Hypocrites: For Schiavo, Excited Republicans ready to Throw out Laws - Invite Federal Activism

Right-wing extremists and conservatives in Congress are using the Terri Schiavo case to attack America's judiciary and push for "more socially conservative judges and for a socially conservative Supreme Court." If they get their way, Americans – who, by large majorities, agreed with court rulings and opposed federal intervention in the Schiavo case – will have less protection from the courts the next time the federal government seeks to impose its ideology on their private lives. Despite America's disgust with the political maneuvering in the case, a small group of radicals has made Schiavo into a "potent symbol." Indeed, the legal struggle over whether to keep Schiavo alive is "blazing a direct political path from her hospice bed to the U.S. Senate's next confrontation over President Bush's judicial nominees."

ENCOURAGING ACTIVISM: President Bush has endorsed the use of federal power to discourage so-called "activist judges," but in the Schiavo case, Bush and congressional conservatives passed "extraordinary legislation" exhorting the judiciary to intervene, a maneuver which "encourage[d] the sort of activism that they had long condemned."

LIKE ANGRY SPORTS FANS, REPUBLICANS SIMPLY DID NOT LIKE THE OUTCOME OF SCHIAVO CASE - Alleging Nothing Unfair About the Process
In fact, what the neocons call “judicial activism” is really the exact opposite: courts following the law and accepted legal procedure. [more] Judge Stanley Birch of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals took sharp exception to a law hastily passed by Congress, and immediately signed by the president, telling the federal courts to hear the case. The act, Birch said, was "demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people --- our Constitution." Only an "activist judge" could have ruled for the parents, Birch wrote. "When the fervor of political passions moves the Executive and the Legislative branches to act in ways inimical to basic constitutional principles, it is the duty of the judiciary to intervene," Birch wrote. "If sacrifices to the independence of the judiciary are permitted today, precedent is established for the constitutional transgressions of tomorrow." And as the Washington Post's David Broder pointed out, "No one in the truncated congressional debate suggested that the Florida judges had been biased or negligent or anything but conscientious" in their evaluation of the Schiavo case. "The majority simply did not like the result of the case, and decided to intervene."

NO APPEAL: The right wing's invocation of federal law to support a "culture of life" has been especially ironic given its past actions on the death penalty. In 1996, a conservative Congress imposed specific limits on the ability of federal courts to review petitions from prisoners on death row, including a "bar on … reconsideration of legal and factual issues ruled upon by state courts in most instances." That law would have made it more difficult for federal courts to review, say, then-Gov. George Bush's 1997 decision to put the mentally retarded Terry Washington to death. Bush denied Washington's plea for clemency after a 31-minute briefing from then-legal counsel Alberto Gonzales – the briefing "failed to mention that Washington's mental limitations, and the fact that he and his ten siblings were regularly beaten [as children] … were never made known to the jury." As President Bush says, "In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws, and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life."

THE 'BLESSING' OF TERRI SCHIAVO: Hoping to clear the way for President Bush's extremist Supreme Court nominees, conservatives are trying to use Schiavo to undermine America's faith in its courts. The Rev. Louis Sheldon, the head of the Traditional Values Coalition, called it a great "blessing" that Schiavo would expose the Court's "dictatorial control" over people's lives. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council – where Tom DeLay (R-TX) spoke last Friday – said the case will "increase the debate over whether or not the courts have overstepped their bounds." In fact, most Americans agree it was Congress that overstepped its bounds, with a new poll showing four in five people were opposed to federal intervention in the case.

HYPOCRITE TOM DELAY PUT HIS OWN FATHER TO DEATH Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader and a driving force behind the Congressional effort to spare Terri Schiavo's life, was confronted with his own end-of-life dilemma and agreed to withdraw life support from the patient, his father. Delay has been at the center of Congress's efforts to intervene in the Schiavo case and has taken an unusually public role. Yet he referred to Michael Schiavo's attorney as the "embodiment of evil." He insisted to a group of religious conservatives that God "brought us Terri Schiavo." In press releases and statements on the House floor, he spoke of Ms. Schiavo in explicitly religious and moral terms. "Congress has a legislative and moral duty to do what we can to protect her," Mr. DeLay said on March 17, after the House passed a measure intended to prevent the withdrawal of Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube. "Her life is being threatened, and we have it in our power to act on her behalf. Every human life deserves at least that much."  [more] and [more] and [more]