Posted on 05/28/2007 9:33:12 AM PDT by wagglebee
The Christian attorney who fought to keep Terry Schiavo alive says the three leading GOP presidential candidates don't understand the important disability issues involved in the widely publicized 2005 case.
During a recent Republican presidential debate in California, the candidates were asked whether Congress was right to intervene in the Terry Schiavo case by attempting to prevent the state of Florida from removing the disabled woman's feeding tube. The answers varied.
Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, said he thought it "was a mistake" for Congress to get involved and the matter should have been left at the state level. Senator John McCain said Congress "probably acted too hastily." And former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani called the case a "family dispute."
David Gibbs III of the Christian Law Association says the United States gives greater due process to convicted murderers than to innocent disabled people. The former attorney for Schiavo's parents argues that Congress did the right thing when it intervened to provide her those rights.
"Many of the candidates are following the political wind, if you will, instead of showing leadership and saying, 'You know what? That was good public policy back then. We need to stand up for the disabled. We need to stand up for the senior citizens,'" Gibbs says. "We need to have that compassion for vulnerable people as opposed to taking the mindset that those people that just don't matter," he notes.
It is disingenuous, the Christian attorney contends, for candidates to claim they are pro-life but not be willing to grant due process rights to the disabled. "If you're pro-life, you have to be pro-life at every step," he says.
"Please understand: our founding fathers understood that you don't have any liberty, our Constitution doesn't matter, if you don't protect the innocent life of the citizens," Gibbs explains. "That's why they talked about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- your free speech, your freedom of religion, your right to own a gun or [receive] due process of law," he says. "If the government can kill you, you have no true liberty."
When Rudy Giuliani visited Florida he initially said he was in favor of assisting Terry Schiavo but later backpedaled from those comments, Gibbs points out. And in the recent GOP presidential debate, he says, only Kansas Senator Sam Brownback and Congressman Duncan Hunter of California got the issue right when they were asked about the Schiavo case.
The deathbots are 100% invested in the idea that Michael could not have had any responsibility in Terri’s injuries. Because that belief is necessary for them to be able to justify Michael’s unlawful decision to kill Terri.
Wives, too bad if you don't like it, it's now the law. So just shut up about it and be a good little chattel property.
At least they bounce the thread to the top. :)
“The deathbots are 100% invested in the idea that Michael could not have had any responsibility in Terri’s injuries. Because that belief is necessary for them to be able to justify Michael’s unlawful decision to kill Terri.”
Common sense should tell a person that if a man sues for malpractice, and gets the $$ because he SAYS he will take care of his wife for the rest of her life, and AFTER he gets the $$ “remembers” that she did not want to live like that, the man does not have his wife’s best interests at heart, to say the least.
Did you notice any other points where retMD’s medical logic was a little one-sided? I think the other side deserves to be heard. One that bugged me is that he kept insisting that Dr. Walker, the bone scan radiologist, framed his findings according to a few erroneous words on the routing slip. So everything Dr. Walker saw was, what, an illusion? Sheesh. That a terrible insult to Dr. Walker. I thought even first year med students were taught to focus on the normal in order to see the abnormal.
While I’m on the subject, Dr. Thogmartin said that the bone scan’s notation of “closed head injury” was clearly wrong, unless it referred to the anoxic insult itself. But Dr. Thogmartin wasn’t there in 1991. He is reconstructing, probably with very little paper evidence. CHI may not have been erroneous at all, contemporaneously seen. It’s hard to see how Terri could have had a severe whiplash injury to her neck without the possibility of a closed head injury. Does that make sense?
>> it takes a fair amount of blunt force to cause multiple bilateral rib fractures.
It sure does. Poor Terri!
>> A car accident would do that, struggle on the floor would not.
Not a "struggle on the floor." Hitting the floor hard is what would do it. We know that this couldn't be from her just keeling over because that wouldn't be enough force and the head would show external injury. She had some "help" smashing into the floor.
>> Posterior rib fractures are very suggestive of abuse in infants and children. As I've mentioned several times, you can't automatically assume what holds in children is valid in adults.
Such injuries ARE suggestive of abuse in adults, though it's not "automatic" as it is in children.
Would you be using logic to suggest that Michael committed fraud in the malpractice suits? Then he committed fraud again to keep the money? That his sobby scene in the trial where he promised to spend the rest of his life taking care of Terri was -- er -- terrible soap opera and a big lie?
Any sensible person would agree.
Hearty welcome to our Terri threads! Thanks for your posts and hope to see lots more. I am almost sorry the trolls left the building before you got a chance to confront them. More will come, though and I hope you are in the neighborhood when they do. They just can’t help themselves.
Warm FReegards!
8mm
You were right about this, bjs1779. I understand there are pre- or post-mortem tests so sophisticated they can detect signs of strangulation in soft tissues, even 14 years later. Dr. Thogmartin blundered by releasing the body for cremation in a case "of criminal importance." The body may well have contained clues.
Remember when he said it was a "classic case of sickle cell trait" AFTER the video of Martin Anderson was released? I don't think there is much doubt that he would've allowed his body to cremated, video or no video. The list of irregularities is rather long.
Basically, Thogmartin did the same thing, with no evidence or no evidence to support his conclusion either. Maybe he just took Gary Fox's word for it : )
with (little) evidence or no evidence
He's a county medical officer. This is not the big leagues in medicine. Even so, his call on Martin Anderson was beyond the pale.
We watched the kid -- 14 years old -- getting pounded by half a dozen trained deputies, in that video. It was sickening. And then to have the coroner cover it up as a "sickle cell" problem was a crime.
I am still trying to trust that Thogmartin was at least trying to play straight with Terri's autopsy, but it is getting difficult.
I heard he hired Dr. Nelson. You know the guy who missed a strangulation case.
I guess that deserves more than one reply. I don't think they found anything. You got a discredited patho telling us she was blind and couldn't eat and he weighed her brain. Bragging about her deficiency's as I recall at the news conference.
None of that, even if true, does not justify murder. They also said that they had no way of knowing if she was PVS. Yet, the public statement was "she was blind, she could not see". Thank you very much Dr. Thogmartin.
Nelson was trying to portray her as PVS, -- and every media serpent in the country picked up on that, -- but of course they cannot determine PVS post-mortem. He was grandstanding to compare Terri's dehydrated brain weight with Quinlan's. That's utterly unprofessional. Terri was far more responsive than Quinlan and it wasn't her fault that her brain was injured in the first place. Blame that on her no-good killer.
Thogmartin did the neck and said she couldn't swallow safely. He meant what doctors mean by that, that the patient might aspirate -- get food down the wrong tube and into her lungs. That is indeed dangerous -- but executing her because she can't swallow safely is a lot more dangerous!
Nelson again, and wrong. The right-to-kill crew jumped on that one with delight. They are conspiracy theorists who believe the videos were faked. Here was their "proof." Just like they heard it on the Mother Ship.
I wonder how the video faking crew got Michael's chosen neurologist, Dr. Cranford, to tell Terri that she could see.
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