Meanwhile, in real news....

I'm sure glad I'm employed outside the home. This eliminates any possibility of dealing with what I'm sure is a nonstop barrage of "guests" on the cable news shows, each one presumably on the wingnut side of the fence.

But there is, in fact, some REAL news today, that of course the broadcast media, those guys who force-feed their crap over PUBLIC airwaves that belong to US, are conveniently ignoring.

First of all, even the skeptical have had the rug pulled out from under them today. The so-called "intelligence" about WMDs in Iraq WAS, in fact, crap after all.

Second of all, unmentioned by President Codpiece in his "culture of life" focus on the death of Terri Schiavo, are the three GI's, who last time I checked, should be regarded as just as human as Terri Schiavo, and at least still had their cerebral cortices, who were killed in separate incidents in Iraq today. (Hat tip: Attaturk)

And third of all, is it just me (and ThinkProgress), or did Tom DeLay just admonish the nutballs to commit violence against Michael Schiavo and every judge who worked on the Schiavo case?

Be at peace, Terri Schiavo

MSNBC is reporting that Terri Schiavo has died, hours after her parents' last appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court.

This is not a happy day for anyone, not even those of us who were appalled at the political circus that grew around this case. I'm at an age now where it's hard to see people my own age die, let alone someone younger. And yet, I feel that the time to grieve for this woman was fifteen years ago, when her relentless efforts to conform to society's view of what a woman's body should look like took their toll and robbed her of her very selfhood.

At this point, I have to separate out my contempt for her parents for their willingness to be part of the Christofascist agenda, and their cynical selling of the names of the people who believed in their cause, and their clear regard of their daughter as property; from the kind of human sympathy one has for parents who lose a beloved child. Despite the hoopla, this has been an ordeal for them, and at least for now, it's time to lay off.

As for Terri Schiavo herself, my own spiritual beliefs tell me that this was a task she had to complete during this incarnation; and it's not for us to try to understand why this is. At any rate, I hope she finds peace and that better things await her next time around.

Now I think we as a society have to focus on exactly how we're going to deal with medical technology, and what constitues "life." And anyone who doesn't currently have a living will (and that includes me) had damn well better get one, PDQ.

A commenter at Kos posits some very good questions we need to address NOW:

1. How much of a brain counts as 'human enough' to preclude questions of whether to sustain life-support? At what point should it be a state decision? At what point should it be up to the spouse or immediate family?


2. How much hope of partial or full recovery is needed to justify continued life-support?


3. When should a feeding tube deemed extraordinary care? Now that the pope has one, this question will receive global scrutiny.


4. What sort of people should be making the decisions that result in the death of a severely damaged/disabled human on life support? Lawyers? Judges? Police? Families? Anyone who wants to preserve the life that others are willing to allow to expend?


5. Should people who believe in miracles and supernatural powers be allowed to intervene in the affairs of those who don't? What's the right of a 'faith-based' community to trump a 'reality-based' family or group on a matter of 'life'?

My answer would be that such decisions should be made by the individual, which is where the living will comes in. For those who have none, some kind of "hierarchy of responsibility" needs to be set up. I'd hate to think that, for example in a gay couple, parents from whom one is estranged would be able to trump the partner in making such decisions.

What I fear, though, is that even making one's wishes clear in a living will won't be enough for the folks who pushed this case into the limelight. How far will they go?

A journalistic note: The photograph of Terri Schiavo taken soon after she became incapacitated, one which was routinely cropped and mistakenly used as a "before" photo, is shown in full on MSNBC's site, and now it's clear that this is not a photograph of an intact person.

EoMEoTE #5: Eggymite--Scrambled eggs with Vegemite

Hot buttered toast with Vegemite?Or hot buttered toast with scrambled eggs?Why not do both?!?When inspiration for this month's End of Month Eggs on Toast Extravaganza struck me, I had visions of soft fluffy egg pillows decorated with beautiful dark brown swirls of salty goodness.I whisked the eggs with milk and then added half-a-teaspoon of Vegemite. Trying to swirl the solid lump of brewers

EoMEoTE #5: Eggymite--Scrambled eggs with Vegemite

Hot buttered toast with Vegemite?Or hot buttered toast with scrambled eggs?Why not do both?!?When inspiration for this month's End of Month Eggs on Toast Extravaganza struck me, I had visions of soft fluffy egg pillows decorated with beautiful dark brown swirls of salty goodness.I whisked the eggs with milk and then added half-a-teaspoon of Vegemite. Trying to swirl the solid lump of brewers

Ah, the idiocy of callow youth....

...and how I wish I still had it. Damn, I wish I could still pull off stuff like this. Check out in particular the third photo. Have you ever seen someone having so much fun being snarky?

The HAL 9000 is malfunctioning

We on the left have tended to imbue Karl Rove with quasi-magical powers because of his usually unerring political instincts. In the Schiavo case, however, Rove's "play to the base" strategy seems to have backfired. How badly this will hurt the GOP over time remains to be seen, but when conservatives are starting to blast their own party, something is definitely up. Republicans may be many things, but one thing they aren't is rebels. Republicans tend to be good soldiers, going along even with policies they don't like.

Yesterday, former Missouri Sen. John Danforth, about as impeccably-credentialed a conservative Christian Republican as you're likely to find, blasted Congress for its injection of religion into the making of Federal policy. Today, Stanley F. Birch, Jr., one of the most conservative Federal judges, steps into the fray:

in Wednesday's 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to deny a rehearing to Schiavo's parents, Birch went out of his way to castigate Bush and congressional Republicans for acting "in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for governance of a free people - our Constitution."

Birch said he couldn't countenance Congress' attempt to "rob" federal courts of the discretion they're given in the Constitution. Noting that it had become popular among "some members of society, including some members of Congress," to denounce "activist judges," or those who substitute their personal opinions for constitutional imperatives, Birch said lawmakers embarked on their own form of unconstitutional activism.

It's amusing to watch so-called judicial purists blasting what they like to call "activist judges", or more frankly, "activist liberal judges." It's clear that where Christian reactionaries are concerned, "activist judge" means "any judge who doesn't decide the way we want him to. The odious Jay Sekulow, pal to Pat Robertson and another Jewish guy who thinks allying himself with Jesus freaks is the way to survive when they start rounding up all non-Christians into camps, blasted Birch while praising a judge appointed by that spawn of Satan himself, Bill Clinton. I wonder if they think Antonin Scalia is an activist judge as well, since even HE didn't vote to hear the Schiavo case in the Supreme Court. Of course, we already know that Scalia doesn't believe that the High Court has a dog in this particular hunt, as evidenced by his writings in the Cruzan case.

It's becoming more and more difficult for me to believe that there is some kind of massive conspiracy that's been going on for over a decade among dozens of Federal judges (including conservatives), the Pinellas Park police, the staff at the facilities in which Terri Schiavo has been housed for the last fifteen years, and Michael Schiavo, to cover up some kind of abuse. Schiavo may not be a nice guy. It's pretty clear that he was the kind of controlling husband that most of us wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole. It's possible that his wife was about to leave him. It's possible that having him make the decisions ISN'T what she would have wanted -- though frankly, if all he has to go on is what her family says, after all the animosity and after the circus they've allowed to go on (one in which he has tried not to participate), I can hardly blame him for taking what they say with a grain of salt. But ultimately where I come down on this is "Why on earth would he put himself through all this for any other reason other than because he really believes in what he's doing?" He's refused all financial compensation for backing away. He's not that big a Catholic, from what I understand, so divorce shouldn't be that big an issue for him, not if he's living with someone else and had children with her. I can't buy some kind of massive, nationwide coverup of abuse. No matter what path I try to go down here, I keep ending up with just two possibilities for his motiviation: Either he really believes he's doing what's right, or else this is his last opportunity to get his in-laws to butt out of his marriage once and for all.

As usual, Olbermann puts it best:

It is possible that Michael Schiavo is a battering spouse or a murderer, just as it is possible that you are a battering spouse or a murderer.

But the odds against him (or you) being a battering spouse or murderer, and a complete idiot, are very, very high.

And that is exactly what the husband of the unfortunate, and unfortunately publicized, Terri Schiavo, would have to be, to have done what he did yesterday, unless his innocence was all but certain and the mainstream medical evidence on his wife’s condition all but incontrovertibly verified.

Through his attorney, Mr. Schiavo announced that after his wife’s life ends, he will delay the planned cremation of her body, and ask the Chief Medical Examiner of Pinellas County, Florida, to conduct a full autopsy on the cause of her now impending death.

If he, as some blood relatives of his wife now suggest after a decade of suggesting otherwise, somehow abused her, or he led to the heart stoppage that put her in her present state, it is not likely to be missed by the autopsy.

If he, as his in-laws and all of his critics now suggest after nearly a decade of suggesting otherwise, had an ulterior motive in seeking to end her treatment, it is not likely to be missed by the autopsy.

And if the part of her brain that makes her her was not irreparably damaged (in fact, turned to liquid)— as examination after examination and court after court has found— it is certain not to be missed by the autopsy.

In short, Mr. Schiavo has just given his critics three opportunities to prosecute him by authorizing, in fact requesting, the autopsy. If he’s been lying, or the doctors have been wrong, or any of the hysteria stirred up by those operating both in good faith and bad in this case, is true— then he is a complete idiot.

This case should now be considered closed. Obviously it will not be. It will be perpetuated by a few good, sad people who do not want the woman they know as daughter, sister, or friend, to die. It will be perpetuated by others who cannot come to grips with the incongruity of part of her brain still acting automatically, like a stoplight in the middle of a desert. But mostly it will be perpetuated by people who do not and have not given a damn about Terri Schiavo, or her parents, or anyone but themselves and the opportunities to exploit this situation for their own personal or political beliefs.

Michael Schiavo’s insistence on an autopsy will resolve more than just how hopeless his wife’s situation really has been. It will also be an autopsy on the credibility of those who have tried to manipulate her insentient condition. For, unless Michael Schiavo is a battering spouse or murderer, and a complete idiot, his public critics will be revealed as snake-oil salesmen who have not only exploited his wife, but also thousands of Americans who— just like me, and no doubt just like you— would love nothing more than to see Terri Schiavo rise from her bed and go home, happy, healthy, and fully restored.

Food for thought

No pun intended. This is a letter posted at Altercation today:

Dear Dr. Alterman:
I have an irony to illuminate.

A few months ago, I spent a lot of time at a nursing home keeping my elderly aunt company as she faded gently to black. My sister and I had the privilege of holding her and singing her to sleep in her final hour. We had no wrenching decision to make - Mavis was very clear with us about heroic measures.

During many long visits I came to know a lovely man named John who spent many of his waking hours at the home keeping his beloved Christine company. "Steen", as she was known was lost forever to the impenetrable fog of Alzheimer's. Many years ago, John and Steen worked for the Dutch Underground in their efforts to hide Jews, gather intel for the Allies and give the Nazis all possible grief. As John asserted, "Steen was the hero." As a courier, she had to smuggle all manner of stuff from town to town, evading German patrols and getting through checkpoints and roadblocks undetected. Had she been caught, she would have faced down a firing squad. John told me blushingly and proudly that Steen was a world-class flirt and voluptuous 16yr old beauty with long golden hair who could wiggle, tease and giggle her way out of any situation.

And so she did, saving countless lives and contributing to the great victory.

After the war, John and Steen came to Canada, declared themselves unhyphenated Canadians and gave generously to their new homeland. Steen died recently with John at her side in grieving silence. She was the love of his life; his rock and his heroine.

And so the irony. The whole world knows who Terri Schiavo is. We know the details of her medical condition, the sounds she makes, the minutiae of her marriage and have seen unflattering photos of her wasted limbs and vacant visage. We even got to see a picture of the now iconic feeding tube protruding from her navel.

Terri Schiavo, the innocent sufferer is the unwitting center of a huge and ugly morality play that demeans us all. Steen, the intrepid heroine to whom many still living owe their lives died quietly in a small Canadian town. Not even the local paper managed to note that a woman of extraordinary grace and courage passed this way and made the world a better place.

Irony.

As someone whose grandparents lost relatives in Hitler's camps, let me be the second American to say: Thank you, "Steen."

Another reason to feel old today

Eric Clapton is 60.

He's no longer God. He's Methuselah.

From the "Let's Blame the 60's" file....

Hoo-frickin-ray. Blogger is actually working again (or so it seems; we'll see whether I can actually post this.

But here's a nice little tidbit that the Lunatics in Pinellas Park and the Pundits Who Love Them can flog to death on the cable news channels: Judge George Greer, who gave the initial order to remove Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, used to be Lizard King Jim Morrison's roommate, back when they were Florida State graduates.

There's a connection to be made here. Let's give it a try:

Hmmmmm...Morrison was obsessed with death; Greer orders this feeding tube removed. Therefore, rooming together at Florida State makes you want to kill yourself or others?

Una's on Broadway, Ultimo

A gaggle of foodies descended upon Una's on Broadway last night, Easter Monday, to see if this latest outpost of Una's could stand up to the original.In all there must've been about fifteen of us: some new faces in the crowd as well as some familiar ones, including Casey, Aaron, R and VerucaSalt.The restaurant was surprisingly empty, although true, this area doesn't have the luxury of constant

Una's on Broadway, Ultimo

A gaggle of foodies descended upon Una's on Broadway last night, Easter Monday, to see if this latest outpost of Una's could stand up to the original.In all there must've been about fifteen of us: some new faces in the crowd as well as some familiar ones, including Casey, Aaron, R and VerucaSalt.The restaurant was surprisingly empty, although true, this area doesn't have the luxury of constant

The real moral to the story

As the Terri Schiavo case draws towards its sad and inevitable close, there's something that's been nagging at the back of my mind for quite some time. I first noticed this with friends who married young and still allowed their parents to make decisions for them and still looked to their parents for guidance and direction far more than anyone who had entered the so-called "adult" institution of marriage ought to.

The problem in a marriage where the parties are still too closely tied to one or both sets of parents is that there's inevitably a tug-of-war as to whose parents are going to control things. Young marrieds will buy a house they can't afford because their parents expect them to (and often provide the down payment). They will start a family because their parents want grandchildren, not because they're ready. Too many people marry and still allow their parents to guide their lives. If you have to ask for Mom 'n' Dad's approval before doing something, you're not an adult, and don't get married.

I knew one couple where her parents and his parents never agreed on what this couple should do. So they were in a constant state of divided loyalties -- do they side with their parents or their spouse? (Hint: once you marry, your spouse becomes your first priority, NOT your parents.)

I know at least three instances in which a wife wanted a baby, the husband wasn't ready yet, and the wife's mother urged her to go ahead and get pregnant anyway, because "once he sees the baby, he'll love it." This happens also when a young marriage is in trouble...a well-meaning but misguided parent will urge the couple to have a baby "to bring them closer together." In each of those cases, the wife became pregnant, the husband didn't love the baby, and the couple ended up divorcing. I somehow get a sense that something like this is what happened in the Scott/Laci Peterson marriage. This in no way excuses murder, but it certainly can make someone feel besieged.

Some information has trickled out over the last few days about Terri Schiavo that nags at me as well. Of course I don't know this family, but both the Schindler and Schiavo families are often described as "close-knit." This can be a positive, but it can also be a negative, pulling a couple in separate directions. Terri Schindler was barely 21 when she married. I get a sense that she comes from a controlling family. One report, to which unfortunately I cannot find the link, indicated that when she lost 50 pounds on Nutri-System in her senior year of high school, it was with her mother's help. We all know now about teenage girls and their weight. Do we know for sure that Michael Schiavo was the only person concerned about Terri's weight? What did her mother think about her 200-pound teenaged daughter? It's a fine line between "closeness" and controlling...and I wonder...if Terri Schindler married a controlling man (which it appears she did), was it because being controlled was what she was accustomed to?

Think about what bulimia is. The National Women's Health Information Center says:

Purging and other behaviors to prevent weight gain are ways for people with bulimia to feel more in control of their lives and ease stress and anxiety.

We know that the Schindlers had a large role in this couple's early married life:

They met in the Philadelphia suburbs where Terri Schiavo and her husband, Michael, spent their childhoods and married in 1984, barely past adolescence. The young couple relied on the generosity of her parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, first living in their basement in Pennsylvania, then moving to a condominium here that Robert Schindler had bought around the time he sold his heavy-equipment business.

The Schindlers followed their daughter and son in-law to this sunny coastal city, and though they did not see Michael Schiavo often -- he was working long hours at beachside restaurants -- they had no problem with him. He called them Mom and Dad. They paid their daughter and son in-law's rent.

Now, I'll grant you -- I'm not exactly the poster child for the product of a functional family. But I wonder how a young couple is supposed to make their own way in the world when the parents are paying the bills and following them around the country.

I have to wonder: Was Terri Schiavo feeling torn by conflicting loyalties, between controlling parents and a controlling husband? Rather than simply wanting to be thin, was her bulimia about something more? Was she the chubby kid in the skinny family; the throwback to someone's peasant ancestors, and in this thinness-obsessed society, an embarrassment?

We just don't know, and we never will. I just wonder.

But in the two biggest media circuses of the last year, the unrelated and vastly different Schaivo and Peterson cases, there is one common thread: a perhaps too tight bond with the parents, often at the expense of the marriage.

Marriage is hard enough when you're young without feeling as if you're being torn in a million directions. A word advise from someone hitting the half-century mark this year: If you're not ready to break up with your parents, don't get married. You can still be friends with them, and if you're lucky, they'll always be there for you. But when you marry, you make your OWN way with your spouse. Sometimes you'll do things right, sometimes you'll make mistakes. But you'll do it on your own, together, as a unit.

UPDATE: Great minds think alike. No less a venerable personage in blogdom than Digby has been thinking about this very thing:

...I think that Krauthamer may be expressing the views of plenty of "conservative" people who want to control their children's lives long past the time they are legally and morally allowed to do so. That particular kind of control is often the default temperamental style of right wingers. They wish to control everything, particularly the people around them.

Essentially, he's saying that parents should have a veto over the spouse in these issues. (If it were the spouse who wanted to use extraordinary measure to keep the patient alive, current law would already suffice.) Therefore, he's promoting the idea that there are cases in which your "first degree relatives" have the power of life and death over you in circumstances where your spouse disagrees. What a concept.

I had a colleague years ago who was in a terrible car accident and severely brain damaged at the age of 33. He had been estranged for years from his abusive family and had been more or less raised by others to whom he was very close. He was quite wealthy and had left his surrogate family all of his money in his will. He was also unmarried and did not have a living will, although those who knew him said that he had expressed many times that he would not want to be kept alive by extraordinary measures. His estranged family were extremely religious and insisted that he be kept alive at all costs. Being "first degree" relatives they had the right to make that decision. I lost track of the situation after five years or so, but at that time he was still living in a persistent vegetative state. The money ran out and he was put on medicaid. I heard that his family rarely visited.

I realize that in some cases, one might not want one's spouse making that kind of decision, especially if the marriage is in trouble. But if that's the case, then make a living will! That should be just another way of protecting oneself when a marriage is on the rocks. But there are enough dysfunctional families out there that assuming that blood relatives know what you want, and will always act in your interest rather than their own, isn't an answer either.

Emma at the American Street (hat tip to Shakespeare's Sister for this one) draws a big red line under the extent to which the Schindler's stated they'd go at one point to keep Terri alive:

One of the most enlightening documents is the Guardian Ad Litem report that had to be filed under Florida’s Terri’s law(which was later found unconstitutional). Several sections spoke to the Schindler’s motivations. Here’s the most horrifying:

Testimony provided by members of the Schindler family included very personal statements about their desire and intention to ensure that Theresa remain alive. Throughout the course of the litigation, deposition, and trail testimony by members of the Schindler family voiced the disturbing belief that they would keep Theresa alive at any and all costs. Nearly gruesome examples were given, eliciting agreement by family members that in the event Theresa should contract diabetes and subsequent gangrene in each of her limbs, they would agree to amputate each limb, and would then, were she to be diagnosed with heart disease, perform open heart surgery. There was additional, difficult testimony that appeared to establish that despite the sad and undesirable condition of Theresa, the parents still derived joy from having her alive, even if Theresa might not be at all aware of her environment given the persistent vegetative state. Within the testimony, as part of the hypotheticals presented, Schindler family members stated that even if Theresa had told them of her intention to have artificial nutrition withdrawn, they would not do it. Throughout this painful and difficult trial, the family acknowledged that Theresa was in a diagnosed persistent vegetative state.

My sympathies for the Schindlers dried up right about here, out of fear, I think. Or horror. They would keep a mindless, limbless husk in a bed, because it would make them feel joy?

One other thing I'd point out here is that until the wackos like Randall Terry got hold of this family, they at least had a grip on the reality that Terri was in a persistent vegetative state, not ready to give a valedictorian speech followed by dancing the lead in Giselle.

Another fine upstanding Christian man

Here's the wonderful, selfless, life-loving, woman-caring Christian man who let his 10-year-old son get arrested bringing cups of water to a woman who can't swallow.

I don't know why these things can still surprise me.

But hey, he's one o'them "blank slate" Christians, where he can do whatever he wants, and as long as he accepts Jeebus, he gets a free pass to God's own home theatre, where he and his sanctimonious buddies will get to pass around nachos and popcorn and watch heathen like me burn.

(hat tip: commenter Michael Hawthorne at Americablog)

"Imp" used to be a term for Satan

I guess now that Judith Miller may go to jail, Elisabeth Bumuller is going to inherit her kneepads:

George W. Bush has been acting like a man liberated from the American presidency.

At an event in Denver last Monday, he mused that sending out quarterly statements for the individual investment accounts he wants to add to Social Security could encourage people to pay more attention to government but then chuckled that investors might conclude from tepid returns that "maybe we ought to change presidents or something."

At a news conference last week, Mr. Bush joked that he did not have the time "to sit around and wander, lonely, in the Oval Office, kind of asking different portraits, 'How do you think my standing will be?' "

And at the end of an interview with a Belgian television correspondent last month, Mr. Bush blurted out to the young woman that she had "great eyes," glanced away slyly and then a little sheepishly, but for the most part seemed sorry that the session was over.

Is this a new George Bush?

White House officials insist not and say that the frisky president people are seeing in public is simply the one he has kept private for the last four years. "In the first term he wanted to have the American people see his heart and his policy agenda and his seriousness, and not that he's an impishly fun, very clever guy," said Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education and the president's former domestic policy adviser.

I think it's more a question of the fact that this is a man with absolutely no empathy, who now that he doesn't have to worry about re-election, is free to release his Inner Asshole.

Who let the black kid into the White House Easter Egg Roll?

What's wrong with this picture?

That's the "inclusive" nature of Republicanism. Put one black person in there, then crow about how "inclusive" you are.

La Peniche, Stanmore

You've probably driven past La Peniche a million times on your travels up and down Parramatta Road but never realised it. Disguised amongst the bland windowed shop fronts, it is here at La Peniche where you can dine on a three-course meal plus glass of wine for a mere $30.$30! Tell me more!La Peniche is actually the "application" for students from the Paris International Cooking School, something

La Peniche, Stanmore

You've probably driven past La Peniche a million times on your travels up and down Parramatta Road but never realised it. Disguised amongst the bland windowed shop fronts, it is here at La Peniche where you can dine on a three-course meal plus glass of wine for a mere $30.$30! Tell me more!La Peniche is actually the "application" for students from the Paris International Cooking School, something

Well, well, well....

Tonight the ABC network newscast had a feature about the wife of a news anchor who found herself in 1998 in the very situation Michael Schiavo is in now. This case was in Virginia, but the situation was almost identical: a diagnosis of permanent vegetative state, other relatives who wanted to keep the patient on life support, the patient's wife in favor of withdrawing the feeding tube, government officials getting involved.

That case wasn't publicized outside of Virginia, which makes me wonder what it is about the Schiavo case that has made it a national story.

Now it turns out that many of the pro-feeding-tube principals in this story have their own inconsistencies. As I've blogged before, I hate that I have to feel contempt for a family that's about to lose a beloved daughter, simply because they have allowed a huckster, con man and hypocrite like Randall Terry to speak for them. But it turns out that Terri Schiavo's father has has to make this decision before:

...given the vehemence with which he has been fighting to prolong Terri's life, it is a little surprising to learn that Robert decided to turn off the life-support system for his mother. She was 79 at the time, and had been ill with pneumonia for a week, when her kidneys gave out. "I can remember like yesterday the doctors said she had a good life. I asked, 'If you put her on a ventilator does she have a chance of surviving, of coming out of this thing?'" Robert says. "I was very angry with God because I didn't want to make those decisions."

And amazingly, so has Tom DeLay:

Exposing a previously unknown episode, the Los Angeles Times reported late Saturday that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who this week championed political intervention in the Terry Schaivo case, agreed to his own family’s decision in 1988 to take his own father off life support and allow him to die.

The man, 65-year-old drilling contractor Charles DeLay, was badly injured in a freak accident at his home. Tom DeLay was a junior congressman from Texas at the time. The patient was being kept alive by intravenous lines and a ventilator.

“DeLay has denounced Schiavo's husband, as well as judges, for committing what he calls ‘an act of barbarism,’ in removing the tube,” the L.A. Times reported. “In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as the congressman quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die."

This account was assembled from court files, medical records and interviews with family members, the paper said.

Doctors advised that DeLay’s father would "basically be a vegetable," the congressman's aunt, JoAnne DeLay, told the newspaper.

When his kidneys failed, the family decided against connecting him to a dialysis machine. "Extraordinary measures to prolong life were not initiated," said his medical report, citing "agreement with the family's wishes."

His bedside chart carried the instruction: "Do Not Resuscitate." On Dec. 14, 1988, the senior DeLay died.

The Times noted similarities between the DeLay and Schiavo cases: “Both stricken patients were severely brain damaged. Both were incapable of surviving without continuing medical assistance. Both were said to have expressed a desire to be spared life sustained by machine. And neither left a living will.”

I don't know why this stuff surprises me anymore. Last weekend, George W. Bush made a big show of returning to Washington to sign a bill that allowed the Schindler family to pursue redress in Federal Court, thinking that this would give him brownie points with the increasingly vocal base. Jeb Bush even sent in state agents in a kidnapping attempt. Yes, the Bush Brothers were all over this case like flies on horse manure until the polls started coming in from sane Americans who understand that they will be in this situation someday and they do NOT want politicians getting involved.

And now it's backfired on them. C-Plus Caligula is now utterly silent on the matter as Terri Schiavo's life draws to a close, and Jeb Bush has gone from Hero of the Christian Right to Public Enemy #1, claiming that he lacks the power to do anything. Funny how now that the polls are against him, Jebbie is now invoking the rule of law.

Do these guys really believe that what's left of Terri Schiavo's life must be saved at all costs? One would think so, given their tubthumping of the last week. But now one is silent and the other is whining about the rule of law. Say what you will about the lunatics still outside that hospice in Pinellas Park trying to bring cups of water to someone who cannot swallow -- at least they're willing to stand up, and to be arrested, for what they think is right. I may think they're wrong, but damn it, at leat they have the courage of their convictions....unlike the very Bush brothers they have so ardently supported.

Quote of the Day

...from a comment at John Cole's blog:

Is there no responsibility here? Could there not be some new Tim McVeigh out there, watching, weeping, plotting his revenge "for Terri"?

OK, I take it back

I take back what I said about giving props to Jeb Bush for being a cooler head prevailing. Looks like he sent in the jackbooted thugs after all:

Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Schiavo was not to be removed from her hospice, a team of state agents were en route to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted -- but they stopped short when local police told them they would enforce the judge's order, The Herald has learned.

Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told police in Pinellas Park, the small town where Schiavo lies at Hospice Woodside, on Thursday that they were on the way to take her to a hospital to resume her feeding.

For a brief period, local police, who have officers at the hospice to keep protesters out, prepared for what sources called ``a showdown.''

In the end, the squad from the FDLE and the Department of Children & Families backed down, apparently concerned about confronting local police outside the hospice.

''We told them that unless they had the judge with them when they came, they were not going to get in,'' said a source with the local police.

''The FDLE called to say they were en route to the scene,'' said an official with the city police who requested anonymity. ``When the sheriff's department and our department told them they could not enforce their order, they backed off.''

The incident,known only to a few and related to The Herald by three different sources involved in Thursday's events, underscores the intense emotion and murky legal terrain that the Schiavo case has created. It also shows that agencies answering directly to Gov. Jeb Bush had planned to use a wrinkle in Florida law that would have allowed them to legally get around the judge's order. The exception in the law allows public agencies to freeze a judge's order whenever an agency appeals it.

Swell. Now we have state law enforcement damn near getting into an altercation with local law enforcement.

Regardless of where you stand on the fate of Terri Schiavo herself (and frankly, I wish she would wake up right now and tell us what she thinks), this is madness. Law-and-order Republicans are no longer talking about the rule of law; no longer talking about how "the system worked", no longer having any respect for the justice system, even when the decisions are coming down from conservative judges. Instead, they're advocating mob rule.

And these are the people who made their name on respecting less government and the rule of law?

Out of Africa, Manly

Sipping hot sweet mint tea brings you back to a carpet-selling souq in Fes, where your t-shirt and shorts instantly label you as a bumbling foreigner, your brain is addled by the stifling heat, and a small but determined Moroccan is trying to convince you that the carpet that lays between you, really is an unbelievable bargain.We're not quite in Fes, but rather in wet and miserable Manly, having

Out of Africa, Manly

Sipping hot sweet mint tea brings you back to a carpet-selling souq in Fes, where your t-shirt and shorts instantly label you as a bumbling foreigner, your brain is addled by the stifling heat, and a small but determined Moroccan is trying to convince you that the carpet that lays between you, really is an unbelievable bargain.We're not quite in Fes, but rather in wet and miserable Manly, having

The beast is out of control now

One of our commenters has posted some interesting and thought-provoking stuff about the kinds of capacities some brain-injured people may have that are not readily apparent. If we're going to be talking about whether Terri Schiavo is or is not in a persistent vegetative state, and/or what kind of cognitive abilities she may or may not have, THAT's the field on which this discussion should take place.

The people who are claiming now that Schiavo is alert and talking are NOT doing this discussion any favors. The public has been bombarded with four-year-old video of someone whose eyes are open, and who appears to be smiling (though photos I've seen taken from the video indicate that much of that expression depends on the camera angle; at other angles it looks like a rictus of terror). To the lay person, open eyes = alertness. To be awake but not able to think is as incomprehensible as death itself. We try to put ourselves in Terri Schiavo's place, and we really can't.

Comedian Wanda Sykes has a hilarious bit about how women are always thinking. "Have you ever once had a moment of silence in your head?" I can't speak for anyone else, but for me the answer is a resounding "NO!" Those who know me know that I rarely stop talking. What they don't know is that this patter goes on even when I'm not. To me, the idea of having that silence in my head is beyond comprehension. Does Terri Schiavo have that silence in her head? Or is the patter still going on, but trapped?

It's clear that there's much we still don't know about how the human brain works. If anything good comes out of this whole mess, it'll be because more people will think about what they do and do not want done for themselves in a similar situation, and will put those wishes in writing. And it just might spur additional interest (and hopefully funding) for brain research.

Those are the potential positives. The negative is that the fundamentalist faux-Christian beast that's been rattling the bars of its cage since the mid-1970's has finally broken out of its so-called prison. It's hungry, it's angry, and it's out to destroy everything in its path if it has to in order to feed itself.

Steve Gilliard:

That line from Red October is running through my head again:"This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we will be lucky to live through it."

Why? Because the Republicans are still counting fundie votes. They think they can control this, that nothing will happen and the base will be excited. But most of the base is revolted. They are horrifed at the sanctimony and the increasing rhetoric from people who should know better. Ignore judges? Kidnap a dying woman? Are they kidding?

Why is this happening? Because they thought it would be a gimmie. That the only people who would care is the radical right and their foot soldiers. They could get their way and trap the Dems in the process. But now, the Dems stepped out of the way and let the GOP take every bit of heat for this. You have the spectacle of Randall Terry, has-been, making demands on Jeb Bush, who meekly says "I can't go beyond my powers."

Bush and Bush seem to be puppets of the fringe elements, a group who would let their kids get arrested, which horrifies most people. All that political capital has been squandered, as Jim Wolcott said, on a Sunday flight from Crawford.

But Bush has never spread political risk. He has always heaped it on and expected to be rewarded in the end. There has never been a downside for this. But there is now. If Judge Greer or Michael Schiavo is harmed in any way, that turd is going to land right on the doors of the White House and Congress. They unleashed this madness and the idea that they could escape it is unlikely.

Bairro Portugues - Petersham Food and Wine Fair

After checking out the St Patrick's Day parade in the city a few Sundays ago, we then high-tailed it to Sydney's Little Portugal for the annual Petersham Food and Wine Festival.It was a dazzlingly warm and sunny day and Audley Street was closed off to traffic and jam packed with stalls and wandering foodies.Hey we recognise this stall...Street mural by Portuguese-born Australian artist Luis

Bairro Portugues - Petersham Food and Wine Fair

After checking out the St Patrick's Day parade in the city a few Sundays ago, we then high-tailed it to Sydney's Little Portugal for the annual Petersham Food and Wine Festival.It was a dazzlingly warm and sunny day and Audley Street was closed off to traffic and jam packed with stalls and wandering foodies.Hey we recognise this stall...Street mural by Portuguese-born Australian artist Luis

Wacko Armageddon is Imminent

Sorry, no cat blogging today...my digital camera is lost under a pile of obsolete computer books and other effluvia after damn near needing a backhoe to get all the junk out of our home office so we can paint it a lovely, calming, and soothing shade of taupe. And somehow, "Friday All Hell Has Broken Loose In My House Blogging" just doesn't quite have the same "cute factor."

But speaking of all Hell breaking loose, the wackjobs in Florida are getting ready for some Extreme Nastiness when, as is expected since her parents' legal options are running out, Terri Schiavo at last is freed from the body and the people that betrayed her and depending on your belief, goes home to Jesus, goes to her eternal rest, or leaves this incarnation behind and either gets ready for the next one or moves on to eternal unity with the universe.

In true "culture of life" fashion, the death-centered "pro-life" movement is gearing up for a little of the old ultra-violence. The Kansas City Star reports:

Some pro-life activists are making ugly threats, making up "Wanted" posters for lawmakers and handing out the home addresses of judges who rejected legal appeals to keep Schiavo alive.

"I am afraid," said state Sen. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami, who has received numerous death threats by phone and mail because she voted against a measure to reinsert Schiavo's feeding tube. "We're talking about the sanctity of life, and (they're) threatening my life."

The nine Republican lawmakers who voted against the measure showed up on anonymous "Wanted" posters that appeared in the state capitol in Tallahassee. State Sen. Nancy Argenziano said one of the "un-Christian" voice mails she's received wished stomach cancer on her.

Guards have been posted outside the politicians' offices.

Police won't discuss their security measures, but Michael Schiavo and Judge George Greer, who has consistently upheld Schiavo's requests to end his wife's life, are under around-the-clock protection and staying out of sight. Both have been the targets of a flood of fury, branding them corrupt and abusive murderers who are flouting God.

"Various law enforcement agencies are aware of the emotions in this case and have taken appropriate actions," said Wayne Shelor, spokesman for the police in Clearwater, Fla., where Michael Schiavo lives.

Popular right-wing Web sites have had to post prominent warnings against threats of violence on their discussion boards after calls for the armed "liberation" of Terri Schiavo from her hospice and comments suggesting that if her husband were taken out of the picture, guardianship would revert to her parents, who want to keep her alive.

People on Schiavo's street in Clearwater have received anonymous postcards saying: "Your neighbor Michael Schiavo is trying to murder his wife."

In addition, it seems that over a dozen moronic lunatics are being arrested while trying to bring cups of water to Terri Schiavo at her Pinellas Park hospice (as if she were running a marathon), including two 13-year-old girls and a 10-year-old boy. (This is a typical lunatic right gambit -- put the children out there as human shields. Stephen King sure had the character of Gregg Stillson just right in The Dead Zone, didn't he?

And in the "Killing for Christ" department, we have the Illinois man who was arrested after trying to steal a gun so he could "rescue Terri Schiavo."

You know, I'm not going to give Jeb Bush credit for much. I think he's every bit as vile, venal, greedy, and corrupt as everyone else in his family. But I'll give him credit for not acquiescing to the insane calls to send troops to Pinellas Park to kidnap what's left of Terri Schiavo. Whether it's simply because he's smart enough to know that a gunfight between guys in military uniforms and protesters will just about mean the death knell of his obvious, if still denied, 2008 Presidential campaign, or because he really believes in following the rule of law, at least so far, his cooler head has prevailed.

But you know what? I hate this. I hate this whole thing. I hate it as much as I'm participating in it. I hate how this story has knocked everything else off of the news wires. I hate that this tragic woman has turned into a political football to be kicked around by the phony Christians, the crazies, and corrupt politicians. I hate that I've lost sympathy for a family because they've allowed themselves to be manipulated by people like Randall Terry. I hate that I just want this to be over. I hate that tens of thousands of families who have been through this are having to relive their nightmare. I hate what my country has turned into this week. America had a nervous breakdown after 9/11/01, and this week we've had another one.

Friday morning roundup

I'm spending the day at home today, in a cozy little ménage à trois with Mr. Brilliant and Benjamin Moore.

So here's some of what you ought to check out today.

• I hate to link to Jeff Jarvis; his ego is quite large enough already, thank you very much (not that links from little ol' me mean a heck of a lot), but he has a decent compilation of excerpts from conservative bloggers about a possible "GOP Meltdown" over the Schiavo case.


• Lost in the screeching that is Terrimania is the fact that C-Plus Caligula has been utterly silent on the deaths of ten Native Americans, one of them the shooter, in the Minnesota school shooting earlier this week:
  

  "The fact that Bush preempted his vacation to say something about Ms. Schiavo and here you have 10 native people gunned down and he can't take time to speak is very telling," said David Wilkins, interim chairman of the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and a member of the North Carolina-based Lumbee tribe.

  
  Why people continue to be surprised that Bush's "culture of life" only applies to white Christians is beyond me.


• Media Matters reminds us of the background of Schindler family spokesnut Randall Terry. Perhaps it's unfair, but the Schindlers lost much of the sympathy I had for them when they made the Faustian bargain to have this domestic terrorist speak for them.


• John Gorenfeld, best known for bringing us the news of the coronation of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon as the Messiah in the halls of Congress last year, now tells us of the child abuser who is now the U.S. Ambassador to Italy.


• Bob Herbert has a nice rundown of some of the consequences of the Bush Budget -- child-care assistance for over 300,000 of the poor ended by 2009, cuts in food assistance for pregnant women, infants and children, cuts in funding for H.I.V. and AIDS treatment of over half a billion dollars over five years (whatever happened to that $15 billion, anyway?). And over a half-billion in tax cuts for the wealthy. More proof that that the Fundie right cares about life before birth, and preventing white Christians from going home to Jesus (maybe it's to ensure a good, mediagenic turnout for the Rapture?).


• I can't seem to stop looking at articles about Vespas....which is pretty strange because I am scared to death of motorcycles. But I work 10 miles from work, it's all roads of 40mph or less, and well, a Vespa gets 65mpg. We may all be riding Vespas soon, if Kenneth Deffeyes is correct.


• The Schiavo case is resulting in some pretty interesting behavior on the part of talking heads. I don't usually watch the Abrams Report, which comes on MSNBC after Olbermann's show, but it's been fascinating to watch this week, as Dan Abrams' head has come very close to exploding several times this week as he's interviewed some of the delusional wingnuts who insist that Terri Schiavo is just days away from full cognition. Today, even the usually subdued David Shuster pulls the curtain away from the Congressional grandstanding to show the law that Bill Frist and Tom DeLay have been touting for the toothless exercise in political cynicism that it is:
  

  Based on what Schiavo's parents have been saying this week, it appears the legislation's fine print was never shared with them by Bill Frist or anybody else for that matter. Early Monday morning, after President Bush signed the Schiavo bill, Bob Schindler was positively beaming in front of the television cameras. He said he walked into his daughter's hospice room and told her, "We had to wake the President up to save your life."
  
  Did Bill Frist and Tom Delay ever call the Schindler family and say, "not so fast?" Apparently not. In their latest court filing, the Schinder family still clings to the misleading notion offered by lawmakers last weekend that their bill required Schiavo's feeding tube to be immediately reinserted. Quote, "If Congress meant to give the federal courts the power to let her die..." says the Schindler's filing, then passing the law "would be little more than a cruel hoax." Read it again... The Schindlers argue: "If Congress meant to give the federal courts the power..." The fact is, that's exactly what Congress did. And a "cruel hoax" on Terry Schiavo's family is exactly the right description.
  

Bill Frist, a hypocrite? I'm SHOCKED, I tell ya!

Where is the outrage? Think of the children!

Sen. Bill Frist (R-Quack) has decided, based on watching a video, that Terri Schiavo is just about ready to get up and join the company of Riverdance, then win the National Spelling Bee, and that evil liberals are trying to kill her.

Funny how DOCTOR Frist wasn't as hopeful when it came to the case of someone who was incapacitated, but still had a cerebral cortex. This tidbit comes to us courtesy of DC Inside Scoop.

Bill Frist now:

"Remember, Terri is alive. She is not in a coma," Frist said Sunday. "Although there are a range of opinions, neurologists who have examined her insist today that she is not in a persistent vegetative state. She breathes on her own - like you and me. She is not on a respirator. She is not on life support of any type. She does not have a terminal condition." [The Tennessean, 3/22/05]

Bill Frist then:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist attacked Sen. John Edwards for saying that stem cell research would enable people like Christopher Reeve to “get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.”

Frist responded on a conference call with reporters arranged by the Bush-Cheney campaign: "I find it opportunistic to use the death of someone like Christopher Reeve -- I think it is shameful -- in order to mislead the American people… We should be offering people hope, but neither physicians, scientists, public servants or trial lawyers like John Edwards should be offering hype.

"It is cruel to people who have disabilities and chronic diseases, and, on top of that, it's dishonest. It's giving false hope to people, and I can tell you as a physician who's treated scores of thousands of patients that you don't give them false hope." [CNN.com, 10/12/04]

Am I implying that the pious cat-killer, DOCTOR Frist, is nothing more than another cynical politician, making a calculation to appeal to the wackiest sliver of the Jesusland base for his 2008 presidential run? Nope. I'm not implying anything. I'm screaming it to the skies.

Isn't it just possible that the kind of stem cell research that Bill Frist felt might give people like Christopher Reeve "false hope" just might eventually help people like Terri Schiavo?

This week in a nutshell

...at Get your War On.

(WARNING: THE ABOVE LINK MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR KEYBOARD. BE SURE TO COVER ALL COFFEE CUPS AND OTHER BEVERAGES BEFORE READING.)

(via Running Scared)

But enough about me, how do you like my dress?

I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, one thing God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo to elevate the visibility of what's going on in America. That Americans would be so barbaric as to pull a feeding tube out of a person that is lucid and starve them to death for two weeks. I mean, in America that's going to happen if we don't win this fight.

And so it's bigger than any one of us, and we have to do everything that is in our power to save Terri Schiavo and anybody else that may be in this kind of position, and let me just finish with this:

This is exactly the kind of issue that's going on in America, that attacks against the conservative moment, against me and against many others. -- Tom DeLay, March 18, 2005

Narcissistic Personality Disorder: an all-pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration or adulation and lack of empathy, usually beginning by early adulthood and present in various contexts. -- Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR), 2000

Quote of the Day

MoDo:

The president, who couldn't be dragged outdoors to talk about the more than a hundred thousand people who died in the horrific tsunami, was willing to be dragged out of bed to sign a bill about one woman his base had fixated on.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Republican "Culture of Life"

Tom Friedman, the New York Times foremost apologist for Bush's Iraq war, and fellow denizen of the Bush Manufactured Reality Bubble, reminds us today of how highly selective the Republican "culture of life" is:

You have to stop and think about this: We killed 26 of our prisoners of war. In 18 cases, people have been recommended for prosecution or action by their supervising agencies, and eight other cases are still under investigation. That is simply appalling. Only one of the deaths occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, reported Jehl and Schmitt - "showing how broadly the most violent abuses extended beyond those prison walls and contradicting early impressions that the wrongdoing was confined to a handful of members of the military police on the prison's night shift."

Yes, I know war is hell and ugliness abounds in every corner. I also understand that in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, we are up against a vicious enemy, which, if it had the power, would do great harm to our country. You do not deal with such people with kid gloves. But killing prisoners of war, presumably in the act of torture, is an inexcusable outrage. The fact that Congress has just shrugged this off, and no senior official or officer has been fired, is a travesty. This administration is for "ownership" of everything except responsibility.

All Terri Schiavo, All the Time

WaPo has a must-read interview with Dr. Jay Wolfson, author of the 2003 report at Abstract Appeal on the Schiavo case.

Meanwhile, it looks like the Republicans, led by certain 2008 Presidential candidates Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum, and Bill Frist, may have overplayed their hand here. A CBS News poll reveals that four of five people polled opposed federal intervention, with levels of disapproval among key groups supporting the GOP almost that high.

C-Plus Caligula's approval has taken a hit too -- down to 43%. (Watch for more terror warnings, maybe even another Osama Bin Laden tape, coming soon to a television near you.)

Most Americans say they feel sympathy for family members on both sides of the dispute over the 41-year-old Schiavo, according to a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll.

More than eight in 10 in that poll said they feel sympathy for Bob and Mary Schindler, parents of Schiavo, who want to keep her alive. And seven in 10 said they're sympathetic for Michael Schiavo, the husband of Schiavo who says she should be allowed to die.

I'm gratified that most Americans, even those identifying themselves as evangelical Christians, aren't being taken in by the self-serving carny sideshow in Washington and in the governor's mansion in Florida. That a nearly-equal percentage are able to sympathize with both parties in this case is an indication that when pressed, Americans are still able to hold two ideas in their heads at the same time, and are still able to recognize extreme cynicism when they see it.

So what was the last straw? Was it Tom DeLay saying that Terri Schiavo was God's gift to him? Was it Bill Frist, a physician, doing armchair diagnosis by videotape? Was it Jeb Bush, who is cutting the very same Medicaid payments in his state that are keeping Terri Schiavo alive? Or is it simply that too many Americans either have been, or will be, in this situation at some point in their lives, and they do NOT want politicians intervening in their families?

The kind of vocal, lunatic fringe to whom Republicans are playing can't be any more than, oh, say, fifteen percent of the population. In an effort to placate this fringe that demands ideological purity, Republicans are turning off the very swing voters they regarded as so important just a few months ago.

Amazingly, most Americans, despite the best efforts of the screaming media to convince them otherwise, are still willing to countenance the idea that there are no bad guys in this family, that both sides can be intelligent people of goodwill who honestly believe they are doing the right thing for a terribly damaged family member, but who disagree about what that is.

Berry bombs

When I saw kiwiberries in this week's Good Living, I didn't really think I'd see them at the local Woollies.But there they were. $3.99 for a punnet. Oh go on... why not. Gastronomic research you know?... :-)According to the Good Living blurb, kiwiberries are hand-picked, "vary in shape from round to elongated, weigh between 5 and 20 grams, and are loaded with Vitamin C".Once home and having

Berry bombs

When I saw kiwiberries in this week's Good Living, I didn't really think I'd see them at the local Woollies.But there they were. $3.99 for a punnet. Oh go on... why not. Gastronomic research you know?... :-)According to the Good Living blurb, kiwiberries are hand-picked, "vary in shape from round to elongated, weigh between 5 and 20 grams, and are loaded with Vitamin C".Once home and having

Quote of the Day

....from DavidNYC at Kos, in response to Jeb Bush's latest attempt to wrest custody of Terri Schiavo away from Michael Schiavo because a 'renowned neurologist' who visited with Ms. Schiavo for an hour recently does not agree that she is in a persistent vegetative state"

If only these guys demanded such certainty in death penalty cases, I might almost believe them.

A stroll down memory lane

Now that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to order the re-insertion of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, there's very little doubt in my mind that this case will continue on its relentless march to the Supreme Court.

When it does, it will be interesting to see what Antonin Scalia does with it. Keep an eye on this, folks, for here's what he said in a similar case, Cruzan by Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, in 1990 (emphases mine):

While I agree with the Court's analysis today, and therefore join in its opinion, I would have preferred that we announce, clearly and promptly, that the federal courts have no business in this field; that American law has always accorded the State the power to prevent, by force if necessary, suicide -- including suicide by refusing to take appropriate measures necessary to preserve one's life; that the point at which life becomes "worthless," and the point at which the means necessary to preserve it become "extraordinary" or "inappropriate," are neither set forth in the Constitution nor known to the nine Justices of this Court any better than they are known to nine people picked at random from the Kansas City telephone directory; and hence, that even when it is demonstrated by clear and convincing evidence that a patient no longer wishes certain measures to be taken to preserve her life, it is up to the citizens of Missouri to decide, through their elected representatives, whether that wish will be honored. It is quite impossible (because the Constitution says nothing about the matter) that those citizens will decide upon a line less lawful than the one we would choose; and it is unlikely (because we know no more about "life-and-death" than they do) that they will decide upon a line less reasonable.

Pink Salt, Manly

EDIT: This restaurant has closed at this site. Bella and Evan have re-opened Pink Salt in Double Bay with a new kitchen team.For those of you who aren't Australian reality-TV addicts, Pink Salt is the New South Wales restaurant in the Channel 7 series My Restaurant Rules.Basically the concept goes that five couples at the start of the series are given the opportunity to develop and manage their

Pink Salt, Manly

EDIT: This restaurant has closed at this site. Bella and Evan have re-opened Pink Salt in Double Bay with a new kitchen team.For those of you who aren't Australian reality-TV addicts, Pink Salt is the New South Wales restaurant in the Channel 7 series My Restaurant Rules.Basically the concept goes that five couples at the start of the series are given the opportunity to develop and manage their

And MORE idiocy from so-called Christians

Oh, brother.

This one takes a meandering path through Blogistan, ending up at Poetic Leanings:

Terri Schiavo can continue to live even though her feeding tube has been removed. Yes! She Can! Believe it! We can all participate in sustaining her physical life.

On Friday, March 18, 2005, at 1:00 pm. Michael Schiavo orders the removal of his wife Terri’s feeding tube in compliance of the court order of Judge Greer. The feeding tube is removed.

During the course of Holy Week the secular world watches as starvation takes its toll on Terri Schiavo. Few, if any, will make any connection between John Paul II’s breathing tube and Terri’s feeding tube.

Religious people of all persuasions fast and pray, and do all manner of penance and sacrifice pleading with Almighty God for Terri and for the world.

At 3:00 pm on March 25, Good Friday, the entire world falls victim to absolute, total, complete darkness.

Panic and fear grip the masses the world over.

Only John Paul II and Terri know what’s going on.

The pope made a curious comment recently about the “days of darkness” very soon to be upon us which he did not go on to explain.

Mary explained it to Terri in a vision when the International Pilgrim Virgin Statue of Our Lady of Fatima visited Clearwater.

As Easter arrives and Jesus rises from the tomb, Terri Schiavo rises from her hospice bed completely restored to health. The world witnesses a miracle.

Introspection become the order of the day.

A new Springtime in the Church begins.

Wow! So it's really Terri Schiavo who's the Second Coming of Jesus? Somebody had better tell George W. Bush. He'll be SO disappointed. All this time he thought HE was.

More idiocy from so-called Christians

This one's via Americablog from our good friends and lunatics over at Agape Press:

...A Jewish author says it isn't anti-Semitic to note that Jesus was handed over to the Romans for crucifixion by Jewish leaders. In his new book -- Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History -- David Klinghoffer quotes the Talmud, which says that "on the eve of Passover they hung Yeshu (Jesus)" on charges that he "performed magic, enticed and led astray Israel." The Talmud also claims that Mary conceived Jesus in adultery and that Jesus suffers eternal punishment. But Klinghoffer says fear of Christian persecution caused Jews centuries ago to relegate such materials to footnotes in tiny type or delete them altogether. Anyway, he says, the real dispute between Jews and Christians concerns whether Jesus was Israel's messiah and the Son of God who properly exercised authority to reinterpret divine law.

Who knew the Talmud was written in English?

Thanks to the Miracle that is Google, 30 seconds of searching yielded this, this, and this. Scholars have pondered this question for years, and as many scholars have come to the conclusion that the "Yeshu" and "Miriam" referred to in the Talmud were NOT the Jesus and Mary of the New Testament. In reality, "Yeshu" and "Miriam" were common names at the time. This is like saying that every 30-ish man named "Joshua" is a literal descendent of Jesus (though every time I see Josh Lucas in a movie, well, it makes me wonder...).

I will never understand why Jews are allowing themselves to be cast as useful idiots by the Bible-thumping right.

Making sense of it all

I guess there's just no getting around being sucked into the vortex surrounding Terri Schiavo. This story is inevitably compelling, in a horrible sort of way, because ultimately each of us tries to put ourselves into her shoes, and we're unable to do so.

What we are, how we think, THAT we think, what we see, hear, and experience, is so much the result of electrical impulses in our brains. Most of us have no understanding of how it all works. We wake in the morning, we eat, take care of ourselves, go to work, process inputs, produce outputs, go to sleep, dream -- and never think much about it.

After weeks of being bombarded with the haunting face of someone who is either trapped in a body that doesn't work, or who IS now just a body that functions as a body but nothing else, it kind of forces us to confront just what it is that makes us human.

It's so easy to just assume that there's some great white Alpha male with a beard in the sky who molds us out of clay and micromanages each of our lives. This sort of all-powerful parental authority figure is a concept that at least makes sense to us. But looking at the vacant stare of Terri Schaivo can't help but call that notion into question. After all, what kind of micromanager would be cruel enough to do this to someone? And why on earth would we worship something that cruel?

On the other hand, the idea that something as simple as loss of circulation can cause all that makes us human to burn out that quickly, that easily, well, it makes us all kind of insignificant, doesn't it?

Let's face it, folks: Terri Schiavo makes us uncomfortable. I don't care if you're Tom DeLay or me or Michael Schiavo or anyone: There's something weird about this kind of "present absence", and understanding it is like trying to understand death. Either you put it into some kind of model you can understand, like "heaven" -- a Club Med for the righteous -- or you put it out of your mind because it's Just Too Big.

But for the many people trying to sort out what's happening here in a futile effort to get to "the truth", whatever that may be, there's no better resource than Abstract Appeal. Matt Conigliaro has a wealth of material, including a surprising report (Adobe Acrobat required) by a Guardian Ad Litem for Terri Schiavo that debunks the notion that the last fifteen years have been a nonstop battle between Michael Schiavo and his in-laws. This report, which details the personal, medical, and legal history of the case, is pretty astonishing stuff, and definitely worth reading.

I've tried not to get into too many discussions on this case, mostly because each of us comes to this story with our own baggage. I can relate to this woman's battle with her weight, and with the cruel irony that she only reached her desired weight after becoming bulimic -- and paid for it with her very selfhood. Another person might relate to the disability aspect. Someone else may be affected by what may seem to be a form of abandonment, in which her husband has moved on to create a new life. But the fact of the matter is that over 99% of us do not know these people, and do not know this family.

Michael Schiavo may have been a lousy husband. Maybe he picked on his wife about her weight. Maybe what started out as a simple desire to please her husband turned into an obsession on Terri Schiavo's part, one with a terribly high price. Maybe he HAS lost patience with her parents' refusal to let go. Maybe he should have waited to produce children with someone else until the situation was resolved. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe the Schindlers have sold their souls to a bunch of cynical snake-oil salesmen who care not a fig for their pain, but only for political gain for themselves.

There's only one thing I DO know, and that's the one thing any of us know: Not one of us would trade places with any of these people for a minute. Let's not lose track of the fact that this is a nightmare for this family...and that there are many other families in this country dealing with similar nightmares every day. I'm sure that the Schindlers love their daughter and they believe they're doing the right thing by fighting for what they see to be life and hope. I'm also sure that Michael Schiavo similarly believes he's fighting for what his wife would want if she were able to communicate it. It's not for us to judge any of them until and unless we take a walk in their shoes.

From the White House Office of Irony

...which is always involved in infighting with the White House Department of Bullshit:

The reason [the president] supports the death penalty is because it helps -- he believes that it helps save lives, and he's stated that view clearly and consistently over a number of years."

I wonder how long Scott McClellan has to rehearse to be able to say stuff like that with a straight face?

Next Stop: Supreme Court

And for those of you who think that the Supreme Court wasn't an issue in this past election, take heed now.

A federal judge here today refused to order the reinsertion of a feeding tube for the brain-damaged Terri Schiavo, despite the intervention of Congress and President Bush in the case, The Associated Press reported.

Judge Dames D. Whittemore of Federal District Court said the 41-year-old woman's parents had not established a "substantial likelihood of success" at trial on the merits of their arguments, the agency said.

The tube was disconnected on Friday on the orders of a state judge.

After two hours of tense and often emotional arguments on Monday, Judge Whittemore refused to rule immediately on whether to restore nutrition to Ms. Schiavo, whose husband won a state court's permission to remove her feeding tube. Judge Whittemore also expressed doubts about whether a federal review could change the ultimate outcome and seemed skeptical of the parents' contention that the state courts had violated Ms. Schiavo's right to due process.

Now, this isn't the end of Judge Whittemore's review, and it's starting to look increasingly like Terri Schiavo may die during his deliberations, making the whole point moot except as a precedent, which may be the point. (I'll let the legal scholars among us weigh in in the comments.)

But you can bet your life (no pun intended, though if the shoe fits...) that whether Terri Schiavo lives or dies, this case is going to the Supreme Court.

Patrick Gudridge, a law professor at the University of Miami is quoted in a Christian Science Monitor op-ed piece as saying, "It would appear to be the kind of legislative grandstanding that Chief Justice Rehnquist, if he were up to speed and in good health, would swat away in an instant."

Chief Justice Scalia, however, would adjudicate far differently, as would most, if not all, of the extremists George W. Bush has waiting in line for Supreme Court vacancies.

Quote of the Day

This is Holy Week, this is when the Catholic community is saying, "We understand that life is not an absolute good and death is not an absolute defeat." The whole story of Easter is about the triumph of eternal life over death. Catholics have never believed that biological life is an end in and of itself. We've been created as a gift from God and are ultimately destined to go back to God. And we've been destined in this life to be involved in relationships. And when the capacity for that life is exhausted, there is no obligation to make officious efforts to sustain it. -- Rev. John Paris, Catholic theologian and Walsh Professor of Bioethics at Boston College, in an interview with Salon, 3/22/2005

There now, that wasn't so hard, was it?

Into this sea of shit that is the Terri Schiavo case comes a small bright spot this morning. Americablog brings us news that the head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, Bishop Robert Brom, has apologized to the family of a gay man to whom he had refused a Catholic burial:

The head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego apologized Monday to the family of gay nightclub owner John McCusker, less than a week after decreeing that McCusker couldn't have a Catholic burial because of his "business activities," according to a statement released by McCusker's family.

In a stunning twist to a controversy that has created an uproar in the San Diego gay and Catholic communities, Bishop Robert Brom also promised to preside at a mass in memory of McCusker at The Immaculata Catholic church on the campus of the University of San Diego.

[snip]

In a statement released by McCusker's family Monday night, the bishop was quoted as saying: "I deeply regret that denying a Catholic funeral for John McCusker at the Immaculata has resulted in his unjust condemnation, and I apologize to the family for the anguish this has caused them."

Now the apology was still issued in the passive voice (I'd be more impressed if it read, "I deeply regret that my decision to deny a Catholic funeral for John McCusker at the Immaculata has resulted in his unjust condemnation, and I apologize to the family for the anguish I caused them"), but it's still an apology, and John McCusker will not only receive a Catholic funeral, but Brom himself will preside over the mass.

Two little words: "I apologize". So simple, and yet they mean one heck of a lot to the gay community of San Diego today.

George W. Bush take note.

St Pat's pics

I'm a little behind in uploading my photos from the past week, but here are some pics from Sydney's St Patrick's Day parade.

St Pat's pics

I'm a little behind in uploading my photos from the past week, but here are some pics from Sydney's St Patrick's Day parade.

Granola nuts

Today's Good Living mentions that Australian businesses have been sent letters by lawyers representing Sanitarium for mis-use of the word "granola". Short Black reports that apparently granola was trademarked by Sanitarium in 1921, and that the letter indicated that "businesses had 14 days to remove granola-labelled products from shelves".Reminiscent of the community horror at the ugg boot

Granola nuts

Today's Good Living mentions that Australian businesses have been sent letters by lawyers representing Sanitarium for mis-use of the word "granola". Short Black reports that apparently granola was trademarked by Sanitarium in 1921, and that the letter indicated that "businesses had 14 days to remove granola-labelled products from shelves".Reminiscent of the community horror at the ugg boot

More wondering....

Jeff at Red Hair Black Leather wonders:

Where were all these people when Lauren Rainey was in dire straits not so long ago?

Star Wars III: "Titanic in Space"

[Posted because man cannot live by Republican grandstanding alone]

So sayeth George Lucas, which ought to save a whole lot of people about ten bucks a pop.

Now, I'm not knocking Titanic. It's easy to look back now and wonder what all the fuss was about, now that we've all seen it a dozen times and even those of us who let ourselves get carried away by the spectacle and the meticulous re-creation of a White Star ship and the costumes and the archetype of "Woman Triumphant" and even the cornography of its central romance (and yes, I plead guilty; how guilty most of you have no idea).

I'm not knocking Star Wars either, though I never found the original three movies to be all that compelling, not being a sci-fi fan. But George Lucas hasn't made a decent film since his ego swelled up to the size of Tom DeLay's balls in the aftermath of being mentioned by Joseph Campbell. The first two films in the latter Star Wars oeuvre were absolutely insufferable. Not every director can manage the seemingly impossible feat of sucking all the charm and charisma out of Ewan McGregor, all the testosterone out of Liam Neeson, and make Natalie Portman seem about as good an actress as Paris Hilton. Anyone who saw Shattered Glass knows that even poor, hapless Hayden Christensen isn't as bad as Lucas has made him seem. And as far as I'm concerned, once they killed off Terence Stamp early on in The Fandom Menace, it was all over.

Sure, the special effects are reliable, but effects do not compensate for lack of a coherent story PLUS an awful script PLUS lugubrious performances. You already know that Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader; what Lucas has to do, and so far has failed miserably, is make you want to know why. And frankly, my dear, I really don't give a shit. I mean, it's been pretty clear that Ben Hawkins and Brother Justin Crowe are headed for a showdown in Carnívale, but it's been one hell of an interesting ride getting Daniel Knauf's crew of motley carnies to the revival tents at New Caanan. And you knew that the ship was going to sink in Titanic, but that didn't stop a whole bunch of people from suspending disbelief long enough to hope that Leonardo DiCaprio would be that most rarified of creatures: the surviving steerage male.

So the idea of having this sort of "good vs. evil" showdown leavened by more of the awful crap we saw as Christensen and Portman cavorted in the meadow in Attack of the Clones, all in the ham-handed fists of the self-important Mr. Lucas, and Revenge of the Sith is starting to sound more like a turkey gobbler by the day.

We now return you to our nonstop coverage of Republican Selective Grandstanding.

The Republican "Culture of Life": Second in a Series

An intermittent series designed to call attention to the Republican "Culture of Life" that they want publicized as a result of their superhuman efforts to "save Terri".


The military has announced today that nother U.S. serviceman has been killed in action in Iraq's western Al Anbar province.

Meanwhile, 10,000 a month continue to die in Darfur. Congress has done nothing. Neither has the President.

Lie down, dogs, fleas, etc.

World O'Crap has some lovely information about Randall Terry, the man who has taken advantage of Terri Schiavo's parents' grief to become their "spokesman". It's worth checking out, especially on the off chance you're inclined to write a check.

I especially like the part where he calls Michael Schiavo a "monster", this from a guy who left his own wife for someone else. Pot, kettle, etc.

A penny for YOUR thoughts

In view of Congress and the President overriding Florida state law and the Florida courts in the Terri Schiavo case, does anyone still actually believe that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, the First/DeLay/Bush Axis of Evil will allow abortion to remain a state issue?

If the case of one hopelessly brain-damaged woman in Florida warrants Federal intervention, does anyone believe they won't do the same with abortion?

Just wondering...

The Republican Culture of Life: First in a Series

I thought it might be interesting to post examples of how the policies of the Bush/Frist/DeLay Axis of Evil create a "culture of life", since they're so obsessed with the lives of a woman in Florida.

Today's example of the Republican Culture of Life comes to us from our very own government, which has issued a report stating that:

At least 108 people have died in U.S. custody in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and at least 26 have been investigated as criminal homicides involving possible abuse.

The figure, far higher than any previously disclosed, includes cases investigated by the Army, Navy, CIA and Justice Department.

About 65,000 prisoners have been taken during the U.S.-led wars; most have been freed.

The Pentagon has never provided comprehensive information on how many prisoners taken during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have died.

Stay tuned for more Republican hypocrisy on "life." I just know there's more where this came from.

IMBB13: Lime, white chocolate and coconut muffins

Wow. I can't believe I finally got my act together and made it to an IMBB finishing line. And before deadline too. Woohoo.What is IMBB? It stands for Is My Blog Burning and is basically an online simultaneous theme-based cook-off. This month's IMBB theme was My Little Cupcake (or muffin). Yay, I recall was my response. Not too intimidating for this lazy chef.A couple of days were spent recipe

IMBB13: Lime, white chocolate and coconut muffins

Wow. I can't believe I finally got my act together and made it to an IMBB finishing line. And before deadline too. Woohoo.What is IMBB? It stands for Is My Blog Burning and is basically an online simultaneous theme-based cook-off. This month's IMBB theme was My Little Cupcake (or muffin). Yay, I recall was my response. Not too intimidating for this lazy chef.A couple of days were spent recipe

Quote of the day

"What a shame that religion is being used to abuse Terri and her parents instead of comforting all of them and helping them to move forward." -- Scott at Poetic Leanings, 3/21/05

Priorities.....

Think about it: George W. Bush couldn't cut short his vacation in August 2001 in the face of 52 advisories and a PDB that a terrorist attack was imminent on U.S. soil, but he was more than happy to cut short his vacation in March 2005 to toss some red meat at his base by signing legislation to restor Terri Schiavo's feeding tube.

I guess the 2700 lives that could have been saved in 9/11/01 don't matter only...only the life of one woman in Florida without any cognitive ability.

Not to make light of Terri Schiavo's condition, which is tragic and awful, but that tells me that people without a cerebral cortex are just the kind of base Bush wants.

How does someone return to normal life after this?

I shudder to think of the level of mental illness we're going to be dealing with in this country when all the soldiers serving in Iraq come home:

Hi my name is M. D. formaly of A TRP 1-10 CAV 4ID and while in Iraq we had a sport of killing dogs whenever the Iraqis werent shooting us. So when I shot this one at about 50 yards with my M4 and it ran yelping to lower ground, we had to finish it so my friends and I went to it and started shooting it. I ve never seen a dog take as many shots to the head at least 4 as this one did and then after we thought it was dead we dug a hole and when I picked it up with the shovel it came back to life, so we shot it a couple more times....its pretty funny."

(via Digby the Great)

Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is Republican

Thus Spake Digby (as reprinted all over Blogistan):

By now most people who read liberal blogs are aware that George W. Bush signed a law in Texas that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient's family's wishes. It is called the Texas Futile Care Law. Under this law, a baby was removed from life support against his mother's wishes in Texas just this week. A 68 year old man was given a temporary reprieve by the Texas courts just yesterday.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are also aware that Republicans have voted en masse to pull the plug (no pun intended) on medicaid funding that pays for the kind of care that someone like Terry Schiavo and many others who are not so severely brain damaged need all across this country.

Those of us who read liberal blogs also understand that that the tort reform that is being contemplated by the Republican congress would preclude malpractice claims like that which has paid for Terry Schiavo's care thus far.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are aware that the bankruptcy bill will make it even more difficult for families who suffer a catastrophic illness like Terry Schiavo's because they will not be able to declare chapter 7 bankruptcy and get a fresh start when the gargantuan medical bills become overwhelming.

And those of us who read liberal blogs also know that this grandstanding by the congress is a purely political move designed to appease the religious right and that the legal maneuverings being employed would be anathema to any true small government conservative.

Those who don't read liberal blogs, on the other hand, are seeing a spectacle on television in which the news anchors repeatedly say that the congress is "stepping in to save Terry Schiavo" mimicking the unctuous words of Tom Delay as they grovel and leer at the family and nod sympathetically at the sanctimonious phonies who are using this issue for their political gain.

Wow! Who knew?

I wonder if Frist and DeLay will still want to keep Terri Schiavo alive once they know about this:




Then who's the guy who's in prison now?

Nice going, CBS News. Why not make yourselves even MORE of a laughingstock?

(via Big Brass Blog)

Jesus toe-tappin' bald-headed Christ in a sidecar...

The circus gets worse:

Former Green Beret Commander Bo Gritz is trying to conduct a citizen's arrest of Terri Schiavo's husband and the judge who ordered the brain-damaged Florida woman's feeding tube removed so she can be legally starved.

The 66-year-old retired Army Lt. Colonel with his wife, Judy, arrived in Florida from their home in Nevada yesterday with the intent of arresting anyone involved in removing the life-sustaining tube.

Gritz came bearing a notarized "citizen's arrest warrant" addressed to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Attorney General Charlie Crist.

His intent is to "paper" state and federal law enforcement offices with his warrant today – one day before Pinellas Circuit Court Judge George Greer's deadline to begin denial of food and water to Terri Schiavo.

Gritz says the "arrest" is designed to allow officials additional options as the Florida governor and legislature maneuver to save the woman from starvation.

I'm gonna put something in writing before the weekend is out. God forbid this ever happens in my family.

Maybe I had it wrong about the ribbon magnets

I've spilled many finger-taps on those ribbon magnets that have proliferated mostly on SUVs out in my neck of the woods; the ones that tell OTHER drivers, who aren't pumping quite as much cash into the pockets of the Saudis, to "Support Our Troops."

Maybe they aren't talking to other drivers at all. Maybe those ribbons are really a protest, directed to Our President, C-Plus Caligula himself, because of his cynical, cold-hearted policies like those outlined by Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell today:

The governor of Pennsylvania on Saturday said the federal government must do a better job helping America's war veterans and criticized proposed budget cuts affecting them.

[snip]

He maintained that budget cuts include "a $350 million reduction in veterans home funding, which wipes out at least 5,000 veterans' nursing home beds."

"If the president's proposed budget cuts are enacted, nearly 60 percent of the 1,600 veterans will lose their daily stipend that allows them to stay in our state's nursing homes, literally forcing them out into the cold."

Vet co-payments for prescription drugs were tripled two years ago, Rendell said, and "now the president is proposing to again double those increased co-pays."

"In the midst of a war, when many new men and women will join the legion of veterans, does it really make sense for the president to increase the cost of vets' prescriptions by 100 percent?"

Rendell criticized a proposal calling for a $250 fee "to be paid by every vet wishing to participate in the Veterans Administration health care program. "

"There may well be some veterans who can afford to do so, but can all vets come up with an extra $250 a year to pay for health care? I doubt it."

He urged "every patriotic American" to contact their legislators and protest budget cuts for veteran services.

Just maybe the ribbon magnets are a protest against the Administraion.

Maybe.

Nah.

Doesn't this violate the "Don't shit where you eat" rule?

Hoffmania brings us this little tidbit that may give us insight into why Wolfowitz may want the gig as head of the World Bank:

Although many bank insiders and observers predict that the odds strongly favor Wolfowitz eventually getting the job, the furor yesterday indicated that at the very least a fight will rage for several weeks before the board approves him.

Adding fuel to the controversy is concern within the bank staff over Wolfowitz's reported romantic relationship with Shaha Riza, an Arab feminist who works as a communications adviser in the bank's Middle East and North Africa department.

Both divorced, Wolfowitz and Riza have steadfastly declined to talk publicly about their relationship, but they have been regularly spotted at private functions and one source said the two have been dating for about two years. Riza, an Oxford-educated British citizen who was born in Tunisia and grew up in Saudi Arabia, shares Wolfowitz's passion for democratizing the Middle East, according to people who know her.

Bank policy allows spouses and partners to work on the staff as long as neither reports directly to the other, so the Wolfowitz-Riza relationship may not run afoul of those rules. But some staffers, speaking anonymously for fear of offending their prospective boss, said sentiment is running high that the ethics requirements should be stricter in cases involving the chief executive. Through a spokesman, Wolfowitz said in response to a query from The Post: "Needless to say, if a personal relationship presents a potential conflict of interest, I will comply with bank policies to resolve the issue."

Now, the idea of an ardent Jewish Zionist who works for one of the most anti-feminist presidents in history "dating" an Arab feminist is pretty interesting; right up there with James Carville and Mary Matalin, only with hints of Montague/Capulet blood feuds added for spice.

However, the tin ear that this Administration continues to show in affiars that smack at all of conflict of interest wouldn't be tolerated in anyone else, particularly someone with a "D" after their name. Once again, the IOKIYAR rule is in full flower.