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Conservatives Legislating Morality

Jan 24, 2004
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The Vegetative State
Since the other Schiavo thread has been hijacked by a certain jackass arguing semantics about the Nazis, I'll start my own.

I don't know what should be done for this woman - I simply don't know all the facts. I do think it's significant that several Florida judges, who have examined things from all sides, have agreed with her husband. Then again, several have not. Even ostensibly creditable doctors disagree on the matter.

What I find increasingly despicable are the actions of so-called Conservatives who suddenly feel justified in interfering in the most private family decisions and over-ruling the courts for political reasons. Small government indeed. Why overrule a federal judge who has pondered over all aspects of this case? If the judicial system is flawed - and in cases of euthanasia it certainly is - then fix the law. Overuling the judiciary with this ludicrous law merely distorts the balance of the entire system.

Bush's own hypocrisy in this matter has been making the rounds of the blogosphere http://www.phxnews.com/fullstory.php?article=19552 . I note also that Bush's desire to "ere on the side of life" is highly ironic given his and Alex Gonzales's famous complete lack of concern about due process in death penalty cases: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17670

Tom Delay's glossing of this tragedy as "medical terrorism" is particularly cheap and vile. http://majorityleader.gov/news.asp?FormMode=Detail&ID=409

Thankfully, the American people are displaying more sense than their leaders, as they often do: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/PollVault/story?id=599622&page=1
 
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Peeping Tom

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Dec 24, 2002
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Given that insults are the only vehicle present in your "discourse", I'll add that you are the definition of jackass.

Drunken Master said:
Since the other Schiavo thread has been hijacked by a certain jackass arguing semantics about the Nazis, I'll start my own.
 
Jan 24, 2004
1,279
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The Vegetative State
Peeping Tom said:
Given that insults are the only vehicle present in your "discourse", I'll add that you are the definition of jackass.
Translation: "I know you are but what am I"

Anyway, if you don't mind, I'd like to have a real discussion on this issue. Please feel free to start your own thread and hijack that one.
 
Y

yychobbyist

I fail to see how anyone could possibly think that this is a political issue which should involve the legislative and executive branches of the American government. Making this a political issue is a vile and disgusting invasion of this woman's rights.

My own personal opinion is that the husband's decision should outweigh those of the parents though I have to admit that it's all well and good to think about this in abstract terms but when reality hits you I can easily see I'd feel differently.
 

oldjones

CanBarelyRe Member
Aug 18, 2001
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Perhaps someone can enlighten me on some of the Constitutional implications of Bush's Terri Law. First of all, isn't this law telling the courts what to do, by ordering the courts essentially to start over, and doesn't that fly in the face of the independence of the judiciary and the idea of checks and balances that is central to constitutional government in the US?

That's pretty general, but isn't this law in effect an "ex post facto" law, trying to undo what has already been legally done? That's quite specifically forbidden in the Constitution.

Also forbidden are bills of attainder—which, as I understand it, are laws that visit penalties on specific persons, rather than defining illegal conduct in general terms. In the very specificity that the proponents claim won't affect future situations, do they not cross over this line too?

Whatever one's moral/ethical beliefs, when we come together as a nation (at least in a democratic one) we codify the common elements of those beliefs in laws, so that all may know how to behave (and so that lawyers can make a living picking the nits of them). Each of those constitutional provisions speaks to defending the Rule of Law against those who claim to "know right from wrong" and attempt to impose it on others who have different "knowledge".

What's scary about this agonizing situation are the lengths to which the self-appointed advocates for this woman are prepared to subvert the most basic principles that organize the country, to satisfy their own moral beliefs. Where were they when the existing laws were being drafted and passed?

What is scary about totalitarian dictatorships is that there the law is whatever the powerholder determines it is at the moment, for whatever reason. It's quite clear to me that more than a few of the 'let her live' gang would be quite happy to have that power. And they got some of it from Congress yesterday.

Just to be clear: I have every sympathy for the poor parents whose extreme efforts in what they see as her interests are entirely understandable; they're parents after all. But no one else merits that latitude.
 

langeweile

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Sep 21, 2004
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1) when are you Canadians going to understand that the POTUS can't tell the courts what to do? Neither can congress or the senate. Every law that deems to be wrong can and will be challenged.
BTW the judge in FLA has refused to re-insert the feeding tube.

2) I am not sure what should be done in this case since I don't have the facts.
However on my way home from work i couldn't stop thinking about a certain irony.
Many here are outraged if we put murderers, rapists and other slugs to death. Some of you find every possible excuse for not executing punks. In this case however you don't think twice letting this woman die.

Unfortunately the politics of the day has given this case a sensatiolism, which is disgusting.
Politics are being played with this womans live.....on both sides of the aisle.

Aren't we supposed to do everyhting possible to protect life? Who is going to play the judge on who is allowed to live and who isn't?
 

red

you must be fk'n kid'g me
Nov 13, 2001
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i think congress has the authority to do what they are doing- i.e. to pass laws- but as langweille notes- any law is still subject to the courts oversight
 

Cardinal Fang

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Feb 14, 2002
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langeweile said:
2) I am not sure what should be done in this case since I don't have the facts.
However on my way home from work i couldn't stop thinking about a certain irony.
Many here are outraged if we put murderers, rapists and other slugs to death. Some of you find every possible excuse for not executing punks. In this case however you don't think twice letting this woman die.
Irony works both ways langeweile.

I have to agree with what Drunken Master has written and the recent polls in the U.S. have proven this. The Conservatives have gone out on a limb on this one considering a majority people in the U.S. do not back this decision.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,101826,00.html
 
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onthebottom

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Jan 10, 2002
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For me this is a surreal case. I can't imagine anyone fighting to have this woman taken off of food and water. I can understand that if she had a living will that stated that no special efforts should be taken, but even then it's not like she's on a respirator.

To dehydrate and starve a person to death seems way over the line to me.

As for the politics of it, I find these almost equally abhorrent - both sides are pissing me off - Barney Frank pro death, Delay.... pro intervention. This is the second time this woman has had food and water taken away from her.... I just don't understand the rational, especially when some family members want to keep her alive.

OTB
 

oldjones

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Aug 18, 2001
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langeweile said:
1) when are you Canadians going to understand that the POTUS can't tell the courts what to do?
…edit…
Nor can the Congress. But considering that this case has been on court dockets all the way from court of first instance up to the Supreme Court and the findings have consistantly been that civil rights and statute law support the husband, what else is this law attempting to do, except to have the right-thinking Congress and President tell those ivory-tower judges they're wrong?
It's them, not we Canadians who have to understand [what you said]
 
Jan 24, 2004
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The Vegetative State
onthebottom said:
To dehydrate and starve a person to death seems way over the line to me.

OTB
I can't disagree with you on this one, OTB, but consider this - the only reason why this woman has to starve to death is because there exists no provision within the law to end her life humanely. This applies to both American and Canadian law, so far as I know...
 

KBear

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Aug 17, 2001
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Starving someone until they die seems like a cowardly way to end a life.

After looking at the news reports and seeing the lady, if I was in her situation, I would not want to be kept alive. To think that she should be kept alive indefinitely because she may have some level of awareness of her surroundings is even crueler.
 

oldjones

CanBarelyRe Member
Aug 18, 2001
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onthebottom said:
For me this is a surreal case. I can't imagine anyone fighting to have this woman taken off of food and water. I can understand that if she had a living will that stated that no special efforts should be taken, but even then it's not like she's on a respirator.…edit…OTB
Well the food is a specially formulated mush that is pumped directly into her stomach through a plastic port surgically implanted in her belly. That would qualify as a "special effort" in my book, justifiable to sustain until recovery, not warranted when it's judged recovery isn't going to happen. Like the respirator.
This is not the same as intubating down the throat someone who has temporarily lost swallowing function.
 

oldjones

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Aug 18, 2001
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Drunken Master said:
I can't disagree with you on this one, OTB, but consider this - the only reason why this woman has to starve to death is because there exists no provision within the law to end her life humanely. This applies to both American and Canadian law, so far as I know...
Yup. And there goes the Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia™ brand can of worms—all over everywhere.
 

Truncador

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Mar 21, 2005
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Tom Delay and his fellow Republicans are to be commended. The State has an absolute duty to protect the lives of the innocent (having been granted its powers for no other purpose), and in this case is doing exactly that. As to the issue of constitutionality, the concept of the absolute right of the innocent to life (together with the concomitant absolute duty of the State to preserve life) comprises the formative principle of the American constitutional tradition in its entirety, underwriting all American notions concerning the liberty of the individual, the rule of law, and the purpose, limits, and nature of the power of the State. It is the proponents of euthanasia, not Tom Delay, who are undermining Constitutionality at the bedrock level, seeking to delete the cornerstone of American laws and liberties and replace it with the cornerstone of slave States: the ancient barbarian right of patria potestas.

If activist courts should see things differently, then federal armed forces should be dispatched to Florida in order to remind them that the sovereignty is vested in the Congress, not judges. Deference to jurisprudents has its limits; America, after all, is a democracy, and not some kind of Islamic theocracy.
 
Jan 24, 2004
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The Vegetative State
Truncador said:
Tom Delay and his fellow Republicans are to be commended. The State has an absolute duty to protect the lives of the innocent (having been granted its powers for no other purpose), and in this case is doing exactly that. As to the issue of constitutionality, the concept of the absolute right of the innocent to life (together with the concomitant absolute duty of the State to preserve life) comprises the formative principle of the American constitutional tradition in its entirety, underwriting all American notions concerning the liberty of the individual, the rule of law, and the purpose, limits, and nature of the power of the State. It is the proponents of euthanasia, not Tom Delay, who are undermining Constitutionality at the bedrock level, seeking to delete the cornerstone of American laws and liberties and replace it with the cornerstone of slave States: the ancient barbarian right of patria potestas.

If activist courts should see things differently, then federal armed forces should be dispatched to Florida in order to remind them that the sovereignty is vested in the Congress, not judges. Deference to jurisprudents has its limits; America, after all, is a democracy, and not some kind of Islamic theocracy.
You obviously aren't a stict constructionist - there is no such
"absolute right of the innocent to life" mentioned in the Constitution, still less an "absolute duty of the State to perserve life". The Fathers were usually wise enough not to speak in terms of absolutes. Doctors who act to end the life of terminally ill patients - an action that happens every day in every hospital of the nation - are not violating the law, or the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights.

You also are apparently not familiar with the concept of the separation of powers - a separation which, in fact, ensures the sovereignty of judges and the judicial system, and which render the grandstanding actions of Congress unconstitutional.

Your reference to an Islamic throcracy is laughable - these states are unjust precisely because there is no separation between executive and judicial power.

"Patria potestas" refers to the unrestricted power one individual may exert over another. How do this apply here when any "power" being exerted comes not on the behalf of an individual but through an exhaustive due process that has lasted for 7 years and beyond?

Oh, and, welcome to TERB.
 

red

you must be fk'n kid'g me
Nov 13, 2001
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It comes down to who should decide this. The husband or the family. Is it credible that she had advised her husband of her wishes if something like this ever happened? this plus the medical evidence is what was used by the courts to decide the issue. I haven't the facts nor have I heard the testimony. I would leave it to the courts.
 

langeweile

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Sep 21, 2004
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bbking said:
1) I think most understand this point Lang - seperation of State et all. This case has already been through the Federal Courts not once but twice. The only reason for this is that Delay and the GOP feel a third time around they can turn this to their political advantage at the expense of suffering family.

2)Shame on you. Capital punishment and this case have nothing to do with one another. In Capital punishment you are killing a healthy viable person. Terry Shiavo is neither. Had Terry Shiavo left a living will, this would not be up for debate. Where is Tom Delay, Congress, and for that matter you for all those people who are deprieved nutrition and hydration based on their living will. This is the kind of argument you right wing types come up with while never looking at all sides. You know Lange not all deaths are swift - the vast majority linger and are horrible. From past experience I really hope you don't have to face this decission - but fom your comments I suspect you would not do what is right but the one that causes you the least moral pain.

I do agree with you to introduce politics in this case is discusting, but the only one to blame here is Tom Delay.


bbk
BBK, who is making the decision on what is a viable life and what is not? You? Her husband? The courts? Tom Delay? The anti abortion crowd?
That is a sliperry slope, if anyone of us or them decides what is considered a "viable" life.
Are we going to have abortion next, because of the baby not meeting expectations? Do we give a parent the right to say "If the baby is not perfect, we just kill it?

You "left types" can't have it both ways. We as a society either agree that we respect ALL forms of life(Yes, including a fetus) or we disrespect all and kill at will.
BBK you can't have it both ways. Unless you want to be the judge of who lives and who doesn't.

The left has it's share of fault in this as well. IMHO

For the record. Unless I have clear instructions from my wife I will not pull the tube or the plug.
 
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