Text 10537, 161 rader
Skriven 2005-03-29 02:29:13 av Ed Connell (1:379/1.6)
  Kommentar till text 10522 av Ed Hulett (1:123/789.0)
Ärende: Re: Bo Gritz
====================
Hey, Ed.

 EC>>>> Do you also distrust the motives of her parents?  Based on the news
 EC>>>> stories I have seen, they tried to get guardianship away from the
 EC>>>> husband shortly after the malpractice suit was settled, and YEARS
 EC>>>> before he first moved to have the feeding tube removed.

 EC>>>> As for his motives, apparently he offered back in 1998 to waive any
 EC>>>> claim to the malpractice money if the parents would not fight
 EC>>>> removal of the feeding tube.  If he were just in it for the money, 
he wouldn't
 EC>>>> have done that.  And he has been offered millions of dollars if HE
 EC>>>> will surrender guardianship.  If he were just in it for the money,
 EC>>>> he would have done that.

 EC>>>> The Florida court found that she did not want to live in a
 EC>>>> persistent vegetative state.  There are now people who don't like
 EC>>>> that decision, but assume for a minute that it is correct.  If that
 EC>>>> was her wish, then he should be doing exactly what he IS doing.  He
 EC>>>> shouldn't ignore her interests.  He shouldn't give up his 
guardianship.  And he
 EC>>>> shouldn't divorce her and walk away from her situation.

 EH>>> Just how did the court "find" she wished to starve to death? Did they
 EH>>> ask her? No. Her husband found some others, so-called friends of 
her's,
 EH>>> who testified that she told them. So, if I get enough people to agree
 EH>>> with me, I could have someone starved to death too?

 EH>>> What is so important that she should be kiiled? Will it make things
 EH>>> better that she be starved to death? Actually, as Vern has said, she
 EH>>> will dehydrate long bfore she starves to death. Death by dehydration 
is
 EH>>> a long and painful death. Why must she be put through such pain? Why
 EH>>> not just put a pistol to her head and pull the trigger?

 EH>>> If isn't no real big deal to starve a human being to death, why are
 EH>>> people jailed all the time for starving animals? If the person owns 
the
 EH>>> animal, what's different for them to decide to starve that animal
 EH>>> than what Michael Shiavo is doing to his wife?

 EH>>> All the rationalization you do doesn't change the fact that Terri
 EH>>> Shiavo is being killed rather than being allowed to die with dignity.
 EH>>> There is *NO* dignity for someone to die of dehydration or
 EH>>> starvation.

 EC>> If it were all that dignified, there would be a great demand that this
 EC>> be the means for execution of criminals.

 EH> You got it.

 EH> If she had a living will signed and notorized and it was just a matter
 EH> of disconnecting her from a resperator, it would be different. Even if
 EH> she had told others that she didn't want heroic measures taken to keep
 EH> her alive, it would be different.

 EH> A feeding tube is *NOT* heroic measures.

Yer preachin' to the choir - uh - yer right!

I hope you don't mind if I use this as a vehicle for a George Will column 
about - and here's where it is on-topic - about judges.     Bah!  There, I 
feel better - but not a lot better. <g>
======================================
GEORGE F. WILL

(c) 2005, Washington Post Writers Group

In 1992, before delivering the Supreme Court's ruling in an abortion case, 
Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has a penchant for self-dramatization, stood 
with a journalist observing rival groups of demonstrators and mused: 
"Sometimes you don't know if you're Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or 
Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line." Or perhaps you are a would-be 
legislator, a dilettante sociologist and freelance moralist, disguised as a 
judge.

LAST TUESDAY Kennedy played those three roles when, in yet another 5-4 
decision, the court declared it unconstitutional to execute persons who 
murder when under 18. Such executions, it said, violate the Eighth Amendment 
proscription of "cruel and unusual" punishments because ... well, Kennedy's 
opinion, in which Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter 
and John Paul Stevens joined, is a tossed salad of reasons why those five 
think the court had a duty to do what state legislatures have the rightful 
power and, arguably, the moral responsibility to do.

Although the court rendered an opposite decision just 16 years ago, Kennedy 
says the nation's "evolving standards of decency" now rank such executions 
as cruel and unusual. One proof of this, he says, is:  Of the 38 states that 
have capital punishment, 18 bar executions of those who murder before age 
18, five more than in 1989. So he constructs a "national consensus" against 
capital punishment of juvenile offenders by adding a minority of the states 
with capital punishment to the 12 states that have decided "that the death 
penalty is inappropriate for all offenders."

But "inappropriate" is not a synonym for "unconstitutional." Kennedy simply 
assumes that those 12 states must consider all capital punishment 
unconstitutional, not just wrong or ineffective or more trouble than it is 
worth - three descriptions that are not synonymous with "unconstitutional."

While discussing America's "evolving standards of decency," Kennedy 
announces: "It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of 
international opinion against the juvenile death penalty." Why is that 
proper when construing the U.S. Constitution?

He is remarkably unclear about that. He says two international conventions 
forbid executions of persons who committed their crimes as juveniles. That, 
he thinks, somehow illuminates the meaning of the Eighth Amendment.

KENNEDY, self-appointed discerner of the national consensus on penology, 
evidently considers it unimportant that the United States attached to one of 
the conventions language reserving the right "to impose capital punishment 
... for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age."

The United States never ratified the other convention Kennedy cites. In his 
extra-judicial capacity as roving moralist, Kennedy sniffily disapproves of 
that nonratification as evidence that America is committing the cardinal sin 
of being out of step with "the world community."

Kennedy the sociologist says "any parent knows" and "scientific and 
sociological studies" show that people under 18 show a "lack of maturity" 
and an "underdeveloped sense of responsibility" and susceptibility to 
"negative influences" and a weak aptitude for "cost-benefit analysis."

All this means, he says, that young offenders "cannot with reliability be 
classified among the worst offenders."

Well. Is it gauche to interrupt Kennedy's seminar on adolescence with some 
perhaps pertinent details? The 17-year-old in the case the court was 
considering bragged about planning to do what he then did: He broke into a 
woman's home, put duct tape over her eyes and mouth, wrapped her head in a 
towel, bound her limbs with electrical wire, then threw her off a railroad 
trestle into a river where, helpless, she drowned.

Justice Scalia, joined in dissent by Justices William Rehnquist and Clarence 
Thomas (Justice Sandra Day O'Connor dissented separately), deplores "the new 
reality that, to the extent that our Eighth Amendment decisions constitute 
something more than a show of hands on the current Justices' current 
personal views about penology, they purport to be nothing more than a 
snapshot of American public opinion at a particular point in time (with the 
timeframes now shortened to a mere 15 years)."

Kennedy occupies the seat that 52 Senate Democrats prevented Robert Bork 
from filling in 1987. That episode accelerated the descent into the 
scorched-earth partisanship that was raging in the Senate Judiciary 
Committee at the very moment Tuesday morning that Kennedy was presenting the 
court majority's policy preference as a constitutional imperative. The 
committee's Democrats were browbeating another appellate court nominee, 
foreshadowing another filibuster.

THE DEMOCRATS' standard complaint is that nominees are out of the 
jurisprudential "mainstream." If Kennedy represents the mainstream, it is 
time to change the shape of the river.

His opinion is an intellectual train wreck, but useful as a timely warning 
about what happens when judicial offices are filled with injudicious people.



--- Fidolook Lite FTN stub 
 * Origin: Procrastinate NOW, don't put it off for tomorro (1:379/1.6)