Posted on 06/22/2005 8:06:02 PM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
"Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" asked Joseph Welch in his famous confrontation with the pathologically cruel Joe McCarthy. "Have you left no sense of decency?"
More than a half-century later, I would ask the same question of Florida's governor, Jeb Bush.
In an abuse of power that has been widely denounced, and has even appalled many of his own supporters in the Republican Party, Governor Bush has tried to keep the Terri Schiavo circus alive by sending state prosecutors on a witch hunt against her husband, Michael.
The state attorney who has been pushed by the governor into pursuing this case told me yesterday he has seen nothing to indicate that a crime was committed. Nevertheless, the inquiry continues.
Governor Bush asked Bernie McCabe, the state attorney for Pinellas County, to "take a fresh look" at this already exhaustively investigated case to determine, among other things, whether Michael Schiavo had perhaps waited too long to call for help after discovering that his wife had collapsed early one morning 15 years ago.
Mr. McCabe did not seem particularly enthusiastic about his mission. "I wouldn't call it an investigation," he told me in a telephone conversation. The word "investigation," he said, "is a term of art in my business."
He then explained: "When I conduct an investigation, it would mean that I have a criminal predicate. In other words, that I have some indication that a crime has occurred. That's my job...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
"The politicization of Terri Schiavo prompted the American Medical Association on Tuesday to adopt policy opposing any legislation that presumes patients would want life-sustaining treatment unless it is clear that they would not."
No - as a matter of fact I did not vote for Gore
A warlock hunt.
Beam me up Hippocrates, there is no moral life down here.
One step for Terri Schindler. One huge step for mankind down the slippery slope.
There are no conspiracies to influence public opinion and politicians about health care morality in the US. There are only masses of well paid lobbyists with weird science agendas together with precedence setting lawyers paid by insurance companies trying to save a few billion bucks.
What's to worry about?
"Hmmm. Looks like I managed to reduce you to a raging piece of name-calling incoherence with little effort.
You lose.
If I were you I wouldn't serve on any juries, Fur Shur!"
It's just that the wiring in your brain is slightly askew, so don't waste my time. Thank you.
Gonna back up that statement with evidence, or just use that lovely leftist technique of "Proof by Assertion"?
This has nothing to do with Mark F. or any other straw men you choose to throw up there. It has to do with your libelous statement:
You just care about murder which was that took place, pure and simple!!!I ask you what your evidence is for this wild suggestion, when I was suggesting the best outcome would be to discover an authentic written proof of Mrs. Schiavo's wishes. It was the Schindlers who admitted they would have violated Mrs. Schiavo's wishes even if that evidence was discovered. Though they later retracted their statements, it seems that you cannot accuse me without impugning them at least as strongly.
I suppose one could say that Mrs. Schiavo died a natural death, since if not for intervention by artificial medical technology, she would have expired back in 1990. But that's irrelevant. The important point is whether she died a death she'd have preferred, given her condition.
And in that case, I think we might possibly have let her down...not allowing a more humane active passing, rather than having to resort to "natural" death by removal of hydration. That's a distortion of prinicples, implying that disAbled people are somehow kept alive "artificially" if they require assistance. Again, we must focus on the rights, not on the "natural/artificial" aspects.
It is liberal only in the classical sense, but I would say that it is a rather conservative notion to respect our Constitution and support an individual's rights and preferences without interference from the government or others. Perhaps you're one of the "new conservatives" who think you know better than others how to run their lives and want a Big Nanny overseeing us all, but that's not my definition of true conservatism.
If you don't know who Mark Furhman is, check out the O.J. murder case!!!
I know who he is. In fact, I even know how to spell his name.
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