Friday
April 1 2005
OUR CIVIL SOCIETY: Let's recap:
Howard
Dean hates
Republicans.
Sean Hannity
hates
Democrats.
Republicans
are "a
bunch of crooks and liars."
Pies thrown
in
the face. Shoes thrown at
the head.
Cries of
Nazism. Claims of fascism. Calls for a new
McCarthyism.
We live
in a
theocracy where liberal politicians should start fearing
for their lives.
No, wait,
it's a Godless culture
of death
where the judiciary has become a tool "in
the hands of the devil."
I am not
one of those prudes who thinks we should sanitize public discourse.
To the contrary. And in fairness to Sean Hannity and John Kerry,
their remarks were not meant for public consumption. On the other
hand, while the left has been throwing a fit since the war began
in 2001, we seem to have collectively reached new heights of hyperbole
in recent weeks over the Terri Schiavo case.
"IT
WAS NOT INADVERTENT": Sandy Berger pleads guilty
to removing and destroying classified documents from the National
Archives. Last year he claimed it was "an innocent mistake."
Yesterday, a spokesman said Berger's action was "not inadvertent."
Sandy Berger
is not a stupid man. Even though smart people can sometimes make
stupid mistakes, it's hard to believe Berger wouldn't understand
the consequences of taking classified documents home and cutting
them up in his office. He didn't throw away his entire career
for nothing.
CONGRESS
CAN'T HELP ITSELF: I hate to say 'I told you so' but,
c'mon, you weren't naive enough to think Congress would stop with
just Major League Baseball, were
you?
Government
scrutiny on the NFL intensified yesterday when the congressional
committee investigating steroids in sports requested details
of the league's drug policy in a letter to commissioner Paul
Tagliabue.
In
referring to the MLB hearings as "the first in a series"
in its letter to Tagliabue, the committee put other leagues
and sports governing bodies on notice. Beginning next week,
it will send similar letters to the NBA, NHL, NCAA, USA Track
& Field, Major League Soccer, U.S. Soccer Federation and
other sports governing bodies including NASCAR, White said.
Other sports also could be subject to hearings.
Make no mistake
about it: At some point, after thousands of man-hours have been
spent on hearings and investigations, we will see Congress pass
a law banning steroids and imposing testing programs on all sports.
Will it prevent athletes from finding ways to cheat? Not a chance.
But Thank
God Rep. Tom Davis is around to save us from NASCAR drivers on
steroids. - T. Bevan 8:45 am Link
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Monday
March 28, 2005
TERRI'S LEGACY & THE CULTURE OF LIFE: Those who favored
Congress' intervention in the Terri Schiavo case made a two-tiered
argument to justify their support. The first tier was strictly
legal: a variety of factors in the case (including questions about
Michael Schiavo's fitness as guardian and conflicting medical
testimony as well as a possible misdiagnosis of PVS) allowed for
Congress to mandate a de novo hearing at the federal
level. The second tier of the argument - which represented the
broader question propelling the first - was a strictly moral one:
our society should place an exceptionally high value on innocent
human life and should take steps to prevent a severely handicapped
woman from being starved to death, especially when questions lingered
over what her own wishes might have been.
If one is
convinced of the moral strength of the argument for saving Terri
Schiavo (which millions upon millions of Americans are), and if
one further adheres to the proposition every innocent life is
worth protecting and that we as a society should not countenance
a system that results in the death of a single innocent soul,
then are we not obligated to reconsider support of the death penalty
under all circumstances except those in which confessions have
been voluntarily given?
The fact
is, while it cannot be said for certain that we have yet executed
an innocent person in the United States, it also cannot be said
with certainty we haven't. Since 1973, one
hundred and nineteen people sentenced to death row have been
exonerated prior to execution, a statistic that would lead any
rational person to conclude that out
of the 956 persons executed in the United States since 1976,
it is quite possible we have taken the life of at least one person
who was innocent. Here are
five cases in particular where the defendants were executed
while doubts remained as to their guilt.
Whether
one has supported the death penalty under the moral justification
of deterrence or "retributive
justice", after the outcry over Terri Schiavo it seems
to me to be extremely difficult to reconcile that support with
the new standard of intervening in individual cases to make sure
that we as a society always "err
on the side of life."
Indeed, one
of the ironies of this entire episode is that supporters of Congress'
intervention argued that Schiavo should be given the same right
to appeal her case in federal court as is afforded convicted killers
on death row. But according to an expert I spoke to, while death
penalty cases are heard in some instances (though not all) by
appellate courts on questions of due process they never get de
novo hearings at the federal level, nor has there ever been
an instance where Congress felt the need to intervene and mandate
one.
Here we can
segue to an even larger issue. Many have argued that the moral
questions raised by the Schiavo case outweigh the legal considerations
and that any means of preventing her death (including sending
in the national guard) are morally justifiable.
If this true,
then aren't we obligated to ask a larger question: if one believes
abortion is the taking of innocent life and feels it is our moral
duty to prevent infanticide, shouldn't Congress immediately pass
a law outlawing abortion at the federal level regardless of its
Constitutionality? Wouldn't the saving of a single life (or preventing
a single death by abortion, if you prefer) justify such an action?
And if we
believe deeply held moral beliefs do compel action that is extralegal
or unconstitutional, doesn't that argue in favor of actions like
the one taken by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom who believes,
as do many on the left, that denying gays the right to marry is
morally indefensible and akin to the legal racial discrimination
of blacks in the 1950's?
At what point
are we forced to live within the law even if we disagree morally
with some of the outcomes that result from its application?
The questions
left to us by the tragic case of Terri Schiavo are not easy ones
at all. But they are important, and they should be asked and answered
in a dialogue dictated by intellectual honesty and moral consistency,
not screeching partisanship and political cynicism. -
T. Bevan 12:32 pm Link
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