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…

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

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

Ask the Probate Judge

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.

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.

News Hounds: Bush Hypocrisy on Terri Schiavo Ignored by FOX, the “Real Journalism” Network

While FOX News reporters fall over each other trying to prove their concern for the life of Terri Schiavo, nobody is reporting about the cases in Texas where life support is being removed by hospitals over the objections of family members. The law allowing that to happen was signed in 1999 by then-governor George W. Bush.

Lest anyone thinks this is a case of Bush “evolving” in his opinions, just five days ago a Texas hospital removed life support from a baby over the objections of his mother. Yet Bush never made a peep. Neither did FOX News.

Congress.Org — Issues and Legislation

For the relief of the parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo
On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass
03/21/2005
House Roll Call No. 90
109th Congress, 1st Session

Vote Map: House Roll Call No. 90
Votes For : 203
Votes Against : 58
Not Voting : 174