Let’s see. Florida local, appellate, and supreme courts have ruled that repeated, exhaustive, thorough, and law-conforming reviews of Terri Schiavo’s condition and presumptive wishes under Florida state law indicate that her feeding tube should be removed and remain so.<\/p>\n
The US Congress and President have passed a special law throwing the situation in to federal courts. Of those, we’ve now had a federal judge, an appellate panel, and a full appeals court<\/a> now rule that, yes, the state courts had it right.<\/p>\n So what else to do? Obvious! Off to the Supreme Court!<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Jeb Bush is showing that, if you throw enough doctors at a problem, then sooner or later one of them will agree with you. It’s hard to believe that even a “renowned” neurologist can, on the basis of a one-hour examination, present a compelling case that argues against the diagnoses already given and accepted.<\/p>\n Which makes me wonder how criminal appeals work in Florida. I suspect that convicts, even (or especially) in capital cases, don’t get to have seemingly endless <\/em>judges and lawyers and private investigators reassess their cases, looking for one who might see a glimmer of exonerating doubt in some piece of evidence or procedure that has been passed on previously. I suspect that the same is true in Texas, as well. Indeed, the trend has been the other way, to restrict appeals, to put time limits on them, to keep folks from “tying up the system” with “technicalities.”<\/p>\n Which makes the whole “Culture of Life” thang a bit more dubious. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, a number of conservatives are distancing themselves<\/a> from this particular action by Congress.<\/p>\n “This is a clash between the social conservatives and the process conservatives, and I would count myself a process conservative,” said David Davenport of the Hoover Institute, a conservative research organization. “When a case like this has been heard by 19 judges in six courts and it’s been appealed to the Supreme Court three times, the process has worked – even if it hasn’t given the result that the social conservatives want. For Congress to step in really is a violation of federalism.”<\/p>\n Stephen Moore, a conservative advocate who is president of the Free Enterprise Fund, said: “I don’t normally like to see the federal government intervening in a situation like this, which I think should be resolved ultimately by the family: I think states’ rights should take precedence over federal intervention. A lot of conservatives are really struggling with this case.”<\/p>\n Some more moderate Republicans are also uneasy. Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the sole Republican to oppose the Schiavo bill in a voice vote in the Senate, said: “This senator has learned from many years you’ve got to separate your own emotions from the duty to support the Constitution of this country. These are fundamental principles of federalism.”<\/p>\n “It looks as if it’s a wholly Republican exercise,” Mr. Warner said, “but in the ranks of the Republican Party, there is not a unanimous view that Congress should be taking this step.”<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a collection of religious guidelines<\/a> (from different faiths and denominations) on the whole Living Will thang.<\/p>\n UPDATE<\/u>: And, damn it all to hell, if Bush and Co. (incl. Tom Delay, “that id of reptilian conservatism<\/a>“) are going to get all hissy about Schaivo’s case, where are their outrage over these two individuals<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let’s see. Florida local, appellate, and supreme courts have ruled that repeated, exhaustive, thorough, and law-conforming reviews of Terri Schiavo’s condition and presumptive wishes under Florida state law indicate that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5754,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/07\/22\/whiplash.html","url_meta":{"origin":7355,"position":0},"title":"Whiplash","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 22-Jul-04 1:15pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Wasn't just a week or two ago that GOP lawmakers in Congress were trying to impose a one-size-fits-all Constitutional amendment against gay marriage, to quash even states from allowing such...","rel":"","context":"In "LGBTQ &c"","block_context":{"text":"LGBTQ &c","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/gay-stuff"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5550,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/02\/23\/changing_the_ru.html","url_meta":{"origin":7355,"position":1},"title":"Changing the rules","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 23-Feb-04 11:44am","format":false,"excerpt":"Those who read my blog, or Scott's Gamer's Nook, or both, know that we tend to disagree on a number of political issues. His alarm over this bill, though, appears...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":21,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/07\/12\/going_to_pot.html","url_meta":{"origin":7355,"position":2},"title":"Going to pot","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 12-Jul-03 9:06am","format":false,"excerpt":"Y'know, with the War in Iraq, the War on Terror, and, heck, even the front lines of the War on Drugs, you'd still think Bush and Ashcroft and the DoJ...","rel":"","context":"In "War on Drugs"","block_context":{"text":"War on Drugs","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/war-on-drugs"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9367,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/07\/20\/but_some_branch.html","url_meta":{"origin":7355,"position":3},"title":"But some branches of government are more equal than others","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 20-Jul-06 8:05am","format":false,"excerpt":"Is there no social conservative grandstanding that the House won't posture with these days?\u00a0 The Federal courts have been debating over the Pledge of Allegiance and its \"under God\" clause...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6302,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/09\/23\/playing_with_ir.html","url_meta":{"origin":7355,"position":4},"title":"Playing with ire","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 23-Sep-04 6:43pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I protested this when it originally came up, and I'm deeply irked that the politicians didn't listen to me. The House passed legislation Thursday that would prevent the Supreme Court...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":27965,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/22\/nothing-apparently-is-ever-settled-law.html","url_meta":{"origin":7355,"position":5},"title":"Nothing, apparently, is ever settled law","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 22-May-12 11:05am","format":false,"excerpt":"But it's interesting that even in 2004, the California Supreme Court, including five of the court\u2019s six Republican justices, addressed the very \"mandate vs. religious freedom\" question that various Catholic organizations raised in their federal suits yesterday. And they rejected the claim.\"We are unaware of any decision in which this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/images0-focus-opensocial.googleusercontent.com\/gadgets\/proxy?container=focus&gadget=a&resize_h=100&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthinkprogress.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F02%2Fcontraception1-300x200.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}