. But for Terri Schiavo, who lingers in a Florida nursing home, the devil is in the details, uncomfortable details that raise sticky moral dilemmas.

When Will They Be Coming For Ryan?

In February 1991 our son Ryan suffered a severe brain injury. He was in the hospital for 6 months, and has never regained the ability to walk or talk. He cannot answer Yes or No by any means. He is totally dependent on our care. When he came home from the hospital, he had a feeding tube to his stomach just like Terri Schiavo does now. Through a lot of repetition he learned how to eat and drink again at home, and since we didn't need the feeding tube we removed it and the hole in his stomach healed quite well, quite naturally. He likes to be around people, and he watches a lot of TV.

In short, Ryan's pretty close to the level of functioning of Terri Schiavo, as far as I can tell from the news reports about her. And now her husband, Michael Schiavo, is very close to having her feeding tube removed and having her starved to death. It's at this point I hear the words of actress Frances McDormand as Fargo's Police Chief Marge Gunderson in my head: "And for what? A little bit of money." A little bit of money. The hundreds of thousands Michael Schiavo got to help her, he now stands to receive when she is starved to death. So he can continue on with the other woman he now lives with, and their children. The honorable thing would be for him to simply walk away and let Terri live, but I guess precedent-setting case law is not often set by honorable men doing the honorable thing.

So Terri Schiavo is about to die of a court-ordered thirst, to be starved to death. Ironic, isn't it? In this country a condemned man gets a Last Meal of whatever he wants --  steak, lobster, you name it. So the only thing you can conclude is that mass murderers have more rights than Terri Schiavo. But that's not the worst of it. If a demented disk jockey were to attempt to stage a wacky radio stunt that involved starving a bunch of small rodents, he would be run out of town on a rail. In this country, even gerbils have more rights than Terri Schiavo.

Right now the chess game in the courts continues. And when Terri Schiavo is put to death, you all will feel bad about it for a while, but it will slowly fade from memory as you move on to other things. But for us, a haunting question will remain: When Will They Be Coming For Ryan?

UPDATE: Patrick over at My View of the World was kind enough to post the mp3 audio file of WTMJ's Charlie Sykes reading this post. Thanks, Patrick! And thanks too who wrote in and said all those very nice things. Contrary to what your teacher may have said, you are a joy to have in class! :-)

The Death Sentence of Terri Schiavo

An excerpt of an excellent piece in USA Today by Florida State Senator Daniel Webster:

Florida citizens were justifiably concerned that an innocent, disabled Florida woman was being put to death by court order under extremely questionable and horrific circumstances. If the proceedings that led up to the execution of serial-killer Ted Bundy had been handled in the same way, Bundy's conviction would have been overturned.

Capital felons on trial for their lives in Florida are entitled to independent counsel, competent representation, trial by jury and automatic review of their death-penalty case by the Florida Supreme Court. Yet Terri, utterly innocent of any wrongdoing, received none of these protections.