Posted on 03/22/2005 10:56:01 AM PST by areafiftyone
TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Jeb Bush is pushing state lawmakers toward a new scheme to intervene in the Terri Schiavo dilemma, touting a plan to oust her husband from the role as her guardian.
Bush's new effort echoes a long-aired lament from fervent advocates for Schiavo to be kept alive. The argument: Michael Schiavo's new life with a girlfriend and two small children leaves him unqualified to oversee what he and numerous courts have ruled was her wish to not be kept alive in her current state.
"If someone is living with their loved one and has two children and their spouse is in this situation they have a serious conflict of interest," Bush told reporters Monday morning. "I think our state ought to change our laws to say that in those circumstances, that the guardian needs to be changed."
But state lawmakers, both for and against intervening again in the controversy, said it appeared there was not a will to do so right now.
Bush said the change would relate to the Schiavo situation. But many legal experts and lawmakers have said that because Michael Schiavo allowed the court to make the final decision to remove his wife's feeding tube, changing the guardian might have little or no impact on the current situation.
Despite the extraordinary intervention of Congress and President Bush this weekend that led to a law requiring a federal court review of the Schiavo case, Gov. Jeb Bush insisted the state must still address the matter after abandoning the effort last week.
"I'm deeply disappointed in the actions taken by the Senate last week," Gov. Bush said. "That doesn't mean that there's a finality to this."
It would be the third time lawmakers have made a run at intervening. In 2003, the state rushed "Terri's Law" through, allowing Bush to order the restart of her feeding. The state's Supreme Court tossed the law as unconstitutional last year.
Last week, House lawmakers approved a bill that would have required feeding of people in vegetative states unless there had been explicit directions left to the contrary.
But the Senate rejected a narrower measure 16-21 that would have required a court to decide whether a person had expressed a clear refusal of "sustenance and hydration" if they entered a vegetative state.
Sen. Dan Webster, R-Winter Garden, was the sponsor of the Senate bill. He said Monday that he doubts the Senate would support any Schiavo-related legislation.
"I would suspect it would be the same," he said when asked how a vote on interceding on the behalf of Schiavo's parents would fare in the Senate.
Webster also said that while Michael Schiavo should abandon his role as his wife's guardian, he wasn't sure it would have any effect on the maintenance of her feeding since the courts have found she would not want it.
Bush spoke Monday with Webster and the sponsor of the House measure, Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala. Baxley said the House was at the mercy of the Senate in moving forward.
Opposition to the plan last week in the Senate centered on a group of nine Republicans who voted against Webster's plan. The leader was former Senate President Jim King, R-Jacksonville, who said he'd not heard of any new effort.
"If there's a plan, I haven't talked to anyone who has one," said King, who added that he thinks the Senate is finished with the topic.
"I think Terri is better off in heaven than in that bed," King said. "It's going to be the will of God."
The fallout from last week's vote kept coming this weekend and on Monday, with protesters filling the Capitol, pleading with senators to intervene. Capitol security evicted several protesters who posed as speakers on unrelated bills in various committees before veering into a speech about maintaining Schiavo's feeding.
Ugly messages were left with lawmakers. Sen. Nancy Argenziano, R-Dunnellon, said one letter came from a self-identified Christian who "prayed" for Argenziano to die a painful death with stomach cancer.
Sen. Rod Smith, D-Alachua, said one caller to his office said, "I'm a Christian, and I hope you will die in your own vomit."
Smith, a former state lawyer who has sentenced men to death, said he's been called a killer before from death row opponents, adding that the threats and rallies haven't affected him or his fellow senators.
"I don't want to revisit it, the people around me don't want to revisit it," Smith said, calling last week's vote "a plain statement that the Florida Senate does not belong" in the issue.
Sen. Ron Klein (D-Boca Raton) grimaced when he was told that Christian groups compared the nine GOP senators who opposed last week's bill to Pontius Pilate.
"That is extremely offensive," he said. "This has become a political issue as opposed to a spiritual issue. The radical wing of the Republican Party has taken control of the issue, and those are the people who are whipping up the masses. It's tragic. It turns your stomach."
King said the Schiavo matter shouldn't be a GOP litmus test.
"We're being painted as some sort of counter-productive (group)," he said of the nine Republicans who voted against the bill last week. "All we're doing is what we think is our right, our duty, not necessarily as Republicans but as human beings."
It's too late for this, I think.
They are going to talk about the case again on Nightline tonight.
It is too late.
meanwhile, she continues to starve and to thirst.
Way too late.
They should send in the guards, get her.
But they won't. And they will let her die.
I think this might be old news. Even though it's dated for today it just might not be updated information. Please delete this post if you think it is old news.
Right. /sarcasm
I hope that SOB "husband" meets the same fate as his poor wife.
Those pesky radical Republicans and their love of life. how TRAGIC. /sarcasm
Not all lawyers are crooked and unethical.
GOVERNOR, TAKE HER IN TO CUSTODY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Bill LATER!!!!!!!!!!!
I don't understand how anyone could oppose this. It's so obviously the right thing to do. A man living with another woman should not be allowed to put his former wife to death.
It's not too late. I think if they passed this bill today, and had Jeb sign it, they could get an immediate injunction to force the insertion of the feeding tube.
He'll might agree with you. According to him, it's a nice peaceful way to go.
Friend, what you suggest would be a viable alternative if Terri had granted someone other than her husband power of attorney in matters related to her. Without it, the individual seeking transferral of guardianship would have to prove "it is what Terri would want". A tangled web indeed.
When did the notion arise that a legislature, seeing some wrong occurring, cannot pass laws to stop it? This is what they do all the time. Aren't there bills to help Japanese who were interred during WWII, farmers in southeastern Wyoming, storeowners in Times Square, soldiers who didn't get a medal they deserved, etc? And they say there is no sense of urgency to do this in the Florida legislature right now? How much more urgent could this get?
Two words, Gov. Bush: EXECUTIVE ORDER.
Send in the Florida State Police, insert the tube.
What is the Court going to do about it?
This "death by legal proceedings" has to be brought to an end.
After today, it won't matter what anyone does.
Two words, Gov. Bush: EXECUTIVE ORDER.
Send in the Florida State Police, insert the tube.
What is the Court going to do about it?
This "death by legal proceedings" has to be brought to an end.
After today, it won't matter what anyone does.
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