Doesn't Oliver Willis understand we are talking about ending an innocent human life here?

He may not approve of the gov't intervening but it's hardly a call for one up or a blogswarm - this isn't a game.

I was wondering if this spoken admission to Michael's wish not Terri's has been brought to the attention of Terri's parents or their lawyers?

Oliver doesn't care about human life, he only cares that this is something the republicans are for, if they are for it he's against it.

Ugh, that is truly horrible. I can't stand what is being done to that poor woman, and I can't stand the fact that radicals are so eager to pull out this feeding tube when they know so little about the case.

In a (partial) defense of the 5 Republicans that voted against the bill - consider the fact that they're from fairly left-leaning places (Delaware, Washington State, Pennsylvania), they're probably more interested in keeping the votes from their home state. Doesn't mean I like their voting against the bill, just that they have their own constituents influencing their decision.

No one is killing Terri Shiavo; congress should not have gotten involved and President Bush should not have signed the approval. Even if you have a living will and a dnr, don't move to Florida. The woman is clinically and brain dead, having no brain function. Keeping her alive by machines for 20 years is more than cruel and unusual punishment. Now and only now should we demand that Congress goes to hell and that we do what has to be done to get Pres Bush to step down from his presidency.

Cindy

Cindy she is NOT brain dead even according to the people who want to kill her.

And yes Cindy, starving someone to death is killing them.

If I lock you in a room and don't feed you until you die, did I kill you?

You can (I guess) argue that we should kill her. But you can't argue that they this won't be killing her.

When Michael barred Terri's family Saturday from her room, he cited catching Terri's father attempting to make an audiotape of her trying to speak. Does anyone know if this was that tape?

As a sidebar: one wonders whether this ban was lifted so promptly as a result of a "what the hell are you doing" call to Michael from George Felos. Any attorney worth his salt would try to make his client as appealing to the public as possible. Seems Michael is hell-bent on looking just as cold-hearted as possible in this case.

And Cindy--please define "clinically and brain-dead" for us medically-trained people who see neither in Terri. Just for reference, "clinically dead" is generally accepted as devoid of spontaneous cardiopulmonary function (no breathing, no heartbeat). "Brain dead" is usually taken to mean no neural function within the brain. Also, would you enlighten us as to which machines she is attached that are keeping her alive? I don't mean to sound antagonistic, but you are either misinformed, ignorant, or purposefully making inaccurate statements, and I think we could benefit from some clarification.

Cindy - where are you getting the idea that Terri Schiavo is braindead? I somehow doubt that medical reports stating otherwise, and the testimony of a dozen doctors saying she is neither comatose NOR braindead, would still mean she's a vegetable.

I said this in my own blog that she is not braindead, not a vegetable, and deserves a chance at treatment. I mean, it is patently obvious to anyone reading your comment that you are a liberal. Are you so blinded by hatred for a political party that you would condemn an otherwise healthy woman to death? I could have SWORN that liberals were all over this whole "equal rights for everybody" thing, defending the rights of EVERYONE to life a full and happy life. Unless it inconveniences you, of course.

Terri Schiavo stands a chance to get better and still live a productive life, should she finally get the treatment that has been denied to her for years by her husband. It doesn't strike you as weird AT ALL that he has his "she wouldn't want to be kept this way" epiphany AFTER his settlement and then successfully shoots himself in the foot on Larry King Live?

This isn't a case where a flip of the switch and Terri is gone - it is a cruel, nasty death by starvation. It is not that simple when you have an alive, alert person on the receiving end of that feeding tube. Before you launch into a spiel about how it'll be painless, I challenge you to prove it. Hell, I've spent days fasting, and its torture. I somehow doubt it'll be any different for this woman.

Terri Schiavo deserves a chance, deserves treatment, and deserves to be separated from her husband with clear conflicts of interest. I don't think that is entirely too much to ask, here. Other Democrats and bloggers recognize that as well, and they're burying the hatchet to join a cause and stand up to an injustice perpetuated by Terri Schiavo's husband and a pig-headed judge. I suggest you start considering doing the same.

Why can't there be a blogswarm calling for starving Olliver until he loses that extra 75 pounds he's packing? Besides the direct health benefits to him, the resulting price drops in food due to lowered demand might only be temporary, but we could feed several hungry kids for a month with one week of his food intake. Maintaining that double chin alone must take about 500 calories a day.

Pardon me, but did a single black Congresswoman vote for the bill?

Read this for a similar case (worse, actually) that turned out well: http://dory.typepad.com/wittenberg_gate/2005/03/a_voice_to_spea.html

Oh, and see the NewsMax article with her nurses's statements at http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/3/20/102601.shtml

Brain dead? NOT!

I started out reading about this Schiavo thing as a bit of an agnostic. My wife and I have living wills saying we'd prefer not to live under Terri's circumstances. I've slowly come around to the "keep the tube in postion mainly for two reasons. 1) We have no reliable evidence that Terri would want to be starved, 2) Terri has a loving family -- father, mother, brother, sister -- who consider it a joy, not a burden to take care of her.

Another thing the controversy has made me consider is the idea that Terri's life is not worth living. Maybe that's how some of us honestly feel for ourselves, but what do our preferences for ourselves have to do with Terri? I get the impression that some folks want Terri dead because it challenges their notion that there is no important side of life that resides in the soul.

The Oliver Willis "blogswarm" advocacy is sickening. These people have lost their moral compasses. My mind keeps turning to that passage in "Sophie's Choice" where the concentration camp commander asks, "My God, Sophie, do you think I'm a monster?" He too, was one of us, and he'd lost his way.

Typical Leftist slave morality. Oliver wants her dead, but being a coward he won't accountablity for murdering her. His actions will kill her, but like other totalitarians he will hide the cause of her death in red tape. It is the same "murder by bureaucrat" mentality as those who ran the gulags and concentration camps. The sick part is how eager he is to mass-produce the wholesale murder of undesierables.

QUESTION FOR OLIVER: If you want her dead so bad, why won't YOU pull the trigger? I bet I hear nothing back on this question. Keep your powder dry, we might need it if thugs like Oliver ever get power.

Cindy:

How can it be cruel and unusual punishment if she is, as you say, brain dead? She's not feeling a thing according to you. And how is she being kept a live by machines? Is a feeding tube a machine?

Now and only now should we demand that Congress goes to hell and that we do what has to be done to get Pres Bush to step down from his presidency.

At least you didn't write the above in all caps or include one of your obnoxious proclamations that only you are qualified to render an opinion on this case, but do you have any idea how crazy the above makes you sound?

But it does sound like she is trying to reply to her father to me.

Regardless of which tests you think she should have that you say she hasn't have... You are now saying that all of the doctors and nurses who have examined and cared for her for 15 years are so incompetent that, despite their diagnoses, they have never once noticed that Terri can talk or communicate. But you are basing your analysis, instead, on poor-quality audio of what you admit "could also be taken as random noise".

This just sounds like a desperate attempt to manufacture evidence that supports what you want to believe, despite the fact that it contradicts all of the more obvious evidence. See: Occam's Razor.

" You are now saying that all of the doctors and nurses who have examined and cared for her for 15 years are so incompetent...blah blah blah"

More examples of the Slave Morality. Brian's says the annointed EXPERTS say she should die, we should be good sheeple and submit to their mastery.

Sorry Brian, but not all of us are good slaves. Just because a dude's title says "Dr." does not make him the Annointed Master of Life and Death. See Mengele, Dr. Josef.

Brian--allow me to pose a question to you:

Who should be allowed to make life-and-death decisions for Terri?

A. Her husband, even though he's living with and has had children by another woman

--or--

B. Her mother, father, and siblings, who have stood time and time again willing to assume Terri's care?

What I'm asking is for you to stop arguing about her mental capacity, stop arguing about the constitutionality of the Congressional action, and answer and explain your answer to that single question. Legally, I know that the law provides Michael with that capacity. I'm asking whether you believe he should have that position.

Brian also is using the fallacy called "Appeal to Authority" - but who needs to reason when you are pimping the Annointed Glory of the Infailable Experts.

Brian, read the medical reports from when Terri was first admitted to the hospital. Among other things, she is documented as giving verbal cues and a few words to her parents and her husband. She tracks objects with her eyes, and responds to verbal prompts if she has the ability to do so. This isn't a matter of what we want to believe, its a matter of what it actually is. The court is drawing a completely contradictory conclusion from what medical experts are testifying to be fact. Over a dozen doctors said that she is not comatose nor braindead after examining Terri. Medical documentation declares that she is capable of feeling pain, responding to prompts, and limited interaction. I say "limited interaction" because of the restrictions Michael has placed on those who can see Terri.

What everyone is not noticing here is both Michael Schiavo's attorney George Felos and Judge Greer both have vested interests in the hospice Terri currently reside in - yet neither has recused themself from the case because of this conflict of interest. Any lawyer will tell you that there is no real way that can be considered acceptable when it becomes a life and death matter like this. Judge Greer in particular is not giving Terri a fair chance because his own interests may lie contrary to her own, and therefore contaminates his ability to objectively weigh the facts of this case. Add to the fact that Judge Greer, it can be argued, is being complicit with Felos by denying any new testimony or introduction of evidence, with a blanket statement of calling anything new "irrelevant" - evidence and testimony that could show that keeping Terri alive will generate good results with proper treatment and therapy.

I bring up the "complicit" angle because it is essentially his job to hear anything that could change the outcome of the trial - being pigheaded doesn't make for good judgements, or a fair trial. Especially when you appear to be rubber-stamping whatever motions Schiavo's attorney brings up. When you have dozens of doctors and neurologists CHOMPING AT THE BIT to testify pretty uniformly that Terri deserves a re-evaluation, you sit up and take notice. At the very least, she deserves a re-evaluation by a different team of doctors, a different set of judicial eyes, and a much more humane way of ending her life (if it proves ABSOLUTELY necessary - not "kind of, but we're not sure" necessary). Starving a woman to death because a judge isn't doing his job isn't right and nobody deserves to be treated that way.

You might have a point if I was talking about blind commitment to a single doctor. But I said "all of the doctors and nurses who have examined and cared for her for 15 years". I haven't done the research, but feel free to do so. How many could that be? 30? 50? 100? And not a single one has come forward to say she can talk. I don't believe that even the Schindlers' medical experts are making that claim. Heck, the Schindlers themselves only recently started to claim this.

So to disregard the conclusion of so many who have directly observed her is delusional. And labeling me as a crutch to help you avoid the issue doesn't help you.

Brian's says the annointed EXPERTS say she should die, we should be good sheeple and submit to their mastery.

Wow, you outdid yourself in falsely attributing something to me that is not even close to what I said. Fortunately, my actual words are just a few comments above, so your blatent lies are quite obvious.

Brian--allow me to pose a question to you:
Who should be allowed to make life-and-death decisions for Terri?
A. Her husband...
--or--
B. Her mother, father, and siblings...

Easy. The answer is A.

Which is the answer given by the vast majority of Americans. Only 25% want that decision reserved for their parents.

While I value this blog for its view point, this one is way off the mark, and your use of selective cropping to make your point is disingenuous.

He wasn't allowed to complete the thought/sentence you post as proof. So it is proof of nothing really since you can not determine what the rest of the statement may have been.

Let's look at some other text from the transcript that you left out, and that many seem to want to gloss over, or simply ignore.

KING: Hold it Michael -- on hearsay, George, thought, the only word that she said that is Michael's, right, George?

FELOS: No. That's not correct. Because she made those statements to her best friend, Joan and also to her brother-in-law. There were three witnesses and numerous statements to those witnesses over different periods of time. I don't want to be kept alive artificially. No tubes for me. I want to go when my time comes. If I ever had to be dependent upon anyone, I wouldn't want to live that way.

I mean, Terri made her wishes clear. And that's what the court found.

This has been decided by a court of law, that this was the desire of this woman.

If the only thing he was out for was the money, why has he not taken the offers that have been made for money to release Terri to her parents!

It's really very simple. She did not want this, it is not Michael's word against the parents.

Time and again this guy has suffered the indignation of having false accusation made against him, proven to be false, and yet he keeps it up. Why do you think? Possibly because he made a promise to the woman he loves that he would not let her continue to exist in this manner, as she wished it. It would have been so much easier for him to drop the whole thing and turn her over to her parents. He would not have suffered the crap he is going through now.

I admire him for sticking to his principles.

Man, I can hardly wait for the flames from this . . .

Oliver is still an asshat no matter what though . . .

Brian, it's truly fascinating how you omitted the crux of the issue with a trite little "..."

I felt like that was the mentality of your argument, but thanks for proving me right.

You are lying to first yourself, then the world, if you can honestly say you would want an estranged spouse to wield that type of power over you.

Um, DavidB--are you sure you want to talk about how wonderfully Michael has stuck to his principles? How about his wedding vows?

Just asking . . .

I mean, if his love for Terri is so deep and all . . .

Oh, nevermind. Somebody did say something in another thread about teaching a pig to sing.

Isn't that audio from 2004. Nice try.

Nice try Bo, but you still didn't reply to the main point, that this is her wish, as told to others. . .

But I guess that pig statement would fit, wouldn't it?

Most of the questions I had about this case were answered here: http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/infopage.html

The husband was not the only person relied upon for Terri's wish to not be kept on life support. There is far too much disniformation floating around about this case. I don't trust the family and I don't trust the husband either to give an accurate account at this point. But the link above seems unbiased in my view to give an accounting of fact, and not emotoin.

Conservatives have consisntantly railed against the "emotional" aspect of politics, yet here they are exploiting it for their own gain. Pathetic really.

"Which is the answer given by the vast majority of Americans. Only 25% want that decision reserved for their parents."

Brian offers another fine example of the Slave Morality. Never mind right/wrong on a individual basis, let's make the decision to kill another human being based on the faceless Herd. Let's kill Terri based on some survey. Sick.

"Regardless of which tests you think she should have that you say she hasn't have... You are now saying that all of the doctors and nurses who have examined and cared for her for 15 years are so incompetent that, despite their diagnoses, they have never once noticed that Terri can talk or communicate."

Actually not all the doctors are in agreement, and there were several affidavits from nurses who believed she was aware and concious. Not sure how many reported that she was speaking, but there are a lot of disabled people out there who don't have speech, surely you aren't advocating we starve all of them to death too.

Okay, DavidB . . . I'll Bite.

Actually five people made the statement that Terri had indicated that she wouldn't want to live:

1. Her own mother: Said Terri was so moved by hearing of the case of Karen Ann Quinlan that she made a statement to the effect of "they should just leave her alone." That was taken to mean that Ms. Quinlan should be allowed to die. Terri made this statement when she was 11 or 12 years old.

2. An unnamed witness also said Terri made the same sort of statement regarding the Quinlin case, but because of the conflict between the verbage of the comment and the time at which the exchange took place, the testimony was ruled to be potentially inaccurate. Complicating the testimony of this witness was the fact that she had exceptional recall about the exchange during the trial, but limited memory at her earlier deposition.

3. Michael Shiavo said he and his wife had several conversations regarding her wishes. This testimony, alone, wasn't considered enough to stand alone on such a weighty matter.

4&5. Scott Schiavo and Joan Schiavo: Michael's brother and sister-in-law submitted testimony indicating that Terri had made similar statements to them as Michael had claimed were made to him. The court found no reason on the surface to doubt their testimony, although there were questions raised regarding why they waited so long to step forward.

Also, there was "expert testimony" by Beverly Tyler, Executive director of Georgia Health Discoveries, who testified that the views allegedly taken by Terri about not wanting to be "hooked to a machine" were typical for her age group and demographic.

OK--there you have it. She said something when she was a preteen, in response to a right-to-die case televised at that time in her life; another witness was essentially discredited; her husband made his claims, which were backed up by his brother and sister-in-law (his brother's wife); and "expert testimony" that established these views as "typical."

One unrelated account before she reached her majority, Three related witnesses stating the same thing. One witness who didn't know Terri.

This set of witnesses and testimony would be laughed out of a criminal court--why would you accept it as undeniable proof in this case?

There is simply no way of knowing beyond reasonable doubt what Terri would have wanted. Accept that fact and start looking at who would be more likely to have her best interests at heart--the estranged husband or the parents.

Now as to the "nice try" bit . . . exactly what did I try to do and not succeed? You didn't answer my point regarding why you insist Michael is above reproach. To hear people harping upon his position as her husband while ignoring the FACT that HE IS RAISING A FAMILY WITH ANOTHER WOMAN conjures the mental picture of a three year old, hands firmly clasped over his ears, screaming "LALALALALALALA"

Don't ask me why.

Just before the part of the transcript you qoute:

M. SCHIAVO: Because this is what Terri wanted. This is her wish.

Not that that justifies killing her. I'm on your side, I just don't like for things to be taken out of context.

To your credit, you did link to the entire transcript so people could see for themselves.

JC