3.18.2005

George Orwell, Call Your Office

I'm watching a surreal press conference by the attorney for Michael Schiavo, who apparently has succeeded in starting the torturous process of starving his wife to death. The attorney has boggled my mind on a couple of occasions already. First, when he referred to the attempt by the U.S. Congress to block the removal of the feeding tube by issuing subpoenas to Terri Schiavo and others as "thuggery." Then he referred to the process of starving Terri Schiavo to death as "allowing her to exercise her freedom of choice." Unbelievable! And then he refers to the subpoenas as a "cruel ruse," never mind the cruelty of starving this poor woman to death. If they're going to kill her, they should at least give her the consideration that they would give to a convicted murderer and give her a lethal injection.

Frankly, I find both Michael Schiavo and his mouthpiece to be contemptible human beings.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

This whole case pisses me off. But that's all I'm going to say since you and I are not on the same side of the fence.

Karen Zipdrive said...

I was too curious not to come by and read this, but it's really not worth debating.
Thanks for the yucks, Clyde. Priceless!
:)

Clyde said...

No, it's obviously not worth debating it with you. It should be noted that one doesn't have to be a God-bothering Bible-thumper to think that it's wrong to kill Terri Schiavo the way they are doing it.

I'm from the "where there's life, there's hope" school myself. Remember Christopher Reeve? There wasn't anything we could do for him at the time, any more than there's anything we cand do for Terri Schiavo right now. But the state of the art in medicine continues to advance. You didn't hear Christopher Reeve saying, "Just let me die," no, he tried to hang on until medicine could come up with some way to fix his broken body. We just don't know what kind of therapies might be discovered in the next few years that might be able to "fix" Terri Schiavo. How do you think her parents would feel if such therapies were developed and she was already dead because of her husband's wishes?

Karen Zipdrive said...

The point is not a person's right to live or die, the point is Bush thinking he has the right to sidestep the law and impose his personal beliefs over legitaimate court rulings, silly.
This should help educate you:

NY Times EDITORIAL
A Blow to the Rule of Law

If you are in a "persistent vegetative state" and there is a dispute about whether to keep you alive, your case will probably go no further than state court - unless you are Terri Schiavo. President Bush signed legislation yesterday giving Ms. Schiavo's parents a personal right to sue in federal court. *The new law tramples on the principle that this is "a nation of laws, not of men," and it guts the power of the states.* When the commotion over this one tragic woman is over, Congress and the president will have done real damage to the founders' careful plan for American democracy.
Ms. Schiavo's case presents heart-wrenching human issues, and difficult legal ones. But the Florida courts, after careful deliberation, ruled that she would not want to be kept alive by artificial means in her current state, and ordered her feeding tube removed. Ms. Schiavo's parents, who wanted the tube to remain, hoped to get the Florida Legislature to intervene, but it did not do so.
That should have settled the matter. But supporters of Ms. Schiavo's parents, particularly members of the religious right, leaned heavily on Congress and the White House to step in. They did so yesterday with the new law, which gives "any parent of Theresa Marie Schiavo" standing to sue in federal court to keep her alive.
This narrow focus is offensive. The founders believed in a nation in which, as Justice Robert Jackson once wrote, we would "submit ourselves to rulers only if under rules." *There is no place in such a system for a special law creating rights for only one family.* The White House insists that the law will not be a precedent. But that means that the right to bring such claims in federal court is reserved for people with enough political pull to get a law passed that names them in the text.
The Bush administration and the current Congressional leadership like to wax eloquent about states' rights. But they dropped those principles in their rush to stampede over the Florida courts and Legislature. The new law doesn't miss a chance to trample on the state's autonomy and dignity. There are a variety of technical legal doctrines the federal courts use to show deference to state courts, like "abstention" and "exhaustion of remedies." The new law decrees that in Ms. Schiavo's case, these well-established doctrines simply will not apply.
Republicans have traditionally championed respect for the delicate balance the founders created. But in the Schiavo case, and in the battle to stop the Democratic filibusters of judicial nominations, President Bush and his Congressional allies have begun to enunciate a new principle: the rules of government are worth respecting only if they produce the result we want. It may be a formula for short-term political success, but it is no way to preserve and protect a great republic.

Karen Zipdrive said...

Besides, as Governor of Texas, Bush signed into law a bill that allowed hospitals to take patients off life support at their discretion, whether the parents (or spouses) agreed or not.
Which Bush do you agree with, Clyde? The evil, murdering, executing Texas Governor Bush, or the compassionate, right to life President Bush who seeks to deny states their right to determine state laws?
Which side of his mouth do you prefer to listen to?

Clyde said...

Somehow, Karen, I seriously doubt that the law did what you claim it did. You have a habit of distorting the truth whenever it suits you, which is often. If you were to tell me that the sun had risen in the east, I'd have to look for myself just to make sure.

As for the legislation, Karen, three-fourths of the House voted in favor of that legislation, including almost half of the Democrats. There is a case to be made that it wasn't their business, that it was the legislative and executive branches overstepping their authority, and a lot of conservatives who are "right-to-life" feel that way. I don't. I feel that the whole thing is a miscarriage of justice, because Michael Schiavo has been trying to kill his wife for about 12 years, and it seems that he would have profited handsomely financially if he had been able to do it back then. Now, most of the money is gone due to legal fees, not from using it as he should have to care for his wife.

One more thing: On Friday, the same day they removed Terri Schiavo's feeding tube to begin her starvation, a man was charge with felony animal cruelty in Collier County, Florida, for allowing about a dozen cattle to die of starvation and dehydration. Perhaps the man should just say that he was "allowing the cattle to exercise their freedom of choice." Apparently there's legal precedent for it.

Clyde said...

In any case, I think the husband is a skunk. There was a woman named Carla Sauer-Iyer on "Hannity and Colmes" last night. She was an LPN who cared for Terri Schiavo in the mid-1990s, and she makes some amazing claims. I don't know whether she was telling the truth or not, but she said that Michael Schiavo was constantly wanting to know "When will she die? Is she going to die soon? When is that bitch going to die?" When Terri got better, he would be angry, when she got worse, he would be upbeat. Sauer-Iyer claims that Michael Schiavo said to her that when Terri died, he'd use the money to get a new car, a new boat and take a trip to Europe. Sauer-Iyer was fired from the place she worked because of her claims back in the 1990s about Terri being in better condition that officially told. There are also claims that Terri had broken bones and that her husband may have physically abused her. It's possible that all of these stories are untrue, but they aren't the sort of thing that makes me think that he has his wife's best interests at heart, unlike her parents. It's convenient for him that he and a couple of members of his family are the only ones to claim that Terri said that she wouldn't want to live in a vegetative state. He's had a financial interest in her death for a long time.

Clyde said...

http://www.terrisfight.org/documents/CIyerAffidavit090203.htm

That's a link to Ms. Sauer-Iyer's sworn affidavit. Read it and then let me know if you still think that Michael Schiavo is the one who should be calling the shots on life or death for Terri.