Under California’s Work Release Program, mental patients* are now able to work on the editorial staff of the LA Times (*either that or it’s Bill Moyers, it’s difficult to tell the difference).
Their latest editorial is such a target rich environment, I don’t even know where to begin. The Times accuses Republican leaders of using the Schiavo case as an “opportunity to appease their radical right-wing constituents”, and “shamelessly interject the federal government into the wrenching Schiavo family dispute.”
By radical “right-wing” they mean anyone this side of Al Gore (including you Joe Lieberman). Now there’s a concept, appeasing your constituents. Democrats ought to try that. They might win more elections. Plus I never thought I’d see the day liberals shun some good old-fashioned government interjection.
The Times even went as far to call this act a “constitutional coup d’etat”. Answers.com defines a “coup d’etat” as “the sudden overthrow of a government”. So as long as you consider a handful of activist judges in Florida the Federal Government, then you’re right. But then again, those were the same guys that tried to deliver Gore a victory in 2000, so you can see their confusion. And to think I thought this is how checks and balances work. Two branches of the government team up to bitch slap the other one when they, you know… like say, try to kill someone.
Then there’s this little nugget: “this case once again shows that some social conservatives are happy to see the federal government acquire Stalinist proportions when imposing their morality on the rest of the country.”
Ah yes, there it is - the obligatory comparison of the Republican Party to a dead dictator. So saving a life is the bureaucratic, authoritarian exercise of state power… but the long slow death of someone by starvation is ok.
They accuse Republicans of “wresting jurisdiction over a right-to-die case away from Florida's judiciary”. And we all know that the right-to-die is outlined in the Declaration of Independence - right after that "life, liberty, pursuit of happiness" mumbo jumbo. Andrea Yates carried out her children’s right-to-die, Ted Bundy oversaw about 40 right-to-die cases, Hitler… well, you get the point.
The Times describes Terri Schiavo as “bedridden for 15 years since she was resuscitated after she stopped breathing, Schiavo now breathes but is incapable of eating or drinking on her own.” And to think we let Christopher Reeve live under these same conditions for almost 10 years. I knew we should have killed him when we had the chance. Preferably sometime before Superman IV.
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The Opinion Journal, Best of the Web, illicits an interesting viewpoint of the disabled:
Some of the most passionate commentary on the Schiavo case has come from people with severe disabilities. One is Harriet McBryde Johnson, who wrote in Slate last week:
I watch nourishment flowing into a slim tube that runs through a neat, round, surgically created orifice in Ms. Schiavo's abdomen, and I'm almost envious. What effortless intake! Due to a congenital neuromuscular disease, I am having trouble swallowing, and it's a constant struggle to get by mouth the calories my skinny body needs. For whatever reason, I'm still trying, but I know a tube is in my future. So, possibly, is speechlessness. That's a scary thought. . . .
I hope against hope that I will never be one of those people in the shadows, that I will always, one way or another, be able to make my wishes known. I hope that I will not outlive my usefulness or my capacity (at least occasionally) to amuse the people around me. But if it happens otherwise, I hope whoever is appointed to speak for me will be subject to legal constraints. Even if my guardian thinks I'd be better off dead--even if I think so myself--I hope to live and die in a world that recognizes that killing, even of people with the most severe disabilities, is a matter of more than private concern.
And here is Mary Johnson, editor of Ragged Edge, a disability-rights magazine:
No; it's not about Terri Schiavo. And it hasn't been for quite awhile.
It's about us.
It's about each of us who thinks "I wouldn't want to live if I were a vegetable." It's about each one of us who thinks, as one blogger wrote, that Michael Schiavo has been "chained to a drooling sh--bag for 15 years."
But it's also about those of us who are those vegetables, those drooling sh--bags. Those of us who want to live but know we're a burden to our families. Those of us who fear "do not resuscitate" orders. Those of us who use ventilators, and who use feeding tubes. And those of us who can communicate with clarity only through artificial means. . . .
There isn't a single disability rights activist I've heard from who is happy that things ended up at such a sorry pass, and who isn't afraid that this will make liberals hate them even more than they now do.
Mary Johnson, by the way, is no Republican; she says she agrees with Michael Schiavo that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is a "snake." And both Johnsons note that among the champions of saving Terri Schiavo was the ultraliberal Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa.
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Go Iowa!
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