Thursday, April 21, 2005
I didn’t comment on the Terry Schiavo case since I didn’t know enough facts about it. The national news media didn’t do the sort of investigative journalism and reporting that the public needed to make an informed decision. They never adequately explained what overriding legal precedent was so important that it required the starvation of a human being.
Instead we were exposed to a circus of accusations, charges, countercharges, innuendo, clouded explanations, and a cornucopia of punditiotry. We were left with the impression of a heartless man who was able to kill an inconvenient person with the aid and collusion of a court system so lacking in compassion that it couldn’t find a solution that would have preserved her life in the care of those willing to provide it. But since we were presented with everything except facts, or answers to questions that were raised, we’ll never really know.
If we weren’t left with the uncomfortable feeling that it could have been us in that position, whether or not we agree or disagree with the right to die, we should have been.
And if we weren’t left with the disturbing impression that the courts ignore laws passed by Congress directing them to review cases (as provided for in Article III in the Constitution) while extending their jurisdiction rapaciously (in violation of Article III) and pronouncing new rights we have, and rights we no longer have, while basing their decisions on anything but our Constitution and Bill of Rights, we should have been.
The one fact that we are all aware of is that Terry’s feeding tube was disconnected by court order. The outcome was that she was starved and dehydrated to death.
Whether or not hers was a painful or euphoric death will never be known, but even that was debated by “experts” from the Right and the Left. Sympathizers with the decision to “allow” her to die claimed studies indicated it would be painless, or even euphoric, while opponents pointed empirically to millions of examples of starving people in Africa who didn’t appear to be euphoric in their last moments.
But less than a month after the courts killed Terry by refusing to review her case, they have agreed to hear yet another case brought about to end the use of the death penalty in criminal cases.
The claim is that--get this--the use of lethal injection doesn’t bring about a humane, painless death, but a painful death.
The argument is that lethal injection involves the administration of a painkiller followed by a drug that paralyzes the nervous system and stops the breathing and circulation process. The plaintiffs claim that the painkiller isn’t always effective, and that the murderer killed in this manner may feel excrutiating pain as the second drug sears the veins, and that even after he or she stops breathing, remains conscious for several minutes while suffocating.
What a horrifying thought--the idea that people who shoot, slash, bludgeon, maim, rape, sodomize, hack, gouge, strangle, burn, pummel, skewer, kick, run over, smother, poison, bash, blow up, crush, disembowel, and/or eat their victims might feel pain in their last moments of life!
It’s absolutely outrageous that the courts can ignore the consequences of starving innocent citizens, but yet again hear claims of “cruel and unusual punishment” for convicted felons who didn’t consider for a moment the feelings of their victims when they snuffed out their lives.
It’s been suggested lately by some opponents of individual gun ownership that Second Amendment rights should extend only to firearms no more modern than those available at the time the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were adopted. Theirs is a flawed argument, but I would like to suggest, by logical extension, that since hanging was the accepted mode of capital punishment at that time, we need to bring it back as the preferred method of execution.
And if that’s unacceptable, well. . . there’s always starvation.
Instead we were exposed to a circus of accusations, charges, countercharges, innuendo, clouded explanations, and a cornucopia of punditiotry. We were left with the impression of a heartless man who was able to kill an inconvenient person with the aid and collusion of a court system so lacking in compassion that it couldn’t find a solution that would have preserved her life in the care of those willing to provide it. But since we were presented with everything except facts, or answers to questions that were raised, we’ll never really know.
If we weren’t left with the uncomfortable feeling that it could have been us in that position, whether or not we agree or disagree with the right to die, we should have been.
And if we weren’t left with the disturbing impression that the courts ignore laws passed by Congress directing them to review cases (as provided for in Article III in the Constitution) while extending their jurisdiction rapaciously (in violation of Article III) and pronouncing new rights we have, and rights we no longer have, while basing their decisions on anything but our Constitution and Bill of Rights, we should have been.
The one fact that we are all aware of is that Terry’s feeding tube was disconnected by court order. The outcome was that she was starved and dehydrated to death.
Whether or not hers was a painful or euphoric death will never be known, but even that was debated by “experts” from the Right and the Left. Sympathizers with the decision to “allow” her to die claimed studies indicated it would be painless, or even euphoric, while opponents pointed empirically to millions of examples of starving people in Africa who didn’t appear to be euphoric in their last moments.
But less than a month after the courts killed Terry by refusing to review her case, they have agreed to hear yet another case brought about to end the use of the death penalty in criminal cases.
The claim is that--get this--the use of lethal injection doesn’t bring about a humane, painless death, but a painful death.
The argument is that lethal injection involves the administration of a painkiller followed by a drug that paralyzes the nervous system and stops the breathing and circulation process. The plaintiffs claim that the painkiller isn’t always effective, and that the murderer killed in this manner may feel excrutiating pain as the second drug sears the veins, and that even after he or she stops breathing, remains conscious for several minutes while suffocating.
What a horrifying thought--the idea that people who shoot, slash, bludgeon, maim, rape, sodomize, hack, gouge, strangle, burn, pummel, skewer, kick, run over, smother, poison, bash, blow up, crush, disembowel, and/or eat their victims might feel pain in their last moments of life!
It’s absolutely outrageous that the courts can ignore the consequences of starving innocent citizens, but yet again hear claims of “cruel and unusual punishment” for convicted felons who didn’t consider for a moment the feelings of their victims when they snuffed out their lives.
It’s been suggested lately by some opponents of individual gun ownership that Second Amendment rights should extend only to firearms no more modern than those available at the time the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were adopted. Theirs is a flawed argument, but I would like to suggest, by logical extension, that since hanging was the accepted mode of capital punishment at that time, we need to bring it back as the preferred method of execution.
And if that’s unacceptable, well. . . there’s always starvation.
