Still More on Terri Schiavo

As you may have already figured out, I'm declining all those kind invitations to shut up.

I'm glad that MJ at Friday Fishwrap finds this amusing. I don't. In fact I think it's disgusting. Jon Stewart (consistently referring to "Terri Shyvo") thinks it's cute to comment on how many people are calling Terri by her first name, and wonders what all those people would call her if they actually knew her. Well, I don't know, but I bet they'd at least pronounce her f*cking name correctly. Moron.

Cox & Forkum disappoint as well.

On the bright side, Peggy Noonan has a splendid column about the culture of death. I really want to talk about this more (it'll get its own post), because I think it's critical for all of us liberals to understand the danger posed by those destructive demons that live at the heart of the far left. To want to reform society because you have a vision of a better world is one thing; to try to throw civilization into the abyss is something else. Here's Peggy Noonan:

I do not understand the emotionalism of the pull-the-tube people. What is driving their engagement? Is it because they are compassionate, and their hearts bleed at the thought that Mrs. Schiavo suffers? But throughout this case no one has testified that she is in persistent pain, as those with terminal cancer are.

If they care so much about her pain, why are they unconcerned at the suffering caused her by the denial of food and water? And why do those who argue for Mrs. Schiavo's death employ language and imagery that is so violent and aggressive? The chairman of the Democratic National Committee calls Republicans "brain dead." Michael Schiavo, the husband, calls House Majority Leader Tom DeLay "a slithering snake."

Everyone who has written in defense of Mrs. Schiavo's right to live has received e-mail blasts full of attacks that appear to have been dictated by the unstable and typed by the unhinged. On Democratic Underground they crowed about having "kicked the sh-- out of the fascists." On Tuesday James Carville's face was swept with a sneer so convulsive you could see his gums as he damned the Republicans trying to help Mrs. Schiavo. It would have seemed demonic if he weren't a buffoon.

Why are they so committed to this woman's death?

They seem to have fallen half in love with death.

Please go read the whole thing at the link.

And that's all I have on Terri Schiavo.

For now.

Terri Schiavo and Persons with Disabilities

From someone who knows a thing or two about disabilities, there is this:

Healthy people have a horror of disability. I feel this horror myself, and I am the parent of two children with autism. When my first son was diagnosed, my immediate reaction—this is intimate, but I have published one article revealing this—was that I needed to kill him and kill myself.

The thought that ran through my head, over and over again, was: “He has no life, and neither do I.”

I was in a clinical depression. By the next morning I was still in a clinical depression, but at least my mind had cleared on the rationality of two people needing to die because one small boy had been diagnosed with a developmental disability.

My psychiatrist talked me through.

“Why would you assume that your son will have an unhappy life?” she asked me.

...

My psychiatrist told me that there had been a fair amount of research done with disabled & mentally ill people—she had done some of it herself—and they all have the same level of well-being anyone else does. (People with clinical depression, she said, are the one exception. Extremely low ‘quality of life’ is almost the definition of depression.)

Since then I’ve followed this research, and it’s true of suddenly-disabled adults as well. After they adjust to their injuries, which seems to take two years’ time, they are as happy as anyone else. A healthy person will say that he would rather die than live life as a quadriplegic. But in life, people who become quadriplegics are like Christopher Reeve, not like the character in MILLION DOLLAR BABY.

The mistake we make is to experience our horror of disability, which I share, and our concern and care for their condition, which motivates those who wish to see Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube removed, as the emotion felt by the disabled person himself.

But ‘quality of life,’ like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The fact that we are horrified by the sight of Christopher Reeve does not mean that Christopher Reeve is horrified by the sight of Christopher Reeve. And it is Christopher Reeve’s opinion that counts.

The same can be said of my own life, as a matter of fact. When people realize I have two children with autism they react with horror. I would, too, in their shoes! But I myself am not horrified. I’m as happy as anyone I know, and happier than some. This strange life I lead, which I wouldn’t recommend to anyone else, is normal to me.

This is from Catherine Johnson's guest post at Kesher Talk. I immediately thought of this post when I read Charles Krauthammer's column this morning. Even more interesting is something Catherine says elsewhere - and I hope she won't mind my paraphrasing it here: That even severely disabled people, after that two-year adjustment period, consider themselves fortunate by comparison with people even more gravely incapacitated. Now think about that and read the quadriplegic Krauthammer's opening sentence in his column:

If I were in Terri Schiavo's condition, I would not want a feeding tube.

Krauthammer makes this assertion with absolute confidence - as many of us would - because, like almost all of us, he shares this wonderful basic trait of human nature. He has the ability to see his life as blessed. And so, with almost no use of his arms and legs, he can look on Terri Schiavo and say: "Wow ... she's really got it bad! I wouldn't want to live her life!"

But Krauthammer possesses two other beautiful human traits as well: humility and compassion. He knows that he is not Terri Schiavo, and he wants her to have what is best for her. And so he immediately continues:

... But Terri Schiavo does not have the means to make her intentions known. We do not know what she would have wanted. We have nothing to go on. No living will, no advance directives, no durable power of attorney.

And if you haven't yet, go read his full column.

What Charles Krauthammer and Catherine Johnson both understand is that, no matter how unbearable another person's life may look to us, it is only the person living that life who actually knows.

Neo-Neocon
Kesher Talk
Charles Krauthammer

President Bush Appoints Goli Ameri to UN Human Rights Commission

Yeah!!!

Hot off the e-mail: Iranian-American businesswoman Goli Ameri, who ran last year as the Republican candidate for the US House of Representatives (representing my district, 1st Oregon) has been appointed as a delegate to the UN Commission on Human Rights:

Goli Ameri Appointed by President Bush as one of Three Public Delegates
to the UN Human Rights Commission

March 23, 2005
Office: (503) 968-8437

Goli Ameri has been appointed by President George W. Bush as one of
three public delegates to the United Nations Commission on Human
Rights. The 2005 meeting of the UN Commission on Human Rights will
take place March 14 through April 22 in Geneva, Switzerland.

The US delegation is headed by former Senator Rudy Boschwitz who has
been nominated by the White House for the position of Ambassador to
the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR). Senator Boschwitz served in
the US Senate from 1978-1991. Former Ambassadors to the UNCHR include
Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick who served in the Geneva post in 2003.

"The United States wants the Commission to better fulfill its mandate
to strengthen human rights and fundamental freedoms around the world.
I am honored to have been appointed by the president and to represent
the United States on the Commission," said Goli Ameri former
Republican nominee for Congress in Oregon's first district. "I look
forward to actively participating in the upcoming session."

The Commission's annual meeting is an opportunity to focus attention on
countries where there are significant human rights problems. The US
delegation is also committed to promoting democracy worldwide. In
this regard, the United States plans to work with other countries to
encourage discussion of ways that the Commission can foster reform in
nations that are determined to advance democracy and human rights.

Go to this link to read the Full Text of Goli Ameri's Speech.

An Army of One

Happy belated blogiversary to Jane Novak, Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of Liberation. Jane is a native New Yorker who took 9/11 personally, and vowed to bring the fight to the enemy by challenging Osama bin Laden on his own ground. She is a passionate and eloquent advocate for democracy in the Middle East. Her philosophy is: "Okay, Osama, you come to my hometown and knock stuff down, I'll go to your hometown and build stuff up." She has published numberous articles and essays in English-language print journals in the Middle East (she has a particular obsession with OBL's native Yemen) and recently played a leading role in the campaign to free Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani and other imprisoned Yemeni journalists. Jane has also played a key role in keeping Sudan on our maps. (And for whatever it's worth, she also inspired yours truly to stake out this humble corner of the blogosphere that you're reading right now.) And she's done all this in just her first year of blogging.

Happy blogiversary, Jane! Readers, be sure to add Armies of Liberation to your browser favorites.

Krauthammer on Schiavo

Charles Krauthammer, who is himself a quadriplegic, has this to say:

Let's be clear about her condition. She is not dead. If she were brain-dead, we would be talking about harvesting her organs. She is a living, breathing human being. Some people have called her a vegetable. Apart from the term being disgusting, how do they know? How can we be sure of the complete absence of any consciousness, any awareness, any anything ``inside'' this person?

     The crucial issue in deciding whether or not one would want to intervene to keep her alive is whether there is, as one bioethicist put it to me, ``anyone home.'' Her parents, who see her often, believe that there is. The husband maintains there is no one home. (But then again he has another home, making his judgment somewhat suspect.)

     The husband has not allowed a lot of medical testing in the last few years. I have tried to find out what her neurological condition actually is. But the evidence is sketchy, old and conflicting. The Florida court found that most of her cerebral cortex is gone. But ``most'' does not mean all. There might be some cortex functioning. The very severely retarded or brain-damaged can have some consciousness. And we do not go around euthanizing the minimally conscious in the back wards of the mental hospitals on the grounds that their lives are not worth living.

     Given our lack of certainty, given that there are loved ones prepared to keep her alive and care for her, how can you allow the husband to end her life on his say-so?

Krauthammer makes it very clear that he's not happy with Washington's attempts to circumvent due process; it is, he says, a no-win choice between a legal travesty and a moral tragedy. Read the whole thing.

Hat tip: Neo-Neocon.

More on Terri Schiavo

Okay, so I changed my mind

The MSM is beginning to realize that not all the "Save Terri" people are Christian conservatives:

Conservative Christian groups have called for mass vigils outside the hospice caring for brain-damaged Terri Schiavo but many of the few dozen who have shown up said they were drawn for personal reasons unrelated to organized religion.

Eleanor Smith of Decatur, Georgia, sat on Tuesday in a motorized wheelchair in front of the hospice, baking in the sun, with a sign on her lap reading, "This agnostic liberal says 'Feed Terri."'

Her background was a far cry from the evangelical right wing more generally seen as the lobbying force behind the U.S. Congress' scramble over the weekend to draw up a special law to try to prolong Schiavo's life, and President Bush's decision to cut short a Texas vacation to sign it.

Smith, 65, had polio as a child and described herself as a lesbian and a liberal who had demonstrated before in support of the disabled and causes supported by the conservative establishment's archfoe, the American Civil Liberties Union.

"What drew me here is the horror of the idea of starving someone to death who's vulnerable and who has not asked that to happen," Smith said.

She said she thought that people who left written instructions to withhold medical treatment should have those wishes honored but that withholding water and nutrition from Terri Schiavo, who left no such written instructions, was tantamount to murder.

"At this point I would rather have a right-wing Christian decide my fate than an ACLU member," Smith said.

Hat tip (again): The Corner.

Iraqi Patriots Get Some

Iraqi citizens told the terrorist thugs, "Bring it on!", after a group of masked gunmen carrying grenades threatened a carpenter in Baghdad. The New York Times reports:

Ordinary Iraqis rarely strike back at the insurgents who terrorize their country. But just before noon on Tuesday, a carpenter named Dhia saw a troop of masked gunmen with grenades coming toward his shop here and decided he had had enough.

As the gunmen emerged from their cars, Dhia and his young relatives shouldered their Kalashnikov rifles and opened fire, the police and witnesses said. In the fierce gun battle that followed, three of the insurgents were killed, and the rest fled just after the police arrived. Two of Dhia's nephews and a bystander were wounded, the police said.

"We attacked them before they attacked us," said Dhia, 35, his face still contorted with rage and excitement, as he stood barefoot outside his home a few hours after the battle, a 9-millimeter pistol in his hand. He would not give his last name.

"We killed three of those who call themselves the mujahedeen," he said. "I am waiting for the rest of them to come, and we will show them."

Go read the whole thing. Hat tip: Rich Lowry at The Corner.

Meanwhile, Iraqi and US forces wiped out 85 terrorists in an attack on a base north of Baghdad:

After a two-hour firefight, Iraqi forces and U.S. helicopters captured an insurgent base north of Baghdad, killing 85 rebels, U.S. and Iraqi military officials said Wednesday.

"A previous safe haven for planning attacks has been removed," a U.S. military official said of Tuesday's battle.

Morning Report: March 23, 2005

Al-Khaiwani to be freed. Jane at Armies of Liberation reports that imprisoned Yemeni journalist Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani is to be released, by order of President Salah. This comes about after a massive campaign led by Jane Novak and other freedom activists. Good work, Jane! (Armies of Liberation)

EU unlikely to block Wolfowitz nomination. CNN reports: 'European leaders say they will not oppose the nomination of Paul Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank, despite initial misgivings about his role in the Iraq war. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, speaking at a news conference Wednesday in Brussels, said Wolfowitz's bid to lead the global development-funding group "will not fail because of Germany." "And I have the impression that it will not fail due to the other countries in Europe," he said at the conclusion of a two-day European Union summit.' (CNN)

Europe may support Iranian democracy, Hadley says. According to the latest post at Regime Change Iran, US National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley has said that Europe may be ready to refer the issue of Iran's nuclear program to the UN Security Council if the current round of negotiations fail; he also suggested that the Europeans may be moving toward support for democracy and human rights in Iran: "The cause of freedom for the Iranian people has been advanced by the understandings we've reached with the Europeans." (RCI)

Separated at Birth?

With all due respect to Roger Simon:

Nancy Pelosi and
Michael Jackson.

Eyeball bleach recommended.

Terri Schiavo

This will be my one and only post on the Terri Schiavo case.

(B'li neder!)

[UPDATE: B'li neder is a Hebrew expression, which in this context translates as, "Not!!!"]

I don't want to get too deeplly involved in the debate, only because I'm coming to it very late and I'm playing catch-up. I do believe this is an important issue and I don't feel I have anything worthwhile to contribute. So I'll just point you to some sites that have been following the case.

Cards on table: My own views on the issue are still evolving as I learn more. As I write this, I find myself leaning toward the pro-life side. I am not a pro-life absolutist, and I can envision any number of nightmare scenarios in which I would not wish to be kept alive, nor wish that for someone else. But I'm not convinced that this applies to Terri. And in general I've found the pro-life arguments more persuasive in this debate.

I should also point out that my views have been partly shaped by the debate on an e-mail group I belong to. (Thanks, Judith!)

And that's all I'm going to say on this. Here are some links to sites, pro and con, that I've found the most informative:

Pro-life:
Kesher Talk - "Save Terri" from a liberal Jewish perspective
Straight Up with Sherri - "Save Terri" from a conservative Christian perspective
Discarded Lies


Pro-release:
Respectful of Otters
Obsidian Wings
Thanks to reader Kai Jones for these links.

Ongoing debate:
The Corner

On federalism:
Ann Althouse

Also please see:
Code Blue - A radiologist analyzes Terri Schiavo's brain scan. Please read the comment thread as well.
Victory Soap enters the fray.

Google News Carries Nazi Propaganda

No, I'm not kidding. Try this right now: go to Google News and do a search on "National Vanguard". See what you get. I found out about Karl Rove's homosexual orgies and the persecution of poor, innocent Holocaust denier Pedro Varela. You see, the white-supremacist, neo-Nazi site is considered a legitimate source of "news" by Google. (Hat tip: Little Green Footballs.)

UPDATE: Google has dropped NV from its news index.

LGF: Google Drops National Vanguard

Morning Report: March 21, 2005

Federal judge to review Schiavo case. In an unusual move, the US Congress passed, and the President signed, a bill that would prolong the life of Terri Schiavo pending review of her case by a federal judge in Florida. MSNBC reports: Taking the Senate’s lead, the House early Monday passed a bill to let the woman’s parents ask a federal judge to prolong Schiavo’s life by reinserting her feeding tube. President Bush signed the measure less than an hour later, at 1:11 a.m. ET. A White House source said he was woken from his sleep for the signing. Until now, federal courts have turned the case back to state courts. The law gives the U.S. District Court in Tampa jurisdiction on a case that has been taken up by Republican leaders and galvanized activists on both sides of the emotional end-of-life issue. An attorney for her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, went to the federal district court in Tampa at 3 a.m. ET, filing a request for an emergency injunction to keep their daughter fed. It was not known when the judge, James Whittemore, would make a ruling.' Full details are available at Straight Up With Sherri. (MSNBC, Straight Up with Sherri)

Rice: "Other options" on North Korea. Speaking in Beijing, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cited "other options" if North Korea continues to refuse to cooperate with the US and other nations on halting its nuclear weapons program. Rice said her conversations with Chinese leaders stressed how the United States and China, "but especially China", could persuade Pyongyang to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons. This could be seen as a reference to economic sanctions, as the North Korean economy depends heavily on trade with China. Rice also discussed Taiwan relations, noting that the mainland regime's new anti-secsssion law had "raised tensions". (MSNBC)

Pakistan: Staging ground against Iran? Citing NetIndia, a recent itema at Regime Change Iran claims that Pakistan may agree to serve as a staging ground for US military action against Iran. 'According to a online report of Asia Times, Islamabad may have agreed to host US troops and intelligence assets near Pakistan's border with Iran in preparation for a possible attack on Iran and probably agreed to train American forces in Karachi in return for some kind of commitment on F-16 deliveries.' (NetIndia via RCI)