Shiavo Must-Read

Dahlia Lithwick at Slate absolutely nails the issue of the deplorable Schiavo situation: Activist Legislators – The boundless overreaching behind Congress’ new Schiavo bill.. I said yesterday that this is just grandstanding to energize the base (which, according to a recent poll, do not approve of what Congress is doing), but the ramifications are astounding. The action by Congress and the President undermines the heart of our legal system, essentially saying that the government can jump in and change things that it doesn’t like.

Whether Terri Schiavo will live or die in the coming days has come down to this: Can federal district judge James Whittemore set aside virtually every bedrock constitutional principle on which this nation was founded, just so members of the United States Congress may constitutionalize the nowhere-to-be-found legal principle that a “culture of life” is a good thing?

This morning’s decision by Congress and President Bush—to authorize new federal legislation that will obliterate years of state court litigation, and justify re-inserting a feeding tube into Terri Schiavo, based on new and illusory federal constitutional claims—is not about law. It is congressional activism, plain and simple; legislative overreaching and hubris taken to absurd extremes.

I also especially like this bit about Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, whose qualifications as a medical professional seem more in doubt every day.

Members of Congress have apparently also had super-analytical powers conferred upon them, as well. Senate Majority Leader, and heart surgeon, [Lithwick’s emphasis] Bill Frist felt confident last week—after reviewing an hour of videotape—in offering a medical diagnosis of Schiavo’s condition, blithely second-guessing the court-appointed neurologists who evaluated her for days and weeks. His colleagues are similarly self-appointed neurological experts. Years of painstaking litigation, assessment, and evaluation by state courts are dismissed by Tom DeLay as the activist doings of a “little judge sitting in a state district court in Florida.” Only the most extraordinary levels of congressional hubris could allow a group of elected citizens to substitute their personal medical, legal, and ethical judgments for those of the doctors, judges, and guardians who have been intimately involved with this heartbreakingly sad case for years.

And this:

… because anyone who disagrees with [a video clip of Schiavo that purports that she’s capable of laughter and talking] is a murderer and torturer, the state court judge in this case requires constant police protection: The standard-bearers of the “culture of life” keep threatening to kill him.