(So that's his invocation of Taft-Hartley in 2002... the Texan legislation... Nope, still only need one hand to count the things he's ever done that I've approved of.)

Also, if you read a bit down in the Lean Left posting that Mr. Zielinski cited, I believe it indicates that the charge of hypocrisy is mistaken:

The reason National Right to Life got involved in drafting the Texas law was simple enough: it was obvious that some solution to futile cases had to be found, so they participated in order to make the law as lenient as possible. The 10-day rule was one of the compromises they struck (though in fact facilities had routinely been caring for patients much longer than that while trying to come to arrangements with the families). This is a solution that is necessary - one that even rabid pro-lifers have agreed to, and one that is becoming common across the country. Hospitals simply must have a mechanism to cut off care for hopeless cases - not “severely ill” or “terminal", but literally hopeless cases, patients who cannot improve - when those cases are tying up scarce resources or costing the hospital large amounts of its own money. (Arguably, you ought to cut off care in all futile cases just as a matter of principle, but there is little harm in indulging unrealistic family members as long as they are not overriding the patient’s own wishes and as long as they can pay for their indulgences themselves. When they make demands on other people’s resources or interests, a line must be drawn.)

So if I understand correctly, Bush and pro-lifers agreed that when a patient has no chance of recovery, the hospital shouldn't be required to provide free care forever. But that obviously says nothing about the Schiavo case, where her parents (if I recall correctly) are willing to subsidize her care.

What... what... what? You mean, appeals to the person's wishes, dignity, standards of acceptable life don't count and you HAVE to be kept alive... but if you ain't got the money it's ok to pull the plug?

No, this is not hypocritical. This is... this is worse.

Joy, oh glee.

There's a shred of silver lining in that this case and my grandmother's case has prompted my family to have discussions about our wishes in case anything similar should happen to any of us. Morbid as it may feel, I'm really glad we did.

The Australian government has been widely condemned by human rights advocates for its longstanding habit of incarcerating immigrants in concentration camps in the desert. Now they're adding insult to injury by offering to expedite the release of Muslim immigrants who convert to Christianity.

See the Sydney Morning Herald's report (registration required, see Bugmenot as usual):

"Thirty of Australia's longest-term immigration detainees are having their cases reviewed and could be freed because they have converted to Christianity since arriving. The Federal Government has made the move quietly as it searches for a face-saving way to soften its policy on failed asylum seekers who have been in custody for more than three years, and cannot be repatriated to their countries of origin. It follows strong lobbying efforts by several Government backbenchers, churches and the powerful Family First party for the Government to relax its refugee policy for Christian converts."

Why, no, of course the West isn't engaged in anything remotely resembling a new Crusade against Islam. Whatever could have given you that idea?

If a woman is persistently vegetative, and expressed a prior wish to die if ever in this status, and will die slowly when her loving husband ends her nutrition to respond to her wish, and it's all legal, shouldn't we use physician-assisted suicide as an act of mercy to ease the amount of her suffering before dying?

I'm curious about whether assisted suicide has been considered for Terry; it's probably illegal in Florida.

I guess I sound a little like an armchair philosopher; I'm just trying to come to grips with the thing.

This website has forms for most states: http://uslivingwillregistry.com/default.htm

However, you're wrong in your facts with regard to the Schiavo case: What's being discussed here isn't physician-assisted suicide, it's withholding treatment. Introducing feeding and hydration tubes are intrusive medical procedures; when we contemplated it for my mother, we were told it involved an incision in the stomach. (Well, maybe not an actual incision, but breaking the skin and passing an object through it.)

The difference between withholding treatment and euthanasia is a bright, shining line, even if it appears subtle when we are first introduced to the idea. I think that even religions with strict prohibitions against suicide — such as Catholicism — permit withholding treatment from hopeless cases, and also permit people with terminal illnesses to refuse treatment.

President Bush’s budget calls for a $60 billion reduction in funding for Medicaid over 10 years, a cut, which would worsen the burden that cash strapped states like Alabama are already experiencing. The budget also slashes spending for community development block grants; housing programs for the disabled; low-income heating assistance; and local police forces. The president proposes eliminating altogether the HOPE VI housing program; the rural housing and economic development program; and various education programs for at-risk children. In the case of HOPE VI, the president would retroactively cancel last year’s congressional allocation for the program. The budget would even tighten eligibility for food stamps at a time when the poverty rate is rising by making poor Americans ineligible for the stamps if they receive other forms of assistance unrelated to their nutritional needs.

I dunno how it plays in the big cities, but around here the low-income heating assistance and rural housing and economic development programs are real popular.

And did you like the thing with the food stamps? What was that about feeding tubes, George?

http://www.susiebright.com/stories/quayledick.html

(warning: humor and explicit if unlikely sex...)

Bush was for pulling the plug on hopeless patients who cannot afford to pay. That position is not consistent with pro-life principles, because it makes money the deciding factor, instead of the patient's quality of life. In other words, for Bush, who boasts of being pro-life, it is hypocritical in the extreme. And regardless of Bush's posturing, it's bad medicine. I do understand that we can't afford unlimited medical care, but care should be rationed according to its cost-effectiveness, not by ability to pay.

Now, Bush is against pulling the plug on Terry Shiavo, who is a pathetic exemplar of hopelessness. This is inconsistent with his previous position, piling hypocrisy upon hypocrisy. Even though this intervention is intended to court pro-life voters, it is not pro-life to artificially prolong the misery of someone against her will.

If there is any consistency in Bush's positions, it is that the Futile Care Act was heartless, cruel, and mercenary, while his Schiavo intervention is heartless, cruel, and cynically opportunistic.

Schiavo's care is not being subsidized by her parents. It is paid for by money from a malpractice settlement. Of course, to the Bush administration, this is "lawsuit abuse" and they are against it. If Bush had his way, Terry Schiavo's plug would have been pulled years ago, because there would have been no settlement.

So yes, it's hypocrisy, in spades.

The rationale for the Texas legislation is a bit more complicated than the blogosphere-at-large is making it out to be.

(Although that doesn't make the GOP's stance of Terri Schiavo any less hypocritical, for a myriad of other reasons.)

Maybe I'm just cynical, but when I look at the U.S., I see nothing but a selfish culture (and as far as I'm concerned, that goes for the left just as much as the right). What will it take to create real change in the culture of the U.S.? I think there needs to be a revolution in self-education and community in the U.S. I just wonder if that will ever occur.

(And I'm not trying to start a flame war with these comments. They're just late night ramblings.)

I agree completely. However, Bush and the Texas legislature could have passed a simpler and fairer bill that did not include a means test. Of course, that would have been hard, but we don't elect politicians to do only what is easy.

Yeah, I thought about this because of something I saw on CNN: the Vatican considers removing her feeding tube to be euthanasia:

ROME, Italy (CNN) -- It is rare for Vatican officials to publicly discuss ongoing legal matters.
But in the case of Terri Schiavo -- a brain-damaged America woman who has been kept alive for 15 years -- they have taken the unusual step of harshly criticizing the removal of her feeding tube.
They say the procedure amounts to nothing less than a ruthless way to kill a person.
"It is euthanasia," says Javier Lozano, of the Pontiff's Council for Health.

I guess I was then thinking about the less ruthless of two ways to kill a person; is euthanasia by, say, lethal injection worse than euthanasia by withdrawal of feeding tube?

It starts feeling ugly, though, like "kill one to save twenty" kinds of debates. I guess I'd prefer never to have to know. I feel sorry for you for being in a similar situation with your mother.

My father has already left explicit instructions, though. He says that if he can't function well enough to stay out of the nursing home that we are to take him on his first skydiving experience. If he survives, repeat.

On that Oedipal note, back to machine language datapaths.

Things seem bad now, but the Depression was worse. I hope we don't we don't end up in times like that again, even if it is what it takes to revitalize American society.

My grandparents reacted to the Depression in different ways. Both sides went through some hardship, but not any serious privation that I know of. One side came out with a heightened sense of entitlement, that they had earned the right to live comfortably. The other side came out with a heightened sense of responsibility, that they needed to look out for others. I was fortunate to be close to all my grandparents while growing up. I loved them all. But it was clear that the liberal activist side of my family was the happiest. My mom's mother, bless her, is still going strong at 95. I'm glad I have her as a role model.

Interesting paragraphs from Daily Kos:

"It's important to remember that the latest ABC News poll on the issue clocked conservative support for removing the feeding tube at 54-40. That's a solid majority, among conservatives. Heck, even among evangelicals, there is narrow support for removing the feeding tubes, 44-40.

"What we have here is a Republican Party held captive by a narrow, fringe, extremist part of its base. Your average Republican is looking in horror at the current congressional spectacle. The GOP majority has neatly segued itself into the party of Big Intrusive Government."

In coming years, political historians might look back and try to pinpoint the day or week or month that the Republican Party shed the last vestiges of its small-government philosophy. If and when they do, the week just past should make the short list. For it was in this last week that the Republican-controlled Congress made it clear that it sees no area of American life -- none too trivial and none too intimate -- that the federal government should not permeate with its power.

He says two events are the signals: The Schiavo case, and the baseball-steroid hearings.

It's ironic that George Bush is making me a conservative, and the more conservative I get, the more I hate Bush and the current leadership of the country — who call themselves conservatives.

gracelandwest - Good thing you're not trying to start a flamewar here, because if you were I would tell you to take your superior, patronizing attitude, fold it up until it's all corners, and shove it into an orifice from which things usually only come out of. You're proud to be no longer an American? Fine. I wouldn't want you to risk soiling your precious virtue by hanging around with the rest of us, so why don't you just leave us alone? And I'm sure you must be thankful that your new country, whereever it is, is one that has never had corrupt people in power, and never oppressed anyone — which is to say that it's either (1) imaginary or (2) was founded, like, last Thursday and has barely had time to draw up a flag and stamps and other national stuff, let alone having time to go out and do evil.

This is a very different case from dementia. A demented patient is still there. But there comes a time when this is simply no longer true. I saw my grandmother cross that line. She lived on for six months, staring into nothing with scared eyes which were probably her last expression back when the stroke hit, fed by intravenous tube because she no longer swallowed, slowly curling up in a lopsided fetal position. My mother who lived by her side for all the six months said that once she stayed in the room when the nurses came to wash her and she saw the bed sores. Her spine was visible through them. We do not think she was feeling anything at that point, or at least we hope so. We begged the doctors to stop the IV tube. They came on all indignant to us, telling us that that way she'd die of thirst and that that was a terrible, terrible death. At the end of the sixth months, her veins couldn't take the IV tube any longer, and as a consequence, she did die of thirst. They had to break her bones to lay her flat in her coffin, she had been curled up so long her tendons had atrophied.

Me, there was a point when I would have gladly have removed the tube, pumped her full of morphine, and let her go. I don't think she was in pain, and what dignity she had had the dementia had already taken away years before. But all of us who loved her looked at that body and couldn't help grieve. Even if we knew she wasn't in there any longer. It was like a six months-wake. We were lucky because she was old, the stroke had done a lot of damage, and she only lasted six months.

I wouldn't have dreamed shortening her life when she was wondering around whispering to herself, talking to the ladies in the mirror, or even mumbling anxiously, incomprehensibly in her bed after the stroke. She was like a little lost baby then, and we cared for her, though she was no longer the woman we had known. But in those last six months she was no baby: she was just a breathing corpse.

I'm an American expat too - still a citizen, but living abroad. I know how you feel. I get that way late at night sometimes, too.

A few mitigating circumstances to tell yourself, when you see the country you have loved approaching what looks like meltown, while you're powerless to do anything about it:

1. You still love the place, or you wouldn't be so indignant about what's going on. Remember that. I don't know if you've given up your citizenship, but I chose not to, because it would be a lie: I am still American. I still buy into the dream that made our nation.
2. The story we get overseas is not the full story. Even if we read the online versions of our old local papers, we don't get a feel for the fabric of the nation, which is still overwhelmingly decent and honorable.
3. As Mitch Wagner pointed out, wherever you're living will have its own problems. You might not see them, because as a newcomer you'll see the good things first. But they're there, and if you live there long enough, you'll see them.

As for the Terry Schiavo thing, it's crystallised my desires in a non-medical way. My wishes for after any permanent complete disablement include things like:

• No photos of me in my sickbed to end up all over the Internet
• Everyone who doesn't know me, keep your mouth off my relatives and loved ones
• No matter how bizzare and unique my circumstances, if you make an Abi's Law to cover them, I will spontaneously recover and throttle you
• If you pray for me (and feel free to), follow Matthew 6:5-6 and pray in secret. No street-corner demonstrations of piety, please.

"We are conscious that as a church we are much indebted in our life both to a significant presence of persons of homosexual orientation, and also those whose theology and stance would be critical of attitudes to sexuality other than abstinence outside marriage.

"We rejoice in both."

Thank you, Scottish Episcopal Bishops. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4374249.stm

The family will take it to the U.S. Supreme Court, and I bet those old Justices will feel for Schiavo: they risk to end up like that in a few years (or months), and I don't think they want to hang around much in that condition. The Schindlers will set a "wonderful" amount of precedents, and the fundie schills supporting them will end up doing their cause a very bad service.

Things get worse when you take into account that Quorum Counts must be requested, or Quorum is assumed to exist. Yes, there are reasons not to call for a quorum count when numbers slip too low- but this trick simply makes a mockery of the rules.

Three senators, all republican and a voice vote. Of course it was unanimous. Great precident to set there.

Next, Cassie Bernall ... now, I have no idea why that kid in Minnesota went on a rampage, but go on and completely dismiss Cassie's story is a spin on the truth. What the Columbine gunman actually asked her (if anything) is moot; the information on her spirituality comes from her personal journals. Her father tours churches and uses her own writings and drawings in his messsage.

2. Schiavo -- I wish they had pulled the tube 15 years ago. I ask why it didn't happen then as it now makes this decision difficult on a moral level. But, apart from the specifics of her case, one could argue that this issue now impacts on issues regarding the handicapped. Would someone suggest you could refuse to feed a severly handicapped person just because they were too brain-damaged to feed themselves? I am not trying to make a moral judgment here, I am just tossing out ideas that might be of concern.

I also had to fight them for his morphine.

Dad was intermittently conscious and speaking right up until the end. He knew, and I knew, the day when our last visit came, and we said our goodbyes.

It wasn't the sort of dignified death my husband's family tends to have, but it was worlds better than the lingering semi-life he would have had with the feeding tube. If I could have made his death quicker, instead of weeks on a morphine drip, I think he would have agreed to it. He was looking forward to moving on into eternity.

On the Schiavo case, it's been used by this administration to establish some truly scary precedents. The unanimous voice vote by three Senators is one part. More important is that the Federal government can get involved in what should be a personal decision. It does bear directly on the abortion issue, and points up one of my objections to efforts to ban abortion--that once the precedent of governmental control is set, what can be banned can also be made compulsory. It ties directly to the mindset that engaged in compulsory sterilization of the mentally handicapped, lobotomization of deranged or troublesome people (name that Kennedy!), and winds up with means testing to decide whether to pull the plug on patients who are not beyond hope of recovery. All done for their own good, of course.

What would these same zealots say if asked why they didn't force a ventilator and heart-lung machine to be used to maintain a beating heart in the great modern Republican saint, Ronald Reagan? He had more brain activity than does Terry. Hell--they'd better hook Cheney up right now. With his cardiac history he could go at any time, and we already know that his circle will always choose life. Unless it's life that has no money, or doesn't march to their specific drum.

Sue:

On point 2, I can see where you're coming from. But from all I can gather, this woman isn't handicapped. She's not even there any more. The body is still maintaining, but on purely autonomic functions.

Having said that, there has to be a quicker way than starving to death. Even if she won't feel it, it won't be nice for any of her family to watch.

Alas, with Schiavo, I wish they had let her die when she first suffered the brain-damage.

I think, being in another country, I don't have enough exposure to the whole Columbine thing to understand what's actually been going on with this whole "do you believe on god" stuff. Are people really using that to try and claim persecution?

There's a certain part of the fundie population that still thinks it's the first century and Ceasar is feading Christians to the lions for the amusment of the pagan masses. They apparently haven't notticed the monuments of the ten commandments or churches on every street, godly billboards and Supreme Court Justices talking openly about our laws being Christian in origin. Stories like the "Yes, I Believe" myth is a way for these folks to reinforce their persocution complex. After all, they only make up 70% of the population, so we godless other 30% must be trying to persecute them or we would have happily converted by now and would all be singing hymns and sitting patiently, twiddling our thumbs, waiting for the rapture.

But then I saw a picture of her brain. Her cerebral cortex has liquified. Now I know she isn't suffering, because there's nothing there to suffer with.

My only concern, as a Wiccan Priest, is that her spirit may still be bound to that body. If it is, then it's been in torment for fifteen years, and the parents have been committing the worst of all crimes against her -- as tools of the hypochristians, as someone above has called them.

I've said it before: The Republican Party has become a stinking midden where true conservatives smother in the effluvia of right-wing ideologues.

The Columbine shooters targeted "jocks," by whom they'd been (at least in their view) mistreated. There was one guy early on who they warned to take off before the rampage began. Other than that they shot at random. If Cassie Bernall is a Christian martyr, so is Matthew Shepard (in fact I can make a better case for him).

Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

What he said.

=============

If the question ever arises for me, and there's no reasonable hope of resuming normal mental function, my choice is comfort care only.

Cloak and Classroom

Many social scientists say a new government program will turn fieldwork abroad into spying. Can secrecy coexist with academic openness?

By DAVID GLENN
Chronicle of Higher Education
Section: Research & Publishing
Volume 51, Issue 29, Page A14

In 1995, as the American Anthropological Association debated a revision to its code of ethics, Felix Moos made an argument that was unpopular among his peers. Anthropologists, he said, should be permitted -- indeed, should feel a duty -- to conduct classified research that might help the U.S. government understand global conflicts....

"We have on the Intelligence Committee what I call 'Oh my God' hearings," Mr. Roberts says. "As in: 'Oh, my God, how did this happen?'"

So:

Just what is it that losers and creeps and traumatized youth find so attractive about Hitler?

So is the "all jocks please stand up" an urban myth as well? THAT I did not know.

Just what is it that losers and creeps and traumatized youth find so attractive about Hitler?

My speculation has been that it's a way of getting attention. Worshipping Hitler is outrageous enough that no sane person could ignore it as a serious sign of trouble. Unfortunately, for some reason our society appears to have decided that "he's doing that to get attention" means "ignore him" not "he's crying for help."

One additional thing. In addition to considering this doctor's opinion -- which apparently no other commenter has yet done -- you might want to direct some cynicism towards the "GOP memo" itself. Thus far, no one has explained where it came from; it is not written on Senate letterhead; and the memo's text was mostly copied from a blog posting at the Traditional Values Coalition. That doesn't prove the memo is a fake, but one should definitely take it with a grain of salt. Read here and here for more info.

But you have to give them credit for craft -- they apparently do good work, and carefully, too.

Hitler was kind of a loser and a creep, and traumatized according to some people. And yet he acquired Supreme Power. That's a pretty attractive narrative, to some types.

"Pekin Prattles also reproduces a lengthy journal article by Dr. Cranford (it's mislabeled "Dr. Cranford's complete Terri Schiavo report," but it's obviously a summary article, not a medical report). It's well worth reading. He discusses the series of CAT scans taken between 1990 and 2002 (not just the 1996 one which has been widely reproduced on the net), the EEG evidence over the same time period, and Schiavo's clinical records from her attending physicians - correcting the widespread misapprehension that Schiavo's neurological condition has not been re-evaluated since the 1998 trial."

Now, that is starting to make sense to me.

I'd say that Hitler is attractive to those people because his message is "It's not your fault". Don't have a job? Must be them damn Jewblackmexicanpolishasianitaliancommunistpaganists who are taking them all. It's simple, understandable, easily repeatable, and requires no further effort or investigation on the listener's part. The fact that the evidence isn't credible doesn't make any difference.

It's also a message of comfort e.g. the world isn't random or unpredictable or unfair or scary, the problem is with those [imagine strike-through here, not quite sure why it's not working] body thetans Jewblackmexicanpolishasianitaliancommunistpaganists demons democrats[/strike-through] others. Who needs a philosophy where s**t just happens when you can have one where s**t happens because of a very specific someone?

Although I may be pimping here, check out Disney's propaganda shorts in "On the Front Lines", specifically "Reason and Emotion". Even though it's propaganda (and pretty cringingly sexist), it's a good key into the mindset.

Seriously, even in the comments section of the post you link to he already backs down from some of his more, um, authoritative pronouncements about the Schiavo CT.

If I'd written that memo, I'd say anything to try to disavow it now, too. Do tell, Jack. Who's responsible for it--Vince Foster?

Still less gently: sometimes, that lone voice crying in the wilderness is out there alone because he's an idiot. I can't say for sure in this case-- I've never met the man-- but I will say that if I get hit by a bus, I really hope someone else is on duty at the ER that day.

Every legal and medical detail of Terri Schiavo's case has been scrutinized, repeatedly and in detail, continuously, for years. No one involved would dare make an unconsidered decision. Nevertheless, the legitimate court system decided that, on the basis of the evidence and the law, the appropriate action was to go along with the removal of the feeding tube.

Are you objection to adjudication by evidence, adjudication by law, or both? I'm curious.

There is no case to be made for ignoring Terri Schiavo's wishes and her physical condition. The only way to make one is by lying. This current congressional media stunt is the only way to circumvent the legitimate court system. And even after said stunt had been pulled, and the case thrown into the federal courts, pray notice that they quickly arrived at the same conclusions as the state courts.

This case is yet another patch of astroturf. Y'all are being suckered.

Here's the hard truth: Terri Schiavo's cerebral cortex is gone. It has ceased to be, it has expired, it has been replaced by cerebrospinal fluid. It is neither stunned, nor resting, nor pining for the fjords. Its total non-functionality is not due to its being tired and shagged out following a prolonged squawk, and it wouldn't twitch if you put four million volts through it, because it simply isn't there.

Nobody comes back from that.

As for that GOP memo, I sincerely doubt that the Washington Post printed the story without checking it out first.

One of the Schindlers' 'experts' was recently disciplined by the Florida Dept. of Health for employing unproven treatments on his patients. Nice work.

By the way Gov Jeb Bush in his press conf today after the 11th Cir turned the appeal down 10-2, hinted he may send in the Fl Law Enf. Dept. to grab Schiavo and have the tube reinserted. He's found a Christian neurologist who claims that she's not in a persistent vegitative state.

And the FL Senate turned down the latest iteration of Terri's law 21-18. 9 Repubs voted with the sane ones.

I tried, I really tried to do the href sort of thing, and couldn't get it to work. This is the address for the disciplinary action against Hammesfahr.

The precedent that three Senators, voting at midnight, can have a bill on the President's desk and signed into law by the next morning.

Terry Schiavo the "person" no longer exists; but the body is a living organism. It gives the parents some (partly delusional) consolation to care for and visit the body. If they're willing to assume the cost and responsibility of maintaining it, this does no harm to "Terry Schiavo," who is already gone.

Aside from the larger issue that perversion of the United States legal system is immoral, I see these moral questions:

a) Would allowing the parents to assume custody of the body do harm to the husband, who is a living human being with legal rights and connection to the person who has passed on?

b) Would allowing the parents to maintain Terri's body be disrespectful to the will of Terry Schiavo, who, from all evidence, would not have approved of this after she was no longer there to occupy her body.?

c) [a more finicky issue which I, as someone who tries to avoid killing any living thing, have some sympathy with]: The organism may be sensitive to pain and discomfort on some level. Starving it to death may induce a traumatic experience that it feels on some level. If someone is willing to assume financial and physical responsibility for maintaining the organism, perhaps this isn't such a terrible thing. Why kill a large, breathing creature if you don't have to -- and its continued existence causes you no hardship?

Unfortunately, those issues are bound together with a bunch of other ones:

a) Intelligent people are appalled by the sense of delusion around the case exhibited by those who buy into the idea that "Terri is still there and might someday be saved." The operative instinct here is that it's more ethical and compassionate to make ignorant people face hard facts about life and spirit than to allow them to indulge in fantasies.

b) Political monsters are capitalizing on the case to inflict damage on the United States legal system -- which ultimately harms all of us. These monsters are using the case as a prop in their ongoing platform of cultivating ignorance and superstition as the best way they know to maintain their political power.

As far as the arguments in favor of the parents assuming custody, the courts have already decided against them in a reasonable way -- after considering rational medical evidence.

If something in the hearts of a large number of people says the decision of the courts is wrong, I think this needs to be addressed in a way that tempers justice (for the Terry Schiavo who is now gone) and mercy (mostly mercy for the parents) without abandoning rationality -- and mercy for the husband.

Bush, Delay, and the congress members who "passed" that stupid bill aren't helping.

"My party is demonstrating that they are for states' rights unless they don't like what states are doing," said Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut, one of five House Republicans who voted against the bill. "This couldn't be a more classic case of a state responsibility."

"This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy," Mr. Shays said. "There are going to be repercussions from this vote. There are a number of people who feel that the government is getting involved in their personal lives in a way that scares them."

From today's NY Times. (reg reqd)

It'll be interesting to see whether or not he gets targeted by the god squad after shooting his mouth off.

What's interesting is that the Nobel Foundation doesn't announce nominees, either before or after the prize is awarded.

So what's the basis of his claim? "Hammesfahr said he was nominated for the prize by Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Bilirakis, who wrote a letter to Stockholm recommending the doctor for the honor several years ago." (St. Petersburg Times) Mike Bilirakis isn't on the Nobel nominating comittee, so his opinion with the Nobel Foundation carries the same weight as mine. Anyone want to be a Nobel Prize nominee? I'll fire off a letter to Stockholm right away.

Given what Buonaparte did to Russia, this was exactly the 19th century equivalent of having a Hitler fixation.

Right on the money in re "ignore", but needs to be expanded just a little - first we ignore them, then we punish them. If they're dead, we punish people like them, or who might be like them, if they get the chance. This guarantees an endless supply of tragedies for public mourning, and an endless supply of targets for ritualized state-sponsored vengeance. Actually taking preventative measures would be counterproductive, in addition to being hard work, for the Establishment. (Thus Bushco talking in the runup to the elections about how they were going to respond to crime by making tougher sentences, as if that would restore the dead.)
----
Italian poster gilgamesh has, btw, tied the Schiavo backers to our old friends of the Hegemony, the Scaife Foundations, in a comprehensive post I have bookmarked because not had the time to dig through. But it is sure to be interesting.

This is *not* new in conservativism, of course. Terry Schaivo is quite simply the godsend replacement for Karen Ann Quinlan, for whom as a young theocon I prayed nightly until she finally died of pneumonia as her body gave out. Back then, it was her parents who were the demons, for wanting her disconnected from the respirator...

They're at the top of the main page, the two articles designated as "early release." They're both pdf format; one's by a doctor and one by a lawyer/MPH. They're also both open-access, which is unusual for the NEJM editors. They reserve that status for items they think are very important.

Claiming Terri will regain use of her mind is akin to ancouraging belief that someone whose arm has been amputated at the elbow could regain use of their hand.

These people want a miracle. Not an everyday miracle. Not a saint-level miracle. (There must me a word for that, but I don't know it.) No, they want a full-blown Jesus miracle. There have been billions of people on the earth since the death of Christ and, to my knowledge, not one of them has gotten a miracle on the level the Schinders are asking for. But they have no humility about it, no sense of the awesomeness of power that it would take for their daughter to be returned to them.

All they are showing is petty anger, at their son-in-law, the courts, the doctors... Wrapping themselves in religious righteousness, not having reached the point where they realize that their anger should be aimed at God, and that only in forgiving Him will they be able to find peace.

If the Schindlers were willing to say "We know our daughter's case is hopeless, but we want a chance for a miracle," I might be sympathic to their cause. But this denial of the medical truth, the reality of their daughter's condition is to me the saddest part of the story.

And watching this saga unfold, I am not surprised that the daughter of these parents died of a fatal eating disorder.

If you want a Jeff Gannon doll, if you give 'em $450 and a couple of photos they'll make one for you, no problem.

Now that's a serious action-figure kink.
Because for that kind of money, you can rent Gannon in the flesh.

(Sorry, but I've been waiting since the afternoon to mention that. Carry on.)

The question I had about his alleged Nazi admiration is not "How can someone admire Hitler?", as "How can someone Hitler would condemn as subhuman admire Hitler?"

Scary as it is, I could see the appeal in admiring a dictator, or in the lazy morality of blaming some group for the ills of the world. But as soon as it hits the point where one of the people being blamed IS YOU, I can't see the appeal.

Or did nobody ever mention to him that while Jews were the most persecuted, anyone not "Aryan" white (Or Japanese) was on the list?

It's an idea that occurred to me here due to the presence in these halls of Jo Walton, since I just a few weeks back read _Tooth and Claw_...

On the other hand, repeatedly stated but non-willed requests for the disposition of property seem to mean nothing legally; witness the continuation of Roger Zelazny's Amber books. So I suppose it's a very good sign that a person's ownership of her body is in a different class.

And it fits with the typical Republican ethos these days that they're trampling over themselves in their eagerness to trample Terri Schiavo's property rights.

As I understand it, from the articles I've seen today, Jeff Weise was against racial mixing. He was apparently very critical of inter-racial marriages and the loss of Native languages. I presume that he felt that a National Socialist government would force like to marry like, therefore stopping further dilution of Native bloodlines with 'other' peoples' contributions.

Whether he went beyond that to the 'purify the planet of all non-Aryans' part isn't an issue any longer.

There have also been a couple cases about property rights in sperm like this current one.

So what "owning your own body" means and what rights you then have (right to sell a kidney for medical research? right to sell a kidney for transplant? right to have an abortion? right to clone yourself?) are still poorly-defined legally.

As for Chris Shays, he's already under watch for publicly denouncing the DeLay ethics rule changes earlier this year. Here's one of the early posts about the issue by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo. Marshall later named all the members who said they opposed the rule change the Shays Handful. Keep in mind that Shays is from Connecticut, so appearing unhandcuffed to his party's leadership may be a good thing electorally.

Neither are you or any of the commenters one of Terri's physicians. That does not seem to stop anyone from giving an opinion about the CT scan images or anything else. Are you intending to imply that bloggers and commenters can freely comment on Terri's medical condition, except if they're a doctor themselves? I'm not sure I grasp that standard.

True, the pro-life side in this case is also rarely able to see that some people sincerely believe that the judicial process has spoken, and that Schiavo no longer really exists in any meaningful fashion. They also are unable to acknowledge that this is a difficult moral issue.

Are you intending to imply that they can't?

I'm not sure I grasp that standard.

That "doctor" or whatever he is, is presenting raving speculation as if it were professional judgement. Where are his standards?

Pro-Schiavo? Don't you mean pro-Schindler?

I'll give you that the Schindlers are perfectly sincere and genuine. But they're not primarily motivated by "worry about creating a slippery slope." Let's be real. The Schindlers are nuts. As such, they are part of Bush's core demographic. The politicians who are taking advantage of this are not worried about slippery slopes either. Or do you think it's really necessary to gut the Constitution, separation of powers, and states rights, in order to ensure that people's bodies will stay on life support forever? If you do, you're being played.

Ahem. "pro-Schiavo"? The other side is also "pro-Schiavo"; they want to preserve her right to control her own destiny. This might be the start on a "slippery slope" if it were some kind of precedent-setting decision; it's not, it's a routine application of long-existing law.

For anybody still interested in this, I recommend reading the original trial court ruling (PDF) which has some information I hadn't seen in any of the news stories I read.

Yes, some individual people on the pro-Schindler side are sincerely motivated. Some are, but are basing their attitudes on interpretations of the findings as incorrect as your doctor's. But the ones with the current political clout seem not to be the ones praying, nor the ones worried about euthanasia-slippery-slope. It's George W. Bush and Karl Rove we're worried about, not a sincere Catholic.

(1) I give the U.S. Supreme Court credit, today, for not giving a political plum to the President they appointed, but actually following Law.

(2) I cannot separate my disgust for the congresscritters who followed the GOP Talking Points from any rational thoughts.

(3) There is no Terri Schiavo, and has not been for a long time. This is like a battle for a cryonically frozen corpse. It is the flip-side of Tom Disch's "Wings of Song."

(4) Mr. Schiavo suffers the defamations that he's doing this for the money (he only has $30,000 or so left from the medical malpractice judgment), and of the local Catholic dogmatic who asserts that this is a bad husband because he's being unfaithful to his wife with another woman.

(5) I basically agree with Mary Root that the Schindler's are horribly irrational, verging on insane, from a greedy faith that demands Jesus-Class miracles -- is there a Richter scale for these?

(6) However, the family is deeply victimized by their traumatic memories, and unable to approach rationality, and require loving professional treatment. See:
Emotional Memories Function In Self-Reinforcing Loop
DURHAM, N.C. (March 8, 2005) -- Researchers exploring the brain structures involved in recalling an emotional memory a year later have found evidence for a self-reinforcing "memory loop" -- in which the brain's emotional center triggers the memory center, which in turn further enhances activity in the emotional center.

The researchers said their findings suggest why people subject to traumatic events may be trapped in a cycle of emotion and recall that aggravates post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They said their findings also suggest why therapies in which people relive such memories and reshape perspective to make it less traumatic can help people cope with such memories.

The paper by Florin Dolcos, Kevin LaBar and Roberto Cabeza, was published online February 9, 2005, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This case has actually made me yell at the radio. Mrs. Schindler was on there, tearfully saying "Please don't let my daughter die of starvation!" I yelled "Your daughter died of a heart attack fifteen years ago, you selfish, deluded bitch!"

Of course, I would not have done that had she actually been present. I didn't actually feel too good about it even though I was alone in my apartment. But these lunatics have been torturing their daughter's breathing corpse for a decade and a half. If they ever deserved our sympathy, that time is past. Now they just have to be stopped.

I also think that they know perfectly well how young women get eating disorders. They don't want to acknowledge that her death (15 years ago) was their fault. Hence the demonization of Michael Schiavo - can you believe the Schindleristas are attacking him for being unfaithful to Terri? My gods, what a lot of wrthlss crwlng scmbgs.

Where exactly is the morality here? "People should be kept hooked up to life support forever, on the absolutely faintest remotest chance that they might miracuously get better"?

If someone wants that to happen to them, if they don't ever want anybody to pull the plug, then that's their right. They can leave instructions to that effect. Terri did not want that, so I don't see how her case makes a good example.

I do, on the other hand, feel physically ill when I think about the other strangers to this family who have used this matter for their own benefit.

More generally, what seems to be missing from the discussion above is any acknowledgment that the pro-Schiavo people (citizens, not politicians) are perfectly sincere and genuine in their worry about creating a slippery slope towards the euthanization of anyone deemed too disabled. ...

Well, first off, I object to your characerization of the people who want to keep Terri Schiavo alive as "pro-Schiavo" and "pro-life." The people seeking to withdraw life support believe they are pro-Schiavo, acting in her interests, by seeing to it that her wishes are carried out.

Secondly, I'm quite frankly skeptical that there is much sincerity in the pro-feeding crowd, outside of Terri Schiavo's immediate family. Certainly there isn't much sincerity in the Florida Governor's Mansion, and in Washington D.C.

But on to the most important point you raise: Euthenasia is indeed a terrible thing, and that is why we draw a line between withholding treatment and inducing death, and why we struggle to comply with the patient's wishes, even in the absence of a living will or other clear-cut evidence of what those wishes are.

At the very least, the State of Florida, which has so firmly declared itself to be pro-life, should quickly abolish their own death penalty. I'm looking forward to seeing Jeb Bush making his position clear in the near future.

As far as withholding essential care, I'm also looking forward to a complete overhaul of the Veterans' Administration hospital system.

But hey, they're so much fun and so easy to do, let’s imagine the hellish slippery slope we might find ourselves on if keep developing technologies to keep people alive and require their use. In my story the heroine (er, victim) is named Sibyl of Cumae…

Or maybe I’m just being a Cassandra?

End of Life Issues III

This life at any cost position comes from a Catholic view of life. I’m not Catholic and don’t particularly have anything against Catholics but I think they should be free to practice their religion without forcing it on me. If Sean Hannity wants to torture his family members with feeding tubes and ventilators when they are nearing death that’s his choice. If I want my family to withhold treatments I don’t want some plastic Pope in a Pope mobile cog-wheeling his wizened hand and telling them they can’t. That’s not to say I think what is happening to Terri Schiavo is right, it’s not. The problem with this whole thing is not that she is being starved but that the tube was allowed to be put in in the first place. These types of problems are not uncommon to encounter in my job. Sometimes families take little steps in the hopes that their loved one will get better. Let me be very clear on this issue. A FEEDING TUBE IS NOT A LITTLE STEP. A feeding tube is extraordinary care and putting it in is a far cry from pulling it out.

I am not a Catholic myself, but I was raised as one, and the more I am exposed to some other Christian denominations, the better my opinion of the Catholic Church becomes. But even if it were not so, the display of anti-Catholic feeling I sense, evidenced in this as in other instances, in US society, is frankly apalling.

Ted -- the slippery slope is not a "logical fallacy" in any relevant sense. It has been true throughout history that a social change at a given time often leads people to become accustomed to that change, and thus to tolerate further change in that direction in the future. That's an empirical argument, not something out of symbolic logic.

Besides, is this really a trend setting case? If the top third of your head goes missing and your loved ones tell the doctors to let you go, does the federal government usually get involved? As far as I can tell, this a case with some interesting emotional buttons that are being pushed hard by people who normally could care less about your or my continued survival.

There are people I respect who have what they call a "consistent pro-Life ethic." They oppose both abortion and the death penalty. As, btw, does the Roman Catholic Church as a whole. I disagree, but they aren't being hypocritical.

Bush & Co. are. Bush even signed the bill allowing people in Texas to be disconnected from life support even if they want to live. See, you don't have a right to life if you can't pay your hospital bills, not in his view. Hypocritical scumbag.

But about the death penalty: if it's wrong to kill another human being, it's wrong and that's that. That is, in fact, what I believe. I'm a relativist, so it can be LESS wrong to kill them than not to, but only if they pose an immediate threat: it's still wrong to kill someone in self-defense, but less wrong than letting him kill you; it's wrong to shoot the gun-wielding teen through the forehead, but less wrong than letting him go on killing his classmates.

I don't think a 4-week fetus is a human being. Sorry, I just don't. I think Terri Schiavo is something that used to be a human being, and is now a hideous travesty of humanity. If Florida law would allow shooting her up with a lethal dose of morphine, I think that would not only not be wrong, it would be kind and just and merciful.

I deeply, deeply hope she - it, really - will die before her crazy parents find some conniving political entity to let them go back to torturing her to salve their guilty consciences.

Testimony of Fr. Murphy at p. 17.

http://www.miami.edu/ethics/schiavo/Testimony%20of%20Father%20Gerard%20Murphy.doc

Why don't we blame the Jews? After all, according to some authorities, we're to blame for pretty much everything.

I was once a little catholic boy whose dad explained that people were afraid to vote for JFK, because he might run the country under orders from the Pope. But I figured Kennedy was an American and would support the First Amendment, so I wasn't afraid. Do the Schindlers believe in the First Amendment? Does the Pope? Maybe it doesn't matter if the ones now sworn to preserve and defend the Constitution don't.

You’re wrong about calling me a bigot. I work with a Physician who is closely associated with the Vatican and is very active in the Catholic Church. I often attend Mass with him. We have had long talks about this issue and the Catholic position on issues of life and death. This doctor always signs off care of patients to me when they enter hospice because his religious beliefs do not allow for comfort care only. The position he takes is that life must go on at any cost. You do every invasive procedure necessary to keep the person alive as long as possible whether the patient wants it or not. There may be other religious people and denominations who take this same view. I was not saying the entire argument was being pushed by just Catholics but it certainly is a Catholic value.

I am uneasily and sickeningly aware that the last man hanged in Australia - Ronald Ryan - might not have been guilty as charged. That was in 1964(?), and the death penalty was formally abolished in all States and Federally a decade later, all governments quietly commuting all death sentences in the interim.

The thing is, in 1964 huge crowds demonstrated against the death penalty. It had become very rare in Australia during the previous few decades. Ryan's hanging was made a political issue by the Victorian (state) government of the day, and it was hurled from office at the next election.

I understand that although the death penalty is opposed by many in the US, there is not that groundswell of popular revulsion. For I can tell you that despite the occasional outpouring from someone aggrieved beyond rationality, it's a dead issue here. It's gone forever, and it'll never come back so long as there is elected government here.

I wonder what the difference is?

Myself, I blame the Jews for Dark Matter. I figure that's what they wanted the blood of Christian children for. Now what've we got? A universe where we can't account for all the damn gravity!

Of course, that was trillions of years before Judaism, or even humans, were even a glimmer in the eye of the universe. Which just proves how clever they are!

"We realized that you simply need to add this new key ingredient, the ripples of spacetime generated during the epoch of inflation, to Einstein's General Relativity to explain why the universe is accelerating today," Riotto says. "It seems that the solution to the puzzle of acceleration involves the universe beyond our cosmic horizon. No mysterious dark energy is required."

I know, I know, bear with me here

--what kind of medical technology would that require?

Cloning, perhaps?

Stem-cell research and manipulation?

Whoo-hoo! Glad to know Prez Bush is in favor of all that stuff now!

The Schindlers have a "religious advisor", a Brother Rasputin or some such, some kind of member of a Catholic religious order. He's often speaking to the media, appearing on cable talk shows, etc.

He kinda creeps me out. I have to wonder what kind of fantasy talk he's been feeding to the parents.

People have gotten by with lower than normal amounts of cortex.

But the atrophy of Schiavo's cortex, combined with the flatline EEG, certainly suggests that what she still has left isn't doing anything.

This just goes to show how wrong I've been all this time, blaming gays for everything.

Nichole of the Cool Name: --what kind of medical technology would that require?

A dead white chicken, still bleeding, 6 tablets One-A-Day Vitamins, 2 cups SpinalFluidCornstarch(r)(tm), and someone with a whole lot more gall than me to take the money and still explain to the bereaved how it was their "lack of faith" that kept God from cuisinarting all that into a new human brain, complete with the deceased's memory wrinkles.

Yeah, anti-Catholic bigot.

Prolonging physical life at any cost, regardless of the patient's wishes, is not now and never has been "a Catholic view of life."

See also: http://www.calvaryhospital.org/

The Church has never required aggressive treatment until the end, or disapproved of withdrawing all but comfort care in terminal cases. Azygos's friend has some idiosyncratic beliefs about this issue - he's not reflecting official Catholic doctrine.

This doctor always signs off care of patients to me when they enter hospice because his religious beliefs do not allow for comfort care only.

Is just not true.

Not only is comfort care allowed, it is required. The Catholic Church supports Terminal Sedation. (This doctrine goes back to Kant; I haven't read the original, only discussion on his duty ethic and how it relates to end-of-life care.)

And I would have been shocked had the Supreme Court chose to intercede. The opinions in this matter should be seen as clear in the cases Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco v. Quill.

There is no slippery slope here. Legally and ethically cessation of treatment is quite distinct from euthanasia or physician assisted suicide.

The dragging back to of gains made and understandings developed in industrial relations, "women's rights", social balance, sexual behaviour, gender, environmental & sustainability issues, etc., has been one of the most distressing trends of recent years. I've been pointing out that the attitudes & re-arrangements that people are calling "back to the 1950s" are actually closer to the 1850s.

Unfortunately, the reviews of the last millenium or two that we saw back in 1999/2000 showed that there were times when a whole lot of good done over a few decades, or a century or two or more could be happily wiped out, leaving all the suffering & struggle to go through all over again. With my energy failing, I can certainly understand how some might be very deeply depressed at the prospect.

No, no, you're not wrong. Remember that there are gay Jews. (And if you meet a nice gay Jewish boy, give him my email address, wilya?)

Besides, gays really are to blame for some things. Modern computer science (Alan Turing), for one thing. The music to West Side Story (Leonard Bernstein) for another. I'm sure you can think of other horrible examples.

;-)

I always thought it interesting that the Turing Test for intelligence is based on the ability to "pass" as human.

Alex - I've often said that I can pass for human in dim light.

Also, "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," which was a really good show for the first 1-1/2 seasons or so but Just Won't Stop, like an aging queen still prancing around in the mesh tank top and chaps that he looked great in 40 years ago.....

I've been listening obsessively to the soundtrack of "De-Lovely." The music of Cole Porter had, until then, been recorded and performed so many times that it had descended into aural wallpaper, stuff you hear but never listen to. I'm amazed at how powerful — and subservice — the music really is.

That was supposed to read "subversive," right?

but of course!

Besides, gays really are to blame for some things.

Sadly, I, personally, am to blame for none of them. Or anything comparable.

Now I pretty much have it. Time to start singing praises to Ganesha again.

Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine...in pace.

It's not like they take roll call in Church, either. If she didn't take Communion for two years, it could be because she was conscious of a serious sin on her soul that would prevent her from doing so. Lack of faith isn't the only reason.

Furthermore, you don't just give up being Catholic. Baptism puts a permanent mark on your soul. No matter what you do, or don't do, believe, or don't believe, Baptism remains.

Given the number of high-end physicists who fled Germany as a result of Hitler's rise to power, it's probably safe to assume their involvement.

Speak for your own soul, mister. Circumcision leaves a permanent mark; my baptism washed off just fine. No matter what you or anyone may care to believe.

I realize your remarks were in the context of people presuming to judge whether someone else was lapsed. I don't judge whether she died a Catholic on the basis of her history, and I equally stand against such a judgement made by others. If it is a doctrine of someone's faith that she was or was not Catholic, then that is only relevant to her faith if she believed that doctrine.

My family is about 50% gay and completely Jewish, but unfortunately they're all either lesbians or partnered. Sorry, Xopher.

I can also respect those sincere and determined people who will find all human life sacred and worth preserving. I find many of them to be guided more by sensibility than sense, but we do need to be constantly mindful of the value of life, and to be careful of the results of our actions and their consequences--not just personally but in public policy as well. I cannot include Randall Terry or the Bush brothers among these people.

Also, if her family are sincere and convinced Christians, what reason do they have to fear Terri Schiavo's death? Do they doubt the judgment of a merciful and loving God? Do they, in spite of their claims of belief, fear that death really is the end of all things? I can understand a Christian with qualms about committing actions that might result in someone's death [although not enough people who claim to be Christians these days exhibit such qualms, IMO]. I am highly confused by supposed Christians who persist in acting as if the death of the body was the worst possible outcome for themselves or those they love.

This is tied about in an attack on the rule of law and the power of courts only in as much as courts, like the determination of facts, are a way of deciding questions collectively. (No one has any facts in their head -- some of those things might represent facts, but the thing that makes a fact is its independence from any particular person's mind, on the one hand, and the brain stores everything as belief. Which is why no question of faith -- the experienced faith, not the material claims associated with a faith -- can be addressed factually.)

If facts are accepted -- as they generally have been since steam engines went into wide use -- they're a constraint on authority (we counted and measured and that policy doesn't work), a constraint on dogma and doctrine (the earth is old, life evolved, man is a variety of chimp, nothing human has access to absolutes because the universe we've got has error bars), and a constraint on the perception of possibility (liquefied cortex doesn't grow back).

I find that active attack on the idea of facts disturbing not in a they-must-be-crazy way, but in a "well, that has rather been the long term historical default" way.

Facts mean taking twenty years of working professional life and admitting you got it wrong, facts mean not getting what you most want, and facts mean giving up the idea that you don't need -- really, seriously, die-without-them NEED -- other people, including the people you don't like and don't agree with.

Facts also mean an ever-expanding amount of access to choice -- material comfort and security, capability, and the possibility of real peace, a peace not made out of the resignation of peasants and shift workers to their fate -- but a very great many people will pick the stories and the things that ought to be true over what can be weighed and measured and calculated.

It's a mistake to think that there's a common set of abstractions, a common measure of what is good and desireable, between the groups which accepts the utility of facts and the groups which do not.

Thank you to Linkmeister and Rich McAllister for posteding links to the NEJM and the court transcript pdfs. I avoid the news because I am "an oversensitive chick" as a friend of mine calls me and I get overwhelmed and depressed easily by bad news. Because of my hiding from the news I had never heard of this case until last week when it burst like a bomb of hatred and rage all over the messageboard I moderate.

Reading those files really helped me make some sense of what is going on and where the posters are getting expressions like "she's not ill, she's disabled" and "err on the side of life."

Someone suggested today that they raid the hospice, kidnap Terri Schiavo and bear her off to another country for treatment so she can be rehabbed and get her life back far from her murdering husband. Sigh. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Q_ How would you define, Father Murphy, a practicing Catholic?

A Off, that's a tough one.
Q Let me rephrase it. Does the church have any particular definition of what a

17
practicing Catholic is?

A Certainly. We have what we call Easter duty, which means sometime from Lent to Trinity Sunday, in that three or four month window, a Catholic is required to receive holy communion. If necessary, confession. Catholics are mortally bound to assist at mass. Attend mass every Sunday. Every holy day of obligation. Certainly those are all criteria for a practicing Catholic.

Q If Theresa Schiavo had not taken communion over a two year period before her medical incident and not participated in confession, would she be considered by the church to be a practicing Catholic?

A Not according to the criteria. No. Practicing, no.
_______________________________

In one sense, it puts the lie to the parents' contention that Theresa was a devout Catholic and would not have wanted her feeding tube removed.

She may not have wanted the feeding tube removed, but not because she was a devout Catholic. And as the Court held, the evidence was clear and convincing that she did not want to be kept alive by extraordinary measures. So the parents' lost that fight as well. I am sorry for them, but I am angry that they are putting all of us through this terrible spectacle. And that the cable news networks are descending to rank yellow journalism not seen since the Spanish American War.

This is evil.

The Schiavo case naturally highlights the ongoing cultural struggle in the U.S. between rational thought (the heritage of scientific and social progress) and superstition (the ignorance and fear of neglected and undereducated segments in our population).

But underneath that, I'm increasingly afraid that the Bushes, Cheney, Delay, et al., really will force all of us to test the viability of their "Animal Farm" conspiracy. (I'm still hoping that things won't come down to one of Graydon's pessimistic scenarios -- believing in the basic decency of most people, the reluctance of police and armies to follow criminal orders, and the ability of reason and common sense to prevail against liars and their victims.)

We'd better keep talking to the victims, though, and not fall asleep.

This is a bit simplistic.

From what I've read, the "other side" sees this as a cultural struggle between decent life-valuing folk and immoral, materialistic opportunists.

What the REAL struggle is is between people who believe in due process, the rule of law, seperation of powers, and checks and balances and people who see government as a tool for advancing their agenda.

I think law and pluralism are winning. The polls clearly show that the public is disgusted at the government intrusion into the Schiavo's affairs, an the right is terribly divided. I am really enjoying the squirming of various bloggers and journalists.

The "life-valuing folk" are misled by liars who use the trappings of authority to cover ill-formed pronouncements. The liars have louder megaphones in the media. The "life-valuing folk" don't always take the time to find opinions from someone who knows what they're talking about. (Those opinions are out there, but "life-valuing folk" don't always find them.)

In the meantime, some "life-valuing folk" are not able to identify who the immoral, materialistic opportunists really are. This is the basic fuel used by your people who see government as a tool for advancing their agenda -- to cover lies and rally support for antisocial actions. I believe one component of the successes that Bush, Delay, et al., achieve at the polls is based on stirring up distrust and resentment in "regular folk" for "smart folk."

Recognizing that there are people smarter than you and learning to separate what they say from what conmen and well-meaning laymen say is part of growing up and participating in a rational society. Respect for the laws of a rational society is another part of it.

I share your concern about the attempts by current placeholders in the Executive and Legislative branches of the Federal government to undermine law and due process -- by painting law and due process as unjust. But I'm also concerned about their other attempts -- to undermine respect for science and rationality by preying upon susceptibility to superstition.

As to the relevance of whether Terri Schiavo had taken communion in her last 2 years, I'm with Graydon--I assumed the point was what that implied about her priorities.

That, however, begs the question as to what the proper determiner of someone's religion is: church doctrine or the person's belief. It's somewhat akin to Syria's refusal to allow a change in nationality even after the person has moved elsewhere and got a new passport; in both cases one is positing an extrinsic, invisible marker that somehow overrides not only the person's individual choice but their actions and their recent history (as well as any normative viewing of their life).

[And no, no further comparison between the Catholic Church and the country of Syria are meant or implied.]

To be clear: I believe that James Macdonald is correct as a matter of Catholic doctrine. What hasn't yet been addressed is whether that's actually applicable (or even meaningful) here.

"Earlier, Pinellas Circuit Judge George Greer rejected the family's latest motion. The family claimed Schiavo tried to say ''I want to live'' hours before her tube was removed, saying ''AHHHHH'' and ''WAAAAAAA'' when asked to repeat the phrase."

I've heard of denial before, but this is ridiculous. Have these parents completely disconnected from reality? Have they just decided that all the doctors and the CT scans and EEGs are *lying* and their daughter's cortex really hasn't liquified? Someone commented earlier that the parents were essentially asking for a Jesus-sized miracle. I actually think that implies too much rationality in their case. They don't think they need a Jesus-sized miracle, because as far as they're concerned, her brain is just a little damaged, and she can still hear and understand them (and *speak*, for god's sake!) and everything would be fine and dandy if these ignorant doctor and legal types would just leave her alone. I'm sure it's that much harder to let go when you have someone in front of you who looks just like the person you loved moving and vocalizing randomly, but still after fifteen years you'd think that reality would have set in...

This situation is sad enough without the political manipulation. And now a whole movement is aiding and abetting the Schindler's irrational denial of Schiavo's condition.

(Btw, this is my first post on your blog, Teresa, though I've been reading it for a while now, so hello ;)

And she will be cremated -- no longer against Church doctrine, if anyone's wondering -- and buried in the (presumably Catholic) cemetery in Pennsylvania where Michael's family has a plot and relatives nearby, near where they both grew up. And that while her parents and siblings are not in the room when Michael is, and vice-versa, due to the families not getting along, this is because Michael is there nearly all the time, but he leaves the room now and then so her family can be with her.

Also, the lawyer seemed to hold out hope that at the end both families will be together peaceably. Though he said something about that there might be more than one memorial. I wasn't sure if he meant more than one headstone or more than one Mass or maybe both.

As for Terri, I think of her soul as already through Purgatory and in Heaven, and trying to tell her parents, "Mom, Dad, give up already!"

I don't think I will ever forget the way my mom appeared to look at me. Her eyes would open just the least bit and seem to stare straight at me with a look which seemed so sentient and made it look like if she just opened her eyes a little she'd be awake. Of course, she couldn't really move her head and her head happened to be at the exact right angle such that her eyes were pointing at me when I stood by her side. If you sit in the room long enough, you see her do all sorts of things which clearly do not correlate with anything.

I don't think I will ever forget the way my mom's friends treated her as some sort of carnival game where they would try to elicit something which they interpreted as a reaction from her and cheer as if they'd just won a plush doll when it coincidentally happened. This includes my mom's church group who arrived en masse and appeared to think that if they inundated her with enough really loud, really bad singing, her innate sense of taste would force her to wake just so she could tell them to stop. But they were all so happy when they saw an eyelid or lip move that I couldn't tell them that she did that whether you were there trying to get her attention or not.

In a rare show of family unity, it was pretty clear to the family exactly what my mom wanted. She was such an active and engaged woman that none of us could imagine her wanting to spend the rest of her life in a catatonic state. Chemotherapy had proven to be utterly ineffective so the brain tumor was romping its way merrily through my mom's brain. So there was very little doubt of her ultimate condition. We had all accepted that beating the cancer back into remission this time was, as an understatement, unlikely. (I remain intensely grateful for the additional 18 months of life the doctors gave my mom though. We thought she had the cancer licked. Ha!)

Her friends were another issue entirely. I guess one could argue that it is an expression of love to want to hold on to someone as long as possible, even if that person no longer exists in any meaningful sense except as a life-sized prop which reminds you of who she was. Honestly though, this strikes me as being rather selfish because I don't know how else to see it besides as a way of saying that this person exists merely for your benefit. Still, to them, it is an expression of love and to do otherwise would be to show a lack of love towards her. In retrospect, I guess we were fortunate in that they had no legal standing to object to what we all felt were my mom's wishes.

Still, you see the way she appears to look at you and for a moment, it seems all too plausible that she will get out of bed and go on with her life as if none of this had ever happened. For some of us, reality intrudes, but I can completely understand why it would not for others. It is not an excuse for the wanton abuse of the rule of law or to turn their private ordeal into a nationwide debate. I suppose it only proves the old adage about the road to Hell. There is no question at this point that they appear either completely delusional about their daughter's condition or utterly manipulative of the media. But there is also no question that they are doing this out of love. (Like I said, this is not a justification as much as it an explanation.)

What I find disturbing is that they appear to be unable to distinguish between the active taking of a life and the respecting the wish to withhold life-sustaining medical treatment. Mrs. Schindler has been quoted to the effect of begging us not to let the doctors "kill" her daughter. Of course, no one is killing her daughter. The doctors are merely respecting her wishes denying medical treatment. As we become more capable, we need to develop the wisdom to realize that the ability to do something does not mean that we should always exercise that ability.

Of course, even if the Schindlers are so blinded by grief that they behave insensibly, I have no non-cynical explanation for the behavior of legislative and executive branches. For example, why would Florida state agents deliberately violate a judge's order by attempting to seize Terry Schiavo?

This started off being about care and compassion for the dying, but has turned into a rather disturbing disregard for the rule of law. NPR had a story last night about a legislator who talked about cutting the budget of the 9th Circuit Court (or in the extreme, dismantling it) if it did not make decisions that the Congress was happy with. It's worth noting that those who advocated for the insertion of a feeding tube are also those who rail against judges who "legislate from the bench." I guess the irony is lost on them for a judge to order its insertion would require a judge to do just that. If they wanted judges to rule based on the law, not create new law, there was only one decision they could reach and they all, unsurprisingly, reached it.

What does it mean that those who are opposed to the rule of law currently rule? Quis custodies custodiet?

I take the denial of what I know about my own soul--coming as it does without reasoned argument, and from someone I have never met--to be a statement of faith. Not necessarily "You're wrong because you disagree with Catholic doctrine" but "You're wrong because what you say denies my deeply-held religious belief". The distinction is important because, doctrine to the contrary, most Catholics do not believe in every doctrinal point taught by the church. Whatever its nature, James D. McDonald is welcome to his faith, and I will not argue with him further on its points, for all my faith in its incorrectness.

I think it might be more polite for him to be more explicit about the source of a belief based on his faith, but that may be too much to ask. Many people cannot distinguish between what they know from observation and what they know from faith, and there are cases on the border between these that are hard to categorize. In addition, I am not exactly an expert in politeness, so my analysis of this nicety is suspect.

In sum, I don't hold any animus against JDM, and I rather regret the somewhat intemperate nature of my outburst. I felt his statements, as applied to my soul, to be degrading and false, but I'm sure he doesn't mean them to be. And whether or not he does, that's life in a multisectarian society.

Tom Whitmore: The reaction that surprised me the most in a brain-flatlined friend was yawning -- yawns apparently are deep enough in the brainstem that they look quite normal in people with no cortical function at all. This is really creepy.

Yes. Those things are very familiar from my experience with my mother.

Two more things that stay with me: My Mom was very particular about her appearance. She would never let anyone see her unless she was fully dressed, groomed and made up. And that included me, after I moved to a place of my own. So seeing her lying there in bed with an old-lady's sparse undergrowth of facial hair was as deeply wrong to me as anything else that was wrong with her.

All her life, she was nearly blind without her glasses. She bought new glasses every year or two or three, and always went with frames that were very fashionable. (This led to some very unfortunate choices in the 70s, such as her octagonal frames, which she actually stuck with a relatively long time.)

Through all the months my mother was in a persistent vegetative state, we kept her eyeglasses on the nightstand next to her bed. Not in it, on it, where she could easily reach them, should she regain the will and desire to do so.

The frames were small ovals, made of silver-colored wire.

The location of her glasses heightened the illusion that she was just resting, and that she might, at any moment, get up out of bed, put on her glasses, and demand that someone fetch her a tweezers so she could do something about the facial hair.

Terri Schiavo lacks the ability to swallow according to the evidence available to the fact finders. Had the Guardian ad Litem's recommendation been followed, additional swallowing tests would have been conducted to cement this fact. They were not b/c the first Terri's law was overturned and the GAL lost his position as a result.

If those folks who are lobbying to put the Communion host in Terri's mouth, were able to do so, Terri would likely choke.

I also find it ghoulish that an issue about communion is being made when the young woman in question had not received communion for two years prior to her heart attack. Actions, here, speak louder than words.

PS: speaking of hosts (and brain-slugs as Neil Gaiman was recently) The Puppet Masters was on yesterday here on one of our free-to-air commercial networks! Synchronicity, man. Probably not some slightly oblique reference to Easter & recent church-related events.

As well as some Anglican and Episcopalian churches, IME.

As well as some Anglican and Episcopalian churches, IME.

You will always be given wine in Anglican/Episcopal churches; rarely, if ever, in Catholic.

How recent is your information? I got the impression in the 1990s that wine was de rigueur. Chewing, too. Though perhaps my memory is leaking again.

Let us also dismiss the suggestion of someone choking a comatose patient with a communion host. There are procedures for administering communion to people who cannot swallow; after all, there is no theologically minimum size for a host. Procedures might be not be followed every single time, but this case is being carefully watched.

I was raised in the Catholic Church between the 50s and the 70s so both pre and post Vatican 2. Wine for the laity was not introduced until later and even then it was not always done on Sundays. I just remember the instruction given if, by any horror you threw up immediately after church. You were to go get the good father who would clean up the mess and dispose of it according to the rules. It was not allowed to go down the drain, because it was still considered the body of Christ. Wonder if that is still sop today.

Jon Singer told me he was walking around in a town in Pennsylvania, and was idly wondering just where he was. Then he noticed that the streetlamps were shaped like chocolate kisses and realized he was in Hershey. He walked past a belching smokestack and felt something on his skin; looked and saw tiny dabs of what looked like chocolate. I'm hoping he didn't taste one, but memory seems to be shielding me from that information.

So there you have it, for some values of 'it.' My reaction was to wonder when we'd hear the first case of Chocolate Lung in the courtroom.

Terri Schiavo lived near to her fundi-Catholic parents and didn't go to Mass for two years? Just knowing the dynamics of my family and those of my Catholic friends, that would have been a fairly big deal. Not even Christmas and Easter? Something was going on there.

When this all started, there was a link on one of the blogs to the University of Miami's Ethics Project Schiavo page. I read it during lunch one day. It amazes me that no one in the media appears to have done the same. I haven't watched much news on this, but I have yet to see a single broadcast that didn't include something refuted by an hour's skimming of the official record.

It began with the Swift Boat folks, this idea that because official records may have some errors, they can all be thrown out the window. And that people coming along with a new version of the story don't have to offer any evidence when they contradict military reports or the findings of a court appointed guardian. The conspiracy mongers have taken over. "Don't trust anything you read" is one thing to say to people who actually read a lot, but quite dangerous when people who never read much to begin with take it literally.

PS - The greatest communion wine scene in the history of film: Greta Garbo in FLESH AND THE DEVIL. Made this lapsed-Catholic girl gasp. Highly recommended.

I find myself strangely disappointed by that.

I feel that if you're going to do deiphagia, ...

you might as well acknowledge it...we rip ours to shreds and put butter on him.

As a character in The Invention of Love said of the (then-new) word 'homosexual', "It's half Greek and half Latin!" To which another replied "Sounds about right..."

I was brought up attending St. Angela of Merici in Metairie, Louisiana during most of the '80s and the first little chunk of the '90s. Wine was never offered during my Mass attendence, although in Sunday School (same church) they taught us how we were supposed to receive it should that change or we find ourselves obliged to attend Mass elsewhere. I don't recall the teacher telling us not to chew. More emphasis was put on which hand goes under which.

Dan: Thanks for your response. Have I mentioned how much I love this place?

One objection to "television" was that the word was a barbarous conjuction of Latin & Greek. Now if a list of such words was assembled, perhaps one could weave a story from them ... or is that just what conspiracy theorists do?

There are some drawings from mediaeval (& later) times showing various miracles & manifestations where The Host bled. Wasn't it sometimes related to anti-Semitism -- Jews were said to try to steal them to use in some unholy rite? Certainly this was also claimed of Satanists

Exactly. Robert A. Heinlein believed that he had done so with the utmost respect, which in this thread equates to feeling safe to make a very extended joke because, after all, Christianity is a Religion, not a cult, right? Martians communicated regularly with their colleagues in an afterlife, which gave the theology a certain literalism, which made Theophagia eminently rational. Heinlein was quite bitter that the Cult led by Charles Manson gave Communes bad PR, and, far worse, the nearly illiterate Manson treated "Stranger in a Strange Land" as a Received Text, just as "Helter Skelter" became liturgical music. Heinlein did not agree with Manson's take on open marriages and the Hollywood equivalent of throwing people out of airlocks. There are people who seriously state that Manson was set up by U.S. Government Behavior Modification Therapy at Vacaville precisely to discredit The Counter-Culture. Heinlein was an innocent bystander in the blowback, or was hit by Friendly Fire. Unless you're really paranoid, and think that Heinlein was the disinformation target all along. Maybe by someone who hated the Navy's space program, or Heinlein's former Left Libertarian activism before he became Right Libertarian. Or something.

Every Catholic church I have been to, has offered wine at communion. Of course I was born in 1970, so that may account for the difference, but the only time I don't remember being it offered was during mass at (Catholic) school.

I've been to Catholic mass in many cities in WV, in different churches in Baltimore MD, in Milwaukee WI, in northern VA, in rural PA/MD, and other places I can't remember in the states around WV, and they all served wine.

Although I'm no longer a practicing Catholic, I took my Grandmother to mass two weeks ago when I was visiting her, and they were still serving wine.

Also, we were never told not to chew--in fact the church I went to as a child actually made unleavened bread for special occasions (such as First Communion), and you had to chew that--it would never dissolve in your mouth like the wafers did.

So there's another data point.

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/2594/eatgod.htm

Heinlein did not agree with Manson's take on open marriages . . .

Does that mean he did not approve of open marriages in general (which I find hard to believe from his writings), or that he had a different take from Manson's?

Different take. Heinlein approved of various alternative marriage axioms. But he would not, I think, have taken advantage of anyone inebriated or drugged [he strongly condemned marijuana use by those serving in the U.S. Navy], taken money from a sex partner, or used a "family" as proxy to commit murder. But open marriage, consenting adults? Even though he and I never actually spoke of this together, face to face or in our letters, I'm rather sure he approved. He was also a nudist. Part of why he liked California. And swimming pools. And don't get me started on waterbeds...

Well, Heinlein did point out that since Christ was human (and simultaneously divine), if one believed that the Host literally became Christ's body, one was eating human flesh and therefore a cannibal. This dovetailed neatly with the Martian cannibalistic ancestor-worship practice Michael's water-brothers engage in toward the end.

But it's not "more literally" theophagia than the practice in my coven, at least according to my take on it. The God is manifest in the grain. If you corner me thealogically (and no, I didn't misspell that), I'm a Radical Pantheist; that is, I believe that the Divine Nature of the Universe is manifest in its physical substance as such.

That means that the God isn't just IN the bread we bake for Lúnasa; he IS the bread. (He's a lot of other things too, of course.) When we eat it, we take more of the divine nature into ourselves.

Actually, of course, the bread is no more divine than we are, and all the food we eat is the God, the Goddess, or both; we just NOTICE it more in Lúnasa circle! Noticing our connection to the rest of the universe is a big part of what Wicca is about.

I made this very observation in fifth grade, and I very nearly wasn't confirmed because of it. It took my grandfather's intervention with the Monsignor (and possibly a nice gift to the parish) to move things along.

I guess I was a grade-school heretic.

Anyone have the Salinger / bananafish quotation handy, about God drinking God, as grade-school heresy?

I'd love to introduce you to my coven brother Steven, but he doesn't have email at this point, and he's here in Mpls, and you're on the East Coast.

I lost a loved one to cancer a couple of years ago. Her primary caretaker/decision maker during the terminal stage of her illness was her brother, a Catholic priest. When it was clear that she wasn't going to survive, the hospice (with his and her ok) stopped her nutrition and gave her morphine and xanax to get her through the end of it. Fortunately for terminal cancer patients, lying in bed and taking a lot of morphine tends to give you pneumonia, which is still a bad way to die but better than the pain of cancer. They give you xanax to take the edge of the anxiety caused by not being able to breathe properly but otherwise don't treat the pneumonia.

This was in no way a deviation from Catholic doctrine. The idea of hospice care is to give as much morphine as is needed to take away ALL the pain, and not to do anything to prolong life.

One thing that surprised me about the Schiavo case - stories have mentioned that she "took communion" last week, but when my friend was in the hospital, her Priest/brother would only give her communion if she was lucid. Once she was on morphine all the time she couldn't receive communion any more because she couldn't consciously participate in the sacrament.

Maybe it's different for last rites? I wasn't present for that.

One of the guests . . . sheesh. If you believe her, then Micheal Schiavo is a cesspool of scheming evilness who is not only responsible for Terri Not Getting Better (the feeding tube is there just because the nursing home people are lazy), but killed her cats, too.

The name of that organization implies that anyone who doesn't share its views is by definition Unconcerned for America.

When is a life valuable? Only when it is American, white, Christian? Only when it is slipping away? Only when it makes a "point" about Christian ideology?

Despite the fact that I have great reservations about the morality of deliberately ending any life, regardless of the circumstances, I will NEVER align myself with these people politically. I do not respect the way they are shamelessly using this woman and her family opportunistically as a way of gaining greater control over the private lives of others -- especially women and non-Christians. And I do not agree that laws passed in haste are the way to deal with a complex ethical/moral dilemma with far reaching implications.

If the wild bowler thinks he bowls,
Or if the batsman thinks he's bowled,
They know not, poor misguided souls,
They, too, shall perish unconsoled.
I am the batsman and the bat,
I am the bowler and the ball,
The umpire, the pavilion cat,
The roller, pitch, the stumps and all.

Andrew Lang.

Xopher: you were concerned that her spirit is still attached to that body. After thinking about it, I'd say that is unfortunately likely. This is all speculation, but I've heard she can still breathe on her own, and spirit and breath have always been considered to be similar.

Of course, like any other medical opinion, we can't pronounce on the condition of her spirit without examining the patient.

That's gonna be one ANGRY ghost.

The article closed with a quite from the director of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union:

"Just because something is nude doesn't mean it's obscene," he said. "If that were the case, most Renaissance art would have to be put into back rooms or hidden."

It seems to me that he inadvertently hit the nail on the head. The religious right apparently wants to dismantle the Renaissance Civilization, and the GOP is doing the heavy lifting for them.

A little more on-topic, I was watching the CBC's 11 o'clock newscast which had a feature on the media circus currently camped out outside Terri Schiavo's hospice and her husband's home. They pointed cameras at Randall Terry and explained who he was. They interviewed professional protesters who typically spend their time intimidating abortion providers. They even talked to neighbors who just wanted to be able to live normal lives again. One woman even expressed her concerns that the goings-on could endanger her reproductive rights.

[rant mode]Amazing how it takes a foreign news outlet to provide a balanced story. That Jesusland/United States of Canada map that was circulating around the internets a few months ago is starting to look like an attractive alternative. Or maybe more US cable systems should carry the CBC so we can see what a free country's media looks like.[/rant mode]

R.I.P., Terry.

"... Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, has already blamed episodes of violence such as the shootings in Littleton, Colo., on the teaching of evolution, which presumably "dehumanizes" human beings. On the other hand, Darwin, in the final paragraph of The Origin of Species, suggested instead that "there is grandeur in this view of life," one that recognizes the connectedness of our species to the rest of evolution...."

I was surprised to read that Duane Gish (Evolution: The fossils say NO! is still around. He is still spreading his Young Earth sophistry, only now with Powerpoint slides. He boasted that most evolutionists scheduled to debate him bow out.

'nyway, one of the ideological stormtroopers in training said something along the lines of what DeLay is quoted in JVP's post: If kids are taught they're monkeys, they'll behave like monkeys and we shouldn't be surprised they shoot each other, yadda, yadda.

Oye.

Littleton was the dateline on many early news stories and is the site of the bulk mail center serving that part of Jefferson County. This may be significant for some purposes because Littleton is an old line (for Colorado settlement) community and Columbine served a community where everybody had recently moved from someplace else.

IMO it would be better if people behaved more like animals. I've never heard of a monkey going on a shooting spree . . . or creating a media circus around the death of a family member, either.

Terry Schiavo's life was over years ago. The actual events at hand aren't over by a long shot. Here's the statement just released by United States House of Representatives Majority Leader Tom DeLay:

Mrs. Schiavo's death is a moral poverty and a legal tragedy. This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change. The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today. Today we grieve, we pray, and we hope to God this fate never befalls another. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Schindlers and with Terri Schiavo's friends in this time of deep sorrow.

A good 20% of the country is now convinced that judges, lawyers, Democrats, Michael Schiavo, and other demonic forces are engaged in the deliberate practice of murdering perfectly nice women who smile and follow balloons around the room with their eyes and otherwise demonstrate evidence of well-being. Where is their anger going to go? The George W. Bushes and Tom DeLays of our world have raised hell, and there is going to be hell to pay. This isn't remotely "over."

But in Victorian times, they did, on occasion, hide the naughty bits. See this item, for instance.

I never meant to imply that the controversy was over, I am certainly not so painfully naive.

For us, it's just beginning. These evil bastards are still going to use this to try to destroy my beloved country -- some more.

Sometimes I regret the oath that prevents me from cursing people.

I definitely recall the assertion (perhaps from Spider
Robinson) that RAH went to some lengths to determine
whether Manson had ever read _Stranger_, and concluded
that he hadn't. Though of course that wouldn't rule out
indirect mimetic influence of the book on the cult in other
ways.

Anybody know anything more definitive about this?

On balance, I think I prefer the leaf.

But Ashcroft has been used to cover up more obscenity than that...on a recent transatlantic flight, I was watching Sideways, edited for airplane viewing. "Ashcroft" was used to substitute for an anatomical term (pit of the donkey).

How do you fight against the so-called Culture of Life crowd?

The thing about zealots is they're zealots Consider the root word: zeal. "Enthusiastic devotion to a cause, ideal, or goal and tireless diligence in its furtherance."

Keyword: Tireless. They've devoted their lives to this, we have other interests.

We might like getting into a pissing contest with zealots for a short time, but we eventually get disgusted and move on. They never get tired; this is what they live for.

Last week, I was engaged in a strenuous debate over the Schiavo case in another, private forum elsewhere. I finally, and publicly, unsubscribed from the forum on Sunday, partly because I had become convinced that the two primary people I was arguing with were not arguing in good faith. They were liars, fools or some combination of the two.

They seemed to be enjoying the argument, flying to the keyboard eagerly, ready to demolish each one of my arguments. Me, I had come to hate the discussion. It was making me sick, preying on my enjoyment of my leisure time and time with my wife. It was hurting my job performance. I knew I'd hit a low point on Sunday night when I was trying to program a show into my TiVo and (and I'm not making this up) instead of picking out the letters for the name of the show, I picked out "T-E-R-R-I."

I dislike that I backed away from this discussion, because this is how religious extremism works. They drive all the reasonable people out of the discussion until the only ones left are kooks, on both sides. For me, in America in 2005, being driven out of a discussion was a simple matter of unsubscribing to a discussion group. Other people, in other places and times, have had to pay a greater price for leaving a discussion; they've had to emigrate thousands of miles away, carrying with them only the possessions their governments allow them to carry.

By the way, during the Iraq war I noticed one of the ideas the conservatives put forward was that liberal protestors were losers; conservatives didn't protest in the streets (they said) because conservatives have jobs and families and other things that occupy their times.

Well, who looks more like a nutjob and loser to you: this protestor or Michael Schiavo? Schiavo or the creators of this page?

One of the things that terrifies me most in the world is the thouught that I might one day be in a coma or persistent vegetative state. Now, I have a new twist on that nightmare: That I might find myself in such a state, and my medical care will be in the hands of the hateful lunatics who tormented Michael Schiavo, and that my wife — who will already be suffering because I'm in that state — will be tormented the way Michael Schaivo was made to suffer.

It seems to me that he inadvertently hit the nail on the head. The religious right apparently wants to dismantle the Renaissance Civilization, and the GOP is doing the heavy lifting for them.

It always seemed to me that is was the Enlightenment that they really want to dismantle. Separation of church and state, rationalism, and all that claptrap.

I mean, fuck, I know that bringing up the Nazis is supposedly a sign of hysteria in an online discussion, but this whole Terry Schiavo matter has really gotten me freaked out. When I think about the issue too long, I feel afraid. I don't feel the enjoyable, healthy outrage that I feel when arguing about online copyrights or the Microsoft anti-trust trial — I feel physical fear, sweat and a dropping sensation in my stomach.

What do the hate? They hate us, people. that's what. They feel that their God should decide what medical care you should get at the end-of-life, not you and your family and your doctors.

I felt the same fear when I was standing in a deli in April 2003, having a sandwich made for my supper. The TV was on, and I was watching the first bombs falling in Baghdad.

I have also felt it on a couple of occasions when I lost control of my car.

It's the feeling of being taken somewhere outside my control, and maybe it'll all turn out to be just a big scare, and maybe I'll end up disfigured, crippled, in great pain, or dead. And there's nothing I can do to affect the outcome.

It seems to me that all of this happened because Terri's parents were not willing to let go. Does it seem that way to you?

Are you concerned about the behavior of your family members, or strangers who get involved in your (hypothetical, hopefully) medical case somehow?

Mitch: It may seem to you like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but to me it's a way to cope and stay sane.

Primarily the latter; I imagine myself in Terri Schiavo's condition. And I imagine my wife — who will already have a lot on her mind, what with her husband being a vegetable and all — being villified in the way that Michael Schiavo has been.

I'm not too concerned about my family. I have no children, and don't anticipate having any. My parents are dead. And my brothers are reasonable guys.

I'm also concerned that the law will be changed to deny patients the fundamental right to refuse treatment, and to grant power-of-attorney to someone else to make those decisions, if the patient himself becomes incapable of making them.

And I'm also concerned, in my darker moments, that the Terri Schiavo case is somehow the tipping point toward theocracy — that somehow, 30 years of abuses by the current wave of the Religious Right was just a lead-in, and this marks the start of the endgame.

(This link, from BoingBoing, seems to bypass the Times login stuff.)

The Washington Post has now admitted that it had no basis for the first version of the story that you quoted above, i.e., the version in which the memo was "distributed to Republican senators by party leaders." In fact, the Post now admits that the "authorship is unknown."

both TalkingPointsMemo.com and atrios have good smackdowns of that most recent lie.

http://billmon.org/archives/001812.html

The second of these is the medical term for where the knife goes, creating in the affected staffer first rictus rectus and then rapidly progressive patsycline.

"Cray-zeeee..."

Mike Ford, you. will. get. your. comeuppance. Someday I will make you laugh so hard it qualifies as a half hour of Abdominals class!