Posted on 05/08/2008 3:14:03 AM PDT by 8mmMauser
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Creating an extra layer of government bureaucracy to solve a problem, however serious, rarely proves effective. Here's hoping the newly created Office of the Child Advocate is the exception. The position is part of a law overhauling the state's child welfare system. Other measures include increasing penalties for people who work with children and fail to report instances of suspected child abuse, establishment of a foster care registry to track the success of foster parents and a revision of the process for deciding when to end the lift of an abused child in state custody. The last measure was crafted in response to the case of Haleigh Poutre of Westfield, now 14, who fell into a coma after a severe beating. Her adoptive mother and stepfather were charged with assaulting her. Poutre was nearly removed from life support at the direction of the Department of Social Services before her condition began to improve. Poutre is in a Boston rehabilitation hospital. She has been recovering and may testify against her stepfather, Jason Strickland, who has pleaded innocent to assault and battery charges. Her adoptive mother, Holli A. Strickland, died in what police said was a murder-suicide with her grandmother. While Poutre's case has garnered the most attention, there have been several others in the past few years that have been similarly disturbing: r In 2005, 4-year-old Dontel Jeffers of Boston was killed by his foster mother, Corinne Stephen. Stephen was sentenced to eight years in prison last December. r Four-year-old Rebecca Riley of Hull died last year after her parents gave her a massive overdose of drugs meant to treat hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder. The parents were under DSS supervision. r Jennifer Ward of Peabody has been charged with shaking her 9-month-old daughter Jocelyn Ward Anderson to death last November. Prosecutors contend the girl suffered a series of injuries, from a skull fracture to broken vertebrae, while her mother was under DSS supervision................................
Our view: A hopeful start for child welfare reform
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July 14, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A large number of endangered, unwanted, and unborn children held a town hall meeting on the 4th of July - alarmed at the brutal and untimely killing of millions of their brothers and sisters in recent years. That the murderous war waged on them had the full force and respectability of the law made their plight all the more terrifying.
Their complaint was humble and it was simple. They were not distressed by rising gas prices, or the deteriorating economy in general. They were not even frightened by the exponential increase of natural disasters. The threat of global warming or global terrorism did not greatly disturb them.
They had become an endangered species, and little had been done to answer their terrified and silent screams from the womb. They decided that the barbaric treatment that they and their fellow unwanted unborn human beings have had to endure for perilous decades was unconscionable and unbearable. They cried out to their Creator for inspiration and protection, and then unanimously they put forth a declaration. It began as follows:.................
Death Wish: The Impending Suicide of a Once Great Nation (Great Read!)
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Little Auschwitz fires up the ovens again, as the seeds continue to sprout.
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Unquestionably conscious cognitively disabled patients are now being denied sustenance in every state in U.S.This latest event took place in Terri Schiavo's Hospice
Another Disabled Young Person Dehydrated to Death
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"We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will give you no rest."
Zurich, Switzerland (LifeNews.com) -- A leading government official in Switzerland wants the European nation to stop the infamous practice of "death tourism." That's where residents of other countries come to the mountainous nation to have pro-euthanasia groups help them engage in an assisted suicide.
Swiss Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf says the practice is giving her nation a bad name.......
Switzerland Government Official Wants Assisted Suicide Death Tourism to Stop
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Olympia, WA (LifeNews.com) -- Voters in Washington state head to the polls in November to decided whether to make it the second, after Oregon, to legalize assisted suicide. In the coming months, they'll likely see a one-sided campaign in favor of I-1000 because the backers of the initiative have a nearly 12-1 advantage in fundraising.
The numbers should light a fire under pro-life advocates, patient and disability rights groups and medical professionals who don't want euthanasia to expand......
Washington Assisted Suicide Opponents Trail Nearly 12-1 in Fundraising
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Obama on Illinois "Born Alive" Bill (2001)
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“He died July 2 after the Hospice of Florida Suncoast removed his food and hydration tube.”
Any good talkers ought to call talk shows to warn people about hospices. Of course, there are some pro-life hospices, but people need to be very, very careful.
In my area hospices ask for $$, and they get it. A lot of pro-life folks might be contributing money to an antilife hospice.
Yet we look in horror at what happened in Hitler's Germany, and smugly take comfort it cannot happen here. Yet it is creeping in like crabgrass and dandelions to a once pure lawn.
Thread by wagglebee.
July 15, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - More than half of people in the US would rather be dead than disabled says a new survey. A US website for disabled people ran the survey which asked, "Which would you choose: Living with a severe disability that forever alters your ability to live an independent life, or death?" 52 per cent of the respondents chose death.
The survey, run by the online community and website Disaboom, found that differences in attitude toward disability were based on age, income, geographic location, and level of education. 63 percent of younger Americans chose death over disability, while of those of the so-called "boomer generation" (people between the age of 55 and 64 years) 50 percent chose death. 56 percent of Americans 65 and older would rather die than live with a disability.
Those with more education and higher incomes were more likely to choose death and the numbers were slightly lower, 45 percent, in the southern states. 57 percent of those with a college education said they would rather die than live with a severe disability, while only 30 per cent of respondents who have not completed a high school education chose death.
Dr. Glen House, founder of Disaboom, himself a quadriplegic, said he was working to change such attitudes. He told Medical News Today, "I want to share ways for people to understand that disability isn't the end of life. It can be a new beginning."...
Half of Americans Would Choose Death over Disability: Survey
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Thread by wagglebee.
LONDON, July 15, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The solution to global warming, says a UK charity, is to implement laws that would result in people having fewer children. Governments should put slow pressure on people to limit their offspring to one or two children to save social and environmental resources.
"There is no unlimited right to have children," said the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), the group known to be one of the most militantly anti-life organisations in the world. There is a limit, the Trust said, "on the number of children to which people are 'entitled'."
"A voluntary population policy should be incorporated into law," the group said.....
No Such thing as a Right to Have Babies: Population Trust
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Thread by wagglebee.
Cincinnati, OH (LifeNews.com) -- Yesterday, African-Americans kicked off the 99th annual conference for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Though Barack Obama was on-hand as the first black presidential candidate, black pro-life advocates there said he doesn't represent them.
Several pastors and dozens of black pro-life people, including NAACP members, said the organization shouldn't turn a blind eye to how abortion disproportionately hurts black women.
The protestors included Dr. Alveda King, a niece of the Rev. Martin Luther King who told the Wall Street Journal she knows what abortion does to women -- having had two abortions herself.......
NAACP Convention Sees Black Pro-Life Advocates Condemn Abortion
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In the old days, killing was simply killing, now it is so decorated with words designed to obfuscate, intentionally, it is difficult for the general public to grasp what is happening. Her own father turns his efforts into something noble as if dehydrating a daughter to death was the right thing to do.
News is thin on this case, but it still isn't over
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(AGI) - Rome, 16 July - The Senate Regulatory Committee received a proposal during this afternoon's session from President Renato Schifani to defer to the first permanent committee, Constitutional Affairs, the question of a possible clash of competence to be raised between the Senate and the Court of Appeal over the Eluana Englaro affair. After the committee's investigation the Assembly will decide. In the last few days the motion with principal signatory Francesco Cossiga was presented at Palazzo Madama, which asks the Senate to resolve a conflict of competence against the Court of Appeal concerning the Eluana Englaro case. The vice-group leader of the PDL, Gaetano Quagliariello, noted yesterday that the discussion for the motion will be scheduled in the next meeting of the group leaders to be held on Monday.
ELUANA: SENATE EXAMINES POSSIBLE CLASH OF COMPETENCE
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Sounds like they need it if they accept such rantings as reasonable. I find it interesting that many in the homosexual community stood so boldly and openly on condemning Terri from the time it happened. The rant shows the mindset of our adversaries.
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Our Carmarthen-based zealot was at it again this week. Outraged at the appearance in Britain of Gene Robinson, the American bishop blanked by the CoE because he’s openly gay (as opposed to being secretly gay like dozens of his peers) the Prophet Green of Christian Voice thundered: “It is a sad day when you get a bishop in a church preaching something that God himself called an abomination.”
~Snip~
For 16 years Eleuna Englaro has been in a coma in an Italian hospital. Her father finally won permission to remove the feeding tube that kept his 37-year-old daughter alive. With startling prescience, Eleuna said before the accident that left her a vegetable: “It’s better to die than remain motionless in hospital at the mercy of others, attached to a tube.”
~Snip~
Which brings us to George W Bush, certified born-again buffoon. He was at the forefront in the fight to prevent the removal of a feeding tube from Terri Schiavo, a 39-year-old woman left in a coma for 13 years.
The usual suspects joined in – the Catholic church, the rampant religious right, the pro-lifers – none of whom, as far as I know, protested when Bush, as Governor of Texas, “took it on himself” (in Vaticanspeak) to end the lives of dozens on his state’s Death Row.
If God considers gays an abomination, why did he create them?
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- Affirm ABA opposition to legislation and policies that interfere with a medical provider’s effort to protect a patient’s health, such as the legislative attempts made to direct care in the Terri Schiavo case. (Recommendation 117B)
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Prayer Request for a FReeper and Her Husband [Good news Update in #168!]
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WASHINGTON, DC, July 16, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - David Bereit, the national campaign director for the the 40 Days for Life campaign, has indicated that cities across the country are applying to participate in the upcoming, fall 2008 campaign. Bereit said that the fall campaign "promises to be the largest and longest coordinated pro-life mobilization in history.".............
40 Days for Life Prepares for "Largest Pro-life Mobilization in History"
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CNN reported July 11 that according to the National Institutes of Health, U.S. teen pregnancies in 2006 rose for the first time since 1991. Translation: "One-third of girls in the U.S. got pregnant before age 20."
In the same article, CNN reported a "striking decrease" in the percentage of eighth graders smoking, down from 10 percent in 1996 to 3 percent in 2007.
While federal health experts were at a loss to explain the spike in teen pregnancies, a Centers for Disease Control official said smoking abated due to "efforts convincing kids and adults not to smoke," according to CNN...........
Jill Stanek: Linking U.S. teen pregnancies and AIDS in Africa
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About one thing Aharon Barak, former president of the Supreme Court of Israel, is right: constitutionalismthe imposition by judges of their moral intuitions on an unsuspecting publicis on the rise everywhere. The opinion of Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court in Kennedy v. Louisiana could have been written by an Israeli Supreme Court justice, so lacking was it in anything bordering on coherent analysis.
A five-to-four majority of the court ruled that imposition by Louisiana of the death penalty on Patrick Kennedy for brutally raping his 12-year-old stepdaughter and inflicting internal injuries far too gruesome to describe would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. According to Justice Kennedy, the Constitution contemplates that in the end our [i.e., the justices] own judgment will be determinative. Yet the only argument he offered for why murder, alone of crimes against individuals, may be punished by death is that murder victims are dead. Such profundity is Kennedys trademark.
~Snip~
On June 17, 2006, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts granted the request of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services to cut off the respirator from Haleigh Poutre, an 11-year-old girl who had been savagely beaten by her aunt and stepfather. The court was informed that Haleigh was in an irreversible and permanent coma, with the least amount of brain function that a person can still have and be considered alive...........
Supreme Arrogance The Devolving Value Of Life
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I am posting no updates on Karen Weber because nothing is appearing in the news these days. If anyone else spots something on her, please let me know.
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Please kill me slowly and painfully so I will suffer more than almost any other living thing meeting the end. Please dehydrate me to death slowly, Dad...
Yeah sure, that is what she wanted...
Last Wednesday the civil appeals court in Italy Milan authorized stopping the forced hydration and feeding that has kept Eluana Englaro alive for the past 16 years. The Italian woman has been in a coma since her car accident on January 18, 1992. Her father Beppino Englaro, spoke to Corriere Canadese/Tandem about his reaction to the ruling.
What did you feel when you learned about the court ruling?
I simply felt a great relief because finally the will of my daughter will be respected.
What were her dreams before the accident?............
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