Busy weekend

=Whew!=

Most weekends end up on Sunday night with me wondering where it went, and why I didn't get anything accomplished. This weekend I finished painting our home office (and at least for now it's possible to find one's way to the PC without tripping over something), saw the marvelous Sin City (review coming soon), finished doing our taxes and found out that due to H&R Block Tax Cut software's inability to properly handle a W-2 where income and withholding for two states, we're getting enough back from the Feds and from NJ to pay for the new PC we rather impulsively ordered from Dell today.

Wednesday I head off to NC for the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, which contrary to what you may think, has nothing to do with fat people, last year's screening of Supersize Me notwithstanding. Too much to do before then, not enough time.

Not that any of this has to do with this terrific op-ed piece in the Boca Raton News, of all places, by the paper's publisher, which hits the Schiavo mess on the head like the cold kiss of water in your face when someone dunks your head in the toilet.

Damn. There I go, writing noir again. Yeah. Sin City will do that to ya.

Of course we live in pretty noir times. Thank Goddess we still have a few newspaper publishers around who will tell it like it is:

Her plight – which pitted her husband against her parents and siblings – has magnified what is a a very troubling pattern emerging in our nation. Religion is no longer just a sidelight in the American political scene; it has moved front and center. If those of us who consider ourselves mainstream and more toward the center don’t wake up soon, the religious right will steamroll moderation and we will find ourselves no longer living in a democracy, but rather a theocracy.

The Schiavo case was a family matter, plain and simple. It was seized upon by the same religious zealots that helped push George W. Bush into a second term as president of our nation. The Republican Party has been home to the religious right for a very long time. Today, more than ever, this party has become beholden to those that would like to ignore our rules of law and let God – their God – decide the fate of our country. What Governor Jeb Bush started and what the United States Congress and the president continued has set a very dangerous precedent. The political party that has always extolled states’ rights and less government interference thought it wise to inject themselves right smack into the middle of a family matter. Some might be asking, what should be done when the family cannot agree on something as serious as a person’s right to live or die?

That’s where our courts come into play. Right or wrong, the bigger issue here is our Constitution. The governor, our president, Congress and the Florida state legislature – all Republican or Republican-controlled – didn’t think twice before trampling all over the very basis of our greatness as a nation – the United States Constitution. They decided, in the name of a so-called “culture of life” that ignoring our judicial branch of government was a good idea. With the exception of the Florida Senate – which surprisingly refused to sign on to any legislation that would have attempted to undo the decisions of every Florida court that heard this case – every other legislative body in Florida and at the federal level thought it wise to try to overturn what 19 judges had ruled.

You keep hearing the president and his baby brother the governor talking about liberal and insensitive judges. It has become standard code for appointing as many judges of conservative leanings as possible. The irony in this is that one of the dissenting judges at the Federal Court of Appeals was in fact a Clinton appointee. Judges are supposed to uphold the Constitution and rule on the facts of a case.

Despite what you may have seen on the nightly news or read in the newspaper, the trial court judge in the Schiavo case was and remains a very religious man. He just can’t attend his own baptist church anymore because he has received too many death threats from his God-fearing fellow congregants. So much for a “culture of life.”

Oh and by the way, this newly-coined term being bandied about by our president and other Republicans trying to position themselves as the party of life is from the same party that has refused to back any kind of gun control, thus making it as easy as showing a driver’s license in order to buy a firearm in most states. This is the same president and party that has us at war in Iraq and responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people – including our own soldiers. And yes, this is the same party that would have you believe that life begins at intercourse. This is the same president that while governor of Texas signed more death warrants than any other governor in history.

The trial judge, upon hearing the evidence, ruled that Schiavo would not have wanted to live in a persistent vegetative state. He agreed with her husband, who has been vilified by the religious right as some kind of monster, that she should no longer be kept alive by artificial means. Her parents disagreed and did what they had the right to do – appeal to higher courts. Every court that has heard this case has ruled in favor of the husband and upheld the trial court.

Is it fair? Who knows? Do I feel sorry for her parents? Of course! But the fact remains that since biblical times, upon marriage, the spouses have rights for each other that supercede those of their parents. There are specific quotes in the Bible that speak to the very notion that the parents’ rights no longer exist once their children have been married. Legally, our laws have followed that very concept in upholding a spouse’s rights against those of a parent.

The courts were the proper venue for either the husband or the parents to settle their differences. In this intensely emotional disagreement, it was normal for tempers to flair and people to choose sides. Our system of government should be above emotion. Our leaders should know better than to try and legislate for a specific cause or case at the risk of weakening our entire basis of government – the Constitution. The president, his brother and their party should not be beholden to religious groups, whether it be the Christian Coalition or any other religious organization. Congress had no business intervening in a family matter.

What’s next? When will we see these religious fanatics rear their ugly heads again? Do we really want any one religion exercising that much power in this country? Look around the world, and you will see that wherever religion rules the day, so too does hypocrisy and trouble. This country has done very well, thank you, without being dictated to by the religious right. I have a great deal more respect today for the first President Bush, as he probably lost his bid for re-election because he refused to cave in to the religious right. His sons, apparently, better understand just how to cater to this powerful element of the Republican Party. Terri Schiavo should rest in peace as this horrible 15-year ordeal is finally over for her. How long the effects of this political debate lasts is another story.

Mainstream America better take their collective heads out of their rear ends before it is too late. We cannot stand on the sidelines anymore while religious fanatics hold our government hostage. It has been happening in Israel for a very long time. It is beginning to happen here as well. Our very system of government is at risk. I, for one, do not want to be here when we make the transition from democracy to theocracy.