26. Does Bush Really Care About Schiavo? No.
President Bush has been receiving fawning accolades from his star-struck supporters for cutting short his vacation to sign a bill that ostensively would help the Schindler family save the life of their daughter Terri (Schindler) Schiavo. My first thought was that "Bro." Bush was trying again to consolidate authority at the federal level. Even if the bill was limited, it would set a precedent that would surely be appealed to in the future, perhaps to get the opposite result.
Either Bush, U.S. President George, or Florida Governor Jeb, could have saved Terri Schiavo's life had they really wanted to. When Slick Clinton and Butch Reno wanted to send Elian Gonzales back to oppression in Cuba, they did it. This time everybody is going to drag their feet and take baby steps that won't accomplish anything, but will give them an opportunity to cover their keesters and blame somebody else.
Constitution party Presidential candidate Michael Peroutka observed in an open letter to the Bush brothers:
--- You, Mr. President, could order Federal marshals to be sent to guard Terri Schiavo, have her feeding tube reinserted, and arrest anyone who attempted her murder by removing this tube. If her case goes all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the ruling there is to take her feeding tube out, ignore this ruling and leave the Federal marshals there as long as is necessary to keep her from being murdered. Any court ruling that orders murder is illegal and binds nobody.
--- You, Governor Bush, could do, basically, the same thing --- order your relevant law enforcement personnel to take Terri Schiavo into protective custody; order her feeding tube to be reinserted; and arrest anyone who attempts to murder her be removing this feeding tube. And if any court, at any level, orders her feeding tube to be removed, ignore this order because no court order that orders the murder of anybody has any validity.
But it gets worse. The Shiavo case is now apparently headed to the 11th Circuit Court of appeals where Judge Bill Pryor sits. Remember, Pryor is the one who ran Judge Roy Moore out of office. That means in a few days you'll probably be seeing an update exposing the "conservative Republican" Pryor for another ungodly act.
But it gets worse! Bush, the president, is contradicting his own position as governor of Texas, when he supported euthanasia. That tells us his current position is simply political posturing.
Here is the article from Liberty Post, the Yahoo article is no longer a live link.
http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=88973&Disp=0
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?
tmpl=story&u=/krwashbureau/20050322/ts_krwashbureau/_bc_braindamage
By William Douglas, Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The federal law that President Bush signed early Monday in an effort to prolong Terri Schiavo's life appears to contradict a right-to-die law that he signed as Texas governor, prompting cries of hypocrisy from congressional Democrats and some bioethicists.
In 1999, then-Gov. Bush signed the Advance Directives Act, which lets a patient's surrogate make life-ending decisions on his or her behalf. The measure also allows Texas hospitals to disconnect patients from life-sustaining systems if a physician, in consultation with a hospital bioethics committee, concludes that the patient's condition is hopeless.
Bioethicists familiar with the Texas law said Monday that if the Schiavo case had occurred in Texas, her husband would be the legal decision-maker and, because he and her doctors agreed that she had no hope of recovery, her feeding tube would be disconnected.
"The Texas law signed in 1999 allowed next of kin to decide what the patient wanted, if competent," said John Robertson, a University of Texas bioethicist.
While Congress and the White House were considering legislation recently in the Schiavo case, Bush's Texas law faced its first high-profile test. With the permission of a judge, a Houston hospital disconnected a critically ill infant from his breathing tube last week against his mother's wishes after doctors determined that continuing life support would be futile.
"The mother down in Texas must be reading the Schiavo case and scratching her head," said Dr. Howard Brody, the director of Michigan State University's Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences. "This does appear to be a contradiction."
Brody said that, in taking up the Schiavo case, Bush and Congress had shattered a body of bioethics law and practice.
"This is crazy. It's political grandstanding," he said.
Bush's apparent shift on right-to-die decisions wasn't lost on Democrats. During heated debate on the Schiavo case, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., accused Bush of hypocrisy.
"It appears that President Bush felt, as governor, that there was a point which, when doctors felt there was no further hope for the patient, that it is appropriate for an end-of-life decision to be made, even over the objection of family members," Wasserman Schultz said. "There is an obvious conflict here between the president's feelings on this matter now as compared to when he was governor of Texas."
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan termed Wasserman Schultz's remarks "uninformed accusations" and denied that there was any conflict in Bush's positions on the two laws.
"The legislation he signed (early Monday) is consistent with his views," McClellan said. "The (1999) legislation he signed into law actually provided new protections for patients ... prior to the passage of the '99 legislation that he signed, there were no protections."
Wasserman Schultz stuck by her remarks when told of McClellan's comments.
"It's a fact in black and white," she said. "It's a direct conflict on the position he has in the Schiavo case."
Tom Mayo, a Southern Methodist University Law School associate professor who helped draft the Texas law, said he saw no inconsistency in Bush's stands.
"It's not really a conflict, because the (Texas) law addresses different types of disputes, meaning the dispute between decision-maker and physician," he said. "The Schiavo case is a disagreement among family members."
Bush himself framed the Schiavo decision this way Monday.
"This is a complex case with serious issues, but in extraordinary circumstances like this, it is wise to always err on the side of life," the president said during a Social Security event in Tucson, Ariz. He didn't mention the 1999 Texas law.
For my position, Terri Schiavo is not on life support, she's not a "vegetable", she's not comatose, she's simply handicapped. There is no evidence she ever expressed a desire to die under tough circumstances. No one, not even a husband, has the right to kill someone for being handicapped. The only issue here is removing her source of food, which would kill ANYBODY. They refuse to feed her normally because of potential liability, but it's entirely possible she could eat and drink normally. To withhold her food and drink is cruel as well as murder.
Either Bush, U.S. President George, or Florida Governor Jeb, could have saved Terri Schiavo's life had they really wanted to. When Slick Clinton and Butch Reno wanted to send Elian Gonzales back to oppression in Cuba, they did it. This time everybody is going to drag their feet and take baby steps that won't accomplish anything, but will give them an opportunity to cover their keesters and blame somebody else.
Constitution party Presidential candidate Michael Peroutka observed in an open letter to the Bush brothers:
--- You, Mr. President, could order Federal marshals to be sent to guard Terri Schiavo, have her feeding tube reinserted, and arrest anyone who attempted her murder by removing this tube. If her case goes all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the ruling there is to take her feeding tube out, ignore this ruling and leave the Federal marshals there as long as is necessary to keep her from being murdered. Any court ruling that orders murder is illegal and binds nobody.
--- You, Governor Bush, could do, basically, the same thing --- order your relevant law enforcement personnel to take Terri Schiavo into protective custody; order her feeding tube to be reinserted; and arrest anyone who attempts to murder her be removing this feeding tube. And if any court, at any level, orders her feeding tube to be removed, ignore this order because no court order that orders the murder of anybody has any validity.
But it gets worse. The Shiavo case is now apparently headed to the 11th Circuit Court of appeals where Judge Bill Pryor sits. Remember, Pryor is the one who ran Judge Roy Moore out of office. That means in a few days you'll probably be seeing an update exposing the "conservative Republican" Pryor for another ungodly act.
But it gets worse! Bush, the president, is contradicting his own position as governor of Texas, when he supported euthanasia. That tells us his current position is simply political posturing.
Here is the article from Liberty Post, the Yahoo article is no longer a live link.
http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=88973&Disp=0
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?
tmpl=story&u=/krwashbureau/20050322/ts_krwashbureau/_bc_braindamage
By William Douglas, Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The federal law that President Bush signed early Monday in an effort to prolong Terri Schiavo's life appears to contradict a right-to-die law that he signed as Texas governor, prompting cries of hypocrisy from congressional Democrats and some bioethicists.
In 1999, then-Gov. Bush signed the Advance Directives Act, which lets a patient's surrogate make life-ending decisions on his or her behalf. The measure also allows Texas hospitals to disconnect patients from life-sustaining systems if a physician, in consultation with a hospital bioethics committee, concludes that the patient's condition is hopeless.
Bioethicists familiar with the Texas law said Monday that if the Schiavo case had occurred in Texas, her husband would be the legal decision-maker and, because he and her doctors agreed that she had no hope of recovery, her feeding tube would be disconnected.
"The Texas law signed in 1999 allowed next of kin to decide what the patient wanted, if competent," said John Robertson, a University of Texas bioethicist.
While Congress and the White House were considering legislation recently in the Schiavo case, Bush's Texas law faced its first high-profile test. With the permission of a judge, a Houston hospital disconnected a critically ill infant from his breathing tube last week against his mother's wishes after doctors determined that continuing life support would be futile.
"The mother down in Texas must be reading the Schiavo case and scratching her head," said Dr. Howard Brody, the director of Michigan State University's Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences. "This does appear to be a contradiction."
Brody said that, in taking up the Schiavo case, Bush and Congress had shattered a body of bioethics law and practice.
"This is crazy. It's political grandstanding," he said.
Bush's apparent shift on right-to-die decisions wasn't lost on Democrats. During heated debate on the Schiavo case, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., accused Bush of hypocrisy.
"It appears that President Bush felt, as governor, that there was a point which, when doctors felt there was no further hope for the patient, that it is appropriate for an end-of-life decision to be made, even over the objection of family members," Wasserman Schultz said. "There is an obvious conflict here between the president's feelings on this matter now as compared to when he was governor of Texas."
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan termed Wasserman Schultz's remarks "uninformed accusations" and denied that there was any conflict in Bush's positions on the two laws.
"The legislation he signed (early Monday) is consistent with his views," McClellan said. "The (1999) legislation he signed into law actually provided new protections for patients ... prior to the passage of the '99 legislation that he signed, there were no protections."
Wasserman Schultz stuck by her remarks when told of McClellan's comments.
"It's a fact in black and white," she said. "It's a direct conflict on the position he has in the Schiavo case."
Tom Mayo, a Southern Methodist University Law School associate professor who helped draft the Texas law, said he saw no inconsistency in Bush's stands.
"It's not really a conflict, because the (Texas) law addresses different types of disputes, meaning the dispute between decision-maker and physician," he said. "The Schiavo case is a disagreement among family members."
Bush himself framed the Schiavo decision this way Monday.
"This is a complex case with serious issues, but in extraordinary circumstances like this, it is wise to always err on the side of life," the president said during a Social Security event in Tucson, Ariz. He didn't mention the 1999 Texas law.
For my position, Terri Schiavo is not on life support, she's not a "vegetable", she's not comatose, she's simply handicapped. There is no evidence she ever expressed a desire to die under tough circumstances. No one, not even a husband, has the right to kill someone for being handicapped. The only issue here is removing her source of food, which would kill ANYBODY. They refuse to feed her normally because of potential liability, but it's entirely possible she could eat and drink normally. To withhold her food and drink is cruel as well as murder.
posted by T.G. at 8:14 PM
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