MSNBC – “Grotesque” or life-saving drama at the Capitol?
So the House & Senate passed a bil specifically for one former human being, Terri Schiavo, and it was signed at 1:11AM by President Bush. Wow, those Republicans sure can get work done in a hurry when they really want to, huh? I wonder what took so long with getting some armor to our troops?
Terri Schiavo will get her feeding tube back while the case is taken from the nineteen judges in six state-level courts who’ve all come to the same decision, and put before a federal district judge in Tampa. Twentieth judge is the charm, I suppose. And when he agrees with the Florida judges, then they’ll go to the Circuit Court. And when he agrees they’ll go to the Supreme Court. And by that time, Chief Justice Scalia will lead a majority in deciding that Terri’s corpse should be kept alive as long as medical science and unlimited taxpayer dollars can keep it going, and they’ll be one step closer to overturning Roe v. Wade.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D- Fla., who opposed the Schiavo bill, blasted GOP leaders as “particularly hypocritical” because they extol the sanctity of marriage and yet “insert themselves in between a husband and a wife.”
When a reporter queried House Majority Leader Tom DeLay Saturday about that point, he replied, “The sanctity of life overshadows the sanctity of marriage. I don’t know what transpired between Terri and her husband. All I know is Terri is alive. Unless she has specifically written instructions in her hand, with her signature, I don’t care what her husband says.”
Got that, my queer friends? No use fighting for marriage like we straights have, even we don’t get to make medical decisions for our spouses.
Now, how far is the leap from “only people with signed living wills” get their feeding tubes removed to “someone who’d wish for suicide is mentally ill, therefore all living wills are invalid”? I’ll bet it’s not even half the leap from “Saddam’s got weapons and we know where they are” to “weapons of mass destruction related program activities.”
[Tom] Harkin [(D-IA)], a longtime champion of disabled people, had his own plans in mind. He sketched a potentially large expansion of federal court powers to intervene when disabled people can’t say whether they want life-sustaining treatment continued.
“There are a lot of people in the shadows, all over this country, who are incapacitated because of a disabilities and many times there’s no one to speak for them and it’s hard to determine what their wishes are,” Harkin said. He urged Congress, once it passes the Schiavo relief bill, to enact another law requiring federal court hearings where there is a dispute over ending life-sustaining measures.
Yes, let’s get the federal government even more involved with the private medical decisions of families.
The bill was, said [Barney] Frank [(D-MA)], “the manifestation of a constitutional crisis.”
Congress was doing what only courts should do, Frank said. DeLay and other Republicans had rejected “a fundamental precept of American government, that is, a limited government.”
Barney, c’mon. Republicans for limited government is soooo 20th century.
He pointed to a provision of the bill which said nothing in it would be a precedent for future legislation or private relief bills.
“Well, if it’s the right thing to do, why not?” asked Frank, arguing if the GOP majority was going to intervene in the Schiavo case, it was inconsistent not to do so in comparable cases.
“Of course, no one believes we’re only going to do this once,” he said.
Sure they will. They’ll ignore the Florida courts just this once because it is convenient to their goal of eliminating abortion rights. Just like they ignored the Florida courts in 2000 because it was convenient to their goal of electing George W. Bush. To Republicans, precedent is just a paper trail that might trip them up later. Like, maybe one of their wives might go brain dead someday and they wouldn’t want a messy precedent allowing the courts to get up in their business.
