Schiavo Tragedy Revealed True Agenda

[Freedom_from_Chains]

Schiavo Tragedy Revealed True Agenda, Frightening Power Of Religious Right, Says Americans United
Thursday, March 31, 2005

Battle Over Judges Is Next Round In 'Culture War,' AU's Lynn Says

The legal and political battle over Terri Schiavo exposed the Religious Right's radical agenda and its extraordinary power in Washington, D.C., and now Americans should expect that influence to be aimed at the nation's judiciary, according to Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Mrs. Schiavo, a Florida woman in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years, was the subject of a lengthy legal dispute between her husband and other family members over whether her feeding tube should be removed. Until her death today, Religious Right forces used Mrs. Schiavo as a symbol in their drive to make government apply their fundamentalist beliefs to everyone.

"At the behest of the Religious Right, Congress and President George W. Bush intervened in a place where they didn't belong - a personal family matter," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. "They failed, and now furious Religious Right leaders will step up their assault on our nation's courts."

(con't) http://www.au.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7295&news_iv_ctrl=1241&abbr=pr

[Dookus]

1. Yes

I think that was always the agenda. But the Republicans miscalculated enormously. They had hoped to strike a chord of outrage among Americans about the courts in this case, but they failed. Americans, by a large margin, think the courts have done the right thing in this case, and the total unanimity of the multiple court decisions makes it clear that ALL judges in this case were well within the legal mainstream.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. That didn't stop Delay saying it was all the fault of the activist

judge -- as if there weren't a dozen previous rulings that preceeded Greer.

[xray s]

5. Greer is a conservative Republican Baptist

Not a very good poster boy for evil activist liberal.

[Freedom_from_Chains]

7. Still good enough fodder for the idealoges

One of them was on the TV today and called Greer pure evil. It doesn't make any difference that he was a Christian in that since he didn't go their way he wasn't a "true" Christian.

That's the great thing about religion; you can make it come out any way you like.

[wryter2000]

3. Love Barry Lynn

:loveya: Barry Lynn

AU was the organization that released the tape of Delay telling the Family Research Council that God had given him Terri Schiavo as a symbol.

[Freedom_from_Chains]

4. Yes, I have been trying to get involved with them locally n/t

[wryter2000]

8. I give them money

The newsletter is awesome.

[Tux]

6. Too late

Americans in general hate liberals to the point that they believe they are persecuted (Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas which neither appear in the Bible so why worry), kids are corrupted by college professors (education is bad), and the media is liberal (despite all the conservative shit and endless Christian documentaries calling non-Chrsitians barbarians and heatherns).

Thanks Jesus for destroying our nation and Earth.

[wryter2000]

9. Jesus doesn't have anything to do with this

I doubt they've read a word attributed to Jesus. If they have, they've ignored him.

[gbayoo]

10. Schiavo MEMO/Peggy Noonan

Hello all you good Dems.
Hey, I have yet to see any word on where the memo to the Repubs "Christian" whacko's came from. I will make a good bet it came from Peggy Noonass article, "Don't Kick It" on Friday March 18th. I know Repubs are trying to say it the alleged memeo supposedly came from a Senator or higher ups. That is not what was said. What was said is, There is a memo floating around the Republican Senate, & House that tells them to take advantge of the issue and boost the Christian Right among other things. Read the article in the Opinion Journal archives. It is very clear what and who regarding this "memo". I am including it here. I apologize for the length, but this is good! I read it when it first appeared. I have been waiting for someone to note this and explain what these people are really all about. HERE IT IS...
Wayne

Peggy Noonan

Friday, March 18, 2005 1:37 p.m. EST

It appears we've reached the pivotal moment in the Terri Schiavo case, and it also appears our politicians, our senators and congressmen, might benefit from some observations.

In America today all big stories have three dimensions: a legal angle, a public-relations angle and a political angle. In the Schiavo case some of our politicians seem not to be fully appreciating the second and third. This is odd.

Here's both a political and a public-relations reality: The Republican Party controls the Senate, the House and the White House. The Republicans are in charge. They have the power. If they can't save this woman's life, they will face a reckoning from a sizable portion of their own base. And they will of course deserve it.

This should concentrate their minds.

So should this: America is watching. As the deadline for removal of Mrs. Schiavo's feeding tube approaches, the story has broken through as never before in the media.

There is a passionate, highly motivated and sincere group of voters and activists who care deeply about whether Terri Schiavo is allowed to live. Their reasoning, ultimately, is this: Be on the side of life. They remind me of what Winston Churchill said once when he became home secretary in charge of England's prisons. He was seated at dinner with a jabbery lady who said that if she were ever given a life sentence she'd rather die than serve it. He reared back. No, he said, always choose life! "Death's the only thing you can't get out of!"
Just so. Life is full of surprise and lightning-like lurches. The person in a coma today wakes up tomorrow and says, "Is that you, mom?" Life is unknowable. Always give it a chance to shake your soul and upend reality.

The supporters of Terri Schiavo's right to continue living have fought for her heroically, through the courts and through the legislatures. They're still fighting. They really mean it. And they have memories.

On the other side of this debate, one would assume there is an equally well organized and passionate group of organizations deeply committed to removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. But that's not true. There's just about no one on the other side. Or rather there is one person, a disaffected husband who insists Terri once told him she didn't want to be kept alive by extraordinary measures.

He has fought the battle to kill her with a determination that at this point seems not single-minded or passionate but strange. His former wife's parents and family are eager to care for her and do care for her, every day. He doesn't have to do a thing. His wife is not kept alive by extraordinary measures--she breathes on her own, is not on a respirator. All she needs to continue existing--and to continue being alive so that life can produce whatever miracle it may produce--is a feeding tube.

It doesn't seem a lot.

So politically this is a struggle between many serious people who really mean it and one, just one, strange-o. And the few bearded and depressed-looking academics he's drawn to his side.

It is not at all in the political interests of senators and congressmen to earn the wrath of the pro-Schiavo group and the gratitude of the anti-Schiavo husband, by doing nothing.

So let me write a sentence I never thought I'd write: Politicians, please, think of yourselves! Move to help Terri Schiavo, and no one will be mad at you, and you'll keep a human being alive. Do nothing and you reap bitterness and help someone die.

This isn't hard, is it?

At the heart of the case at this point is a question: Is Terri Schiavo brain-dead? That is, is remedy, healing, physiologically impossible?
No. Oddly enough anyone who sees the film and tape of her can see that her brain tells her lungs to breathe, that she can open her eyes, that she seems to respond at times and to some degree to her family. She can laugh. (I heard it this morning on the news. It's a childlike chuckle.) In the language of computers she appears not to be a broken hard drive but a computer in deep hibernation. She looks like one of those coma cases that wind up in the news because the patient, for no clear reason, snaps to and returns to life and says, "Is it 1983? Is there still McDonald's? Can I have a burger?"

Again, life is mysterious. Medicine is full of happenings and events that leave brilliant doctors scratching their heads.

But in the end, it comes down to this: Why kill her? What is gained? What is good about it? Ronald Reagan used to say, in the early days of the abortion debate, when people would argue that the fetus may not really be a person, he'd say, "Well, if you come across a paper bag in the gutter and it seems something's in it and you don't know if it's alive, you don't kick it, do you?" No, you don't.

So Congress: don't kick it. Let her live. Hard cases make bad law, but let her live. Precedents can begin to cascade, special pleas can become a flood, but let her live. Because she's human, and you're human.

A final note to the Republican leadership in the House and Senate: You have to pull out all the stops. You have to run over your chairmen if they're being obstructionist for this niggling reason and that. Run over their egos, run past their fatigue. You have to win on this. If you don't, you can't imagine how much you're going to lose. And from people who have faith in you.
Bill Frist and Tom DeLay and Jim Sensenbrenner and Denny Hastert and all the rest would be better off risking looking ridiculous and flying down to Florida, standing outside Terri Schiavo's room and physically restraining the poor harassed staff who may be told soon to remove her feeding tube, than standing by in Washington, helpless and tied in legislative knots, and doing nothing.

Issue whatever subpoena, call whatever witnesses, pass whatever emergency bill, but don't let this woman die.
Well ther you have it from this right wingnut...

Sad, really sad how these people think and talk. Attacking the husband and calling anyone who is against this, killers, is nuts. No one wants to "KILL" anyone. It just is wrong for government and right wing moralists to jump into a long heald family issues case. These people are making this country really sorry.
Best to you all.
WRM