Gallows humor: They better eat their wheaties.
If that doesn't spur folks to help Terri's Fight, I don't know what will. Please sign up at this email address to join Terri's Fight. fight4terri@aol.com
Posted on 11/30/2004 8:06:26 PM PST by cyn
Welcome to Terri's December Dailies thread. This is where we place links to other Terri threads at Free Republic and other breaking news about Terri Schindler-Schiavo.In addition, this is a place to meet and plan ways to use grassroots activism to help Terri's Fight.
If you are a newbie to Terri's Fight, I urge you to visit http://www.terrisfight.org where you can subscribe to their newsletter, can get up to speed on the court cases and the very long struggle.
Please consider joining us. The pay isn't very good lol but it is rewarding to help Terri nonetheless. Terri's life has as much value as anyone else's. The right to die movement needs a counter-balance. That freepers, is where we come in. -- floriduh voter
To help you keep up with most important and breaking news, ping or freepmail Ohioan from Florida and ask to be added to the “ping” (notification) list.
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LAST MONTH/NOV TERRI DAILIES THREAD -- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1264875/postsCurrent project: Please sign TERRI’S BIRTHDAY CARD -- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1283113/posts.
Send your own birthday cards to Terri at http://www.Terrisfight.org -- tuck in a small check if you are able, it will be so greatly appreciated.
This is a busy time of the year for us all. Please keep Terri and her family and their efforts in your prayers and check by/bump this thread periodically and PLEASE SIGN TERRI’S BIRTHDAY CARD.
Gallows humor: They better eat their wheaties.
If that doesn't spur folks to help Terri's Fight, I don't know what will. Please sign up at this email address to join Terri's Fight. fight4terri@aol.com
Thanks to the ACLJ, American Center for Law & Justice who are helping fight the ACLU.
I think Clay's hair is cute in that picture.
I think Clay has surpassed Harry Connick, Jr. whose voice has not improved with age, that's just my opnion but Harry's voice is rougher and slightly off key. Even slightly off key DRIVES FLORIDUH VOTER UP THE WALL.
http://imagicke.blogspot.com/2004/11/scalia-founding-fathers-never.html
Scalia: Founding fathers never advocated the separation of church and state Scalia in shul: State must back religion
By URIEL HEILMAN
US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia used an appearance at an Orthodox synagogue in New York to assail the notion that the US government should maintain a neutral stance toward religion, saying it has always supported religion and the courts should not try to change that.
Speaking at a conference on religious freedom in America on Monday hosted by Manhattan's Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in North America, Scalia said that the founding fathers never advocated the separation of church and state and that America has prospered because of its religiousness.
"There is something wrong with the principle of neutrality," said Scalia, considered among the court's staunchest conservatives. Neutrality as envisioned by the founding fathers, Scalia said, "is not neutrality between religiousness and nonreligiousness; it is between denominations of religion."
Scalia cited early examples of support of religion in the public sphere by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, the last of whom went so far as to argue at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 for the institution of daily prayers.
Today, Scalia noted, the government exempts houses of worship from real-estate tax, pays for chaplains in Congress, state legislatures, and the military, and sanctions the opening of every Supreme Court session with the cry, "God save the United States!"
"To say that the Constitution allows the court to sweep away that long-standing attitude toward religion seems to me just wrong," he said. "I do think we're forgetting our roots."
Scalia's speech, at a conference marking the 350th anniversary both of Jews in America and of Shearith Israel, elicited a standing ovation.
Scalia was nominated to the nine-member Supreme Court in 1986 by president Ronald Reagan to fill the seat vacated by William Rehnquist, who became the chief justice after Warren Berger retired. Now, with speculation that Rehnquist is on the verge of retirement after a recent diagnosis of thyroid cancer, Scalia may be the leading candidate to take his place.
It is widely believed that President George W. Bush will appoint a staunch conservative as chief justice if he gets the chance, and the only other Supreme Court justice considered sufficiently conservative is Clarence Thomas, appointed by president George H.W. Bush.
Originally from New York, Scalia wore a black skull cap as he addressed the congregation with his back to the ark.
"The founding fathers never used the phrase 'separation of church and state,'" he said, arguing that rigid separation of religion and state – as in Europe, for example – would be bad for America and bad for the Jews.
"Do you think it's going to make Jews safer? It didn't prove that way in Europe," he said.
"You will not hear the word 'God' cross the lips of a French premier or an Italian head of state," Scalia said. "But that has never been the American way."
Most establishment Jewish groups, however, are staunch supporters of church-state separation. Earlier this month, for example, the American Jewish Committee was part of a coalition that won a lawsuit to block a Florida program allowing state aid to go to parochial schools. In 2000, the Anti-Defamation League led several Jewish groups in criticizing vice presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Lieberman for talking too much about God on the campaign trail.
Scalia said expunging religion from public life would be bad for America, and that the courts, instead, should come around to most Americans' way of thinking and to the founding fathers' vision for the US. He noted that after a San Francisco court last year barred the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools because it includes the phrase "under God," Congress voted nearly unanimously to condemn the decision and uphold use of the phrase. more
Source: The Jerusalem Post
Scalia: founding fathers never advocated the separation of church and state
http://imagicke.blogspot.com/2004/11/scalia-founding-fathers-never.html
FV SAYS: Justice Scalia's words are somewhat encouraging.
Thanks for colorizing and linking. I get that to happen 50 per cent of the time.
Terri's following her doctor's instructions to open her eyes and look at him.
More videos are at http://www.terrisfight.org
Life, death in the Schiavo case
By Michael Kirkland
WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- The Supreme Court of the United States is used to dealing with disputes over life and death, but the case of Terri Schiavo is among the most poignant. How the justices deal with her case, assuming they accept it, may depend on a 1990 precedent involving another young woman in a "persistent vegetative state."
Theresa Marie Schindler, later Terri Schiavo, was born in Pennsylvania on Dec. 3, 1963, and lived there with or near her parents until 1986, when she married Michael Schiavo and moved to Florida. Both sides in the case agreed they lived happily there. They had no children and both were employed.
Then in February 1990, their lives changed. Terri Schiavo was 26 when she suffered a cardiac arrest caused by a potassium imbalance in her body. Since 1990 she has lived in a nursing home in Pinellas Park, Fla., under constant care, has been fed and given water by tubes, and nurses change her diapers. A court has ruled she has never regained consciousness. For three years Michael Schiavo and his wife's parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, were close, but eventually Schiavo and the Schindlers stopped speaking to each other because of disagreements over the young woman's care. In 1998, eight years after his wife slipped into a coma, Schiavo asked a court to order her life support removed.
A state judge ruled that "clear and convincing evidence" showed Terri Schiavo to be in a persistent vegetative state and that she would have chosen to end life support if she were in a condition to make that decision. A state appeals court agreed with the judge, ruling, "The evidence is overwhelming that Theresa is in a permanent or persistent vegetative state." She is not in a coma, the court found, but has "cycles of apparent wakefulness and apparent sleep without any cognition or awareness." Because of a lack of oxygen due to the heart attack, her brain has deteriorated, the court found, and "much of her cerebral cortex is simply gone."
The Schindlers did not accept the findings. Instead, they filed an attack on the final ruling alleging fraud and claiming newly discovered evidence. The couple maintained their daughter was not in a vegetative state but indeed interacted with visitors. They also alleged Michael Schiavo was acting in his own financial interests, not in the interests of his wife.
Eventually, on Sept. 17, 2003, the Probate Division of the Circuit Court of Pinellas County, Fla., authorized the removal of the food and water tubes from Terri Schiavo's body. The tubes were removed less than a month later. "The death watch over Terri Schiavo had begun," lawyers for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said in a petition to the Supreme Court. "Public reaction to the dramatic, and apparently final, chapter of this long, personal and public tragedy was intense."
In the face of that reaction, Bush and the state Legislature acted. A new state statute, Chapter 2003-418 of the Laws of Florida, gave the governor the authority to prevent the withholding of food and water from a patient if -- as of Oct. 15, 2003 -- there was no previous written directive from the patient to remove it; a court has found the patient to be in a persistent vegetative state; food and water have been withheld, and any member of the patient's family challenges that action. The governor's authority expired under the law 15 days after the day it was implemented -- in other words, on Oct. 30, 2003 -- meaning Bush would have acted by then in the Schiavo case.
After the issuance of a stay, the local circuit court was directed by the law to appoint a guardian for the patient to make recommendations to the governor and the court on her treatment. Attorneys for Michael Schiavo challenged the law in court, and eventually the Florida Supreme Court struck it down. The Florida high court ruled that the law "violates the fundamental constitutional tenet of separation of powers and is therefore unconstitutional both on its face and as applied to Theresa Schiavo."
Bush, supported by many of the evangelicals who support his brother, the president of the United States, then asked the U.S. Supreme Court for review. The governor's petition asks the high court to determine whether the Florida court violated his rights and those of "his incompetent ward" under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The amendment says, among other things, that any state may not "deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction of equal protection of the laws." The petition also asks the high court to determine if Bush and Terri Schiavo were deprived of their rights when the Florida court upheld findings in the earlier parts of the case, when the governor was not a party to the dispute.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejects the vast majority of cases that land at its doorstep, of course, and there is no guarantee it will accept the Bush petition. A good sign, however, is that the justices have asked for a response from Michael Schiavo by next week, something they would not have done if they were rejecting the Bush petition out of hand.
The Terri Schiavo case has gone beyond a simple, if tragic, legal dispute. To many, she is considered a martyr. One report says Michael Schiavo refused to let a priest administer the last rites to his wife in 2003. Roman Catholics, in particular, have championed her parents. Columnist Nat Hentoff even suggested in The Village Voice that the young woman may have been beaten and strangled in 1990, though no evidence of that has ever been introduced into court. But beyond all the emotion and innuendo, Terri Schiavo's fate will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court on a legal basis. For that, the justices have to reach back to 1990's Cruzan vs. Director MDH.
Nancy Cruzan was 24 when she lost control of her car on a Missouri road in January 1983. She was thrown from the car and landed face down in a ditch filled with water. Paramedics found her and resuscitated her, but she remained in a "persistent vegetative state." After seven years her parents wanted to remove life support, citing their daughter's comments to a friend about not wanting to depend indefinitely on life support should she be injured -- but hospital workers refused. When the Missouri Supreme Court backed the hospital, saying there was not enough evidence of Nancy Cruzan's wishes, the dispute reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
The 5-4 majority in the 1990 case recognized that a patient has a "liberty interest" in declining medical treatment, but that right is not unrestricted. It affirmed the Missouri Supreme Court ruling. The U.S. Constitution does not forbid Missouri from requiring "clear and convincing" evidence of an incompetent person's wishes about withdrawing life support before such support is removed, the majority said.
The Constitution does not require "the state to repose judgment on these matters with anyone but the patient herself. Close family members may have a strong feeling -- a feeling not at all ignoble or unworthy, but not entirely disinterested, either -- that they do not wish to witness the continuation of the life of a loved one which they regard as hopeless, meaningless, and even degrading," Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the conservative majority. "But there is no automatic assurance that the view of close family members will necessarily be the same as the patient's would have been had she been confronted with the prospect of her situation while competent. All of the reasons previously discussed for allowing Missouri to require clear and convincing evidence of the patient's wishes lead us to conclude that the state may choose to defer only to those wishes, rather than confide the decision to close family members." Also in that 1990 majority were Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, all, like Rehnquist, current members of the court. The fifth vote belonged to the late Justice Byron White. The court's four liberals dissented, saying they would honor Cruzan's wishes. Of the four, only Justice John Paul Stevens remains on the court.
Assuming that the U.S. Supreme Court accepts Bush's petition, how would the current court apply the Cruzan precedent to the Schiavo case? Look for a 5-4 split between the conservative majority and the liberal minority, with Chief Justice William Rehnquist, largely recovered from thyroid cancer, again writing the majority opinion. The four justices from the Cruzan court have no reason to change their opinion over the last 14 years. The fifth vote would come from Justice Clarence Thomas, who often votes with Scalia. Also, look for the slim majority to reaffirm Cruzan's principles without deciding Bush's 14th Amendment argument. The justices could reverse the Florida Supreme Court, ending the dispute. The state Legislature, after all, did require a written directive from a competent person before life support could be withdrawn when the person later becomes incompetent -- even if it did so in a temporary law. If that is enough to be dispositive, the U.S. Supreme Court still would have to rule that the law could be retroactively applied to the Schiavo case.
But a simple reaffirmation of Cruzan would point to a possible U.S. Supreme Court ruling that throws out the Florida Supreme Court decision without reversing it, and that sends the case back for more hearings in a tragedy that already has gone on for years.
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(No. 04-757, Gov. Jeb Bush vs. Michael Schiavo, guardian of Theresa Schiavo)
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(Please send comments to nationaldesk@upi.com.)
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Copyright 2004 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
http://www.insightmag.com/news/2004/12/20/National/Life-Death.In.The.Schiavo.Case-829833.shtml
HMMM Lets see if HINO gets out of this! (like he has with the depositions).
Christmas Eve Morning Bump! Prayers For The Life Terri !
Good article and it gives me much hope. Terri to my understanding has not just been in a nursing home, but in hospice care as if she had less than 6 months to live, which was the hope of Michael and his mistress all along. Terri lives on thanks to her parents, Florida Voter and many other dedicated freepers and Jeb Bush.
"My family and I want to wish you and your family a happy and blessed Christmas holiday. We appreciate everything you have done and are doing to help our Terri."
Bob Sr.
Christmas greetings and wishes to all, and New Year hopes for an honest guardianship ruling in 2005 that liberates Terri from anti-rehabilitation HINO's cruel and corrupt control.
http://multimedia.tbo.com/multimedia/popup/polls/1015terri.html
If you consider there are still rumors that Sixth Circuit employees are betting on whether Terri will live or not, now THAT'S TACKY AND ILLEGAL. Thanks, FV
NOW BACK TO CHRISTMAS. MERRY CHRISTMAS, Terri's Freepers.
Ping to my post above. Tampa Tribune must know something to take a poll at this time? It has been alleged that Judge Baird's wife works at the Tampa Tribune. hmmmmmmmmmmmmm
I almost think that might be an older poll that got recirculated. The pre on the document is 1015, so maybe it's something that was published this past October (possibly even last October if you think about that date).
I can't stand these polls anyway, as you pointed out, because they're rather tacky. But my big problem is how they are typically worded. They almost lead one to respond a certain way.
The National RTL conducted a poll and asked the question in a very different fashion. This was a telephone poll and not a web one, so the audience wasn't predispositioned on the side of life. But, they asked something like "should her husband, who now has a partner and two children with her be the one to decide" kind of thing.
Naturally, the majority responding said 'no'. So, when you give people new information they will make a new decision.
I wonder what would happen if you asked "MS has not filed a guardianship plan in ** years, has not permitted Terri's teeth to be looked after in ** years and will not allow Terri outside of her room, in violation of Florida laws. Should he remain guardian?" How many do you think would vote NO.
Agree with your last post. The retiring Clerk of Courts is proud of her record protecting wards. What record?
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