I hope y'all are happy....

[ReillyT]

Do you believe federal intervention was proper in this case?

Perhaps I didn't answer the question you actually asked. Do I personally feel that intervention was proper (constitutionality aside) in this case? No. I think that there is a proper venue for dealing with the issues of this case, and I think that the proper venue is the State of Florida and its courts. That said, if the only thing that the federal courts were given authority to look at is whether she received adquate legal process, I am not terribly concerned about this federal intrusion.

 

[musicman]

To be honest, I just don't know. The Congress can extend the jurisdiction of the federal courts to hear a due process claim. That is clear. However, there are considerations that call intervention in this case into doubt. Almost all of these considerations involve the question of federalism. For instance, courts generally recognize comity, which says that federal and state courts should respect the decisions of the other. That is based on federalist principles. Another concern is that this legislation targeted just one party, which is generally forbidden as a bill of attainder (although that usually deals with legislation that strips a party of rights, instead of conferring further review as in this case). I don't know on what basis to balance these conflicting principles.

This wasn't my most articulate response, but that is because I am still trying to get my head around these issues. In short, I just don't know. I think what Congress did was of questionable Constitutionality, but I don't know enough about this issue to make an informed decision one way or the other.

I wouldn't say that the legislation necessarily targeted just one party. Quite a few Democrats voted to intervene as well - some fifty, if memory serves.

As for the aspect of federalism, I'm having a hard time reconciling what I perceive to be contradictions in your viewpoint. The federal courts' consistent interpretation of the XIVth Amendment regarding matters like religion is - to put it mildly - debatable. Yet you seem to have no problem with federal judges forcing communities to take down Ten Commandments displays.

Yet, in a matter like the Schiavo case, where a clearly possible violation of the Bill of Rights exists, you seem to cling to the sanctity of one state judge as the finder of fact, and all other input be damned. Help me out here.

 

[ReillyT]

I wouldn't say that the legislation necessarily targeted just one party. Quite a few Democrats voted to intervene as well - some fifty, if memory serves.

As for the aspect of federalism, I'm having a hard time reconciling what I perceive to be contradictions in your viewpoint. The federal courts' consistent interpretation of the XIVth Amendment regarding matters like religion is - to put it mildly - debatable. Yet you seem to have no problem with federal judges forcing communities to take down Ten Commandments displays.

Yet, in a matter like the Schiavo case, where a clearly possible violation of the Bill of Rights exists, you seem to cling to the sanctity of one state judge as the finder of fact, and all other input be damned. Help me out here.

When I said party, I just meant that it targeted one individual - Terri Schiavo - not that it was a purely Republican measure. In this sense it differs from the vast majority of laws, which are general in nature (couple of exceptions - citizenship awarded to individuals and such).

The XIV amendment says that the 1st amendment and the Bill of Rights applies to the states. Where possible state laws or practices conflict with the Bill of Rights, citizens can bring civil rights (based upon general federal laws) claims in federal courts as a way of pursuing their federal rights (leaving the substance of any litigation out of this discussion for now). There may be no corresponding state law that prevents that state from putting up the ten commandments, but arguably, the First Amendment would. It is perhaps itself the only protection (although not necessarily)

The difference I think in this case is that there is clearly a state law and procedure to deal with this issue. In fact, it is the kind of issue that is generally considered a purely state matter (there are no federal probate laws because the constitution doesn't provide a basis for the federal government to make laws on this issue). Every state has procedures to deal with these issues that include decisions of the first instance and appeals of that decision. The states define the procedure and provide protections for litigants within it. It seems dubious for me that a federal court should have oversight over these state adopted procedures and the decision that these state courts make in what is and has always been a state matter. That seems like a possible violation of the doctrine of federalism. In short, it seems questionable for federal courts to provide oversight of purely state issues and procedures over which the federal government has no authority.

On the other hand, I recognize that the federal government generally has the right to protect the due process rights of its citizens. Further, I can think of instances where I would not be overly comforted by state laws and procedures, even in traditionally state areas - i.e., application of the laws to blacks in the south in the 1960's and before.

In the end, I just don't know whether it was constitutional. Even as I review my own response I am not satisfied that I have adequately articulated a meaningful distinction, although I believe there is one. There is still something in the back of my head that is telling me that I am overlooking something important about this issue, but I can't figure out what it might be. In advance, I acknowledge the inadequacy of my response, but ask you to consider that a more educated person may be able to articulate what I could not.

However, constitutionality aside, I think in this case there has been so much procedure and care put into the judicial decisions that I think it was unwise for Congress to intrude, even if they had the authority to do so.

 

[musicman]

Hell, Reilly, we're just a couple of Americans, hashing it out the best we can. I think you articulate your views very well.

I just think we've hit upon the basic differences in our views on federalism. For my part, I believe that we're witnesses to history. This may be the first time the federal government has intervened in a state matter under PROPER circumstances in forty years!

 

[spillmind]

He allowed the Dr.s to let her continue to live for years in spite on her request that she NOT be kept alive. Isn't torture what the death squads say she is experiencing now???

indeed, you are correct.

 

[OCA]

Right Spill--the pro-death folks care a lot about Terris' last wishes too-----so much that they didn't say crap about it while her hubby tortured her for years--but you never could tell the good guys from the bad guys .

PRO DEATH....is that the catch phrase nowadays? Shouldn't that be reserved for pro abortionists?

 

[OCA]

He allowed the Dr.s to let her continue to live for years in spite on her request that she NOT be kept alive. Isn't torture what the death squads say she is experiencing now???

There is no request written or verbal, that is what this is all about.

 

[OCA]

He allowed the Dr.s to let her continue to live for years in spite on her request that she NOT be kept alive. Isn't torture what the death squads say she is experiencing now???

Death squads, aren't you going just a little overboard Dillo? Kind of the equal to the Bush-Hitler camp.

 

[dilloduck]

Death squads, aren't you going just a little overboard Dillo? Kind of the equal to the Bush-Hitler camp.

Just don't understand the need to kill something that already isn't there OCA----we would rather kill her than let her parents have the bod??

 

[OCA]

Just don't understand the need to kill something that already isn't there OCA----we would rather kill her than let her parents have the bod??

Ok, I see the parents want of a basically lifeless body to be morbid and creepy. My view is that understandably they are unwilling to deal with reality and maybe a little bit selfish subconsciously. Why not let her go be with God where it is nice instead of locked in her prison here on earth?

 

[dilloduck]

Ok, I see the parents want of a basically lifeless body to be morbid and creepy. My view is that understandably they are unwilling to deal with reality and maybe a little bit selfish subconsciously. Why not let her go be with God where it is nice instead of locked in her prison here on earth?

I assume her soul is already there---this bod is either gonna be in the cold ground or warm in a bed where maybe it can teach her parents that it's over. Her Hubby is the control freak here----he wants to be the one who controls her even after she's gone.

 

[Bullypulpit]

<center><h1><a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/arts/27Rich.html?pagewanted=2>Sleaze merchants, not statesmen, soil the halls of Congress</a></h1></center>

<blockquote>Like many Americans, I suspect, I tried to picture how I would have reacted if a bunch of smarmy, camera-seeking politicians came anywhere near a hospital room where my own relative was hooked up to life support. I imagined summoning the Clint Eastwood of "Dirty Harry," not "Million Dollar Baby." But before my fantasy could get very far, star politicians with the most to gain from playing the God card started hatching stunts whose extravagant shamelessness could upstage any humble reverie of my own.

Senator Bill Frist, the Harvard-educated heart surgeon with presidential aspirations, announced that watching videos of Ms. Schiavo had persuaded him that her doctors in Florida were mistaken about her vegetative state - a remarkable diagnosis given that he had not only failed to examine the patient ostensibly under his care but has no expertise in the medical specialty, neurology, relevant to her case. No less audacious was Tom DeLay, last seen on "60 Minutes" a few weeks ago deflecting Lesley Stahl's questions about his proximity to allegedly criminal fund-raising by saying he would talk only about children stranded by the tsunami. Those kids were quickly forgotten as he hitched his own political rehabilitation to a brain-damaged patient's feeding tube. Adopting a prayerful tone, the former exterminator from Sugar Land, Tex., took it upon himself to instruct "millions of people praying around the world this Palm Sunday weekend" to "not be afraid."

The president was not about to be outpreached by these saps. The same Mr. Bush who couldn't be bothered to interrupt his vacation during the darkening summer of 2001, not even when he received a briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," flew from his Crawford ranch to Washington to sign Congress's Schiavo bill into law. The bill could have been flown to him in Texas, but his ceremonial arrival and departure by helicopter on the White House lawn allowed him to showboat as if he had just landed on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Within hours he turned Ms. Schiavo into a slick applause line at a Social Security rally. "It is wise to always err on the side of life," he said, wisdom that apparently had not occurred to him in 1999, when he mocked the failed pleas for clemency of Karla Faye Tucker, the born-again Texas death-row inmate, in a magazine interview with Tucker Carlson. - <b>Frank Rich, <i>The New York Times</i></b></blockquote>

Listening to Dubbyuh, Bill Frist and Tom DeLay bray about the virtue of erring "<i>...on the side of life...</i>" just makes my skin crawl. Their utter hypocrisy, smarmy insincerity and sleazy political oportunism is shameless...but they have no shame. Their eagerness to make poltical hay from the the private tragedy of a family in agony is an apalling sign of just how far the Republic has fallen. Gone are the statesmen from America's past. In their place, we find snake-oil merchants of every stripe...wild-eyed religious fanatics...grifters...and a tiny minority of people who do care about the nation. These latter, however, are drowned out by the braying of the asses who form the majority which roams the halls of our nation's capital, soiling them with their very presence.

It's time to clean house, and put the live-stock out to pasture where they can do no harm.

 

[Mr. P]

I have to say, I pretty much agree with ya Bully.

 

[musicman]

"It is thus", saith Frank Rich, The New York Times, and Bullypulpit.

Thanks, guys. I just wanted to make sure my reverse barometer was still working.

 

[Bullypulpit]

"It is thus", saith Frank Rich, The New York Times, and Bullypulpit.

Thanks, guys. I just wanted to make sure my reverse barometer was still working.

Only because it's firmly planted in your rectum.

 

[no1tovote4]

Only because it's firmly planted in your rectum.

I didn't know that MM owned you in such a way Bully! I can't believe you would admit that you were his rectum.

 

[musicman]

Only because it's firmly planted in your rectum.

This is unworthy of you, Bully. It's actually no response at all.

I see the ACLU has thrown in its lot with you and your friends. My logic holds.

 

[musicman]

I didn't know that MM owned you in such a way Bully! I can't believe you would admit that you were his rectum.

 

[Nienna]

[/QUOTE]
How many other constitutional amendments would you like to remove so the feds get more power?[/QUOTE]


Conservatives for big government? Liberals against it?

:rotflmao:

 

[Annie]

How many other constitutional amendments would you like to remove so the feds get more power?

Conservatives for big government? Liberals against it?

:rotflmao:

spot on!