The Terri Schiavo Case

[Tavi]

Balance in all things.

We live, We Die

We all have to die of something!

We get so caught up in now, and living, that we forget that death is a part of it.

 

[Potapko]

Lessons learned from the Terri Shiavo case

FIRST, THE U.S. JUDICIAL SYSTEM IS EXCEEDINGLY CORRUPT. Judges are
bound to uphold the U.S. Constitution but with increasing frequency
that is the last thing that they do. Judges routinely pull opinions
from thin air or even from foreign law rather than upholding the law
of the land as they are solemnly sworn to do. Nowhere does the U.S.
Constitution allow judges to starve people to death. There is a right
to life mentioned in the Declaration of Independence but no right to
death is even hinted at there or in the Constitution and certainly no
right to murder. Yet the judges of the United States have granted the
right for mothers to kill their babies and for husbands to kill their
wives. They have even found a right to practice moral abominations.
The judge that has ordered Terri Schiavo's feeding tube to be removed
should be charged with attempted murder by the state of Florida and
the charge should be routinely upheld by other judges, but they are
corrupt. The most obvious lesson of the Terri Schiavo case is that
the U.S. judicial system is corrupt. American judges are not
balancing power; they are usurping it.

SECOND, THE U.S. MEDICAL SYSTEM IS EXCEEDINGLY CORRUPT. Schiavo's
case is only extraordinary in the attention it has received from the
media. Hospitals and nursing homes routinely starve people to death
at the request of heartless families. I am not talking about patients
who are brain dead, who are kept alive only by machines. I am talking
about people who are living and breathing and even semi or fully
conscious and need only to be provided with nutrition, something we
routinely provide to infants who cannot feed themselves. My wife, a
nurse, has told me many stories about this sorry practice. A personal
friend in Washington ordered food and water withheld from her mother
and then her father in their old age, and in neither case were the
patients dependent on "extreme care" or "heroic measures." They were
simply old and sick and in the way, and the nurses agreed with this
decision. Why would a nurse or doctor agree to starve someone to
death? Why would they not rather go to jail than participate in such
an evil thing? The U.S. medical field has been corrupted, and it
started with the legalization of abortion. Immorality has
consequences; it is a leaven that permeates and corrupts. There is a
slippery slope in the spiritual and moral realms. Every medical
worker in the land should have risen up in arms against the
unspeakably vile practice of abortion, but for the most part they
didn't. Many of them participated in it and most others turned a
blind eye. Thus, another obvious lesson from the Terri Schiavo case
is that an institution which should be dedicated to life and healing
has been corrupted and is becoming more corrupt with each passing
decade.

 

[nauifins73]

I just don't agree with your sermon. It is thought to have been written 2000 yrs ago. Since the time of Jesus, His words have been passed through the hands and mouth of to many men. Show me the writings in black and white or stone.

Becky

 

[triton94949]

Lessons learned from the Terri Shiavo case...

Your views are quite interesting. Even fascinating. You are clearly deeply religious, and would probably welcome a theocratic state, similar to Puritan Massachusetts.

I cannot tell what you believe about freedom of religion, in a world where there are many religions.

Separation of church and state is clearly not a principle that you support.

Of 300 million Americans, possibly 30 million or 10% share the same views, I am guessing. That is of course a lot of people, enough to fill California or New York.

Although I am not comfortable with the decisions made by Terri Schiavo's husband, and the failure of compromise between him and his in-laws, I am comfortable that the Florida state judges did the best job that they could have done in their rulings in this case.

I am also amazed that the federal courts saw fit to defer to the state courts rather than remand the case back for further proceedings. Hence they did not. Normally when you offer federal judges more power they take it. In this case, the did not take it. These men and women are some of the brightest people in the world, and their apparent discretion in this case means they must believe there are constitutional issues related to the recent federal legislation.

I am not surprised that the U.S. Supreme Court did not see any federal or conflicting regional issues, and therefore they did not grant certiorari. It is difficult to get a case in front of the Supreme Court.

At work, we have an issue of law with the State of Washington. They are corruptly succeding in extracting unjust fees from businesses across the USA, and it affects our company to the tune of about a half million dollars. We got legal advice that told us that the only way we were going to succede against the State of Washington was to get lucky and get our case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. And that was unlikely. And litigation to the Supreme Court through all the state courts would have cost an additional half million dollars. So we did not fight it because it is difficult to get a case in front of the Supreme Court.

Therefore I must agree with you that in some courts in some places there is corruption. Only that I did not see it in Florida, this time.

I am impressed that both President Bush and Governor Bush have stated that they themselves would be breaking the law if they opposed the rulings of the Florida state judges, and therefore they are not going to do that. They are both smarter than Richard Nixon.

 

[Maya]

Lessons learned from the Terri Shiavo case

FIRST, THE U.S. JUDICIAL SYSTEM IS EXCEEDINGLY CORRUPT. Judges are
bound to uphold the U.S. Constitution but with increasing frequency
that is the last thing that they do. Judges routinely pull opinions
from thin air or even from foreign law rather than upholding the law
of the land as they are solemnly sworn to do. Nowhere does the U.S.
Constitution allow judges to starve people to death. There is a right
to life mentioned in the Declaration of Independence but no right to
death is even hinted at there or in the Constitution and certainly no
right to murder. Yet the judges of the United States have granted the
right for mothers to kill their babies and for husbands to kill their
wives. They have even found a right to practice moral abominations.
The judge that has ordered Terri Schiavo's feeding tube to be removed
should be charged with attempted murder by the state of Florida and
the charge should be routinely upheld by other judges, but they are
corrupt. The most obvious lesson of the Terri Schiavo case is that
the U.S. judicial system is corrupt. American judges are not
balancing power; they are usurping it.

SECOND, THE U.S. MEDICAL SYSTEM IS EXCEEDINGLY CORRUPT. Schiavo's
case is only extraordinary in the attention it has received from the
media. Hospitals and nursing homes routinely starve people to death
at the request of heartless families. I am not talking about patients
who are brain dead, who are kept alive only by machines. I am talking
about people who are living and breathing and even semi or fully
conscious and need only to be provided with nutrition, something we
routinely provide to infants who cannot feed themselves. My wife, a
nurse, has told me many stories about this sorry practice. A personal
friend in Washington ordered food and water withheld from her mother
and then her father in their old age, and in neither case were the
patients dependent on "extreme care" or "heroic measures." They were
simply old and sick and in the way, and the nurses agreed with this
decision. Why would a nurse or doctor agree to starve someone to
death? Why would they not rather go to jail than participate in such
an evil thing? The U.S. medical field has been corrupted, and it
started with the legalization of abortion. Immorality has
consequences; it is a leaven that permeates and corrupts. There is a
slippery slope in the spiritual and moral realms. Every medical
worker in the land should have risen up in arms against the
unspeakably vile practice of abortion, but for the most part they
didn't. Many of them participated in it and most others turned a
blind eye. Thus, another obvious lesson from the Terri Schiavo case
is that an institution which should be dedicated to life and healing
has been corrupted and is becoming more corrupt with each passing
decade.

With all respect, sounds like your definition of corruption is anyone who doesn't agree with your religious or moral views.

 

[ReefGuy]

I certainly hope that if I'm ever in a condition like her, my family isn't cruel enough to keep me in that kind of condition. I gotta make a living will.

 

[MikeFerrara]

You are going to run into a problem with defining adultery.

You are probably thinking that when a man whose lawfully wedded wife is in a coma or vegetative state for 15 years, and he takes another common law woman and has 2 kids by her, that this is somehow adultery. If you read the Old Testament, adultery has nothing to do with that. You need to search and look in the timeframe of Moses (1400 BCE) regarding the origin of the Hebrew term for adultery.

If you want to flash forward to Jesus's (Jehosua Nazareti) time at 33 AD, then you have the same issue of definition, since He was referring to the older law of Moses. What Jesus was really saying was to keep your thoughts pure. He was not condemning plural marriage nor remarriage. Today plural marriage is a modern taboo, however if you go to the Middle East you see Arabs still practicing it all over. It has been practiced on the Earth for thousands of years.

Also, in Jesus' time, physicians (like St. Luke in the Gospels) did not put feeding tubes into comatous or vegetative victims. In Jesus' time, your wife was usually with you, your companion, and not comatous or vegetative in a hospital bed for 15 years.

I'll check on the Hebrew and greek words used.

Gen 2:24 "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh".

Notice that, in this translation, at least, it says wife not wives.

Cor 6:16 "Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For "the two" he says, "shall become one flesh". "

1 Cor 7:2 "Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband"

1 Cor 7:5 "Do not deprive one another except with concent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self control."

1 Cor 7:8 "But I say this to the unmarried and to the widows: It is good for them to remain even as I am; 9 but if they cannot exercise self-control, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion."

Again notice, wife rather than wives. There are many many more references and if it's mistranslated then it's mistranslated consistantly and I see nothing to suggest that marriage is plural. Also notice that temptation when being neglected is recognized but acting because of it is not condoned. I'm afraid that it would require more than a mistranlation of the word adultary to make your arguement valid. I think, it would require rewritting the whole Bible. Maybe Arabs practice plural marriage but Christians and Jews do not.

Of course my arguement is only that 10 years ago when he took up another woman outside of marriage that, IMO, he disqualified himself from speaking as Terri's husband. I realize that you can't apply logic to law but there seems, at the very least, to exist an obvious possibility for a conflict of interest. Also, since paligamy is illegal in this country (regardless of what Arabs do) I would think (yes, I know that doesn't work with law) that there would be a legal arguement here too. Isn't taking another woman a violation of even our legal marriage contract and grounds for devorce? I wonder if a sharp prosequtor might not even be able to charge him with paligimy or is that ruled out only by the lack of a second legal marriage?

If I was Terri's father I would have first worked for a devorce for her since there seems to be both legal and scriptural grounds. Again realizing that logic doesn't apply well to law but I think that it's a "loophole" in the law that would even allow him to retain guardianship on the basis of being a husband after entering into another psuedo marriage.

 

[Kennedydive]

Let’s keep religion out of this. Not everyone believes in Christianity or religion period. We don't want to get into a pissing match involving religion. If you were to start looking at all the things that were done in the name of religion we would soon see how holly religion is and what horrible things were done in the name of religion. So cool it with your religious views and stick to the topic.
Jason

 

[MikeFerrara]

Let’s keep religion out of this. Not everyone believes in Christianity or religion period. We don't want to get into a pissing match involving religion. If you were to start looking at all the things that were done in the name of religion we would soon see how holly religion is and what horrible things were done in the name of religion. So cool it with your religious views and stick to the topic.
Jason

Sorry don't mean to offend. I was simply countering a statement concerning the Biblical definition of adultery. Whether or not one is Christian or believes in any God at all I would think the meaning of a text can be argued without the need for any one feeling offended.

triton94949 stated that New Testament refered to adultery in the Old Testement context which is consistant with the practice of polygamy among the Isrealites. I simply showed a few references to support why I disagree.

To address the remainder of what you said...yes, rotten things have been done by people who carry Bibles or other religious texts. However, I don't think we can blame the book for what the person does. I'd also point out the rotten things that have been done in the name of politics and law also. It seems that people just do rotten things and they do it for lots of reasons and always have an excuse.

So, please don't be offended by my support of my own understanding of the text by providing references. Please don't mistake my explaination of why my view is what it is as an attempt to get you to accept that view. In this country you have a right to accept or reject those views as you see fit...and so do I. Yes? It was simply a response aimed at countering triton94949's explaination of the New Testament meaning.

With that I'll withdraw from this conversation because my views on it are based on things that society has decided you have the right to reject publically but I don't have the right to embrace publically.

 

[jonnythan]

With that I'll withdraw from this conversation because my views on it are based on things that society has decided you have the right to reject publically but I don't have the right to embrace publically.

FWIW and IMO, you're free to embrace whatever you want as pubicly as you want, but using a religious belief or tradition to justify a legal or governmental action is unacceptable