Tuesday, April 05, 2005

 

Forcefeeding The Fourth Estate

As our mainstream media seem to have deteriorated into a persistent vegetative state for some time now, here’s a question I’m sending down the old feeding tube, for them to ask the GOP Congressional judge-bashers:

“You persistently claim that the federal and Florida state judges who decided the Terri Schiavo case were ‘judicial activists’ for not granting the Schindlers the relief they sought, including the reattachment of Ms. Schiavo’s feeding tube.

“Since you’re the ones criticizing the judiciary for supposedly not following the law – can you explain, specifically, what right or rights under the Constitution or federal law were denied Terri Schiavo, and where is it (in either the text of the Constitution or federal law, or in cases decided by the US Supreme Court) that such a right or rights may be found?”

The fact is, they got nothin’. Beyond their “judicial activism” buzzphrase, they are -- and here I have to use a technical, legal term -- talking out their asses. The ironic thing, of course, is that if the federal judges who reviewed the Terri Schiavo matter had, in fact, been judicial activists, they might have cobbled together some theory by which they could have given Congress what it apparently was asking for: a brand-spankin’ new, never-before-heard-of, constitutionally-mandated “Right to (Mechanically-Assisted) Life.” To do that, however, would have required that the federal courts expand on “privacy rights” established in previous, liberal Supreme Court decisions – like, say, Roe v. Wade, and Lawrence v. Texas. Something makes me think that the Congressional bully-boys – like the Schindlers’ attorneys before them – won’t be making that argument anytime soon.

posted by Michael 1:05 PM