Terry Schiavo and Naked Republican Politics

The Republicans in congress have committed an unforgivable sin. I can tolerate a certain amount of cynicism in our government and I can live with being lied to. What I won’t accept is blatant disregard for the law they are sworn to uphold. This is a representative democracy and when our representatives brazenly disregard our constitution there can be no recourse but to vote the bums out of office. On March 21, 2005, President George W. Bush signed into law a bill passed by the U.S. Congress that morning, which allows the case of Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged Florida woman, to be placed under federal review. This act of interference on the part of Republicans in congress flies in the face of the separation of powers and the right of individuals to make personal decisions without the federal government doing exactly what it’s not supposed to do.

I tend not to cover personal interest stories in my writing space because for the most part, they just don’t pique my interest. I work in a field where I see men, women and children brutalized on a daily basis. I’ve worked with children who’ve seen one parent murdered by another or have been molested, or whom have suffered any number of horrific attacks. One child I remember was beaten about the head by her father with a wrench and needed to have her skull restructured. That little girl is blind in one eye today because of that but you’ll never hear about on the news. When you work in field that deals with man’s inhumanity to man on a daily basis, Lacey Peterson et al. becomes less interesting. The fixation on one particularly horrific case only makes me wonder why that one stands out and not the innumerable ones I see every day. With that said, until today I hadn’t been paying much mind to the tragic Terry Schiavo case. I figured that this matter will flow through our legal system and for better or for worse justice will be done so I felt my time was better spent watching the China-Taiwan situation.

However, as I was watching Studio-B with Shepard Smith today I was drawn into the finer points of the case as they relate to this weekends flash session regarding Mrs. Schiavo. Newshounds.us summed up the segment for me between Smith and Fox News Legal Analyst Judge Napolitano: “At one point Judge Napolitano said that the law that Congress just passed was "Unconstitutional and unprecedented in our history."

Later in the segment Napolitano explained that one of two things would now happen. He said that 1) The law would be declared unconstitutional or 2) The judge would look at everything that the state courts had looked at (which he said would take a considerable amount of time and would offer a temporary reinsertion of the feeding tube) and it would follow the same course that the state law had - it would then go to the Federal Appellate Courts in Atlanta, and to the U.S. Supreme Court. He said this second option would still have the same outcome - the law would be found unconstitutional.”

This is no longer a personal interest story. As of today this has become a story about congressional Republicans and their naked disregard for our laws. The fact of the matter is that Congress had no right to insert themselves into the business of this case. As I have understood it, the law states that where a living will is not present, the legal guardian of an incapacitated person, in this case the spouse, Mr. Schiavo, has the final say over his wife’s medical treatment. In the 15 years since this woman has been in a “vegetative state,” every court that has heard the grievances of Mrs. Schiavo’s family has upheld Mr. Schiavo’s right to ostensibly end her life by removing her feeding tube. No court has found Mr. Schiavo to be conducting the business of his wife’s well-being with malicious intent, which would disqualify him for having a say the decision to keep her alive or not. In the 15 years since this woman collapsed the matter has flowed through our legal system, such as it is, and in every case the finding’s favored Mr. Schiavo’s assertions that indeed Mrs. Schiavo wanted and has the right to die. As a simple matter of legality, this should have been an open and shut case. Once the US Supreme Court opted not to hear the case then the findings of the Florida State Supreme Court become presiding law and the matter is settled.

But the matter is not settled now is it. Christian Conservatives, who in my opinion are no better than the neo-Marxists in the Democrat Party, have decided to insert themselves in the private matters of the Schiavo family. This crowd who purports to be standing up for a, “culture of life” is demanding that their wishes, not the wishes of the legal guardian be met and because of political expediency, the congressional Republicans are too quick to oblige. First off, the whole idea of the Christian Right standing up for a “culture of life,” is so hypocritical I can barely take it seriously. These are the same people who applaud the death penalty rather than standing up for policies of prisoner rehabilitation. These are same people who are ardently against abortion but when the babies are born they turn their back on the mother’s who cannot care for their children in the first place without some assistance. There’s no compassion in these people, only blind ideology to a religion that most don’t know the first thing. It’s a crying shame that Christianity’s most supportive followers aren’t very good Christians to begin with.

What makes them even worse are the cynical politicians in the Republican Party that enable them in our national dialogue. It’s so obvious that this whole episode involving “Terry’s Law” is one giant pander-fest. The congressional Republicans figure since they can’t abolish abortion and they can’t do anything legally about the culture wars, they might as well attempt to satiate the Christian fundamentalist masses by keeping this woman alive in defiance of the laws they’re supposed to be upholding. Normally pandering to ones political base doesn’t bother me but when you manage to supercede the separation of powers that make our representative democracy work then I believe you should lose your job. Those that voted for “Terry’s Law” are bad representatives and I will not be voting for them come the mid-term elections (mind you, I’m a Republican).

This isn’t about my personal beliefs. I personally think Mr. Schiavo is suspect and his motives are suspicious. I believe when his wife’s parents offered to absorb the costs of keeping her alive he should have been gracious and granted them their wish. I don’t want Terry to die and I’m entirely consistent in my beliefs about the sanctity of life. But she isn’t my wife so my opinion, Sean Hannity’s opinion, the Christian Right’s opinion, the Pro-Choice/Right-to-Die Left’s opinion, and certainly the Congress’ opinion have absolutely no bearing on this case. Frankly, her parent’s opinion really didn’t have any place in the discussion but it was their right to try and insert themselves in the process. They were heard and they were summarily dismissed in several US Courts of Law. That’s American justice, for better or for worse. We cannot re-write our laws to accommodate one family and it is criminal to do so in order to curry favor with a bunch of zealous radicals (from either side of the political spectrum).

If I had my way every one of those Congressmen who voted for Terry’s Law would be censured. Unfortunately, according to Judge Napolitano they can’t be. All we can do, as people that actually respect the law and think it should be followed is to vote them out of office in 2006. It has become apparent to me that one party cannot be trusted to have a monopoly over the Federal Government. When that happens you get this sort of nonsense. Since I don’t trust our armed forces in the hands of Democrats, I will gladly vote Congress directly back into their hands at my first opportunity. Democracy isn’t about my personal needs, Terry’s needs or your individual needs; it’s about the greater good of the larger population. When our elected representatives start running amok and changing laws in a cynical attempt to look like they are listening to a fringe element in the national discourse then changes (however painful to me personally) have to be made.

The constitution and the law of the land is above petty politics and our own personal philosophy and should be respected as so.