Terripalooza

Just as our LORD was in the tomb on Saturday, so I took a break from the (let's be honest) depressing state-sanctioned murder of Terri Schiavo [Satu]rday. Pity her family doesn't have that luxury, and never will.

What follows in this post will be some of what I like to call "three-dot monte" items. The posts after this one will summarize the various areas of this harrowingly precedent setting victory for euthanasia and the possible final descent of American culture down the slippery slope of Nazi bioethics.

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Terri Schiavo's collapse may not have been due to an "eating disorder," but domestic abuse instead.

Terri Schiavo had a bad fight with her husband the night before she was discovered unconscious in the hallway of her St. Petersberg, Florida home fifteen years ago, and intended to seek a divorce, a close friend said Friday.

"They were talking about divorce at the time that Terri collapsed," Jackie Rhodes told Fox News Channel's Fox & Friends. Rhodes became a friend of Ms. Schiavo's when they worked together at an insurance company.

On the night of their marital blow-up, Rhodes said Terri caller her about the fight.

"I said, do you want me to come over?" Schiavo said no, saying that she'd just spoken to her brother and was going to go see him.

"If you want me to come over later - if you want to come over to my house, just call, " Rhodes remembers saying. "I'll do whatever you need."

Rhodes said the fight came as Terri and Michael considered splitting up.

"They were talking about a divorce at the time that Terri collapsed, and I do feel they were headed for divorce," Rhodes said.

Apparently Rhodes wasn't the only one who knew the Schiavos' marriage was unraveling.

When Michael filed a malpractice suit after Terri's accident, Rhodes said:

"The malpractice attorney followed me down the hall at the courthouse and told me that it was important that I did not mention that they were discussing divorce during this trial, because it would impact the court's decision."

She said the attorney didn't get the divorce info from her.

"Someone else told the malpractice attorney about that because I had not talked to him prior to that," Rhodes said.

Interesting timing, no? Particularly in light of some reports showing her brain injury manifesting itself several days after she was hospitalized, and being most likely the product of a severe blow to her head.

Was Terri crippled as a result of spousal foul play? If so, that would certainly add a big additional reason to why Michael Schiavo didn't want to take any chances on her recovering, and did want her permanently silenced.

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Whether or not scumbag husband tried to off his wife and failed, Judge George Greer is certainly finishing the job with relish.

I bet you didn't know that the courts (at least in Florida) could order a state agency to not enforce the law. [BLEEP]ing amazing, isn't it?

The Florida judge presiding over the Terri Schiavo case ordered the state agency charged with protecting vulnerable adults to make no attempt to take the brain-injured woman into protective custody late Wednesday. The order appears to be in direct contradiction to a state statute that requires the agency to act.

One member of the media asked if the state Department of Children and Families (DCF) planned to take Terri Schiavo into protective custody, remove her from the hospice where she is being dehydrated and starved to death or try to reinsert her feeding and hydration tube. "We are looking at every potential opportunity to be of assistance," replied DCF Secretary Lucy Hadi.

That response apparently prompted the attorney for Terri's estranged husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, to contact Pinellas County Circuit Court Judge George Greer, requesting a court order barring the state from acting. Noted "right-to-die" attorney, author and activist George Felos argued during a court hearing later Wednesday that DCF had "no more power than ... a person walking down the street," to place Terri in protective custody.

Felos, as you might expect, is full of crap:

Florida statute 415.1051...states, "If it appears that the vulnerable adult ... is likely to incur a risk of death or serious physical injury if such person is not immediately removed from the premises, then the representative of the department shall transport or arrange for the transportation of the vulnerable adult to an appropriate medical or protective services facility in order to provide emergency protective services."

Jennifer Lima-Smith, an attorney for the DCF, reminded Greer that the agency does not need his permission in advance to act.

"The law allows the department to exercise both emergency protective services - intervention and emergency removal - either one or both," Lima-Smith told Greer.

Well, that settles the question, right?

In a sane world, yes; but here's the rub:

The statute also appears to specifically exempt DCF from an otherwise enforceable mandate to seek Michael Schiavo's permission to remove Terri.

"If the vulnerable adult's caregiver or guardian is present, the protective investigator must seek the caregiver's or guardian's consent ... before the vulnerable adult may be removed from the premises," the law states, "unless the protective investigator suspects that the vulnerable adult's caregiver or guardian has caused the abuse, neglect, or exploitation."

What then is the problem? The very fact that any and all testimony that would have highlighted Michael Schiavo's abuse, neglect, and exploitation of his brain-damaged wife has been pointedly and deliberately excluded and ignored by Judge Greer (see the nurses' complaints here). And, of course, had this not been the case, Terri Schiavo wouldn't be shriveling up in the first place.

DCF could liberate her anyway, but....

The only authorization or requirement for the involvement of the courts in an emergency intervention or removal comes after DCF has taken its action. "The department shall, within 24 hours after providing or arranging for emergency removal of the vulnerable adult, excluding Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays, petition the court for an order authorizing emergency protective services."

Judge Greer, of course, would never grant such authorization. So the most that Terri could receive would be a light snack before her starvation and dehydration was resumed.

Be thankful, dear readers, that I edited out Felos' gibbering about Terri's "civil rights being violated" by her slow, agonizing murder being interrupted. I may just have spared your monitors a barrage of bricks, or worse.

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While the blue-state propaganda apparatus was doing its part to manipulate a public stamp of approval on Terri Schiavo's execution, guess who spoke up on her behalf from the wrong side of the tracks?

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader says a "profound injustice is being inflicted on Terri Schiavo," and he is urging the Florida courts, Governor Jeb Bush and concerned citizens to take any legal action available to let the brain-damaged woman live.

In a joint statement, Nader and Wesley J. Smith, author of the book Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America, enumerated what they see as the many injustices in the Schiavo case.

They said the courts, under "color of law," have imposed a slow death by dehydration on Terri, giving every benefit of the doubt to her death, rather than her continued life.

This outrageous order proves that the courts are not merely permitting medical treatment to be withheld, it has ordered her to be made dead," Nader and Smith said.

Nader and Smith said the court is imposing "process over justice." They said new evidence should allow for a new trial - which was the point of the federal legislation.

Wow, who knew Nader was a "holy roller"? I guess what they say about stopped clocks is true after all.

Pity the strangeness of the bedfellows can't be a decisive factor - otherwise Terri would not only survive, but make a full recovery.

UPDATE: Clintonoid Lanny Davis and Joe Lieberman have joined the life bandwagon as well.

UPDATE/BUMP TO 3/29: You can add the Sinister Minister to that list.

Never, EVER thought I'd find myself on the same side of ANYthing as Ralph Nader and Jesse Jackson. I guess the Rancid Crabtree corollary really does hold true: "Iffin' ya stays in one place long enough, jist about everythang'll come by 'least once."

UPDATE III: And Bill Clinton, too? When did he ever schtup Terri Schiavo?