Does anyone have a link to the actual ....

measure that was passed by Congress. I hate the print and television media interpreting it for me. I've been unable to find an online version. Thanks.

First, Thank you for the link.

Second, what the fuck are we allowing to take place in this country? It is unbelievable that there aren't hoards of Americans outraged to the point of massive demonstrations against the out of control Congress, and tyranical administration that we are under. People will remember these, as the days of our demise. There is a monumental assault against our Constitution and the separation of powers that it created, growing like a cancer every day.

I can't believe that camp Jesus got away with another one. I am ashamed of our country more than ever. Myself included. But, I am most angry and ashamed of the Democratic Party for staying home to avoid a vote. The same pussies that will allow another Republican victory in 2008, for fear of actually taking an issue as their own.

It hadn't been clear from press reports that this was a private bill! Congress was reconvened and the President flew back from Texas for a private bill benefitting only the parents of Terri Schiavo! How much did this cost the taxpayers?

My constitutional law doesn't extend to knowing with any certainty if this bill is an intolerable intrusion by Congress into the sphere of the Judiciary, but there is a certain odor to that effect. The bill dictates the Court's procedures, and virtually dictates the Court's conclusion. That's extreme! In fact, I wonder if there's any precedent for this bill? But the God's Own Party crowd pushing this bill has already demonstrated its contempt for the Constitution, and certainly hasn't concealed its agenda. America was warned, but voted for them anyway. What Congress and the President are doing is outrageous, but if there's any public outrage about this hideous stunt it's a case of too little, too late, and more than a bit hypocritical. Sadly, America is getting exactly what it voted for. . .

>Second, what the fuck are we allowing to take place in this

>country? It is unbelievable that there aren't hoards of

>Americans outraged to the point of massive demonstrations

>against the out of control Congress, and tyranical

>administration that we are under. People will remember these,

>as the days of our demise. There is a monumental assault

>against our Constitution and the separation of powers that it

>created, growing like a cancer every day.

I don´t disagree with any of this (except for some of the sillier, overblown rhetoric about ``tyranny´´ - the only people who would use that word for America are people who never experienced actual tyranny), but it is interesting that not just a majority - but an OVERWHELMING majority - of Americans oppose what Congress is doing. Here´s an interesting poll:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/blogphotos/Blog_Schiavo_Poll.gif

Although I believe that the right result in this case should have been to err on the side of keeping her alive in the absence of a written document setting forth her wishes, what the Congress has done is absolutely disgraceful.

It isn´t just that they have the audacity to intervene in a medical affair and substitute their own totally incompetent and uniformed judgment for those of multiple courts who actually heard reams of expert information. Far worse is that the Congress is actually at the point where they are willing to pass legislation MANDATING that a court case be re-heard if they don´t like the result the first time around. That´s scary.

One of the most fundamental priciples of our legal system is res judicata, the principle that once a matter is decided, no other court - federal or state - will adjudicate it. It´s one of the oldest and most important legal principles we have; without it, litigation would be endless and would yield inconsistent results.

It´s long been held that, with very few exceptions clearly not applicable here, federal courts won´t hear or review outcomes of state court decisions.

For cheap political gain and to advance a hidden agenda, the Congress - led by the party that is supposed to be the party of RESTRAINT on federal power - has stomped on that principle and is really engaged in shameful and despicable behavior.

BUT, as Joel pointed out, the ones to blame are the Democrats who, as usual, are too afraid to speak out about anything, and the non-evangelical voters who, due to their understandable support for Bush´s foreign policy, are willing to let the Republicans do seemingly anything in the social arena in order to cater to the religious conservatives.

And, as usual, the media is too stupid to realize any of this, opting instead for focusing on the cheap sensationalism of the family drama at the expense of any of the substance.

I´m for the result of keeping her alive, but that viewpoint lost after substantial and fair court proceedings. That ought to be the end of it.

>The bill dictates the Court's procedures, and

>virtually dictates the Court's conclusion. That's extreme!

As bad, indefensible and likely unconstitutional as this bill is, it doesn´t actually do what you say it does. It simply requires the federal court to review the claims, but does not push it one way or the other to reach any conclusion.

The bill is an attempt to basically allow re-litigation of the same claims already thoroughly decided by the state court for no reason other than the fact that the Republicans in Congress didn´t like the outcome of the case the first time around.

>In fact, I wonder if there's any precedent for this bill?

There have been lots of times when the Congress has mandated that certain kinds of claims be reviewed by federal courts because it believed that state courts were either incompetent or unequipped to adjudicate those claims. That´s why federal civil rights legislation entailed federal court jurisdiction and why certain types of claims (such as antitrust and some intellectual copyright claims) are bestowed with EXCLUSIVE federal court jurisdiction.

But I don´t think there has been any other case where Congress mandated that a specific, already adjudicated action be re-litigated in a different forum. That´s what makes this Congressional act so corrupt, indefensible, and arguably, even dangerous.

>America was warned, but voted

>for them anyway. What Congress and the President are doing is

>outrageous, but if there's any public outrage about this

>hideous stunt it's a case of too little, too late, and more

>than a bit hypocritical. Sadly, America is getting exactly

>what it voted for. . .

Despite media reports to the contrary, most people who voted for George Bush voted for him on the basis of his superior approach to terrorism, not due to his position on social issues. If you liked Kerry better on social issues but thought he was heinous on terrorism and foreign policy, but liked Bush better on terrorism and foreign policy, it was hardly irrational to vote for Bush.

With only 2 candidates and 2 parties, only the most mindless, brainwashed morons are going to think that one of the candidates is superior on every issue. While that may include most of the people here, most actual voters are forced to decide which issues are most important when voting.

Dougie! These are your most thoughtful, well-reasoned and moderately phrased posts yet!!! There IS hope!!!

>There have been lots of times when the Congress has mandated that certain kinds of claims be reviewed by federal courts because it believed that state courts were either incompetent or unequipped to adjudicate those claims. That´s why federal civil rights legislation entailed federal court jurisdiction and why certain types of claims (such as antitrust and some intellectual copyright claims) are bestowed with EXCLUSIVE federal court jurisdiction<

The difference here is that they are passing a law that openly limits its scope to this one issue, sets no precedent, and defines no law! What the hell do you go to the Federal Courts with? Your Honor, we claim that the verdict of the State Court violates the Federal ....... What? Due process is their only off-point claim.

I assume that the Federal Circuit Court will pass this back to the State Courts. I hope so. Actually, it would be nice to see the US Supreme Court choose to hear the case, and find that the Bill is Constitutionally invalid. I doubt that though.

>The difference here is that they are passing a law that openly

>limits its scope to this one issue, sets no precedent, and

>defines no law!

I agree. That is a fundamental difference that makes the Congressional action here so odious. It is not conferring courts with jurisdiction, which it can properly do. Instead, it is really acting as a court itself because it did not like the result of the original judicial decision and is trying to force the decision it wants by requiring that the case be re-litigated.

That is a serious intrusion on the power of the judiciary and reflects a scary willingness on the part of the (mostly) Republican Congress to stampede on significant protections and constitutional safeguards if they think that the outcome they want is morally compelling enough.

What the hell do you go to the Federal Courts

>with? Your Honor, we claim that the verdict of the State

>Court violates the Federal ....... What? Due process is

>their only off-point claim.

It´s not uncommon for litigants to go to federal court to argue that their constitutional rights have been violated by the state court. That happens all the time when criminal defendants who are convicted in the state courts bring habeus corpus petitions in the federal courts. That´s not the part that´s unusual.

What´s unusual, and disturbing, is that Congress created this right strictly for this case for no reason other than the fact that they disliked the outcome.

>

>I assume that the Federal Circuit Court will pass this back to

>the State Courts. I hope so. Actually, it would be nice to

>see the US Supreme Court choose to hear the case, and find

>that the Bill is Constitutionally invalid. I doubt that

>though.

If the 11th Circuit affirms the District Court´s decision denying preliminary injuctive relief re-inserting the feeding tube, then none of these constitutional issues regarding the new law likely will be decided since she´ll die before any court can fully adjudicate those issues.

What may happen before that, though, is rather disturbing. I have seen lots of talk on conservative blogs and in prominent national magazines (such as National Review) discussing whether Governor Bush should send the Florida National Guard, or whether President Bush should do something similar with federal force, to basically ignore and violate what would now be 20 court adjudications and re-insert the feeding tube in Terri Schiavo.

In other words, having already cheated once by giving itself a new trial in a whole new court system, those who want to re-insert the feeding tube are now seriously considering outright lawlessness in order to achieve their goal.

Too bad most Americans are more interested in American Idol to know what´s going on and too bad the people in the media are too mindless and/or scared to do their job and alert them to what´s taking place here.

>Dougie! These are your most thoughtful, well-reasoned and

>moderately phrased posts yet!!! There IS hope!!!

Oh, look - Trilingual complimented my reasoning faculties for the first time. And it just so happened to be in response to a post I wrote where, for the first time, I expressed a view that he agrees with.

But I´m sure that´s a complete coincidence!

It is possible for people who disagree with you to have powers of reason and to be rational. It´s also possible for people who agree with you to lack the power of reason and to be irrational.

Recognizing that principle - not just by you but by everyone - would probably go a long away toward elevating the level of political discussion everywhere.

>What may happen before that, though, is rather disturbing. I

>have seen lots of talk on conservative blogs and in prominent

>national magazines (such as National Review) discussing

>whether Governor Bush should send the Florida National Guard,

>or whether President Bush should do something similar with

>federal force, to basically ignore and violate what would now

>be 20 court adjudications and re-insert the feeding tube in

>Terri Schiavo.

Do you think such a move by either Bush is a real possibility?

I don't think Jeb would do it, but I fear GW *could* be convinced.

I do happen to agree with the judicial results in the Schiavo case, but that's not all I was referring to. You also managed to set out your points without invective or attacking anyone else personally. That makes your posting much more worth reading and also more credible.

Speaking of credibility, you're also no longer praising Bush no matter what despicable thing he does. Evidently the scales have finally fallen from your eyes (at least some of them) and you're now seeing what many of us have been seeing for some time: this gang is dangerous! They aren't conservatives, they're ideological radical reactionaries, and they don't really care how much damage they do the country or the Constitution or to individual Americans in order to achieve their goals. As in the old Communist days, for this crowd "the end justifies the means." THAT'S what's so frightening about these people.

There have been plenty of other administrations I didn't like, or disagreed with. Even Democratic ones -- one of the things you learn in life is that there are no perfect politicians, so you end up having to support one whose positions most closely resemble your own and stands a chance of being elected, knowing that on some issues your views are going to diverge and you're going to be disappointed. All of us, I'm sure, have felt at one time or another that something a President or administration was doing was utterly wrong, or counter-productive, or idiotic, or all of the above. But I never recall a time when I thought the country was in real danger from an administration and Congress who have no respect at all for the Constitution or the fundamental principles the U.S. was founded on. And that's what we've got now.

The danger is compounded because the study of civics as a required subject in American schools seems to have disappeared. We have an awful lot of Americans now who don't understand or care about what America stands for, and are unable to make reasoned judgments about what their politicians are doing because they never learned about our political system and how it's supposed to function. If they don't know what America is about, it's not very hard for them to be led astray by the types who claim America was founded as a Christian nation and are working to turn the U.S. into a theocratic state. And their numbers are growing. . .

None of this is standard American politics, and it has nothing to do with conservatism or liberalism as they have commonly been understood. It has everything to do with a group of people who don't like the free America we have, because they're convinced they have the truth and they KNOW what's best for all of us, whether we like it or not. If they succeed in staying in power (and they've already got the three branches of the Federal government and many of the state governments) the vile shenanigans we've seen in the Schiavo case are just a foretaste of what's to come. The way things are going, they may have nearly four more years to ram their agenda down America's throat. Right now my only hope is that the administration's efforts to privatize Social Security will finally wake up the slumbering public and they'll finally begin looking at what's happening in their country with a critical eye. If the Social Security issue blows up in their faces, that may finally help many people realize that the administration isn't invincible, and that their domestic agenda is against the self-interest of most middle and working-class Americans. The results of the polls you just posted suggest that may finally be starting to happen. If that's the case, there's at least a chance of kicking the rascals out of Congress. But I'm not building my hopes very high any longer.

No!

>I do happen to agree with the judicial results in the Schiavo

>case, but that's not all I was referring to. You also managed

>to set out your points without invective or attacking anyone

>else personally. That makes your posting much more worth

>reading and also more credible.

I will take this graciously and thank you for it, but I do want to note that, for me at least, a test of whether I´m being intellectually honest is whether I can praise a person´s arguments even when they´re advanced in response to a position with which I disagree. It´s easy to think that someone is being well-reasoned when you agree with them, but it´s much harder to do so when you disagree.

There are several liberal bloggers whom I read on a daily basis because they are smart, rational, well-informed, and provoctive - Josh Marshall, Kevin Drum, Prof. Juan Cole. I virtually never agree with them, but I rarely think they´re being stupid, irrational or intellectually dishonest. And if I read their arguments against my views and still maintain the position that I have, then I know I´ve subjected it to the strongest tests I can, which makes me more comfortable with the opinion I have.

The same is true for court decisions. It´s easy to praise a court when it reaches a result you agree with, but those people who only praise court decisions when the courts reach a result they like probably aren´t being intellectually honest. For instance, I like what the federal courts are doing in the Schiavo case even though I wish the result were different. Similarly, I am against court decisions which purport to find a non-existent constitutional right to same-sex marriage even though I am vigorously in favor of gay marriages.

Do you ever praise anyone or their reasoning skills when they express opinions with which you disagree? Do you purposely seek out the arguments of those whose views are different? Do you ever agree with the actions of courts when they reach results that you wish were different?

>Speaking of credibility, you're also no longer praising Bush

>no matter what despicable thing he does. Evidently the scales

>have finally fallen from your eyes (at least some of them) and

>you're now seeing what many of us have been seeing for some

>time: this gang is dangerous!

The reality is, I never praised Bush blindly. As I said here many times, I even refused to vote for Bush because of his support for the FMA, and I gave a lot of money to Howard Dean´s campaign and none to Bush´s, despite my disagreement with Dean about Iraq, because I thought Dean was the only honest, non-politician running who transcended liberal/conservative prisons and who could affect fundamenetal change.

I definitely agree with the broad principles and most decisions comprising Bush´s foreign policy, which, post 9/11, is the most important issue to me. But I am highly critical, and have long been, of many aspects of his administration, including the incarceration of American citizens without due process, the manipulation of the federal budget to defecit-finance programs for political gain, the often unwarranted secrecy in which it engages, and lots of other things.

But you see more pro-Bush arguments from me on this Board than anti-Bush arguments for the simple reason that I don´t post much simply to agree with someone because I don´t find much value in it. I prefer to have my arguments confront the arguments of those with whom I disagree since that´s most valuable to me. Since this Board is filled predominantly with liberals rather than convseratives, it follows from that that most of the arguments I make here are anti-liberal arguments.

>they're ideological radical reactionaries, and they don't

>really care how much damage they do the country or the

>Constitution or to individual Americans in order to achieve

>their goals. As in the old Communist days, for this crowd

>"the end justifies the means." THAT'S what's so frightening

>about these people.

I´ll say this about this point. The so-called ``religious conservatives´´ definitely don´t deserve the second word in their title, as they are proving right now. Unlike Goldwater/Reagan conseravtives, this crowd does not give a shit at all about limited federal government or about minimizing state intrusion into people´s lives. I agree with you that they care about one thing and one thing only: maximizing their power in order to impose their religious convictions on the country as a whole. If they were to succeed - and I don´t believe they will - that would be dangerous.

But the extreme wing of the Democratic Party is, in my view, at least equally dangerous. Both extremes are.

But the religious conservatives are only a small part of the Republican Party. They´ve been getting away with stuff they probably shouldn´t be able to get away with because people have been doing what I´ve been doing: placing foreign policy over all other issues post-9/11 and thus willing to tolerate some excesses there because the GOP right now is so superior to the Democrats on foreign policy issues.

But they´re starting to go too far and they aren´t going to get away with it. Check out the article in the New York Times today about how even many conservative Republicans are EXTERMELY uncomfortable with the idea that Congress would intervene in this case. And the poll I posted showed just how distateful the overwhelming majority of Americans - including most Republicans - find attempts by the likes of Tom DeLay to intervene in their intimate, personal lives.

It´s just true that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. For that reason, I never think it´s a good thing when one party consolidates too much power over all branches of the Government. That´s what the Republicans have now, and they will undoubtedly destroy themselves by transgressing limits.

But that´s the genius of our founding fathers and the system they created. There are so many checks and balances - and in the Schiavo case, I think even the conservative federal judges are sending a big FUCK YOU to Congress as a backlash against Congress trying to override the functions of the court - that it takes way too long for any one faction to consolidate true absolute power, and by that point, they usually far over-stay their welcome.

I think the lingering image from this Schiavo case is going to be the creepy picture of Tom Delay and those other fat pigs sitting in their suits over the weekend purporting to be able to make the best decisions about the medical care for a woman they never met, and even going so far as to legislate their preferences. Aside from a few true theocrats, no American wants that.

>There have been plenty of other administrations I didn't like,

>or disagreed with. Even Democratic ones -- one of the things

>you learn in life is that there are no perfect politicians, so

>you end up having to support one whose positions most closely

>resemble your own and stands a chance of being elected,

>knowing that on some issues your views are going to diverge

>and you're going to be disappointed. All of us, I'm sure,

>have felt at one time or another that something a President or

>administration was doing was utterly wrong, or

>counter-productive, or idiotic, or all of the above. But I

>never recall a time when I thought the country was in real

>danger from an administration and Congress who have no respect

>at all for the Constitution or the fundamental principles the

>U.S. was founded on. And that's what we've got now.

Are you sure you weren´t saying the same things you say about Bush about Reagan when he was President? The rhetoric strikes me as being similar.

I believe that Bush and his closest advisers were genuinely affected by 9/11, as they should have been, and reacted in a way to err on the side of excessive security at the expense of liberties. But that´s happened before MANY TIMES in our country. Presidents - including Lincoln and FDR - during war have trampled on every civil liberty we have, have established military tribunals, incarcerated and even executed people without due process. But our country always recovered and returned to full liberty.

We´re not even remotely to that point yet. And most people, and certainly the judiciary, have learned lessons. The Founders intended the media and the judiciary to be last-ditch walls against tyranny. Although the media is totally useless now, the judiciary is not, and you are seeing that this week.

>The danger is compounded because the study of civics as a

>required subject in American schools seems to have

>disappeared. We have an awful lot of Americans now who don't

>understand or care about what America stands for, and are

>unable to make reasoned judgments about what their politicians

>are doing because they never learned about our political

>system and how it's supposed to function. If they don't know

>what America is about, it's not very hard for them to be led

>astray by the types who claim America was founded as a

>Christian nation and are working to turn the U.S. into a

>theocratic state. And their numbers are growing. . .

True. I don´t have a television in my home, but I am currently in a foreign country, renting an apartment that has a television, including CNN and FOX News, and I have be truly startled by what I am seeing, with regard to everything, and particularly the Schiavo coverage. It´s all empty melodrama and propaganda. There is no way any non-lawyer who wanted to be informed would be able to be by watching these two stations. I assume the networks, with far less time devoted to news, are even worse.

As I said, the Founders thought the free press would always stop tyranny. But if you have a public which can be diverted by 1,000 forms of cheap entertainment, combined with a media that has ceased to perform its basic anti-government functions, that wall breaks down. Then again, as these polls on the Schiavo matter reflect, Americans seem to have some way of knowing exactly when they really need to start paying attention.

>None of this is standard American politics, and it has nothing

>to do with conservatism or liberalism as they have commonly

>been understood. It has everything to do with a group of

>people who don't like the free America we have, because

>they're convinced they have the truth and they KNOW what's

>best for all of us, whether we like it or not.

But far leftists think they know what´s best for everyone, too, and want to impose that also, only in different ways. That´s why I think they only real solution is to keep either side from getting too much power.

If they

>succeed in staying in power (and they've already got the three

>branches of the Federal government and many of the state

>governments) the vile shenanigans we've seen in the Schiavo

>case are just a foretaste of what's to come. The way things

>are going, they may have nearly four more years to ram their

>agenda down America's throat.

Add to that the disturbing fact that they seem willing to use their power to change long-standing rules whenever they lose in the few instances where they don´t get their way - changing re-districting rules, abolishing safeguards against absolute power (such as the filibuster), and now mandating the re-litigation of court cases that don´t have the outcome they want.

Nonetheless, just as Newt Gingrich did, they will start to believe their own PR more and more (``Americans care most about having their government impose moral values``) and they will cross more and more lines. I don´t care what the polls show. Nobody wants Jim Dobson, Pat Robertson and Sean Hannity making choices for them in their lives.

Amazing. After all this time we're actually in agreement on a lot of things! :-)

Just a couple of thoughts: I wasn't posting during the Reagan years (I don't actually know when M4M began) or the first Bush administration. Thinking back on things a bit more carefully, there have been a few times when I was afraid for the fundamental institutions of the U.S.: The phony Gulf of Tonkin ruse to get us into Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and just about everything the current Bush administration has done. I was a strong supporter of Jimmy Carter (I worked in a minor way in his campaign) and of Bill Clinton, but on a number important issues, like gays in the military, they deeply disappointed me. However, I don't recall anything they did as pulling the underpinnings out from under our Constitution.

As for the extreme left-wing of the Democratic Party that you refer to, I really am unclear who you're thinking about. If there is such a thing any more, hardly anyone from that wing is in Congress. Maybe Barbara Boxer in the Senate and a tiny handful in the House. The vast majority of the Democrats in Congress range from center-left to conservative (in the classic sense of the word). That crew also controls the party machinery, which is why our platforms and Presidential candidates have been so boringly middle-of-the-road 1950's Republican clones!

However, I'm not sure what terrible things you think the Democratic left wing would try to force on everyone. I can't think of anything that would violate a person's conscience, or force them to follow religious beliefs that are not their own. I also can't think of anything they would want to do that would require changing the Constitution to undo parts of the Bill of Rights.

As I said before, the current administration is scary because it panders to the theocrats, without understanding that by doing so they're undermining the most important principles of our democracy. If it's useful, the Bush administration thinks nothing of firing up the fundamentalists to get support for its real agenda (making sure the rich get it ALL!). The religious fundamentalists are one thing, but the real Bush administration is made up of radical reactionaries who want to undo virtually all of the economic and social legislation of the 20th Century and send us back to the golden laissez-faire days before World War I when plutocrats were REALLY plutocrats, and ruled unchallenged. Not all of the economic and social legislation of the 20th Century is well-thought-out or effective (and for that reason it's constantly being fine-tuned) but for sound reasons the U.S. finally understood that unrestrained, primitive capitalism wasn't a good thing. There needs to be a system of checks and balances in the economy, too, and by-and-large the regulatory system that was crafted after 1929 helped America recover from the Great Depression, got us successfully through World War II, and fostered an age of widespread prosperity in the postwar years. Great Society programs of the Johnson administration helped diminish the gulf between rich and poor in the 60s and 70s, and even Richard Nixon supported some social programs that are anathema to the Bush crowd, which wants to get rid of ALL of them. Since they know that would be politically unpalatable, they carry out their wrecking campaign surreptitiously, starving programs by denying them funding, or, as in the case of Social Security, trying to fundamentally dismantle them while telling Americans untruthfully that they'll continue to exist. That explains the administration's fake "news" plants, among other things.

This administration is truly different in kind from any other in American history, and everyone, whether conservative (in the classical sense) or liberal needs to keep a close eye on them and do everything in our power to prevent them from corrupting the basic structure of America. It looks like the sleeping giant of the American public is finally beginning to wake up and start paying attention to what's happening, and that would be a good thing. When the entire country sets its mind to getting something done, we've got a pretty good record of getting it right. I hope that's what's finally happening now.

Oh, on the gay marriage court cases, whether or not you agree with them I think they're extremely well-reasoned and well-written. They really lay out text-book analyses of the Constitutional rights involved, and very carefully show how constitutional jurisprudence leads to the conclusion that prohibiting same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, whether from a privacy, equal rights or due process standpoint. The recent California case, while not as eloquent as some of the others, is a good example. Unfortunately, hardly anyone reads the actual decisions, and the media no longer sees to have the ability or desire to explain the reasoning of the courts to their reader/viewership. They just go for the inflammatory headlines about "Judge Orders Gay Marriage," and never help the public understand why the judge found as he did. In fact, the decisions to me seem to come from a classically conservative application of the law, as opposed to an "activist" one. While I can't think of one off the top of my head, I can recognize a well-written and reasoned decision that goes against something I wanted. I don't recall now which one it was, but I remember reading one such decision that forced me to concede that the result was what the law required, and anything different could only be the result of a change in the legislation.