re: re- terri schiavo/murdered
Absolutely right, goldie! The ugly thing is the way the sickening so called "pro lifers" (my god, is that a misnomer or what?) are now treating both, the husband as well as the judge who gave the decision to have the tube removed. These creatures have treated this as a rallying point, to get what they otherwise could not: as close to sexual climax as they'll ever get. They come off on this shouting down of humans and of this shouting up praises to some bizarre notion of God.
Michael Gweanda of The Age wrote a splendid article on it. Here it is in its entirety.
Meltdown: Vitriol and hysteria engulf Republicans
Posted on Saturday, April 02 @ 09:11:37 EST By Michael Gawenda, United States correspondent, The Age
He has received death threats has been vilified by evangelical Christians, right-wing radio talk show hosts and senior Republican politicians.
While Terri Schiavo lay dying in her hospice, he was escorted to and from work by armed police and his home and family have been under police guard.
He has been sent tens of thousands of emails, many calling him a murderer and threatening him with harm.
Some of the local papers in Florida have been prepared to publish the most extraordinary letters about him. One letter writer asked whether he was related to the Nazi mass murderer Josef Mengele or was he "just a student of his".
George Greer is a 63-year-old judge of Florida's circuit court, the equivalent of county courts in Australia. He is a conservative evangelical Christian and a committed Republican.
In 2000, he ruled that Mrs Schiavo, who had spent 10 years in what doctors who examined her said was a "persistent vegetative state" following a heart attack, would not have wanted to be kept alive.
He ruled that her feeding tube be removed and that in accordance with Florida law her husband, Michael, rather than her parents, was her legal guardian and able to make decisions about her treatment.
There followed five years of court appeals against his ruling up to the US Supreme Court, all dismissed, and two failed attempts by President George Bush's brother Jeb, the Florida Governor, to pass legislation overruling him. When the appeal process seemed exhausted, Judge Greer ordered Mrs Schiavo's feeding tube removed.
While Judge Greer had been subjected to abuse and threats since his initial ruling, it was not until he ordered the feeding tube removed two weeks ago, which prompted leading Republicans in Congress and President Bush to get involved in the Schiavo case, that the vilification and death threats seriously escalated.
The plight of Judge Greer, embattled, threatened and vilified as a murderer, has become a metaphor for the way the life and death of Mrs Schiavo has been used by some Republicans, including George Bush, to assuage the party's conservative Christian evangelical base.
Many believe it was evangelical activists who brought out the voters that delivered Mr Bush a second term last November and Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. Pressured by conservative activists, senior republicans, House majority leader Tom DeLay and Senate leader Bill Frist, decided Congress had to pass legislation forcing the Federal Court to review Judge Greer's decision and look at giving guardianship of Mrs Schiavo to her parents.
What had been a private family tragedy with all the bitter family disputes that often accompany such tragedies, became a fierce and ugly battle in America's culture wars.
Mr DeLay, under pressure for taking questionable junkets from lobby groups and with some of his Texas staff indicted for alleged campaign finance offences, set the tone for what was to follow. He justified the extraordinary Sunday sitting of Congress to pass what he called emergency legislation to save Mrs Schiavo's life, by calling Judge Greer's decision an act of "medical terrorism" and the removal of her feeding tube "murder".
Bill Frist, a well-regarded heart specialist and potential Republican presidential candidate in 2008, said he had looked at a video of Mrs Schiavo and concluded she was conscious and responding to her parents.
Members of Congress, at the start of a two-week break, were called back to Washington and forced to vote on the bill. Most admitted they knew little about the Schiavo case.
George Bush flew back from his Texas ranch to sign the legislation. While he did not repeat Mr DeLay's inflammatory language, his support for Mr DeLay was implicit in his dramatic return to Washington.
Two weeks later, with Mrs Schiavo having died and perhaps, at last, allowed to return to the private obscurity she had apparently always wanted, there is growing evidence the Republican Party is split over the involvement - some say exploitation - by Congress and the President of the Schiavo case.
Polls have consistently shown that despite the radio shock jocks and the hysteria on the Fox cable TV network, about 80 per cent of Americans say Congress and Mr Bush should not have got involved.
Mr Bush's approval rating has slumped over the past two weeks, falling seven points to 45 per cent in the polls.
And after the Federal Court in Florida refused to rehear the Schiavo case, rejecting three appeals by Mrs Schiavo's parents for the feeding tube to be reinserted, many Republicans expressed concern at the way Mr DeLay's intemperate language had encouraged vitriolic attacks not just on Judge Greer, but all the judges involved in the case.
The split in the Republican Party is between the so-called social conservatives for whom the main issues are abortion, gay marriage and the defence of what they call Christian values and economic conservatives who want small government and believe Congress and the President have no right to get involved with decisions made by state courts.
Writing in The New York Times, former Republican senator and former ambassador to the United Nations John Danforth said Republicans "have transformed our party into the political arm of Conservative Christians". "The elements of this transformation have included advocacy of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, opposition to stem cell research . . . and the extraordinary effort to keep Terri Schiavo hooked up to a feeding tube," he said.
Grover Norquist, a leading Republican strategist and self-described economic conservative, said senior Republicans in Congress and Mr Bush had misread the public on the Schiavo issue. "I think that a lot of conservative leaders assumed there was broader support for saying that they wanted to have the federal government save this woman's life," he said.
David Davenport, a senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution said the bitter attacks on judges by Mr DeLay and other Republican politicians was disturbing.
"The court process has worked, even if it hasn't given the result that the social conservatives want," he said. "For Congress to step in is really a violation of federalism."
After learning that Mrs Schiavo had died, George Bush was circumspect in his response, extending his condolences to her family and urging Americans to continue the fight for "a culture oflife".
But Mr DeLay was no less inflammatory, saying Mrs Schiavo's death was "a moral poverty and a legal tragedy".
"This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change," he said. "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behaviour."
There was outrage, even among Republicans at this clear threat to the judges who were involved in the Schiavo case, more than 30 of them, but that is unlikely to console Judge Greer.
