“This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy,” Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut, one of five House Republicans who voted against the bill, said. “There are going to be repercussions from this vote. There are a number of people who feel that the government is getting involved in their personal lives in a way that scares them.”
Category Archives: Theirs
QOTD
Darwinism and Its Discontents (washingtonpost.com)
[I]n an 1860 debate at Oxford University, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce — a leading critic of Darwinism — mockingly asked scholar T.H. Huxley whether he was descended from apes on his grandfather’s or grandmother’s side. Huxley’s response is worth noting, even 145 years later:
“A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather.
“If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would rather be a man — a man of restless and versatile intellect — who, not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.”
[via MARK ECKENWILER, via dangerousmeta!]
Two Branches of Government Attack the Third
ABC News: GOP Talking Points on Terri Schiavo
March 21, 2005 — The following memo listing talking points on the Terri Schiavo case was circulated among Republican senators on the floor of the Senate.
This is an exact, full copy of the document obtained exclusively by ABC News and first reported Friday, March 18, 2005, by Linda Douglass on “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.” … [mjh: follow the link above for full text; I’m excerpting 3 points.]
• This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue.
• This is a great political issue, because Senator Nelson of Florida has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats. …
• This legislation ensures that individuals like Terri Schiavo are guaranteed the same legal protections as convicted murderers like Ted Bundy.
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The Washington Monthly by Kevin Drum
TERRI SCHIAVO AND THE LIMITS OF CYNICISM….Via Think Progress, here’s a fascinating ABC News poll about the Terri Schiavo affair. It turns out that not only do large majorities favor removing her feeding tube and oppose federal intervention in her case, but huge majorities know perfectly well that Tom DeLay and his crew are in it solely for political advantage. When you drill down into the numbers, it becomes obvious that even people who support DeLay’s position don’t believe he has any actual concern for Terri Schiavo.
Now, I realize that in one sense this doesn’t matter. This whole thing isn’t about majority support, it’s about pandering to one specific segment of the GOP base. But here’s the thing: even evangelical Christians don’t support congressional intervention. Apparently the DeLay/Frist/Bush axis has dealt with this so cynically that even the people they’re pandering to are uneasy about being treated with such open condescension.
This is not an issue that will last in the public mind for more than a few days, but it’s still nice to see that even Bush’s own supporters see through him from time to time. Even the pandering cynicism of the modern Republican party apparently has its limits.
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The Daily Aneurysm at jabartlett.com
So it should surprise nobody that losing in federal court this morning doesn’t mark the end of anything. Nobody’s saying, “Well, we had our hearing, and that’s all we could hope for.” Nope. Rick Santorum has already thrown a hissy fit: “You have judicial tyranny here,” Santorum told WABC Radio in New York. “Congress passed a law that said that you had to look at this case. He simply thumbed his nose at Congress.”
To anyone not drunk on self-righteousness, however, it seems clear that judge James Whittemore did indeed look at the case, and his ruling is reasonable by the standards of the reality-based community, at least. He ruled that the 19 previous court hearings in the case have adequately protected Schiavo’s rights, and that despite the life-and-death stakes at this moment, he had no choice but to apply the law, and by that standard, he wouldn’t rule to reinsert the feeding tube.
the two Americas
Daily Howler: In Scarborough Country, viewers got worked by a brilliant ”Nobel nominee”
What are the two Americas? If you read the Washington Post, you read about a woman who had a heart attack and suffered brain damage in the process. In Scarborough Country, you hear something else. You meet an impressive Nobel nominee — and he makes “explosive allegations.” He tells you she had no such heart attack. Instead, he suggests she was strangled by her husband.
These two Americas have existed for years. If you live in cable America, you routinely hear whole sets of things that never appear in the Washington Post, things that the Washington Post rarely attempts to discuss, describe or debate. Cable viewers live in one world; newspaper readers exist in another. Newspaper readers rarely hear what’s being said in the other America. And for that reason, people who live in the cable America sometimes get played for plain fools. …
Does Terri Schiavo respond to commands, as cable America heard last night? …
Judge Greer counted.
“By the court’s count, (Hammesfahr) gave 105 commands to Terri Schiavo and, at his direction, Mrs. Schindler gave an additional six commands,” Greer wrote. “He asked her 61 questions and Mrs. Schindler asked her an additional 11 questions. The court saw few actions that could be considered responsive to either those commands or those questions.”
In cable America, viewers weren?t asked to hear about that. Hustlers like Scarborough know a good story. And they know facts can mess such tales up.
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News Hounds: We watch FOX so you don’t have to.
In Case You Haven’t Had Enough of Terri Schiavo…
From the Sublime to the Ridiculous
ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor
A Modest Proposal
RATHER THAN DRILL the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and Otero Mesa and the Valle Vidal for gas, why not strip mine the campus of the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs for coal?
The academy was built over the largest remaining deposit of strip minable coal in the state of Colorado. Building the academy over the coal deposit was justified on the grounds that the United States would never need the energy that would be realized by mining the coal.
Now we are told we are at war and need to make sacrifices to defeat terrorism. Drilling ANWR, Otero and the Valle Vidal, we are told, are small sacrifices in that war. Considering all the positive aspects of strip mining … mining the coal under the campus would be a very small sacrifice. …
RONALD GRENKO
Albuquerque
Oil’s Effects Devastating
THE OIL INDUSTRY claims that full-scale oil and gas development would have little or no impact on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Look 60 miles west to Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, a gargantuan oil complex that has turned a thousand square miles of tundra into a sprawling industrial zone. The result: a landscape defaced by mountains of sewage sludge, scrap metal, garbage and more than 60 contaminated waste sites. …
MURIEL J. PETERSON
Albuquerque
Protect Land From Greed
IN THE SPRING of 2001, about 92,000 gallons of crude oil were spilled in the “newer and safer” oil fields at Kuparuk, Alaska. …
Polls by both Republican and Democrat organizations indicate Americans are opposed to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by a 2-to-1 margin. Oil companies are losing interest and are looking to more profitable areas. Still, Secretary of Interior Gale Norton and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and other extremists are determined to destroy a pristine wild land for a minimal amount of oil.
Ninety-five percent of Alaska’s North Slope is open for drilling. Prudhoe Bay has been destroyed. …
CHARLES B. HOUSTON
Albuquerque
Extremists Sieze Issue
RE: “OTERO MESA Drilling Gets Green Light” article
The only green light the Otero Mesa is showing is a “go” signal for the environmental extremism that contributes mightily to the poverty of New Mexico.
As usual, our environmental doomsayers grossly misrepresent the impact of the highly limited oil and gas development proposed? so limited it may not even happen. Not satisfied with 99.9 percent of the area being left alone, they have to have it all regardless of cost or lost economic benefit to the larger community.
The enviro-exaggerators….
DANIEL H. HOUCK
Albuquerque
Yes, folks, New Mexico is poor because of the enviro-exaggerators. mjh
Right to Die for New Mexicans
Life Planning in New Mexico, by Merri Rudd – Abogada Press
includes:
Health Care Decisions in New Mexico: Uniform Health-Care Decisions Act; Right to Die and End-of-Life Decisions; EMS-DNR Orders; Assisted Suicide Prohibited
Legal Forms – Abogada Press
Values History Form and Health Care Directive Form
Q: You discussed financial powers of attorney in a recent column. Can’t someone also use a power of attorney for health care decisions?
Yes, more people are recognizing the importance of planning ahead for health care decisions. [read more]
[disclosure: the book is by my wife, Judge Merri Rudd]
Update 3/22/05
From a national perspective: WSJ.com
Learning about living wills and advance health-care directives.
THE TERRI SCHIAVO INFORMATION PAGE(s)
Abstract Appeal — by Matt Conigliaro
THE TERRI SCHIAVO INFORMATION PAGE
As a Florida law blogger, I have created this page to help people understand the legal circumstances surrounding the Terri Schiavo saga. In my view, there continues to be a need for an objective look at the matter. There is an unbelievable amount of misinformation being circulated.
[via NewMexiKen]
Background: Terry Schiavo’s Right To Live or Die By Andrew Somers, Your Guide To Civil Liberty
Death and Dying II
Lawrence Schneiderman, M.D.
Bioethicist, University of California, San Diego
If you allow patients to die without being given glucose or other sources of carbohydrates, they then begin to use their protein and fat as energy sources. This creates ketones, a chemical in the body that seems to have an analgesic effect. More than that, metabolic acidosis seems to have a euphoric effect. A professor of English, a friend of mine, called me one day, and said that her mother was dying of cancer in a nursing home, and there was a big fight in the family about whether or not to put a feeding tube in her in her last week so that she would live longer. In talking with my friend, I strongly urged against putting in what we call a peg tube, a subcutaneous feeding tube. About a month or so later, she called me and said she was so grateful. Her mother died, she said, an ecstatic death. She had this wonderful kind of peaceful, serene vision that accompanied her dying days. And it occurred to me that that’s what we have been depriving modern patients of, that possibility, by insisting on replenishing their food and fluids.