Mark A. Kilmer (the weblog)

The Associated Press ponders whether Florida Governor Jeb Bush will be hurt by his position in the Terri Schiavo case. The consensus seemed to be no, since he won’t run for President until 2012 or 2016.

A mainstream media question.

Presented is the notion that polls said that Americans thought the government should stay out. That’s not entirely true, and those polls were snapshots of how those surveyed answered questions laced with non-sequitur. But the notion has Bush satisfying either the people who answered the questions or the RELIGIOUS RIGHT!!!

Actually, the Governor took a principled stand, and nothing he did could be portrayed as violating States’ rights. He seemed gubernatorial, and he accepted his limits.

The AP question was bogus. If anything, this would help Governor Bush should he seek his party’s nomination. The history books have not been written on Terri Schiavo’s death. What seems to be unpopular in one moment can be heralded as just the following as opinions mature.

Hollywood actress Jane Fonda, speaking to a TV interviewer on a show to be aired Sunday evening:

“The image of Jane Fonda, `Barbarella,’ Henry Fonda’s daughter … sitting on an enemy aircraft gun [Vietnam, July, 1972] was a betrayal … the largest lapse of judgment that I can even imagine,” Fonda told Leslie Stahl in a “60 Minutes” interview that will air Sunday night.

It seems no wonder that Ted Turner divorced her; she’s lost some of her anti-American “spunk.”

Terri Schiavo suffered from brain damage. It was a specific type of “disability.” Are we squeamish about speaking the words: Brain Damage except in dismissal, as in “brain damaged wife” meaning: less than human, ready to be discarded?

Neurologists do not understand the complexities of the human brain nearly fully. Each type of brain injury is different from the other. Damage is done to different parts, affecting different functions, with other parts sometimes developing to compensate.

Life is to be valued, and innocent human life is to be protected. Terri’s brain was impaired to the point where she could not do many things, perhaps most things. There are human beings alive today born with only brain stems. Do we kill them? There are people confined to wheel chairs since birth with brain deficiencies? Do they die? People are injured, and each brain injury is different. Which die, which don’t? And who decides?

“That’s why we have courts,” frankly, is a frightening suggestion.

For all the talk of government interference in private matters comes word that the Congressional Government Reform Committee is planning to go after the NFL on the matter of Steroids.

Henry Waxman, a member of the US House Committee on Government Reform that conducted a probe of steroids in Major League Baseball earlier this month, said he wants to expand the inquiry to include the American football teams as well.

“The reports that football players have used steroids raise important issues about the effectiveness of the NFL drug-testing policy,” Waxman said in a statement.

“The committee should examine the new allegations as part of its investigation into steroid use in sports.”

Does this now seem important? Did it ever?

Hank’s down with it.

In a room in a hospice with only Michael Schiavo, Theresa Schindler-Schiavo died this morning in Pinellas Park, Florida. Now, the State of Florida can conduct the tests on her which could indicate how much of her brain functioned while she breathed. Michael Schiavo would not allow these tests while she lived. Her parents will have them as an autopsy report.

Michael Schiavo can now get on with his life, marry his longtime live-in and raise their children without having to worry about the woman he reportedly referred to as “the bitch” who wouldn’t die.

The only healing will be measures to ensure that this type of atrocity never again occurs.

Adain has returned from his Thanksgiving break:

Former Senator and U.N. Ambassador John Danforth’s Christianity has never been in doubt; he’s an ordained Episcopal minister who gave a moving homily at President Reagan’s funeral. He was also the recent U.N. ambassador who, in an occasion of go-it-alone-ism, voted confidence in Kofi Annan without first checking with his boss, Secretary of State Colin Powell.

In a New York Times Op/Ed Wednesday, Ambassador Danforth writes of the GOP as having been transformed “into the political arm of conservative Christians.” It’s a popular argument amongst today’s left, but can you dance to it?

(more…)

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has seemingly used an appeal by the parents of Terri Schindler-Schiavo as a means to attack the President and Congress.

To the appeal, Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr. wrote: “Any further action by our court or the district court would be improper.”

This could have been done to begin with, without falsely raising the hopes of the parents. But Judge Birch continued:

“In resolving the Schiavo controversy, it is my judgment that, despite sincere and altruistic motivation, the legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers’ blueprint for the governance of a free people our Constitution.”

He was not asked to rule on that, and I wish he would have demonstrated how it was at odds with the original intention of the Framers of our Constitution, and how the court’s usurpation of legislative powers in Florida is not.

PoliPundit cites the Boston Herald with word that Teddy Kennedy’s ex-wife Joan Kennedy was found Tuesday “passed out and suffering from broken bones on a Hub street early yesterday.” She has been hospitalized.

“You want to make sure there’s someone there for her all the time . . . . but at the same time you don’t want to encroach on her privacy too much,'’ [Rhode Island’s Represenative Patrick] Kennedy told the Herald in an exclusive interview as he visited his injured mom yesterday at Tufts. “When things like this happen, it makes you feel as though maybe you should have done more to make sure there’s someone with her 24/7 and perhaps that might become necessary.'’

He thinks it could affect Patrick’s possible run next year against Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-Rhode Island), which so far has been only hypothetical. (I reported on that matter yesterday.)

Family friend Bruce Sundlin, a former governor of Rhode Island, lamented:

“I know Joan very well . . . and I’m sorry to see it end up this way,'’ Sundlun said. “It’s a terrible thing for him to be going through but Patrick is a Kennedy and I’ve known the Kennedys since President Kennedy and they’re very loyal people and they’re best in a crisis. And this is a crisis.'’

If that indicates anything, and we don’t know that it does, Patrick will not be seeking the office next year. But that is next year.
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UPDATE: Patrick’s out. As he has in the past when asked, Kennedy reiterated that he thinks he can do more sitting on the House Appropriations Committee than he can as a minority freshman U.S. Senator,

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, nominated to run the World Bank, has won over the 25-member European Union by distancing himself from President Bush on matters of overseas U.S. aid, promising to help the poor, and promising Europe a bigger role in the agency’s activities.

He sought to distance himself from his patron, President George W. Bush, pointing out that he had spoken against American overseas aid policy in the past by calling for more public funding for developing countries and for greater attention to be paid to the environment and the role of women.

The Times of London reports that Wolfowitz hinted that one of his chosen deputies would be French: Jean-Pierre Jouyet or Jean-Pierre Landau. And, of course, the EU will expect American backing for Frenchman Pascal Lamy to become next head of the WTO.

Wolfowitz now needs 85% of the vote from the 24-member World Bank Executive Committee.

And in case your are curious, here is the official 10 Things You Never Knew About The World Bank.

Here’s John Edwards from a Tuesday interview with FNC’s Alan Colmes:

[W]e have the best legal system in the world, but it’s not perfect. We could make it better. But the solution to this is not [for Congress] to take away the rights of those who’ve been hurt the worst. Terri Schiavo is an example of somebody who was hurt horribly.

She’s starving, John. We do not know what she would have wished in this case.

At Free Republic this evening, ozzymandus recalls what he had just seen on Tuesday evening’s Hannity & Colmes program on FNC:

Did anybody catch the 2 Michael Schiavo “supporters” on H&C tonight? They were a couple of typical hippie-hags from the far left, who said they went to Florida to counter-demonstrate against the Terri Schiavo supporters, who they called “religious Nazis”. Colmes grovelled and slobbered all over them, but Hannity’s first question, directed to one of the hags, was, “What does that say on your shirt?”. She replied, “Revolutionary Communist Youth League”. Brilliant, Alan, just brilliant.

The hilarity is tempered by the fact, though, that Terri Schiavo is dying.

Paul Volcker helped President Reagan kill the dangerous inflation of the late ’70s, early ’80s. Paul Volcker, in the 21st century, has made it his purpose to rebuild the United Nations. To that end, his eyes are closed, his ears are plugged, and his lips are sealed.

Kofi didn’t know, Kojo wasn’t involved, and cut Benon some slack. Volcker said that there was not enough evidence to convince him that Kofi Annan knew that Kojo worked for a company which bent rules and snagged an Oil for Food contract.

Is Kofi going, sparing the U.N.? In his words, “Hell no.”

“But I knew that [the insinuation that he steered the contract to his son’s employer, the Swiss firm Cotecna] to be untrue and I was therefore absolutely confident that a thorough inquiry would clear me of any wrongdoing,” Annan said. “After so many distressing and untrue allegations have been made against me, this exoneration by the independent inquiry obviously comes as a great relief.”

The State Department says that it backs Kofi no matter what, and Congress is still investigating. For now, the U.N. is stuck with a politically crippled Secretary General.

From the Reverend Jesse Jackson:

‘’Without food or water for 12 days, there are vital signs she is being starved to death. She is being dehydrated to death and that is inhumane. It is immoral and unnecessary. There is no rational reason for this to happen.'’

Here, here.

And then there’s pro-Terri politician Ralph Nader.

But let’s face facts. The woman is dying, like a hiker stranded in a cave on the mountain. Sure, she’s in a hospice, a place where the patients are to be protected, but this is what the judge ordered.

Fifty-nine former U.S. diplomats — mostly former ambassadors to France or Nigeria, deputy ambassadors, and assistant secretaries of state for this or that — have signed a letter to Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) urging him to reject the nomination of John Bolton to be the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. (It is possible for the chairman to block the nomination or make it difficult, but that would be unthinkable to the GOP caucus and to Chairman Lugar. He cannot reject the nomination himself.)

CBS News Foreign Affairs analyst Pam Falk, a pro-Castro professor of international law at the City University of New York, thinks that the President was not serious with Bolton’s nomination, that it was a sop to the conservatives:

Falk said Bolton is “receiving so much bipartisan criticism that there is a widespread question about whether or not the administration was expecting the nomination to pass the Senate.

“Without question, the administration has some serious questions about the credibility of the U.N., but coming on the heels of previous Ambassadors John Negroponte and John Danforth, the nomination of John Bolton – known to have differences with Secretary of State Rice – may well have been a nomination to satisfy conservative critics but appears now to possibly be a sacrificial lamb in the nomination process,” said Falk.

She suggests, then, that President Bush is not serious about treating the United Nations realistically, that he would be happy with the happy buzz of the status quo. This does not mesh with anything the President has said since 2001.

It seems more likely that the President is seizing the opportunity of his reelection and the U.N.’s terrific late loss of credibility to put the world body in its proper perspective.

(posted first at RedState.org)

In today’s Los Angeles Times, a fellow named Patrick Goldstein purports to report that Hollywood seems to be tuning out of politics, but he uses his ink to poke fun at cultural conservatives based on a caricature he himself invents:

If James Dobson can accuse SpongeBob SquarePants of being part of a pro-gay agenda, can charges of devil worship in “Bewitched” be far behind?

Dobson writes:

My brief comments at the FRC gathering were intended to express concern not about SpongeBob or Big Bird or any of their other cartoon friends, but about the way in which those childhood symbols are apparently being hijacked to promote an agenda that involves teaching homosexual propaganda to children.

Goldstein’s misrepresentation is both vacuous and offensive.

He then recites some farcical predictions — he erroneously calls them satire — of upcoming events in the ongoing Hollywood caving to the dark forces of the Religious Right.

I’m going to have to get with Luke Thompson on this one. It seems surprising that Hollywood would correctly estimate their political relevance.

Despite everything — Oil for Food, Blue Helmet molestation-gate, etc. — the United Nations has no means by which to oust Secretary General Kofi Annan. Security Council Resolution 1538 (pdf) “welcome[ed] the appointment of the independent high-level inquiry,” and out popped the Independent Inquiry Committee into the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme [sic] (Volcker Commission). Their report on the activities of Kofi’s son Kojo is due Tuesday.

[read on - but WARNING: BILL CLINTON ALERT!]

(more…)

The web site The New Pantagruel, self-described as “a quarterly electronic journal run by a cadre of intemperate but friendly Catholics and Protestants,” has issued a statement on the matter of Terri Schindler-Schiavo.

Methinks they’re serious:

[T]he State is wrong. There is a higher law. If last ditch efforts in the Florida Legislature and the United States Congress also fail, and the administration of Governor Jeb Bush fails in its duty to uphold the higher law, those closest to Terri—her family, friends, and members of their communities of care—are morally free to contemplate and take extra-legal action as they deem it necessary to save Terri’s life, up to and including forcible resistance to the State’s coercive and unjust implementation of Terri’s death by starvation.

Please note that this seems not to be a general call to arms; rather, it is an expression of support for whatever actions those surrounding Terri choose to take.

Read their entire statement at their site: HERE.

I do not have to either support or condemn their expression of conscience.

We have two new columns on the Rightsided Newsletter web site, the first a scathing indictment of Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the second a polemic aimed at Michael Schiavo’s attorney George Felos:

James Atticus Bowden: Governor Bush Is Just Following Orders.

Barbara J. Stock: George Felos: Dehydration and Starvation–A Great Way to Die!.

Check ‘em out.

Checking in Adam Yoshida, he sees a war between the United States and the People’s Republic of China as inevitable:

I don’t know if it will be the nukes-flying, carriers-sinking sort of war that many of us fear in the dead of the night. But I know there will be war. More than that, I think we’re already in one.

We’re fighting the Chinese for the control of the world as the endgame of a process which goes back a hundred generations. China was a great power (perhaps the greatest power) before Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. Due to economic, technological, and political difficulties China fell behind in recent centuries, but now it’s catching up and it is the West that is indisputably in decline.

Some interesting thoughts there, and he paints a potential doomsday scenario which I haven’t yet studied. How would the world adapt to a superpower PRC?

From the web site of WAPT TV-16 in Jackson, Mississippi, amongst a collection of briefs regarding Terri Schiavo:

A Southern Baptist leader said the Florida judge who ordered the removal of Schiavo’s feeding tube has resigned his membership in a Southern Baptist church.

The Rev. Richard Land said that Judge George Greer and the Baptist church he attended in Clearwater came “to a mutual agreement that he resigned his membership.”

The St. Petersburg Times said the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church [Pastor Willy Rice] wrote Greer a letter warning that, quote: “In all likelihood it is this case which will define your career and this case that you will remember in the waning days of life.”

From LifeNews.com:

Rice said he received a letter from Greer Thursday confirming he has rescinded his long-standing membership after the church. The Greer letter came days after Rice made public comments in news reports disagreeing with Greer’s decisions related to Terri.

Rice said the two exchanged letters about the nature of Greer’s church affiliation after the judge commented publicly about his religious views.

The pastor told Baptist Press he had offered to meet with Greer and received the letter as a response.

According to a St. Petersburg Times news report, Greer, earlier this month, said he told a church deacon, “If I don’t like what the St. Pete Times writes about me, my only recourse is to cancel my subscription.” He told the deacon he would no longer make donations to the church.

I’m sure if he shops around, he can find a church at which his behavior is acceptable. And there is always the option of redemption.

Changing subjects…

Jacko tells the Reverend Jesse Jackson that he is innocent of the charges of which he is accused; it’s all a setup, he relates, to acquire the rights to songs by Elvis, The Beatles, and Little Richard which Jacko currently owns.

For strength, Jacko told Jackson, he looks to the stories of oppressed black men: Nelson Mandela, Muhammad Ali, and Jesse Jackson. Also early 20th century heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, who broke a major color barrier, led a supremely storied life, starred posthumously in a Ken Burns documentary, and even invented and patented a wrench.

Dunno ’bout Jacko, though. The judge is allowing the other little boys testify…

Science Fiction author Orson Scott Card makes his case for the life of Terri Schiavo and against those who have decided that it cannot be worth living. I recommend the entire piece, but one passage in particular caught my eye:

Are there times when it is justified to take a human life?

I believe so — and so do most people. Self-defense, defense of the helpless and innocent, aborting a baby to save the life of the mother; there’s almost always a trade-off, choosing one life over another.

In fact, under traditional law, there is more of a case for killing Terry Schiavo’s husband in order to save her from him than there is for killing the brain-damaged woman in the first place.

There is no trade-off in Terri’s case; it’s not a case of being forced rationally to choose one life over another. Or even irrationally. It’s a case of one man’s convenience being chosen over the life of another.

No, I do not think Michael Schiavo is some diabolical monster. He’s just some dumb guy who was swayed into then entrenched in his position by other, more intellectually capable people: Attorney George Felos and various advocates of euthanasia. It’s a part of the Culture of Death, wherein death is looked upon as a desirable option. Even for those not capable of doing the opting.

[A tip o’ the hat to The Key Monk for pointing out the essay]

From Brother Paul O’Donnell, Franciscan Brothers for Peace, spiritual advisor to Bob and Mary Schindler:

‘’Everyone is willing to write this woman’s obituary except one person and that’s Terri Schiavo.”

On Easter evening, Terri evidently lifted her hands and made noises of recognition when an old friend, identified as “Sherri,” visited and recalled their days of “dancing and partying together.”

Good morning!

Last Monday’s school shootings in Red Lakes, Minnesota roused a response from President Bush yesterday, which is not the story. The story is the story.

Reuters tells us that Indian leaders are upset that it took him so long to say anything and it reminds us that the vacationing President reacting swiftly to the Terri Schindler-Schiavo matter. They list the criticisms from various people, the point out that the President was also criticized for not reacting swiftly enough to the Asian tsunami and then pledging only a paltry $15-million.

Bush’s job-approval rating has sunk to the lowest level of his presidency in the latest national survey, with some pollsters citing a public backlash against his intervention in the Schiavo case.

They didn’t name the poll (CNN/USA Today/Gallup) or the pollsters reacting to it (unnamed), and how many pollsters polled for the poll (Gallup). Why were multiple pollsters reacting to Gallup’s poll?

It’s sloppy, but it is stories like these which drive down a President’s approval rating. But at least the reporter feels strongly about it.

From San Diego Tribune:

But there are Christians who simply don’t buy into the physical Resurrection account.

Led by revisionist Jesus scholars such as Marcus Borg of Oregon State University, a movement of people view the biblical stories as metaphors on how to live life today. What is emerging, writes Borg in his 2003 book, “The Heart of Christianity,” is “a new way of seeing Christianity and what it means to be Christian.”

If the idea is redemption and eternal life, that’s not going to cut it. Christ, who defined Christianity, said that the only way to those things is through Him. One must believe that He is the Son of God, sent here to be tortured and sacrificed to free us from our sins and raised again on the third day, as He said. It’s that simple.

Steve Roberts made an interesting point this morning on Howard Kurtz’s CNN show, Reliable Sources, which I do not usually watch. He posited that the Religion beat was seen as a dead end, since most reporters could not relate to religious types and did not understand the subject matter. It is seen as a place from which it was difficult to advance.

This particular San Diego reporter might have a vision of Christianity as blowing up clinics and protesting Ellen Degeneres and Brittney, or whatever. This weird, cultish version seemed open-minded to her, and that was what she wanted.

If she understood Christianity, this would not be.

This morning, Jon Meacham of Newsweek went on Tim Russert’s show and announced that Christianity is “the humility to understand that no one has the monopoly on the truth.” That’s not how it is, Jon, and it doesn’t matter how many silly essays you’ve written on the topic.

John 14:6 could not be more clear:

Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

By Jon, methinks He is declaring a monopoly on the truth.

He taught humility, but not when it came to matters of truth. This includes the physical resurrection.

The MSM cannot report on what they do not understand.

From the Times of London (via Matt Drudge), we’ve got word that United Nations headmaster Kofi Annan is depressed and might quit.

Depending on the findings of the report, by a team led by the former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, Annan may have to choose between the secretary-generalship and loyalty to his son.

He’s evidently not on a suicide watch, though.

I don’t see Kofi as having any chance at again being effective, so he probably won’t serve out his term — even if John Danforth begs.

Who’s next? Probably some third world guy of whom we’ve never heard, but Clinton probably has a shot. (Even if some tabloid, the cover of which I spotted at the grocery last week, intimates that he’s near death.) Would Clinton oversee the dismantling of the U.N. as we’ve come to know it, or would we see an international phoenix rising from the man’s magnetism? It would be a feigned sop to President Bush — an American Sec Gen — which would really be a swift backhand to the jaw.

Link Chafee’s seat. Word is that Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) Chairman Chuckie Schumer of New York has been talking to Rhode Island Democrat Representative Patrick Kennedy about challenging Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-Rhode Island) in 2006.

Kennedy had initially opted out of the race, deferring to Democrat Representative Jim Langevin. Langevin, however, now says he’s not going to do it. Langevin was anti-abort. Kennedy and the other Dem already in the race, Rhode Island Secretary of State Matt Brown, is pro-abort.

Chafee and Kennedy would make for an interesting race. The two candidates are ideologically even, but Kennedy has the “D” so popular in Rhode Island politics. If it’s a battle of surnames, Kennedy has nothing. Lincoln’s father, the late Senator John Chafee, represented Rhode Island in the U.S. Senate for 22-years until his death in 1999. (He was governor in the late ’60s.)

STEPH AND BARNEY AND DAVE. On ABC’s This Week, host George Stephanopoulos spoke of the matter of Terri Schiavo with Florida Republican Congressman Dave Weldon and Representative Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts).

Weldon expressed hope that his House bill from last week, not taken up by the Senate, would be looked at there. It applied to incapacitated patients with particular circumstances. Frank said he wants to “see if we can do something to make the procedure more fair.” He called on giving more money to disabled people.

Weldon pointed out that “there was the appearance that the husband” wanted her to die. He wanted a De Novo review, which he said was having the entire case reviewed. Frank said that the law had asked the Federal courts to “disregard everything the State court said.” (The question is one of re-view vs. review.)

Steph brought up “err on the side of life” and mentioned that many families couldn’t afford it. He wants to know: who pays? Weldon said that whether she was PVS was disputed, and that there were new therapies and treatments.

Franks said that this bill was “clearly political in nature” and pushed by people who merely disagreed with the findings of the Florida courts. He complained again of Republicans cutting housing funding for the disabled. Weldon argued that the funds had not been removed.

Franks said that only two questions should have been asked in this situation: What were Terri Schiavo’s wishes and what is Terri Schiavo’s condition. He said that these questions should not be answered politically. (The answers are in dispute, and the Republicans asked to have them answered judicially in a Federal court.) He accused the Republicans of telling the Federal Courts to ignore everything the State courts had found.

Steph played an audio tape of Tom DeLay speaking to the Family Research Council on March 18:

“One thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo to elevate the visibility of what is 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. This is exactly the issue that is going on in America, of attacks against the conservative movement, against me and many others.

“The point is the other side has figured out how to win and defeat the conservative movement and that is to go after people personally, charge them with frivolous charges and link that up with all these do-gooder organizations funded by George Soros and then get the national media on their side.”

The MSM has suggested that DeLay was comparing himself to Terri Schiavo. Weldon said no, he was focusing “on the issue of life.”

Barney Frank congratulated Weldon on a “nice attempt to save” to DeLay’s remark.
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The rest of the review of the Sunday shows can be found in the Rightsided Newsletter or at RedState.org.

Sunday’s Rightsided Newsletter, the review of the Sunday shows, has been sent to the sundry global Inboxes. If you do not yet subscribe, you can read the RSN at it web site: here.

Look for the review of ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos in this space momentarily, and look for the entire thing with interactive capability at Redstate.org later this afternoon.

This is from the rough draft of this morning’s Rightsided Newsletter. It deals with Schindler family attorney David Gibbs’s brief live interview on CBS’ Face the Nation shortly after 10:30 am ET on Sunday morning:

First, though, they talked briefly to Schindler attorney David Gibbs. He was not angry, perhaps reflecting the family’s resignation to the wishes of Michael Schiavo. He explained the Terri was “declining rapidly” and had “passed the point-of-no-return” in her slide towards death. She is receiving, he said, a morphine drip “for the pain.” This is pain she was not to be feeling. For Michael to allow it, but not the Easter communion, is an acknowledgement on his part.

Happy Easter!

“Do not be afraid. Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”