Money quote from John Leland's "Did Descartes Doom Terri Schiavo? in the Sunday New York Times:
...this idea that all life is sacred has exerted a powerful force in America, said Mark A. Noll, a professor of history at Wheaton College, a prestigious evangelical school in Illinois, and the author of "The Old Religion in a New World: The History of North American Christianity. " It fueled the abolitionist movement of the 18th and 19th centuries, which insisted on the humanity of slaves, against the prevailing views of social science. In the early 20th century, the same ideal stood up against eugenics, which advocated forced sterilization to prevent the weakest members of society from reproducing.
Okay, it's a cull-the-Rolodex article, get quotes from four people with some officially sanctioned standing to comment, and don't have anybody respond to anyone else's statements. Professor Noll does what he's called on to do, get his buzzwords into a single paragraph.
One is simply left to hope that the good Professor's students don't graduate with such a single-minded view of history. Let's hope they somehow are made aware that the pro-slavery forces in the US could and did quote their Bibles with equal fervor, that racial relations in this country worsened in the aftermath of the Civil War, and that many of the worst abuses of the eugenics movement occurred in Western, Protestant countries with little objection outside the Catholic Church. We'll leave aside, for the moment, religion-inspired opposition to birth-control information, let alone contraception, and what that meant for the "humanity" of women and the unwavering defense of the poor. But if you mean to tar your opponents with the brush of 19th Century science, you might want to gin up your defense of the Spanish Civil War, or the church's role in the genocide of the Americas, or a couple-thousand years of persecuting Jews, or...
Monday, March 28
Nuisance Suits In The News
Indianapolis Star: Charter school won't expel special-needs 10-year-old.
And all it took was five months of effort by a Legal Services attorney. Five months while the boy sat out of school after being suspended from class (as a first step to expelling him) for being "disruptive", despite the fact that Federal law prohibits suspending students for behaviors linked to their disabilities.
My favorite part of the article, though, was the contributions of the Official Charter School Apologist Society and Debating Club, one of whom works at taxpayers' expense. Indianapolis' charter school director, David E. Harris, explained the difficulties charters face: "A school with 100 children doesn't have the same resources of a 35,000-student district." Adds Gerry Wagner, director of the Special Education Co-operative for a statewide charter organization, "Charter organizers never dreamed there would be this many children who qualify for special education services enrolling."
Oh sure. There's no way city government could have foreseen that charter schools would run up against federal regulations in the matter of special-needs students. After all, it was only charters' opponents who were talking about it in the bull-rush to open as many as possible. And who woulda guessed that charter schools would attract almost half the percentage of such students that the public schools do? Or that not every one would go quietly when they tried to shunt 'em back from whence they came? Apprently not the guy who runs their Special Education Co-operative. Man, I hate to see public servants get blindsided like that.
And all it took was five months of effort by a Legal Services attorney. Five months while the boy sat out of school after being suspended from class (as a first step to expelling him) for being "disruptive", despite the fact that Federal law prohibits suspending students for behaviors linked to their disabilities.
My favorite part of the article, though, was the contributions of the Official Charter School Apologist Society and Debating Club, one of whom works at taxpayers' expense. Indianapolis' charter school director, David E. Harris, explained the difficulties charters face: "A school with 100 children doesn't have the same resources of a 35,000-student district." Adds Gerry Wagner, director of the Special Education Co-operative for a statewide charter organization, "Charter organizers never dreamed there would be this many children who qualify for special education services enrolling."
Oh sure. There's no way city government could have foreseen that charter schools would run up against federal regulations in the matter of special-needs students. After all, it was only charters' opponents who were talking about it in the bull-rush to open as many as possible. And who woulda guessed that charter schools would attract almost half the percentage of such students that the public schools do? Or that not every one would go quietly when they tried to shunt 'em back from whence they came? Apprently not the guy who runs their Special Education Co-operative. Man, I hate to see public servants get blindsided like that.
Friday, March 25
Bart Is A Very Very Good Mayor. It's Good What He's Done.
Bart Peterson is the first Democratic mayor of Indianapolis in forty years. He's in his second term.
In his first term, Peterson inherited the biggest of the city's build-us-a-new-stadium-or-we-just-might-move professional sports headaches, your Indianapolis Colts. Right on schedule, about a year before he'd have to start running for reelection, the Colts started making noises about needing a stadium with skybox revenues to stay competitive, and they trotted out the Great NFL Los Angeles canard. Paul Tagliabue blew into town to assure the taxpayers that the NFL really really really needed a franchise in the nation's #2 market. Which prompted one interested observer of my height and weight to ask how come the league had expanded three times since LA kicked its last two teams out without going there, but I'm used to not having my questions answered.
Negotiations proceeded in the headlines. A decent interval passed. Then one morning Naptowners awoke to find a front page story featuring Colts owner Jim Irsay, his inordinate fondness for OxyContin™ and an ongoing investigation thereof. Irsay entered rehab, kicked his habit, and found an undying love for the Circle City.
Peterson now wants to consolidate what's left of the county government functions (police/sheriff, township offices) from the great county annexation of the mid-60s known as Unigov. He has to fight a Republican controlled legislature for the plan, and they, and the township officers whose oxen are set for the pike, have been somewhat negative about the idea.
A decent interval passed. Yesterday morning's Star headlined the story that 8 of the 9 township accessors have kinfolk on the payroll to the tune of $473,000. Plus a sidebar on how the Speaker of the House does $120,000 in legal business with three of them.
Like I say, Bart Peterson is a very good mayor. And the guy in those pictures only looks like me.
In his first term, Peterson inherited the biggest of the city's build-us-a-new-stadium-or-we-just-might-move professional sports headaches, your Indianapolis Colts. Right on schedule, about a year before he'd have to start running for reelection, the Colts started making noises about needing a stadium with skybox revenues to stay competitive, and they trotted out the Great NFL Los Angeles canard. Paul Tagliabue blew into town to assure the taxpayers that the NFL really really really needed a franchise in the nation's #2 market. Which prompted one interested observer of my height and weight to ask how come the league had expanded three times since LA kicked its last two teams out without going there, but I'm used to not having my questions answered.
Negotiations proceeded in the headlines. A decent interval passed. Then one morning Naptowners awoke to find a front page story featuring Colts owner Jim Irsay, his inordinate fondness for OxyContin™ and an ongoing investigation thereof. Irsay entered rehab, kicked his habit, and found an undying love for the Circle City.
Peterson now wants to consolidate what's left of the county government functions (police/sheriff, township offices) from the great county annexation of the mid-60s known as Unigov. He has to fight a Republican controlled legislature for the plan, and they, and the township officers whose oxen are set for the pike, have been somewhat negative about the idea.
A decent interval passed. Yesterday morning's Star headlined the story that 8 of the 9 township accessors have kinfolk on the payroll to the tune of $473,000. Plus a sidebar on how the Speaker of the House does $120,000 in legal business with three of them.
Like I say, Bart Peterson is a very good mayor. And the guy in those pictures only looks like me.
Pass The Popcorn II
Jonah Goldberg swims up the torrent to spawn:
The negative political consequences in the long term for the Schiavo manuevers by the GOP will be near-zero, even though a majority of Americans will view them negatively. This episode is simply too unique, awful and conflicting for anybody except a very small number of people to hold a grudge about it.
Not quite sure I agree with your police work there, Lou.
You already had buyer's remorse setting in with bankruptcy and social security on top of the deficits, and like it or not there are still some folks keeping conservative values in their trunks, though I admit they've been pretty willing to sell them out in exchange for power up to now. Those folks don't care much for DeLay's latest slitherings, and this is not a man who needs to have any of your people give him a good hard look. George W. has come off once again as a pandering politician with no real leadership qualities, only this time a lot of your folks weren't cheering the results and ignoring how it got there. BrotherJethro Jeb has looked worse, rolling over and fetching and the first sharp tug on the leash, then finding out that that wasn't good enough. And maybe it's just me, but now he sounds like the stupider brother.
But above all else, Jonah, if you can imagine now that this is some sort of one-off, unique event for the religious radicals you've been paying less attention than I thought. I realize you thought they'd just hand over money and votes in perpetuity, and wouldn't be coming for your porn stash, but that's your problem. It's their time, Chuckles, and they really believe they were the reason you won last fall. Plenty of House incumbents just lost running room, and everyone with Presidential aspirations just got a letter in the mail. Try keepin' 'em off the podium in prime time next time.
The negative political consequences in the long term for the Schiavo manuevers by the GOP will be near-zero, even though a majority of Americans will view them negatively. This episode is simply too unique, awful and conflicting for anybody except a very small number of people to hold a grudge about it.
Not quite sure I agree with your police work there, Lou.
You already had buyer's remorse setting in with bankruptcy and social security on top of the deficits, and like it or not there are still some folks keeping conservative values in their trunks, though I admit they've been pretty willing to sell them out in exchange for power up to now. Those folks don't care much for DeLay's latest slitherings, and this is not a man who needs to have any of your people give him a good hard look. George W. has come off once again as a pandering politician with no real leadership qualities, only this time a lot of your folks weren't cheering the results and ignoring how it got there. Brother
But above all else, Jonah, if you can imagine now that this is some sort of one-off, unique event for the religious radicals you've been paying less attention than I thought. I realize you thought they'd just hand over money and votes in perpetuity, and wouldn't be coming for your porn stash, but that's your problem. It's their time, Chuckles, and they really believe they were the reason you won last fall. Plenty of House incumbents just lost running room, and everyone with Presidential aspirations just got a letter in the mail. Try keepin' 'em off the podium in prime time next time.
Red Lake Is Where, Again?
I mentioned that my wife's students were more than a little puzzled about the relative lack of coverage of the Red Lake shootings. My long-suffering readers chimed in with the reasons. I'll add mine.
Yes, they were all geared up on Schiavo, with its exciting opportunity to pander to the religious right, but I think Red Lake fell uncomfortably outside the script, which has become increasingly out-of-date to begin with. Faced with the earlier rash of school shootings, which were happening in white suburban schools, not the failing inner-city hellholes big media would have preferred, and with the inescapable conclusion that the crux of the matter was easy access to guns, which big media wasn't gonna get anywhere near, the script evolved into the Internet-using-death-rock-and-violent-videogame-fan story we all know. And Red Lake isn't white, or suburban, and every student in America is on at least one of the internets now, and even CNN has heard that rap is popular. Plus, Weise turns out to have been more than a little familiar with some Nazi sites, which is a topic I don't recall every seeing on teevee news, not that I watch it much.
No, it's not a simple racial equation, but had this been another middle-class white district the Schiavo wall-to-wall would have been interrupted a bit more and the old script given a thorough dusting off. In the event it plays as a serious problem and not an easy morality tale. And big media does not demand Republicans actually solve problems, unless the Republicans were the ones who pointed them out in the first place.
Yes, they were all geared up on Schiavo, with its exciting opportunity to pander to the religious right, but I think Red Lake fell uncomfortably outside the script, which has become increasingly out-of-date to begin with. Faced with the earlier rash of school shootings, which were happening in white suburban schools, not the failing inner-city hellholes big media would have preferred, and with the inescapable conclusion that the crux of the matter was easy access to guns, which big media wasn't gonna get anywhere near, the script evolved into the Internet-using-death-rock-and-violent-videogame-fan story we all know. And Red Lake isn't white, or suburban, and every student in America is on at least one of the internets now, and even CNN has heard that rap is popular. Plus, Weise turns out to have been more than a little familiar with some Nazi sites, which is a topic I don't recall every seeing on teevee news, not that I watch it much.
No, it's not a simple racial equation, but had this been another middle-class white district the Schiavo wall-to-wall would have been interrupted a bit more and the old script given a thorough dusting off. In the event it plays as a serious problem and not an easy morality tale. And big media does not demand Republicans actually solve problems, unless the Republicans were the ones who pointed them out in the first place.
Thursday, March 24
Coughing Hack
I don't read Mickey Kaus, or Slate for that matter, even though I usually try to avoid crowds. But Roger Ailes took a whack at him yesterday and I clicked the link. It was an October 2003 item about the dastardly unfairness of NPR in a piece about the Schiavo case failing to interview the requisite number of priests. The interesting thing there was Kaus, who droned on for five column inches about "the actual facts in the case" didn't know that Michael Schiavo is not acting as Terri's guardian. But he corrected himself when he caught it.
Yeah, so now, eighteen months later, he's quoting Charles Krauthamer: "The husband hasn't allowed much medical testing".
Maybe corrections have a shelf life I don't know about. If so, we can start the clock on today's column, where he repeats Captain Ed's powerful indictment of that ABC poll's misleading respondants by calling "life support" "life support". His "correction" states that feeding by tube is defined as "life support" by at least one medical authority. We'll just have to wait to see whether he has enough space to add another correction when he learns it's also defined as such by Florida law.
Yeah, so now, eighteen months later, he's quoting Charles Krauthamer: "The husband hasn't allowed much medical testing".
Maybe corrections have a shelf life I don't know about. If so, we can start the clock on today's column, where he repeats Captain Ed's powerful indictment of that ABC poll's misleading respondants by calling "life support" "life support". His "correction" states that feeding by tube is defined as "life support" by at least one medical authority. We'll just have to wait to see whether he has enough space to add another correction when he learns it's also defined as such by Florida law.
Too Much To Ask
Things we already knew:
It's too much to ask that fundamentalists, evangelicals, or right-wing Catholics be forced to justify their demands for political action in terms other than their faith. Likewise, they are not to be asked why their morality comes to the fore only in certain, well-publicized cases.
There are roughly 30-35,000 people on life support in this country. In lots of those cases there's no living will or explicit instructions. In nearly every one families are faced with terrible, soul-wrenching decisions, and they're often at odds about it.
We handle left-wing religious political concerns by treating the political issue. The war, the death penalty, social justice are left-wing issues, not moral dilemmas.
The two local news broadcasts I caught last night featured graphics of Terri Schiavo with the title The Fight For Life.
It's too much to ask that the chatters who so strongly support the "Culture of Life" show actual respect for the living, by, say, not simply throwing shit about Michael Schiavo against the wall to see what sticks.
Charles Krauthammer (e.g.) says, Terri "stands in the way" of Michael remarrying, ignoring the fact that this man could have divorced his wife at any time, washed his hands of the whole deal, and left what's left of her to the father who pulled the plug on his mother a decade ago.
It's too much to ask that we look for answers in the same place in similar situations. Jeff Weise's emotional history is the stuff of earnest speculation; Terry Ratzmann "had no known motive".
I've heard a good half-dozen reports on Weise's internet behavior, about how he was in a garage band, how he "dressed in black, like a Goth." Police seized three computers from Ratzmann's home. He never posted anything online? Just had Quicken on all three? What kind of music did he listen to? Did he hunt, fish, watch American Idol?
The public search for moral answers is similarly a one-way street. If teenagers have sex it's a matter of a permissive culture. If they go on a shooting spree somehow it's not a question of a violent culture, unless it's the cartoon violence of video games and not the real violence of levelling a city of 300,000 inhabitants.
There's a genuine poignancy in Weise's writings. "16 years of accumulated rage suppressed by nothing more than brief glimpses of hope, which have all but faded to black," he wrote in his bio, and gave his location as "endless scrutiny, Minnesota, United States." But nobody's gonna stick a microphone in some religious right spokesman's face to ask about this kid. They just get to talk about saving lives.
It's too much to ask that fundamentalists, evangelicals, or right-wing Catholics be forced to justify their demands for political action in terms other than their faith. Likewise, they are not to be asked why their morality comes to the fore only in certain, well-publicized cases.
There are roughly 30-35,000 people on life support in this country. In lots of those cases there's no living will or explicit instructions. In nearly every one families are faced with terrible, soul-wrenching decisions, and they're often at odds about it.
We handle left-wing religious political concerns by treating the political issue. The war, the death penalty, social justice are left-wing issues, not moral dilemmas.
The two local news broadcasts I caught last night featured graphics of Terri Schiavo with the title The Fight For Life.
It's too much to ask that the chatters who so strongly support the "Culture of Life" show actual respect for the living, by, say, not simply throwing shit about Michael Schiavo against the wall to see what sticks.
Charles Krauthammer (e.g.) says, Terri "stands in the way" of Michael remarrying, ignoring the fact that this man could have divorced his wife at any time, washed his hands of the whole deal, and left what's left of her to the father who pulled the plug on his mother a decade ago.
It's too much to ask that we look for answers in the same place in similar situations. Jeff Weise's emotional history is the stuff of earnest speculation; Terry Ratzmann "had no known motive".
I've heard a good half-dozen reports on Weise's internet behavior, about how he was in a garage band, how he "dressed in black, like a Goth." Police seized three computers from Ratzmann's home. He never posted anything online? Just had Quicken on all three? What kind of music did he listen to? Did he hunt, fish, watch American Idol?
The public search for moral answers is similarly a one-way street. If teenagers have sex it's a matter of a permissive culture. If they go on a shooting spree somehow it's not a question of a violent culture, unless it's the cartoon violence of video games and not the real violence of levelling a city of 300,000 inhabitants.
There's a genuine poignancy in Weise's writings. "16 years of accumulated rage suppressed by nothing more than brief glimpses of hope, which have all but faded to black," he wrote in his bio, and gave his location as "endless scrutiny, Minnesota, United States." But nobody's gonna stick a microphone in some religious right spokesman's face to ask about this kid. They just get to talk about saving lives.
Wall To Wall
A few years ago, in a day when the Discovery Channel meant more than "discover how custom bikes are made" and the Learning part of the Learning Channel included more than wedding cake and window treatments, one of them ran an interesting hour on the making of a local news team. The station was just getting into the local news game, and they were going through a week's worth of live rehearsals. The show has stuck in my mind for two reasons. First, there was actual "breaking news" which occurred right before one of the practice newscasts, and the female anchor who the documentary crew was particularly following told them later that this would be news of interest to the local audience because the crash "happened just two markets over." That the concept of "market" would serve a newshairdo the same way "parsec" serves astronomers was a cosmic revelation to me.
The other was Walter Cronkite. Uncle Walter was interviewed for the exercise, and he said something to the effect that when he started out journalists were paid what beat cops and schoolteachers and butchers made. They understood the concerns of the common man because they were common men.
And they were reporters, too, one might add.
How did we get from there to an era where local teleprompter readers make six-figure salaries, live in exclusive neighborhoods, and send their children to private schools? Look, I'm no communist (okay, not anymore); I've got no problem with people making as much as they can, whether because they're on the idiot box or they've got a great court sense or singing voice or a nice set of tits. It's the concomitant commodification of the news itself that is troubling. We've gone from hiring people who read the stuff based on their "likeability" to actually reporting the news that way.
What my wife's class wanted to talk about this morning first period was Red Lake. How come Columbine was all over the news for weeks, but this gets the short shrift? Because it doesn't involve white people? Because the body count barely made double digits? Why are Terri Schiavo and Michael Jackson more important than schools?
It's a fair cop. And I can only add, "why are teenagers more aware of what our priorities should be than the people who bring us the news?"
The other was Walter Cronkite. Uncle Walter was interviewed for the exercise, and he said something to the effect that when he started out journalists were paid what beat cops and schoolteachers and butchers made. They understood the concerns of the common man because they were common men.
And they were reporters, too, one might add.
How did we get from there to an era where local teleprompter readers make six-figure salaries, live in exclusive neighborhoods, and send their children to private schools? Look, I'm no communist (okay, not anymore); I've got no problem with people making as much as they can, whether because they're on the idiot box or they've got a great court sense or singing voice or a nice set of tits. It's the concomitant commodification of the news itself that is troubling. We've gone from hiring people who read the stuff based on their "likeability" to actually reporting the news that way.
What my wife's class wanted to talk about this morning first period was Red Lake. How come Columbine was all over the news for weeks, but this gets the short shrift? Because it doesn't involve white people? Because the body count barely made double digits? Why are Terri Schiavo and Michael Jackson more important than schools?
It's a fair cop. And I can only add, "why are teenagers more aware of what our priorities should be than the people who bring us the news?"
Wednesday, March 23
Homeric Efforts
"Boy, everyone is stupid except me." --Homer, 9F01
Last week Roger Ailes caught a priest named Rob Johansen and his petard in mid-hoist over at the National Review Online. Johansen had argued that one of the experts testifying in Schiavo was biased, because he was "an advocate in the 'right to die' and euthanasia movements." As Roger pointed out, the same was true of the opposing experts, in spades, a fact Johansen had, well, glossed over just a smidgen.
What interested me was the way Johansen brought the matter up: expert witnesses "...are supposed to be unbiased: disinterested in the outcome of the case. Part of the procedure in qualifying expert witnesses is establishing that they are objective and unbiased." Because frankly, supposing we need it, a moment's reflection ought to be enough to realize this is not true and would be completely unworkable if it were. Experts are recognized for reaching a level of expertise; it is their testimony which must be thorough and unbiased.
They're tussling about Schiavo over at the Corner, so I went to do a bit of rubbernecking. Here's Andy McCarthy:
I do not doubt the propriety of the people of Florida governing themselves, or that they may deny sustenance to a person who (a) actually is in a PVS and (b) actually has asserted in a knowing and intelligent way a rejection of life saving measures in certain dire circumstances. What I object to here is the appallingly suspect evidentiary record on these two crucial questions -- especially on PVS, where it seems indisputable that fairly standard tests, which would be easy to do in relatively short order and which could give us confidence in the PVS finding, have not been done. If we can be confident that Terri is a PVS case -- and particularly that her brain damage has left her largely insensitive to pain -- I seal my lips and accept the outcome, however much I may question its wisdom insofar as society's general regard for life is concerned. Under such circumstances, the Supreme Court has said sustenance may be withheld, and the absence of pain would destroy my contention that she is being tortured.
...Much as I instinctively agree with you that a spouse should be given great deference in these matters (and as I would try to ensure that my own wife had a free hand in making them for me), the law is that it is not the spouse's decision. It is the individual's decision, and it cannot be removed from the individual because you decide that in your own life you would not want intrusion into what you regard as your affairs.
I'll not waste time here thanking Andy for recognizing Florida's continuing efforts at self-governance; I'm sure they'll be sending a nice card. And I know a few people in The Palmetto Bug State, and they assure me the legislature does its damnedest to figure out What Would Andy Do? before enacting meaningful legislation. But here's my question: is it somehow too friggin' much to expect that we might first consider that two separate court cases plus appellate challenges, during which the Schindlers have had practically unlimited access to legal and professional help at now charge, just might have dealt with the relevant issues? Or that the court, or the court after that, or the other court, or that other other court, would have some rough concept of guardianship? At this late date, when someone with a vested interest in the case tells me there's been no finding of a Presistant Vegitative State, or that appropriate tests Just Weren't Done, I'd consider that an open invitation to start reading, not to start mouthing off.
Just for the record: the courts all held that Terri Schiavo is in a PVS. The "tests that would give us confidence" presumably refers to the failure to do an MRI. The Schindler's experts could have requested one in 2002, but did not. The MRI business was only raised at the 11th hour, and even then none of the experts signing the affidavits says one "would give us confidence", only that it might. The court rejected the matter because the affidavits come from doctors who have not examined Terri, only viewed edited video clips, the "new findings" they were based on involve "minimally conscious" not PVS patients, and Terri would have to undergo brain surgery before she could be given an MRI.
As for the business about it "not being the spouse's decision" well, based on no evidence whatsoever, I'm going to credit Andy with mistaking one of the particulars of the case rather than Just Making Shit Up. A legal guardian certainly can make that decision in some circumstances. In this one, because the Schindlers, who are not Terri's legal guardians, were given exceptional consideration by the courts when they disagreed with Michael Schiavo's wishes it is, in fact, the court which is operating as her guardian. But thanks for playing, just the same.
Last week Roger Ailes caught a priest named Rob Johansen and his petard in mid-hoist over at the National Review Online. Johansen had argued that one of the experts testifying in Schiavo was biased, because he was "an advocate in the 'right to die' and euthanasia movements." As Roger pointed out, the same was true of the opposing experts, in spades, a fact Johansen had, well, glossed over just a smidgen.
What interested me was the way Johansen brought the matter up: expert witnesses "...are supposed to be unbiased: disinterested in the outcome of the case. Part of the procedure in qualifying expert witnesses is establishing that they are objective and unbiased." Because frankly, supposing we need it, a moment's reflection ought to be enough to realize this is not true and would be completely unworkable if it were. Experts are recognized for reaching a level of expertise; it is their testimony which must be thorough and unbiased.
They're tussling about Schiavo over at the Corner, so I went to do a bit of rubbernecking. Here's Andy McCarthy:
I do not doubt the propriety of the people of Florida governing themselves, or that they may deny sustenance to a person who (a) actually is in a PVS and (b) actually has asserted in a knowing and intelligent way a rejection of life saving measures in certain dire circumstances. What I object to here is the appallingly suspect evidentiary record on these two crucial questions -- especially on PVS, where it seems indisputable that fairly standard tests, which would be easy to do in relatively short order and which could give us confidence in the PVS finding, have not been done. If we can be confident that Terri is a PVS case -- and particularly that her brain damage has left her largely insensitive to pain -- I seal my lips and accept the outcome, however much I may question its wisdom insofar as society's general regard for life is concerned. Under such circumstances, the Supreme Court has said sustenance may be withheld, and the absence of pain would destroy my contention that she is being tortured.
...Much as I instinctively agree with you that a spouse should be given great deference in these matters (and as I would try to ensure that my own wife had a free hand in making them for me), the law is that it is not the spouse's decision. It is the individual's decision, and it cannot be removed from the individual because you decide that in your own life you would not want intrusion into what you regard as your affairs.
I'll not waste time here thanking Andy for recognizing Florida's continuing efforts at self-governance; I'm sure they'll be sending a nice card. And I know a few people in The Palmetto Bug State, and they assure me the legislature does its damnedest to figure out What Would Andy Do? before enacting meaningful legislation. But here's my question: is it somehow too friggin' much to expect that we might first consider that two separate court cases plus appellate challenges, during which the Schindlers have had practically unlimited access to legal and professional help at now charge, just might have dealt with the relevant issues? Or that the court, or the court after that, or the other court, or that other other court, would have some rough concept of guardianship? At this late date, when someone with a vested interest in the case tells me there's been no finding of a Presistant Vegitative State, or that appropriate tests Just Weren't Done, I'd consider that an open invitation to start reading, not to start mouthing off.
Just for the record: the courts all held that Terri Schiavo is in a PVS. The "tests that would give us confidence" presumably refers to the failure to do an MRI. The Schindler's experts could have requested one in 2002, but did not. The MRI business was only raised at the 11th hour, and even then none of the experts signing the affidavits says one "would give us confidence", only that it might. The court rejected the matter because the affidavits come from doctors who have not examined Terri, only viewed edited video clips, the "new findings" they were based on involve "minimally conscious" not PVS patients, and Terri would have to undergo brain surgery before she could be given an MRI.
As for the business about it "not being the spouse's decision" well, based on no evidence whatsoever, I'm going to credit Andy with mistaking one of the particulars of the case rather than Just Making Shit Up. A legal guardian certainly can make that decision in some circumstances. In this one, because the Schindlers, who are not Terri's legal guardians, were given exceptional consideration by the courts when they disagreed with Michael Schiavo's wishes it is, in fact, the court which is operating as her guardian. But thanks for playing, just the same.
Will The Gentleman Yield?
Indy Star: Indiana House OKs Gay Marriage Ban.
Okay, just another vote in 2007, then a win for the initiative in 2008, and it'll be safe to let the kids out in the yard again.
Okay, just another vote in 2007, then a win for the initiative in 2008, and it'll be safe to let the kids out in the yard again.
Pass The Popcorn
Via World O'Crap I see the ravening hounds are now pooping on Jeb's front lawn. I'm tellin' ya, the Scaife and Coors fundees have got to neutralize the corporate wing, and George W.'s complete inability to lead is already being exploited. "John McCain's Black Love Child" is gonna seem like a backyard splash party before this one's done.
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