Waxing Politic

How to Keep Killing Terri Schiavo

2005-03-27T14:20:00.000-08:00

For starters, one needs to know how it was done the first time. You don't know where you are going until you know where you have been!

To be technical, right now Terri Schiavo is in the process of being killed, but I suspect her death will forever be celebrated by the power players who made it happen. Sure it's routine outside the United States, but orchestrating a human sacrifice inside America and also making it legal is about as impressive as it gets in a democracy. It may be a bit wordy to put on a bumper sticker, but this kind of show of force is designed to pay dividends now and in the future. Nothing concentrates the mind like a good kill'in.

Who is behind the dirty deed? Well certainly Michael Schiavo, her husband in name only. He has long since checked out of the marriage, as for years he has shared his life with the mother of his two children. He would in fact be a common law bigamist in most every state in the union except for Florida, which has allowed him to starve his "wife." In a way Mr. Schiavo is a bit player in this travesty. Sure he won a million dollar award for care and suffering, and then apparently immediately stopped Terri's therapy and initiated steps to end her life. Sure he has ignored the wishes of Terri's family, who have offered to take custody and full financial responsibility in order to save and improve her life. Sure he waited nine years after her injury before claiming Terri had at one time mentioned to him that she wouldn't want to be kept alive in a vegetative state. And sure, he was home with her when she suffered her injuries. Had she died due to these injuries it is reasonable to assume there would have been a homicide investigation focused on him. For some time now he has wanted her to die, but wishing doesn't make it so. The dirty deeds are in the dirty details as to how he was allowed to fulfill his wishes.

Enter all the judges, most liberal, most cowards, some unprincipled and biased like Florida state court judge George Greer. Judge Greer gave Michael Schiavo everything he wanted, most importantly, standing as the husband, which then allowed him to pursue Terri's death by starvation. In the face of strong conflicting evidence and lack of documentation, the judge also allowed Terri's alleged one time utterance in private about living in a vegetative state to seal her fate. It was remembered nine years after the injury by the man who now wants her dead, and remains an inconceivably obvious conflict of interest. Judge Greer then treated as gospel the testimony of a doctor who wasn't troubled that Terri had never been given the standard MRI and PET scans, and who performed an exam that lasted less than an hour when evaluations of her condition would typically require periodic observations over weeks or even months. Though over the years there was serious conflicting evidence to this doctor's determination of PVS, judge Greer made his final determination of fact his first determination of fact, as common sense, new medical information, and judicial discretion never appeared to influence a future decision.

All subsequent judges either lacked the law, or courage, or perhaps wanted to sustain the recent trend of judicial tyranny that has attempted to replace the law, representative government, and the voters. Evidence of this is that in more than one state, a judge has taken it upon himself to define marriage as different from the traditions of the last three thousand years, even overruling recent mandates from the voters. Add to this the 2000 New Jersey Supreme Court ruling allowing the Democrats to substitute their senate candidate shortly before the election as the court considered "vague" a specific day limitation on such replacements. Further evidence of this is supplied by a rouge judge who deemed the "pledge of allegiance" unconstitutional as it referenced "under God." And don't forget the California judges who attempted to revoke the special gubanatorial recall election, until a full panel of the court reauthorized the proceedings. But the poster child for judicial excess will always be the 2000 Florida Supreme Court's attempted hijacking of the presidential election, as they thought to rewrite election law and have it apply retroactively to that squeaky tight election. The Federal Supreme Court rejected both rulings from the state. They in fact unanimously agreed to reject the first ruling from the Florida Supreme Court as even the super liberal Ruth Bader Ginsberg could not find legal justification for that court's actions.

Why did Terri Schiavo become a human sacrifice for the radical left in this country? And why were most leading Democrats hiding from this issue? Maybe politicians who embrace these ideals are callous to human suffering. And maybe these politicians are successfully implanting their agenda through the use of these very same radical judges. Since theirs is an agenda that would not be approved by voters or our representatives, having the authority of an unprincipled judiciary to supersede the will of the people is mandatory. This is an agenda that does not respect life and is at odds with the religious principles that founded our country, and that are indeed still found in our country today.

Most of the do-gooder organizations are also missing from the discussion, as they too get their crusty side of morality buttered by this activist radical court. Where are the "Americans with Disabilities" protesters? Terri Schiavo is an American, and she has a disability.

Where are the stem cell groupies. They can pony up three billion in public funds from California taxpayers while the state is broke, claim that Christopher Reeves will walk again because of stem cell research, but they haven't a word of hope for Terri Schiavo.

Where in the H.E.L.L. is N.O.W. and the other women's rights advocates? Here is a case where an estranged husband and a sympathetic male judge have joined together to agree that Mrs. Schiavo would have wanted to die, even though there is no documentation to support this finding. There are in fact dozens of neurologists who claim this is a case of faulty diagnosis, and that Terri can improve through treatment. Credible reports have Terri communicating, laughing, crying and feeling pain. Yet, these two men continue to act as if they were drunk with power: the power to needlessly end a life. If ever their was a case for gender specific advocacy, this is it! Could it be that their abortion promotion requires the position that all life is disposable?
And what about the capital punishment contingent? They protest constantly that convicted serial rapists and child murderers should be kept alive. But when a healthy yet brain damaged woman is starved to her death as a convenience to her husband, they are no where to be found. Selective morality is the common thread with all of these groups, and it is sickening.

In order to continue to kill Terri Schiavo we must allow the radical liberal agenda to flourish in the courts. It's not that difficult as we are already doing it now. We must continue to allow a tyranny of the minority to thrive in the senate, as Democrats continue an historic demand of a super majority to end their filibusters of targeted presidential judge appointees. And we must cower in the face of ACLU legal threats, even as they demand the removal of a tiny cross in a county seal.

Or, we could honor Terri Schiavo by standing up to the absurd and destructive elements that hope to benefit from her cruel death. We can start by insisting that all presidential judge appointments are voted on by congress. We could also demand that our leaders and the courts uphold the laws of the land as they are written. And we could further dedicate ourselves to defending our country's values and thus protecting our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Maybe then the reality of Terri Schiavo's death will be a bit less shameful.

Three Words Lose Meaning as Rather Departs

2005-03-10T11:29:00.000-08:00

Dan Rather launched an attack on the english language yesterday as he was finally removed from the network anchor's chair at CBS News. Not satisfied with helping to end the careers of his closest staffers and destroying what little credibility the news division had left, Rather turned on three unsuspecting nouns in his final comments during his last broadcast. All three appeared in the same run-on sentence, and all three must be wondering what their place in modern day vocabularies will be after this embarrassing association. The three words: "Journalists," "Truth," and the mortally wounded "Courage."

To fully understand the damage Mr. Rather caused to the character and definitions of these words, one only needs to recall Rather's "memogate" scandal regarding President Bush's tour in the Texas Air National Guard. "Jounalists" are expected to honestly investigate a story with a presumption of fairness. In this case, exceptional care was to be expected from the superstar "journalist" and his major news network, as the charge made was that of tarnishing a sitting president, during wartime, fifty days before a presidential election. We later find out that Dan's staff had been working on the story for over five years, and received the memos in question from a well known local partisan nut. Agenda journalism had replaced journalism.

"Truth," and the pursuit thereof never was an prerequisite with the "memogate" story. The known identity of the discredited sad clown who forwarded the memos should have been enough for CBS and Dan to easily determine this was a fraud. So should have the words of their own hired "experts," who all had great doubts about the memos authenticity. The fact that it took the blogasphere less than twenty-four hours to totally discredit these memos reinforces the fact that the memos were a fraud, and an easily determined fraud at that. Dan and CBS ran with these lies only because they wanted them to be true. If they wanted truth they would have immediately reviewed the enormous and compelling evidence that was weighing against this story. Instead, Dan launched further attacks, claiming the story was completely researched and vetted, and he even paraded out the octogenarian secretary that worked in the office in question at the time, but she actually had no specific knowledge of these memos. If truth were a pursuit, Dan would not have at one point asked us to put aside the question of the memos authenticity and replace it with an examination of the veracity of the overall story. What was obvious to everyone who wasn't peddling this lie was that the story hinged on the validity of the memos. Dan was caught embracing a lie, so to save face, he asked us to just focus on the lie "by-product!"

How much courage does it take to let your subordinates take the fall for your own lack of character and judgment? After the criticism started to mount, was it courageous for Dan to claim that he really didn't have much journalistic input into the story? Is it courageous to continue to hide behind the facts and still to this day pretend the story is true. There is a better word for a news division and their anchor who participates in a callous lie upon the public, and then celebrates an internal investigation that becomes little more than a protracted whitewash. That word is "cowards."

It is hard to imagine how someone who only reads the news can turn his chair into a "hot seat." I guess that may explain the old truism: "Liar, liar. Pants on fire!"

Do us a favor Dan. Put yourself out, and stay out!

The L.A. Times: Champion of the Other Side

2005-03-08T13:25:00.000-08:00

North Korea has apparently softened its rhetoric with at least one international organization. Unfortunately that organization is the increasingly irrelevant Los Angeles Times, who along with staff writer Barbara Demick has presented yet another diplomatic coo on behalf of Kim Jong Il in last Friday's edition of the paper. In the article we learned that the Pyongyang gang has its very own reasons for its development of nuclear weapons and lack of cooperation with the civilized world. This article followed the previous day's edition where this same author relayed with pen pal like objectivity views from a North Korean "businessman," in which among other preposterous notions he actually claimed the North Koreans were not unhappy!

The L.A. Times has obviously taken it upon themselves to present the craven tyrants in North Korea as reasonable and misunderstood. But then this is the same paper that describes a military conflict that is over in days a "quagmire." Last Sunday's front page questioned the legitimacy of Iraq's new tribunal, up and running for a matter of days after decades of oppression and targeted deaths. In so doing, the paper made it clear that it was vitally important to them to savage this newest of democracies, even as they prepare to bring their oppressors to justice. Before this series on North Korea, the most obvious attempt at rehabilitation was the paper's efforts to reelect the hapless Gov. Davis of California. Their endorsement came as they routinely avoided his embarrassingly horrific record and treated his opponents as if they were radioactive.

So since the LAT is now exclusively in the business of reclamation and rehabilitation, what can we expect from them going forward?

Jeffrey Dahmer: actually a vegetarian
Dan Rather: anchor of highly rated news program, not leaving in disgrace
Barbara Boxer: smart
Teresa Heinz Kerry: classy
John Kerry: Never falls when skiing
John Kerry: not pompous gold digger
John Kerry: Did not repeatedly lie about Vietnam experience to propel political career (done)
Ward Churchill: not callous apologist for murderous radical Islamic terrorists
Ward Churchill: actual artist
Ward Churchill: actual Indian

At this rate the paper will soon embrace Russian President Putin's whooper that President Bush fired Dan Rather! Perhaps they are waiting until tomorrow when Rather is scheduled to step down before they unburdened themselves with their long list of who was mean to "SadDan."

It is one thing to present the other side for balance and continuity. But when the other side represents a brutally murderous regime that is portrayed without criticism and objectivity, the paper must be labeled as the anti-American paper pimps for tyrants that they have become.

At the L.A. Times the ridiculous is now sublime, and the sublime is presented as North Korea.

L.A.Times: N. Korea, Without the Rancor

2005-03-03T14:46:00.000-08:00

The L.A. Times this week ran a front page story on those pesky North Koreans as they sent staff writer Barbara Demick to China to interview an unnamed North Korean "businessman" and former diplomat. Her mission: Interview this "man on the street" and find out what the unbiased governmental operative thinks about life in one of the most repressive countries on earth. And by all means, try to humanize this gent, and while your at it, put a happy face on the whole country.

So we immediately learn that the unnamed fellow is affable, dresses colorfully and casually, and enjoys a good time with beer and song. Sounds just like you and me doesn't it? The similarities don't end there. He states "There is love. There is hate. There is fighting. There is charity... People marry. They divorce. They make children. People are just trying to live a normal life." Mr. North Korea everyman goes on to state that their secretive nuclear weapons production was justified as a means of protection against forced regime change by the U.S.

He even says that the population is not unhappy, and that human rights are comparable to those in the United States as he suggests that there is no "100% guarantee of human rights" in the U.S. He lodged several other charges against the United States, non of which were challenged by the reporter, who merely dictated a story of relative normalcy by U.S. standards.

By their lack of balance and scrutiny, and by placing the story on their front page, the L.A. Times has attempted to legitimize and sanitize this ferry tale of life in North Korea.

To paraphrase a popular song: "All the L.A. Times is saying, is give starvation, mass murder, and nuclear blackmail a chance!"

Once again, we can either believe the L.A. Times or our lying eyes.