Explaining the bill under consideration.

He blasted Michael Schiavo at the end of the full press conference -- asking "What kind of man is he?" to not even allow the woman to be taken outside in the sun for three years -- but that's not part of this clip.

Update: Trey is working on getting the video of the end of the presser up now. It will be in the same post as linked above, he says.

Posted by: Ace at 02:24 PM | Comments (12)
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Tom Delay: "Speaker Hastert is empowered to call the House back into emergency session, which he will do tomorrow afternoon - Palm Sunday - at one o'clock."

From The Corner.

Seems a little late-- she will have been starved for 48 hours by then. A normal person could go for 48 hours without food without major incident, but obviously Terri is not the healthiest patient in the world.

Still-- I suppose it's something.

Thanks to an unknown tipster.

Although... You know, I'm sort of annoyed by the "Palm Sunday" thing. Why the hell is Tom DeLay even bringing that up? Is the GOP delaying coming back today just for the symbolic appeal of Palm Sunday?

What the hell?

And there's an obvious problem with this: the media, and much of the country, has an (often-irrational) antipathy to those who are religious. Can the GOP get that through their heads and stop making these counterproductive gestures which may appeal to one sector of the base but actually alienate a lot of moderates and liberals, and thereby hurt the possibility to enlist the wider public on their side?

Update: No cite, but I'm informed the Senate is reconvening at 5pm today.

CSPAN-2 Update: Should be covering the Senate in five minutes.

From a Previous Press Conference: DeLay: "What kind of man is [Michael Shiavo]?"

Posted by: Ace at 12:29 PM | Comments (6)
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Refused to grant an emergency stay of the order to remove her feeding tube in order to allow time for the outcome of an appeal.

And I'm not fond of slippery slope arguments as a rule (I mean, once we begin taking slippery slope arguments seriously, who knows what sort of arguments we'll begin taking seriously in the future?), but Rightwing Nuthouse notes that the right-to-die/right-to-euthanize impulse seems to be gaining. As he puts it:

Each time we kill someone like Terri it gets easier. Each time we make a decision to end the life of someone like Terri we expand the boundries of what’s “permissable.” Each time the debate is joined, the advocates for the cult of death point out the “special nature of this particular case” or that it’s only an “isolated incident."

And to prove his point, he cites the Gronigen Protocols, Dutch procedures regarding when it's ethical to euthanize children with incurable and painful diseases, up to 12 years old.

I don't believe these are easy questions that can always be resolved in favor of "life." But we do seem to galloping towards a general acceptance of euthanasia in the interests of "mercy" for a stricken patient -- and in the unspoken interests of convenience for every one else.

Posted by: Ace at 11:49 AM | Comments (12)
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First full day off the tube:

Schiavo, 41, could linger one to two weeks, provided no one intercedes and gets the tube reinserted - something that has happened twice before.

Linger? That's a fairly sedate way to describe "starving to death."

I've lingered. Lingering is sometimes fun. This doesn't sound like fun at all.

Outside the hospice, the Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition said activists planned to try to enter the hospice Saturday morning "to try to give Terri a cup of water."

I realize that Christians are a very important constituency in this movement. However, I also think the press deliberately tries to put this into the template of interfering-Christians-verus-individual-autonomy.

Not everyone on Terri's side is a Christian, or a conservative, or pro-life or anti-euthanasia. But the press prefers that simple narrative.

It's a lazy way of writing the story, but it also has the not-unwelcome-effect of telling moderates and liberals-- stay away from this one. Only the crazies care.

But Schiavo's husband said removing the tube was what Terri wanted. He was at her side shortly after the tube was removed at mid-afternoon.

Isn't he swell for presiding over her demise.

The removal signals that an end may be near in a decade-long feud between Schiavo's husband and her devoutly Roman Catholic parents, Bob and Mary Schindler.

Devoutly Roman Catholic. They are described that way in just about every article I read. It means, in case you're not sure, "nuts."

What's Michael's religion, by the way?

"Terri Schiavo has a right to die in peace," attorney George Felos said.

I don't strongly doubt that someone in Terri's position may have such a right. The question has always been, "Does she want to exercise that right, if, indeed, she has it?"

Gov. Jeb Bush said the judge's decision "breaks my heart" and noted it often takes two decades for a death row inmate's appeals to go through the system.

"There's this rush to starve her to death," Bush said.

Okay: I admit, that's a good quote from the other side. But who gets the last word about this?

Michael Schiavo said Bush and other lawmakers have no business interfering in a personal, family matter. "These people are pandering for votes. That's all," he told NBC.

Cal, take note: The judge did not order Schiavo to remove the tube:

On Feb. 25, Circuit Judge George Greer gave Michael Schiavo permission to order the removal of the feeding tube Friday.

The one cliche missing, which has appeared in just about every article on this case -- and which I was disappointed not to find here -- is that this is a "right to die" case.

It's not. A right to die case involves someone who wishes to die and is prevented from doing so by the law.

We don't know Terri's wishes. This is a right-to-remove-the-tube-from-an-inconvenient-and-sexually-useless-abandoned-wife case.

Disdainful Jennings Update: Mickey Kaus thinks Peter Jennings is flat-out annoyed he has to even cover this nonsense (from his perspective, you understand).

What annoys me about the press the most is how "intellectually incurious" they are about beliefs and "diverse lifestlyes" (such as those who practice Christianity) beyond their own.

Posted by: Ace at 11:31 AM | Comments (14)
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Drill in the arctic (wasteland) preserve! Drill like the wind, little one.

Polar Bears

Let's get them before they get us.

Posted by: Ace at 10:51 AM | Comments (12)
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Now, okay, that headline overstates the case. This opinion piece runs in Pravda, but it seems to be written by an American whose work is syndicated. So it is just a case of Pravda running a syndicated piece it finds interesting, and can't be taken to represent the editorial position of that red rag.

This piece ran quite a while ago: on January 26th, after Bush's Inaugural Address. It's not really current, and it can't be called part of post-30-January the "paradigm shift." Still-- let's say it prefigures the paradigm shift.

But it is very interesting that Pravda seems at least as willing, if not more so, to expressly praise Bush in an op-ed than, say, the New York Times. The New York Times seems to only run conservative-leaning guest op-ed writers when they're attacking Republicans. (Yeah, yeah, David Brooks, William Safire... but they're both tokens, you know.)

And of course Pravda ran this before the votes in Iraq and Palestine and the Orange and Cedar Revolutions. The New York Times refused to admit even the possibility of freedom working until the facts on the ground began to embarass them.

Some key bits:

In his speech the President put world leaders on notice: Either protect your people and provide them with democratic freedom and basic human rights or be prepared to answer to the United States. This notice applies to all countries, even our oil producing allies like Saudi Arabia. Oil is not an excuse for tyranny.

As predicted, liberals and Bush haters began accusing President Bush of being reckless and abusing his power, instead of giving him the credit and praise he deserves. Just once I would like to see liberals help the President in a noble cause, but I guess this will never happen. Liberals would rather try to make Bush look bad rather than help the oppressed, even though they claim to be the defenders of human rights.

I think liberals are afraid of taking an aggressive stand on world problems. They are more comfortable with Bill Clinton"s foreign policy of letting thugs drag dead Americans through the streets of Somalia than a foreign policy of strength. A plan for peace is outside their realm of thinking, unless appeasement and surrender is involved. They just cannot imagine winning a lasting peace by taking the fight to the enemy. No wonder John Kerry was loved by the French.

Thanks to RCL for the tip, and noting that the former communist house organ Pravda seemed, in this case, more amenable to the idea of the forward strategy of freedom than the American New York Times.

Posted by: Ace at 10:38 AM | Comments (3)
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The guys get shots. The guys get shots. Big ones, and multiple ones:

Looks like the U.S. Navy SEALs just got a brand new tool for the War on Terror. The boys at NSWC Crane (Crane Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane, Indiana) have apparently been busy little beavers over there. One of the projects they've been working on is this little .50 BMG badboy. It's called the AS50 Semi-Automatic Rifle, and it's the result of NSWC Crane's teaming with Accuracy International (AI).

At approx. 27 pounds empty/dry weight (according to the AI representative at their booth), the AI AS50 is relatively lightweight....

The Accuracy International (AI) AS50 Semi-Auto Rifle (.50 BMG) was designed specifically for U.S. military Special Operations (SPECOPS) personnel/snipers. More specifically, it was designed for the U.S. Navy SEALs to provide them with anti-materiel/long-range interdiction capability, combined with fast follow-up shot capability, in a combat-rugged, lightweight weapons package that can be assembled and broken down quickly and easily, and maintained easily. ...

Sounds pretty good. As if that's not enough, the AI rep at the booth told us that the AS50 semi-auto .50 BMG rifle creates less felt recoil than their AW50 bolt-action .50 BMG rifle. ...

Magazine capacity is 5 rounds for the AS50. The magazine is detachable box type.

AI's whole focus is to combine match-grade accuracy with military-application reliability and ruggedness, and it looks like it just might have succeeded with the AS50.

Thanks to BlakJack.

Posted by: Ace at 02:54 PM | Comments (34)
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I'm not in a very funny mood, but The Therapist has managed to rouse himself to inject a little humor into this somewhat-dark day.

His sources tell him that the judicial victory in the Schiavo case will have a powerful aphrodisiacal effect on our neutral-and-objective press corps. Expect a bumper crop of mediatykes in nine months.

Posted by: Ace at 02:38 PM | Comments (12)
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And yet that's what Barbara Boxer did, expressing her love-you-long-time feelings towards former KKK Kleagle Robert Byrd:

"...Sen. Barbara Boxer got a bit carried away during MoveOn.org's "Rally for Fair Judges" in Washington, D.C., yesterday, at one point referring to the event's keynote speaker – former Ku Klux Klansman Robert Byrd – as "the love of my life..."

From Newsmax.

Thanks to RCL, who says he is awaiting the MSM outrage over this amorous interest in a former sheets-wearing Night Rider. I would counsel him not to stay up late at night waiting.

Correction: I originally blamed this on Nancy Pelosi. I have difficulty telling the two apart. Except one's face appears to composed of the same fiberglass used on the classic 1974 Corvette Stingray.

Posted by: Ace at 01:50 PM | Comments (8)
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Even cynical motives shoud animate them to act:

In America today all big stories have three dimensions: a legal angle, a public-relations angle and a political angle. In the Schiavo case some of our politicians seem not to be fully appreciating the second and third. This is odd.

Here's both a political and a public-relations reality: The Republican Party controls the Senate, the House and the White House. The Republicans are in charge. They have the power. If they can't save this woman's life, they will face a reckoning from a sizable portion of their own base. And they will of course deserve it.

This should concentrate their minds.

So should this: America is watching. As the deadline for removal of Mrs. Schiavo's feeding tube approaches, the story has broken through as never before in the media.

If they were acting with the courage of their claimed convictions and honestly trying to stop this, but yet failing, they wouldn't pay a price.

But Congress took an early flight home rather than finish work on a bill that could have spared Terri, at least for several weeks as the bill's constitutionality was determined by the courts.

They had to get home to start raising money again from those whose beliefs they claim to champion. Everyone has their priorities, I suppose.

She's only partly right here:

There is a passionate, highly motivated and sincere group of voters and activists who care deeply about whether Terri Schiavo is allowed to live. Their reasoning, ultimately, is this: Be on the side of life.

There are a lot of us who are not ultimately "on the side of life," but rather believe "be on the side of life when there is considerable doubt as to a stricken patient's true desires, and the only evidence on the subject is the hearsay of interested parties."

That's not really a moral concern. It's a bare-bones-minimalist prudential one.

Posted by: Ace at 01:33 PM | Comments (22)
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