Res Publica 2005

Blame Games

2005-09-01T10:45:00.000-07:00

There are frustrated rumbles of talk about whose to blame about New Orleans getting flooded.

I know having lived there, that the situation was created over a wide number of administrations, back into the mid-60s, and the situation involved Federal, state and local decisions.

One interesting tidbit in the blame game is this:

In 1998, the DoD and the US Army Corps of Engineers drafted a document detailing the fact that New Orleans was protected by levees which were designed to protect N.O. from a LEVEL 3 hurricane. These groups wanted to go into N.O. and assess what needed to be done to improve the levees to at least withstand a LEVEL 4 OR 5 hurricane.

This serious request and supporting information was deemed highly necessary to protect N.O. and was presented in full to the President of the United States for approval of this critical project.

THE REQUEST WAS DENIED BY WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON. For those interested in the details, they are available in the FEDERAL REGISTER as a matter of permanent record.

Lots of hands can be slapped in the blame game. Mayor Schiro and President Johnson after Hurricane Betsy, for instance. It was in this time period the decision to protect against a category 3 was made. Betsy was a three. Then there was all the draining of the wetlands in and around New Orleans, the building of the intracostal waterway, and the reaction of the Army Corps of Engineers to the flooding in 1920, and the lack of ability of any government in Louisiana to deal with the salt water destruction of the marshlands which protected the cities near the coast.

Blame them all. What works better is rolling up one's sleeve, see what lessons can be learned, and do the right thing NOW.

I am working on a blog site just for hurricane news and information. Not upline yet, but will be in a day or two.

Join me in thinking about the suffering and what can be done to help. Forget about blame games and work on fixit solutions. Our fellow brothers and sisters need us.

Stay tuned for after Katerina information

2005-08-28T16:42:00.000-07:00

I lived in New Orleans for almost 30 years. I will be posting regular info about what you can do to help after the storm has passed. If you find out info, or want me to publicize your site or program regarding post-storm information and help, please drop me a line here.

Thought for the day:

2005-08-25T05:56:00.000-07:00

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself" -- John Stuart Mill

A thought...

2005-08-18T05:42:00.000-07:00

If Cindy Sheehan and Pat Buchanan were living under a regime like Saddam Hussein's, they'd both be dead now.

Just something to think about.

Well Duh!

2005-08-11T08:02:00.000-07:00

...these attitudes were most powerfully captured in symbolic issues such as display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings, removing God from the Pledge of Allegiance, or outlawing public manger displays at Christmastime. On each of these symbolic cases in point, there was a broad perception that Republicans would be on the side of American tradition, Judeo-Christian values, and the forgotten majority while Democrats would stand up and fight for a subversive minority seeking to erode the moral foundation of our country.

From "The Culture Divide & the Challenge of Winning Back Rural & Red State Voters" by the Democracy Corps

Maybe it's because people clearly linked to the Democratic Party and their causes have been fighting against these traditional values.

When that happens, it's not necessarily a perception; it's based on experience.

"Most [focus group participants] referred to Democrats as 'liberal' on issues of morality, but some even go so far as to label them 'immoral,' 'morally bankrupt,' or even 'anti-religious,'" report Karl Agne and Stan Greenberg from Democracy Corps.

All I can say is if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, flies like a duck, it's usually a duck.

I saw at one gathering a sign that said "Euthanize Christians." It's things like this that make those assumptions truly believable.

Howard Dean called Republicans a "white, Christian party" like it was a bad thing to be white and Christian.

What is most important to voters? The report goes on to note:

President Bush and Republicans in Congress were faulted for their lack of effective leadership on these issues and their failure to offer new ideas. Furthermore, there was strong support for some specific progressive initiatives and a belief among many that Democrats would be more willing to tackle these issues and to offer new ideas in the face of current policies that are clearly failing. However, as powerful as the concern over these issues is, the introduction of cultural themes -- specifically gay marriage, abortion, the importance of the traditional family unit, and the role of religion in public life -- quickly renders them almost irrelevant in terms of electoral politics at the national level.

I put it rather simply:

For years, a sector of society has told another sector of society that their values, traditions and things dear to the heart don't matter.

The people are going to vote for those who they think will respect those values, traditions and things dear to their heart, even it it might not be in their most obvious economic interest because these matter more to them.

And that is a reality that is not going to go away.

Karl Rove...

2005-07-13T15:05:00.000-07:00

During the election, I heard some strange things about Karl Rove...people accusing him of getting the Peterson jury to announce their verdict at a time to take attention off something they thought was damaging to the administration, and things like that.

Then today, I saw this cartoon:

That in turn, led to this:

The eyes of Karl Rove are upon you
All the live long day,
The eyes of Karl Rove are upon you
you cannot get away,
You think you have political acumen,
you think you know the score,
Til Karl Rove gets you in his cross hairs,
and blows you out the door.

He knows what you've been doing in the morning,
He knows where you go at night,
He knows the chatter you've been talking,
He knows the truth all right.
You think you have political acumen,
you think you know the score,
Til Karl Rove gets you in his cross hairs,
and blows you out the door.

The New York Time is missing Judith,
They think Rove will be the key,
When he just smiles at what they're doing,
As they fume at him foolishly.
You think you have political acumen,
you think you know the score,
Til Karl Rove gets you in his cross hairs,
and blows you out the door.

The eyes of Karl Rove are upon you
All the live long day,
The eyes of Karl Rove are upon you
you cannot get away,
You think you have political acumen,
you think you know the score,
Til Karl Rove gets you in his cross hairs,
and blows you out the door.

I do not think that Karl Rove is Mephistopheles, but my sense of humor got the better of me today.

The Dream

2005-06-22T06:27:00.000-07:00

Let us not kowtow
to the forces
of those
who hate the dream
our forefathers pursued,
of standing tall
beneath the sun,
a people who knew the way
of self-determination,
of freedom,
and were willing to pay the cost.

Let us not kowtow
to those who believe
our dream is evil,
and we who cling to it
children of a benighted way,
and the good that we do
is bad,
and the truth that we proclaim
is flawed,
and the hope that we offer
is a chimera.

Let those who believe
that bad is good
and good is bad
be known for who they are,
and called down
for the darkness they would
plunge us into.
Stand firm,
and do not kowtow
to their craven ways,
for our dream,
purchased with blood
on the fields of Concord,
in the wilds of Kentucky,
at Gettysburg,
at St. Etienne,
on Omaha Beach,
on Iwo Jima,
and every other place
has been bought dearly,
and is worth passing down
no matter what they claim.

KAC

Political thought for the day by KAC

2005-06-21T07:10:00.000-07:00

Some things, it is true,
that we can never get enough:
hugs,
friends,
hope,
peace,
love.
Some things, it is true,
that only a crumb
causes a surfeit:
lies,
hate,
disengenuity,
misrepresentation,
manipulation,
cruelty,
abuse.
Some people think
that in the name of power
that evil used to gain the means
has no limits,
long as they get the job done.
May they choke
on the surfeit
of their own amorality
until they learn
that black is black,
white is white,
and black done for white
sullies the good,
and makes Truth weep.

Latest Darfur Bulletin (News and what you can do)

2005-05-26T08:20:00.000-07:00

Save Darfur Coalition
Action Alert and News Updates

ACT NOW: Send a message to urge stronger action on Darfur

The Save Darfur Coalition joins 80 prominent advocacy groups across the nation representing millions of Americans in sending a letter outlining the steps that President Bush must take to stop the genocide in Darfur. You can send the same message. The letter, which highlights the urgency of the genocide in Darfur, calls for immediate US action through the United Nations to strengthen the mandate of the African Union (AU) force on the ground and to augment their mission to protect civilians.

By clicking below, you can join this effort to contact President Bush and other elected representatives to tell them you care about the people of Darfur and call for strong action to protect them. When our leaders understand that their constituents want them to act, they will.

Send a message to President Bush and Congress by clicking here.

Related Articles:
May 24, 2005 - Africa Action News Release
National leaders release open letter to President Bush on Darfur
The Save Darfur Coalition joined Africa Action and other national advocacy groups in Washington on Tuesday to demand that President Bush take specific steps to stop the genocide in Darfur.
May 24, 2005 - Inter Press Service
President Bush urged to take immediate action on Darfur
Nine months after his administration first declared that ongoing violence in Darfur constituted ''genocide,'' U.S. President George W. Bush was urged by some 80 human rights and religious groups and prominent individuals in Washington on Tuesday to do more to protect innocent civilians in Sudan's western Darfur region.

Legislative Update
The Darfur Genocide Accountability Act (HR 1424) will be replaced by an alternative measure sponsored by Congressman Hyde, the chair of the House International Relations Committee. This creates a challenge to the Senate counterpart, the Darfur Accountability Act (S 495), since any bill passed by the House will have to coordinate with a Senate measure.

International News
Kofi Annan visiting Ethiopia and Sudan to seek help for Darfur
May 25, 2005 - UN News Centre
Mr. Annan is due to co-chair a meeting in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa to bolster international support for the African Union (AU) mission in Darfur with AU Commission Chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare. The donor conference aims to rally support for the AU Mission in Darfur.

From Addis, Mr. Annan is scheduled to go to Sudan's capital, Khartoum, and from there to troubled Darfur. In Khartoum he will meet Sudanese Government officials, AU officials and UN system representatives. Mr. Annan is returning to Darfur "to see at first hand one of the world's worst humanitarian crises and the progress being made in meeting the people's needs on the ground," a UN spokesman said earlier Monday. He is also hoping to revitalize the AU-mediated but stalled political negotiations and focus attention on the area's humanitarian needs.

NATO set to make African debut
May 22, 2005 - Sudan Tribune
Barring a last-minute hitch, NATO is set to make its debut in Africa by backing up an African Union peacekeeping mission in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region, but NATO stresses that the African body will be in charge of the mission.

EU pledges logistical support for African Union in Darfur
May 23, 2005 - Politinfo.com
European Union foreign and defense ministers have pledged to provide aircraft to transport thousands of African troops to Sudan's Darfur region to help end the conflict there. The ministers also called for an international inquiry into recent events in Uzbekistan and warned Iran to continue its freeze on nuclear activities. Several EU member countries have offered logistical support and equipment to the African Union as it expands its peacekeeping mission in Darfur.

Egyptian Parliament approves sending troops to Darfur
May 23, 2005 - Sudan Tribune
The Egyptian People's Assembly on Monday approved a decision by President Husni Mubarak on sending peacekeeping forces to the western Sudanese region of Darfur for a period of six years at the request of United Nations.

Canada's commitment to Darfur still falls short, says MP Kilgour
May 18, 2005 - Embassy Online
Canada has pledged $170 million in assistance to Darfur and appointed a special advisory team led by Senators Romeo Dallaire and Mobina Jaffer and Robert Fowler, which plans to support the existing African Union monitoring force in Darfur, and lobby other donor nations to make substantial increases in their pledges at a conference in Ethiopia to be held next week. But MP David Kilgour is concerned that Canada's funds will not go toward essential and immediate security needs, and suggests that it will require a large multilateral force to substantially pressure the Khartoum government.

News in Sudan
Food shortages and aid dependence set to continue in Darfur
May 25, 2005 - International Committee of the Red Cross
Food supplies in Darfur are running critically low and millions of people there are dependent on food aid. The prospects for farmers being able to sow their fields this planting season are not encouraging. During the last planting season, less than 30% of arable land was cultivated. This proportion is set to decline further. If people cannot plant crops, there will be chronic food shortages. A depleted harvest at the end of the year will mean that increasing numbers of Darfuris remain completely reliant on humanitarian aid for their survival, trapped in a cycle of dependency for at least another 18 months.

AU calls for increased support to Darfur mission
May 25, 2005 - allAfrica.com
Africa's peacekeeping mission in war-torn Darfur risks failure unless it receives increased support, the African Union (AU) warned on Wednesday. Speaking on the eve of a major fundraising conference for the peacekeeping mission, AU Peace Commissioner Said Djinnit told reporters Darfur was a critical test of international commitment and Africa's resolve to end wars on the continent. A "shopping list" of military hardware that includes helicopters, 116 armoured personnel carriers, passenger and cargo aircraft as well as trucks for African troops operating in Darfur will be presented at the summit on Thursday.

Sudan eyes Darfur war crimes court
May 21, 2005 - Reuters
Sudan, which has rejected trying its citizens in a foreign court, could announce the make-up of a tribunal to try people accused of war crimes in the troubled region of Darfur soon, a senior official said on Saturday. The U.N. Security Council in March referred Darfur war crimes suspects to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. But it also left the door open for Sudan to hold its own trials provided these were credible, saying the ICC should encourage such domestic efforts.

Sudanese rebels kidnap three politicians in the east
May 25, 2005 - Reuters
Sudanese rebels kidnapped three ruling party politicians as they returned from a conference aimed at preventing conflict in Sudan's east, a government official said on Wednesday. One of the two main Darfur rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), said in a statement it had joined forces with eastern rebels to kidnap the three men who were leaving the government-organised conference in the town of Kassala near the Eritrean border on Tuesday. Both sides complain of marginalisation by the government, accusing it of concentrating on the country's central region, where most of the ruling elite hail from. Analysts fear the east has the potential to explode as Darfur has done.

Opinion Pieces
NATO to Darfur
May 25, 2005 - International Herald Tribune
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and foreign ministers from Canada, Britain and Asia call for NATO to offer more in the way of assistance to Darfur. "While such contributions are both appreciated and much needed given the severity of Darfur's humanitarian emergency, we strongly urge NATO to make an even greater commitment to this important African protection mission, one that would include putting NATO troops on the ground under UN authorization. While much of the international community openly acknowledges the situation in Darfur as one of the world's gravest humanitarian crises, national governments and international organizations have thus far failed to find an effective way to halt the atrocities since they began more than two years ago."

A chance for peace in Darfur
May 25, 2005 - Morocco Times
Editorial by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and AU Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare
"While no one knows for sure how many people have died in the conflict in Darfur, western Sudan, more than 2.6 million are suffering because of it, and in urgent need of assistance. As part of our efforts to address the crisis in Darfur, we have jointly convened [this week's/tomorrow's/today's] donor conference in Addis Ababa: to give the rest of the world - especially the wealthy countries which have the means to contribute, and whose media and public opinion have been most vocal about the need to halt atrocities in Darfur - an opportunity to rally round and give practical support to the Africans who are actually doing something on the ground."

Help African Union boost troops now
May 25, 2005 - Human Rights Watch
"International donors and African countries meeting Thursday to boost support for the African Union mission in Darfur must ensure that more AU troops are quickly deployed to protect civilians in the western Sudanese region. Human Rights Watch sets forth recommendations for the African Union and donors supporting the AU mission in Sudan."

Darfur needs bolder international intervention
May 25, 2005 - Crisis Group
"With the high-level conference on the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) set to begin in Addis Ababa on 26 May 2005, the International Crisis Group is urging much stronger international intervention to stop the ongoing killing in Darfur. In a letter addressed to world leaders, including those meeting at the conference, Crisis Group President Gareth Evans highlights two areas in particular that immediately demand a bold new approach: the mandate of the international troop presence, and its size and capacity."

The Darfur crisis: simple needs, complex response
May 25, 2005 - ReliefWeb
An analysis of the needs in Darfur and the appropriate international response by Max Glaser, former UN-OCHA Senior Humanitarian Affairs Officer in Darfur between July and December 2004.

Activism
Grassroots support to stop the Sudan genocide grows while the world action wanes
May 23, 2005 - Reuters AlertNet, American Jewish World Service
One year ago, American Jewish World Service (AJWS) launched a Sudan humanitarian aid and advocacy campaign within the Jewish community and spearheaded the interfaith Save Darfur Coalition. Since that time there has been a grassroots swelling of activity in synagogues, college campuses, and communities across America.

Save Darfur Coalition beneficiary of charity softball tournament
The International Studies program at the University of Maryland won second place at the College Park Scholars 8th Annual Charity Softball Tournament. Having adopted the Save Darfur Coalition as its charity, the International Studies Program secured and donated $500 to the coalition.

Rabbis call for day of fasting for Darfur
May 20, 2005 - The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
Rabbis from all denominations are calling upon Jews in Los Angeles to participate in a day of fasting, prayer and political activism to raise alarm about the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, organized by Jewish World Watch.

March for Darfur starts "Week of Conscience" in Cincinnati
May 23, 2005 - The News-Record
The University of Cincinnati chapter of Students Taking Action Now: Darfur, kicked off the "Week of Conscience" with a Freedom Walk Sunday.

Divestment Efforts
Divestment efforts seek to pressure Khartoum government
May 21, 2005 - Sudan Tribune
A strengthening movement to bring economic pressure to bear in Sudan got a lift this week when Illinois became the first state to pass a bill aimed at forcing public pension funds to shed investments in companies with business ties in the African nation. Several states, including California and Maryland, have considered similar legislation. Meanwhile, college campuses - a crucible of earlier economic protest movements - have organized to demand that their universities scour their portfolios of investments in companies that do business in Sudan.

The cost of doing business in Sudan
May 25, 2005 - FindLaw's Writ
Human Rights Attorney Joanne Mariner describes and applauds the efforts of states and universities to divest.

Treasurer scolded over Sudan
May 25, 2005 - Philadelphia Inquirer
A Newark (NJ) assemblyman tore into state Treasurer John E. McCormac yesterday for posturing against a bill requiring the state to divest itself of investments in companies doing business in Sudan.
In the midst of a budget hearing on updated state revenue figures, Assemblyman William D. Payne assailed McCormac for suggesting that it would be fiscally irresponsible to pull the plug on an estimated $7 billion in state investments.

Daily news updates can be found at our Latest News page.

Contact Information:
- To subscribe, enter your email under "get email updates" at www.SaveDarfur.org.
- To unsubscribe, please reply with "unsubscribe" in the subject line.
- For other correspondence, please write to david@savedarfur.org.
- Please visit us at www.SaveDarfur.org.

Dirge

2005-05-25T07:33:00.000-07:00

Let the threnodies rise,
sing the dirges soft and sad,
bring the mourners to keen up to heaven.
Let the tolling begin,
long, slow, sonorous,
here the strands of Dies Irae proclaim,
the day of wrath approaches.
With each choice that says bad is good,
good is bad,
sterility is abundance,
death is choice,
God is nil,
man is all,
spirit is myth
and all is dust,
We man the death watch
that says farewell to the bright and wonderous promise
that once was western civilization,
and see it take its place
next to Sumeria,
and Assyria,
the Parthians,
the Anasazi,
and join the dead cities,
Mycenae,
Knossos,
Ur,
Babylon.
and all the others
in being in the past.
The future it looks, belongs to others.

KAC

Newsweek: "The Day America Died"

2005-05-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

Newsweek has a Japanese language edition with the US flag in the trash from February 2, with a lead story that translates out "The Day America Died" ...check out the pic and story at Little Green Footballs.

Osama bin Who?

2005-05-22T13:17:00.000-07:00

Howard Dean said today that Osama bin Laden had nothing to do with 9/11......hmmm.

See for yourself here:
http://treyjackson.net/files/deanbl.mpg

KAC's thought of the day

2005-05-20T09:37:00.000-07:00

I sigh,
hearing the dysphemistic premise
that what is good is evil,
and evil good ,
as they threaten the survivability
of the long trek of Western Civilization
from the golden gleam of Pericles,
to the brightness of the Julian concept
of good law, good government,
to the Thomastic concept of the well-ordered universe,
beneath the hand of a loving God
now to be demolished
in the self indulgent
epicurean nightmare
of those who think self is the measure,
and meaninglessness is the only truth
dripping drop by drop the fetid scum
that will bury
this heritage
in the sterile ravings
of the word ME.

Dhimmitude, anyone?

KAC, 2005

Something to think about.....

2005-05-20T07:16:00.000-07:00

If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in theater in Iraq during the last 22 months that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000. The rate in DC is 80.6 per 100,000. That means that you are more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation's Capital, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq.

Source

On the Newsweek - induced Deaths by Riot

2005-05-19T07:19:00.000-07:00

Who would have guessed
that the irrational hatred
of the left
in their inimical hatred
of those who know that self-esteem
is not the measure of the universe,
and my pleasure not the ultimate truth
would step over the bounds
and cause the deaths
of the people they claim to want to save
from the "American Evil"
because of an ill-advised attempt
to make the administration look bad.

Blood on the hands of the foolish.

KAC

DePaul Professor Suspended Without a Hearing After Arguing with Students on Middle East Issues

2005-05-19T06:46:00.000-07:00

CHICAGO, May 18, 2005—DePaul University administrators have suspended Professor Thomas Klocek without a hearing after he engaged in an out-of-class argument with pro-Palestinian students at a student activities fair. When the students complained to administrators, Klocek was denied the rights that DePaul guarantees to professors accused of wrongdoing and immediately suspended. Statements from DePaul administrators indicate that Klocek was disciplined because of his harsh criticism of the students’ viewpoint, despite DePaul’s stated commitments to free speech and academic freedom.

“DePaul has unquestionably violated Professor Klocek’s due process rights, and the university did so because his statements were allegedly offensive,” commented David French, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which wrote to DePaul on Klocek’s behalf.

The incident in question occurred on September 15, 2004, when Professor Klocek engaged in conversation with students representing Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and United Muslims Moving Ahead (UMMA). According to the DePaulia student newspaper and other sources, during the debate, Klocek cited a Chicago Sun-Times article that quoted the general manager of the Al-Arabiya television network as saying, “It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.” A heated but strictly verbal argument ensued during which Klocek argued that a Christian viewpoint, in addition to Muslim or Jewish ones, should be considered in discussing Israel and Palestine. According to Klocek, SJP and UMMA students (several of whom had gathered around Professor Klocek) made their own controversial statements comparing Israeli Jews to Nazis. The argument concluded when Klocek walked away from the SJP and UMMA tables and thumbed his chin at the students in what he believed to be an Italian hand gesture meaning “I’m outta here.”

The offended students complained to DePaul administrators, who moved quickly to punish Professor Klocek for his part in the argument. Klocek reports that on September 24, 2004, Dean of the School of New Learning Susanne Dumbleton informed him that the university had received letters of complaint from SJP and UMMA students and had met with the students and their faculty advisors the previous evening. Dumbleton immediately suspended Klocek with pay and ordered him to stay off campus. Klocek was never given a copy of the complaint letters, nor was he given a hearing or any other chance to face his accusers before his suspension.

In an October 8 letter to the DePaulia about the university’s actions, Dumbleton explained, “The students’ perspective was dishonored and their freedom demeaned. Individuals were deeply insulted…. Our college acted immediately by removing the instructor from the classroom.” Dumbleton also made several other comments indicating that DePaul was primarily concerned with the content of Klocek’s remarks. On November 10, Klocek finally received a letter confirming his punishment and stating that he would be able to teach only one class the following semester, and that the class would be subject to observation.

Klocek’s suspension violated DePaul’s own policies guaranteeing academic freedom as well as its contractual promises of basic due process. Klocek was suspended without a hearing, which DePaul policies say can only be done in an “emergency.” Though DePaul now claims that the argument created the “emergency” conditions necessary for an immediate suspension, the university waited a full nine days before acting against Klocek—hardly the response of a school in the grip of an “emergency” situation.

“If DePaul professors aren’t worried about this situation, they should be,” remarked Greg Lukianoff, FIRE’s director of legal and public advocacy. “Due process is most important in cases like Klocek’s in which facts need to be sorted through and in which punishment can be severe and career-ending. By refusing Professor Klocek a hearing at such a crucial juncture, DePaul threw its stated commitments to basic procedural rights out the window and missed an opportunity to discover what actually took place.”

On March 24, 2005, FIRE wrote DePaul’s president, Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, on Professor Klocek’s behalf. FIRE asked the university to honor its own commitments and reminded DePaul that “[i]f every person had the power to punish those who expressed ideas they found offensive, we would all soon be reduced to silence.” President Holtschneider responded, saying this was not a matter of academic freedom and that “the university acted to address threatening and unprofessional behavior.” He also noted that Klocek had refused to pursue the university’s grievance process. This response contradicts Dean Dumbleton’s original justification for the school’s punishment. Furthermore, the grievance process available to Professor Klocek does not have the authority to restore his position.

FIRE’s French remarked, “While DePaul may now argue that the issue is one of professionalism, its public statements at the time of Klocek’s punishment make it clear that Klocek’s real crime was offending students during an out-of-class discussion of a controversial and emotional topic. Academic freedom cannot survive when professors who engage in debate on controversial topics are subject to administrative punishment without even the most cursory due process.”

FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation that unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, due process, freedom of expression, academic freedom, and rights of conscience at our nation’s colleges and universities. FIRE’s efforts to preserve liberty on campuses across America can be viewed at thefire.org.

CONTACT:

David French, President, FIRE: 215-717-3473; david.french@thefire.org

Greg Lukianoff, Director of Legal and Public Advocacy, FIRE: 215-717-3473; greg@thefire.org

Tom Ciesielka, President, TC Public Relations: 312-422-1333; tc@tcpr.net

Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, President, DePaul University: 312-362-8000; dholtsch@depaul.edu

On the New Europe

2005-05-17T06:16:00.000-07:00

Turbidity
as opaque as my creamed coffee,
swirls about the rationality
of organizing a society
that cannot,
will not
reproduce
and depends upon its enemies
to come hither
and be corrupted
into the likes of them
and replace their dwindling numbers.

Turbidity of thought
to think that this would work.

KAC, 2005

Something to think about...

2005-04-19T11:53:00.000-07:00

[A] State which arrogates to itself the prerogative of defining which human beings are or are not the subject of rights, and which consequently grants to some the power to violate others' fundamental right to life, contradicts the democratic ideal to which it continues to appeal and undermines the very foundations on which it is built. By allowing the rights of the weakest to be violated, the State also allows the law of force to prevail over the force of law. One sees, then, that the idea of an absolute tolerance of freedom of choice for some destroys the very foundation of a just mode of social life. The separation of politics from any natural content of law, which is the inalienable patrimony of everyone's moral conscience, deprives social life of its ethical substance and leaves it defenseless before the will of the strongest." (April 4-7, 1991, Consistory of Cardinals, "The Problem of Threats to Human Life.")

Then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI

Darfur, one of the Forgotten Crises

2005-04-14T07:10:00.000-07:00

I got this announcement in the mail, and I thought I'd pass it on.

Save Darfur Coalition

News Summary

Darfur Village Rampage Shocks UN

April 9, 2005 - BBC News

The UN and African Union have condemned with "disbelief" a village rampage by militiamen in Sudan's Darfur region. They said 350 militiamen torched all but two buildings in Khor Abeche, 75km (47 miles) from Nyala on Thursday. The BBC's Jonah Fisher in Khartoum says reports speak of 17 people killed in the raid by militiamen riding horses and camels.

Lack of Funds Forces Food Cuts in Darfur: WFP

April 9, 2005 - Aljazeera

The World Food Program (WFP) issued a stark warning Friday, saying that food rations will be cut for more than one million Darfurians who have fled the fighting in Sudan's western regions to makeshift camps because of a drastic shortage of funds. According to the WFP, it has only received 41 percent of the required funds for the emergency program in 2005 and that the food shortage would worsen in July and August when the rainy season would increase the number of people needing food aid from 2.3 million to 2.8 million.

Sudan Donors Pledge $2.6 Bln Aid, Despite Darfur

April 12, 2005 - New York Times

Donors promised at least $2.6 billion Tuesday to help southern Sudan recover after Africa's longest civil war but Washington told Khartoum to end atrocities in Darfur or risk a slide ``back into the depths.'' U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said Washington aimed to give $1-$2 billion but that the aid hinged on Sudan bolstering the January North-South peace deal and on work to end the separate conflict in Darfur in the west.

Arab News Editorial: Darfur to ICC

April 6, 2005 - Arab News

The author of this editorial writes, ?International sentiment is wholly on the side of the people of Darfur. It is time that Khartoum faced up to that fact and made moves to settle the problem before Darfur explodes into a full-scale secessionism.?

Chad Government Accuses Sudan of Backing Rebels, Suspends Darfur Mediation

April 11, 2005 - All Africa News

Chad has accused Sudan of providing backing for a 3,000-strong rebel force operating on the border between the two countries, and in retaliation is suspending its mediation in the Darfur conflict.

UN Rights Expert Accuses Sudan of War Crimes in Darfur

April 9, 2005 - PolitInfo

A United Nations human rights expert is calling on the international community to step up its pressure on the Sudanese government to stop, what he calls, the systematic rape of women and other abuses against civilian victims of the war in Darfur. The expert has submitted his report to the UN Human Rights Commission which is holding its annual session in Geneva.

Women Raped Even After Seeking Refuge

April 12, 2005 - Reuters

Women and girls who have fled ethnic cleansing in Darfur are being raped and subjected to sexual violence around the camps where they have sought refuge, Human Rights Watch said in a briefing paper released today. The briefing paper documents how the Sudanese security forces, including police deployed to protect displaced persons, and allied Janjaweed militias continue to commit rape and sexual violence on daily basis. Even as refugees in Chad, women and girls fleeing the violence in Darfur continued to face the risk of rape and assault by civilians or militia members when collecting water, fuel or animal fodder near the border.

Darfur summit in Egypt postponed

April 11, 2005 - Independent Online (South Africa)

A five-nation African summit in Egypt on the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan has been postponed because some leaders could not attend it, an Egyptian official said on Monday. Egypt had planned to host the meeting in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on April 20 and had invited the leaders of Chad, Libya, Nigeria and Sudan.

Interfaith Group Backs Call to End Darfur Genocide

April 11, 2005 - Christian Today

In light of the continuing necessity for international intervention in Darfur, Sudan, the United Religions Initiative Global Council have voted to endorse the Darfur Unity Statement, according to a URI press release. The Darfur Unity Statement, which was drafted by the Save Darfur Coalition, seeks "a massive worldwide humanitarian response and call to end the violence and investigate crimes against humanity." URI is joining that call by becoming the latest organization to sign its name along with over 100 other faith-based and human rights groups.

Editorial: Doing Better by Darfur

April 11, 2005 - Washington Post

The editor writes, "If the United States does not lead on Darfur, nobody else is going to. Leadership means getting a much larger peacekeeping force into Darfur, so that attacks on civilians cease and humanitarian workers can reach all parts of the territory. To achieve that objective, Mr. Zoellick needs to break the collective paralysis by changing the way the Chinese, Russians, Europeans and Africans think; his most important mission is not this week's visit to Khartoum but future trips to Beijing, Moscow and so on."

Bracelet Sales Benefit Darfur

April 8, 2005 - Arizona Daily Wildcat

A group of concerned University of Arizona students is speaking out about the ongoing genocide to state and national representatives. Known as the Concerned Students to Save Darfur, the non-partisan group sold green bracelets on the UA Mall yesterday and will again today to raise funds for the Darfur region and to educate students about the cause, said David Manthei, a member of the group.

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Contact information:

- To unsubscribe, please reply with "unsubscribe" in the subject line.
- For other correspondence, please write to me at david@savedarfur.org.

Prayer: Immoral and Un-American?

2005-04-08T10:41:00.000-07:00

Ask the ACLU:

NEW ORLEANS—The ACLU has filed a motion for criminal contempt today against the Tangipahoa Parish School Board for defying an agreed on court order banning official prayer at athletic events. An individual identified as Shane Tycer delivered a pre-game prayer over the PA system on March 24 at a baseball game between Loranger High School and Sumner High School. This marks the second contempt motion filed against the school board within the past two weeks for transgressions of injunctions related to the original lawsuit.

“The defendant school board and its superintendent cannot get away with a shell game that mocks the judiciary and its role of interpreting and upholding the rule of law,” remarked Joe Cook, Executive Director, ACLU of Louisiana. “The actors in this matter deserve jail and/or fines for their calculated un-American and immoral conduct to embarrass, hinder or obstruct the court in the administration of justice. Such behavior mimics segregationists who defied the federal courts rather than integrate the schools in Louisiana and elsewhere.”

Note:

Religion is equated with segregationists and the evil of Jim Crow laws.

The desire for prayer is called un-American (although this denies the history of the country).

Worst of all, it's called immoral.

Think about it. Sounds like a clear declaration of war against the believing people in Louisiana to me.

Rest in Peace, Theresa Marie Schiavo

2005-03-31T09:56:00.000-08:00

Today is a day that we should reflect.

It comes as we see a family feud strewn nation-wide, but brought on by disagreements as to the ethics of dealing with severely brain-damaged people.

Did Terri lose her personhood rights when she lost most of her personality due to brain damage?

Currently, the popular consensus seems to be something like: Cognito, ergo sum. And therefore, Non cognito, ergo, non sum. If I think, I exist. But if, because of brain damage I cannot think in higher ways, or communicate that thinking to others, the "I" I was, is no longer, and therefore, I am not a legal person any more.

Some of this is no doubt driven by fear of being in a similar condition.

But some of it deals with conception of the whole person. Are we really just our brains, using the rest of our body just as a carrier for that brain? Is our soul, if we have one (not all believe in it, I know), released with the massive brain damage, or does it wait until the end of our body's life?

What is the ethical way to deal with those trapped between cognitive life and physical death the way that Terri was?

My personal guideline comes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2276 Those whose lives are diminished or weakened deserve special respect. Sick or handicapped persons should be helped to lead lives as normal as possible.

2277 Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable.

Thus an act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator. The error of judgment into which one can fall in good faith does not change the nature of this murderous act, which must always be forbidden and excluded.

2278 Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of "over-zealous" treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one's inability to impede it is merely accepted. The decisions should be made by the patient if he is competent and able or, if not, by those legally entitled to act for the patient, whose reasonable will and legitimate interests must always be respected.

2279 Even if death is thought imminent, the ordinary care owed to a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted. The use of painkillers to alleviate the sufferings of the dying, even at the risk of shortening their days, can be morally in conformity with human dignity if death is not willed as either an end or a means, but only foreseen and tolerated as inevitable Palliative care is a special form of disinterested charity. As such it should be encouraged.

Let us use this time to decide how do we balance the rights of the individuals to make their decisions with the ethical concerns for those who cannot speak for themselves and are vunerable to the choices of others.

Human Non-Persons

2005-03-29T07:55:00.000-08:00

Wesley Smith at NRO noted the following in a debate he had about the Schiavo case:

My debate about Terri Schiavo’s case with Florida bioethicist Bill Allen on Court TV Online eventually got down to the nitty-gritty:

Wesley Smith: "Bill, do you think Terri is a person?"

Bill Allen: "No, I do not. I think having awareness is an essential criterion for personhood. Even minimal awareness would support some criterion of personhood, but I don't think complete absence of awareness does."

If you want to know how it became acceptable to remove tube-supplied food and water from people with profound cognitive disabilities, this exchange brings you to the nub of the Schiavo case — the “first principle,” if you will. Bluntly stated, most bioethicists do not believe that membership in the human species accords any of us intrinsic moral worth. Rather, what matters is whether “a being” or “an organism,” or even a machine, is a “person,” a status achieved by having sufficient cognitive capacities. Those who don’t measure up are denigrated as “non-persons.”

This is the situation we are in now. If you don't meet some societal definition of personhood, then you don't have rights. Thus killing the unborn is all right, because they aren't persons yet (although, if damage is done to the unborn by anybody except the mother, there is a growing amount of case law giving at least some status as a person0. Killing the severely handicapped is all right because their reasoning ability is so low that they have lost their personhood, and therefore are trash ready to be taken out.

Part of my problem with this form of ethics is that it allows a shifting definition of who should be a person. Does the late stage alzheimer's patient lose their personhood? How about the person who has cerebal palsey and has deep trouble communicating? A person who is in a "locked in" but thinking form of disease - ALS, late stage Parkinson's, and a few other diseases cause this, along with trauma - do they lose their personhood too?

This is an important place to think about what we are doing, and define it carefully. If we make personhood the determining factor, who is going to define it?

Marburg Epidemic Spreading in Angola

2005-03-29T07:51:00.000-08:00

Concerns are growing internationally as the outbreak of the Ebola-like Marburg virus is spreading in Angola. With 126 confirmed deaths, this is already the largest Marburg outbreak ever recorded. Infections are now also reported outside Angola's Uige province and among health workers.

While the Marburg outbreak is still mainly concentrated in the northern province of Uige, 4 deaths have already been reported in Angola's capital, Luanda, and several more are infected. Also in Angola's northern exclave Cabinda, one death has been confirmed and 14 contacts have been placed under hospital quarantine.

There are also concerns that the epidemic may spread outside the country. A recent passenger from Angola to Portugal died on Saturday. His death, which is still under investigation, may have been caused by the Marburg virus and Portuguese authorities are on high alert. Finally, authorities in Congo Kinshasa (DRC) are on alert, as that country neighbours both Uige and Cabinda in an area where borders are porous.

The Angolan Ministry of Health has formally declared an epidemic in the province of Uige and is now closely monitoring the few cases reported outside Uige. National authorities further are receiving technical support from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other UN agencies to control the spread of the deadly virus.

The work to control the outbreak is however not without risks. At least two policemen, two physicians and six nurses have died due to their work with Marburg patients. The two physicians - from Italy and Vietnam - died in Luanda last week after treating patients in Uige. Another Angolan physician is also infected.

The Marburg virus disease has no vaccine or curative treatment and is mostly rapidly fatal. In the present outbreak, most deaths have occurred between 3 to 7 days following the onset of symptoms. The Ebola-like disease is a viral haemorrhagic fever causing an acute febrile illness. A severe watery diarrhoea, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting are early symptoms, as are severe chest and lung pains, sore throat, and cough.

Source: Afrol News

Day After Easter 8.7 Earthquake Report

2005-03-29T07:12:00.000-08:00

From the Sydney Morning Herald

A three-metre-high tsunami struck Simeuleu Island near Aceh minutes after the huge earthquake that struck off Indonesia's western coast, Kyoto and Agence France-Presse news agencies reported.

And the fate of around 5000 people living on the isolated Banyak islands close to the epicentre of the massive earthquake remains unknown, as aftershocks continued to rattle Sumatra today.

``We are extremely concerned about the fate of 5000 people living in the Banyaks island group. We've had absolutely no news from these islands," Jude Barrand, communications officer for international aid agency SurfAid, told smh.com.au.

"There has been no contact and they were very close to the epicentre of the earthquake.''

A military commander in Indonesia's Aceh Province said the three-metre tsunami had caused extensive damage on Simeuleu Island.

According to an Aceh-based journalist who made contact with the island, the main hospital in Sinabang had been destroyed and could not be used. He said there were unconfirmed reports of 25 dead on the island.

Earlier today there were reports only of tsunamis running to 25cms high, leading experts to express their bafflement as to why last night's quake had not generated a larger tidal wave as in the Boxing Day disaster.

But there were later reports that an entire town which survived the Boxing Day quake - Aceh Singkil, on the south-western coast of Aceh province -had been levelled by the latest quake.

More than 10,000 people fled their homes there, Antara news agency reported. But there were no details of any casualties.

Endang Suwaraya, the military commander in the western Indonesian province of Aceh, close to the epicentre of the magnitude 8.7 quake, said he had received reports that Sinabang's port and airport were damaged.

The earthquake is believed to have killed between 1000 and 2000 people on the popular surfing island Nias, the country's Vice President Jusuf Kalla said today.

Already reeling from fatalities caused by the Boxing Day disaster, the 600,000-strong island found itself near the epicentre of the quake, which struck at 11.15pm local time (2.15am today AEST)

A Civil Rights Question That Needs to Be Answered

2005-03-25T04:46:00.000-08:00

David Limbaugh asks:

Should we dishonor a person's will to live, even if she doesn't have any more brainpower than a severely retarded person, solely because she issued a previous directive to the contrary when she had greater capacity?

If so, aren't we saying, in effect, that a mentally handicapped person's life is less valuable, less precious than that of a person with full mental capacities?

It does lead to the next question: Does a person with a mental handicap have fewer rights under the law that a person of sound mind? There was one case where the person handicapped by a stroke, asked to drink and eat, but later the judge ruled she wasn't in her right mind, and therefore gave orders to continue with the dehydration (although she died I believe before this could be carried out.)

Can we honestly say that the brain damaged or severely mentally handicapped have full protection of their rights if we refuse to clarify this?

Don't think this can't happen. Read this horrific story by Wesley J. Smith:

The worst of these cases of which I am aware is the tragic dehydration of Marjorie Nighbert. Marjorie was a successful businesswoman until a stroke left her disabled. She was unable to swallow safely, but not terminally ill. She was moved from Alabama to a nursing home in Florida where she would receive rehabilitation to help her relearn how to chew and swallow without danger of aspiration. A feeding tube was inserted to ensure that she was properly nourished during her recovery.

Marjorie had once told her brother Maynard that she didn’t want a feeding tube if she were terminally ill. Despite the fact that she was not dying, Maynard believed that she had meant that she would rather die by dehydration than live the rest of her life using a feeding tube. Accordingly, he ordered all of Marjorie’s nourishment stopped.

As she was slowly dehydrating to death, Marjorie began to beg the staff for food and water. Distraught nurses and staff members, not knowing what else to do, surreptitiously snuck her small amounts. One staffer—who was later fired for the deed—blew the whistle, leading to a hurried court investigation and a temporary restraining order requiring that Marjorie receive nourishment.

Circuit Court Judge Jere Tolton appointed attorney William F. Stone to represent Marjorie and gave him twenty-four hours to determine whether she was competent to rescind the general power of attorney she had given to Maynard before her stroke. After the rushed investigation, Stone was forced to report that Marjorie was not competent at that time. (She had, after all, been intentionally malnourished for several weeks.) Stone particularly noted that he had been unable to determine whether she had been competent at the time the dehydration commenced.

With Stone’s report in hand, Judge Tolton ruled that the dehydration should be completed! Before an appalled Stone could appeal, Marjorie died on April 6, 1995.

Injust Justice and Our Response

2005-03-24T07:09:00.000-08:00

We have a right to refuse medical treatment.

Greer's court certified that Terri, based on evidence only from her husband and his relatives, would have chosen to refuse medical treatment if she knew she would be severely brain damaged.

The stink comes because:

1)There are feelings that Michael and his family created this evidence, by swearing false affidavits and are in effect, perjurers.
2) That Michael, because of his actions,(especially with living with another woman, and fathering children by her) had conflicts of interest and should not have been guardian.
3) That shortly after winning the settlement, he stopped rehab treatment.
4) There is some feeling (and possibly evidence) that they chose doctors who would almost certainly guarantee a diagnosis of PVS.

The legal reality is, (as far as I can tell):

The judge followed the letter, if not the spirit of the law.

The state allows a judge to determine, based on testimony, a person's intentions for refusing medical treatment in cases like this.

Terri's wishes to refuse medical treatment trump all other charges: abuse, etc. which perhaps could be brought up separate and apart from her wish to die, but wouldn't have any impact on it, because she is severely brain damaged and the court has ruled that it was her wish to die in the case she was severely brain damaged.

Moral issues:

Many people, including me, believe that, without hard evidence, like written documentation, there should be a presumption for life.

Many, including me, believe that it is immoral to actively cause death in a right to die case. For us, withholding food and water is not equivalent to turning off a ventilator on a dying person, because everybody has a right to be fed and given drink.

There is also a feeling that MS was allowed to railroad this through because the judge was biased in his favor (selection of evidence acceptable, choice of doctors, etc.)

My personal conclusions, as a right to life advocate:

It is important to work for safeguards so that the handicapped are not considered "useless eaters" and ways found to get rid of them by legal fictions.

That on the other hand, it is important to recognize the right of all persons to refuse medical treatment once they are of age.

The answer to this is no doubt lies in several fronts: education on what is involved (as in filling out end of life directives that accurately reflect their wishes), moral persuasion to convince people of like mind that certain things are proper, in legislation that protects the rights both of life and of a person to choose.

Since I feel strongly that starving a healthy body to death is immoral, and would urge legislation that in absense of written statements to the contrary, a presumption of life should be made. Laws that can protect a person from conflicts of interest in guardianship cases (such as not allowing spouses who are involved in secondary relationships to have sole guardianship over a handicapped spouse) are good ideas.

Like many believers, I feel that it is part of my obligation not just to allow the state to take care of the poor and needy, but to personally consider and work for social issues. In a way, I do think it is a type of test, how we react when we see injustice (whether it's within the letter of the law or not), and we should point our finger at abuse.

I do think we see abuse in this situation, and I am not above pointing it out. Christianity has traditionally believed that it is how we as individuals treat the poor, vunerable and needy that matters most, and that in turning our backs we commit sins of ommision.

I cannot personally condone what has been done to Terri Schiavo, but it has been done legally. If her last legal avenue closes, and she dies, that will not take away the scar it has made on the country, nor end the fight against misuse of legal means against the vunerable.

This is the American way, for people of good will to stand up and be counted when there are issues needing our attention. And although some people wish we wouldn't, we will always be the gadfly in the ointment when what we see as darkness threatens.

Blunt Instrument of the Law

2005-03-23T08:32:00.000-08:00

Thomas Sowell sums it up the best I've seen:

Terri Schiavo's only crime is that she has become an inconvenience — and is caught in the merciless machinery of the law. Those who think law is the answer to our problems need to face the reality that law is a crude and blunt instrument.

Make no mistake about it, Terri Schiavo is being killed. She is not being "allowed to die."

She is not like someone whose breathing, blood circulation, kidney function, or other vital work of the body is being performed by machines. What she is getting by machine is what all of us get otherwise every day — food and water. Depriving any of us of food and water would kill us just as surely, and just as agonizingly, as it is killing Terri Schiavo.

Would I want to be kept alive in Terri Schiavo's condition? No. Would I want to be killed so slowly and painfully? No. Would anyone? I doubt it.

The machinery of the law is a cruel and blunt instrument, he says. And he is right. Terri is being killed not because she was in pain or miserable or unhappy, or dying. She is being killed because a few doctors agreed to call her condition PVS (although many more disagree), and the court ruled that it was her wish to never be in this state.

There is a legal fantasy going on here: that the government is just complying with your wishes, Terri. Even it it causes you pain, it was claimed you once said you didn't want to be kept alive on machines,probably thinking of something like a dying old person on a respirator.. And since the definition of medical means now includes food and water, not just respirators and kidney diaylsis and such, you are being killed because the court ruled you wanted it that way once upon a time, not to be kept alive because you are incapacitated.

So there you lay, drying out, doped on morphine and valium, one for pain and one for spasms, slipping into a stupor because the law decided you wanted to do this.

But it's such a permanent situation. Once it's over, there will be no one left to record your smile, or to visit you or touch your face, for you will be ashes.

Just one more handicapped person they found a way to get rid of.

Eugenic Mentality

2005-03-23T07:00:00.000-08:00

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 22, 2005 .- The legal complexities of Terri Schiavo's case may obscure the fact that a person is being condemned to die of hunger and thirst, warns the Vatican's semiofficial newspaper.

In today's Italian edition, L'Osservatore Romano points out that since last Friday, the brain-damaged woman in Florida whose feeding tube has been removed "is not being denied medicines, special treatments or palliatives, but that which for basic reasons of humanity would not be taken away from the most vile and miserable being."

Meanwhile, Schiavo's parents begged a federal appeals court to order the woman's feeding tube reinserted.

An attorney for parents Bob and Mary Schindler told the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia, that the 41-year-old woman might die before they could get a chance to fully argue their case that her rights are being violated.

The appeal today came after a federal district judge in Florida rejected the parents' emergency request.

L'Osservatore Romano in its article said that amid the exchange of accusations, appeals and judicial surprises in the case, there is a risk of losing sight of the crux of the problem.

"There is a woman in a Miami hospital who is about to die of hunger and thirst," insists the Holy See newspaper.

"A person -- not a 'vegetable' -- is slowly dying while the world watches impotently through television and newspapers," it said. "Her real drama, instead of inspiring a wave of generalized mercy and solidarity, is suffocated by the indecent quest to arrogate to oneself the right to decide on the life and death of a human creature."

"To what chilling eugenic mentality belongs the principle, according to which, life -- even if it is diminished and suffering -- depends on a judgment of quality expressed by other people?" asks the article written by Francesco Valiante.

"Who can judge the dignity and sacred character of a man's existence, made in the 'image and likeness of God'?" he continues. "The doctors whose professional deontology in this case more than ever should make them bring out of their memory chest the known principle 'to cure if possible, always to care'? Terri's parents, who gave her life 41 years ago?

"Or her husband who one day promised 'to love and to honor her, in health and in sickness' and who today has become her coldest and most merciless executioner?"

"Terri's slow and heartbreaking agony is today the agony of the sense of God, Lord of life," Valiante writes. "It is the agony of love that know how to bend down to the frail and needy. It is the agony of humanity."

Good Question

2005-03-21T08:27:00.000-08:00

VATICAN CITY (AP) - The Vatican newspaper on Monday criticized the removal of a feeding tube from a brain-damaged Florida woman, saying nobody can claim the right to decide whether a human being lives or dies.

``Who can, before God and humanity, pretend with impunity to claim such a right?'' L'Osservatore Romano said. ``Who - and on the basis of which criteria - can establish to whom the 'privilege' to live should be given?''

Evidently, in various places of the world, the answer is:

Doctors (Especially, but not only in Denmark)
Next of Kin
Hospital review boards (in Texas once you run out of funds and if the review board thinks your case is hopeless. But at least they give you a chance to find someone to take you in first)
Spouses who live with other partners but still claim enough spousal rights to make these decisions (Florida)
Judges

The morality behind all of this is tricky. It makes several assumptions:

1) death is inevitable (sometimes this is a good judgment, like after a massive stroke, sometimes it's playing games with semantics)

2) For a person who does not need a respirator,the only moral way to kill a person is to withhold food and drink and all other life-sustaining treatment. If the person is not brain damaged enough, they will hurt. Not much mercy here. I question the pretense of refusing treatment for someone who cannot talk. And what about the person who changes their mind before death? That has happened too. If they are in hospice, they might not get a chance to leave.

3) death is better than life (this is the trickiest because it is a values judgement that frequently says healthy brain damaged people are better off dead...but it's not a decision you want to make until you are there yourself!) And once you are dead, you are dead. There is no going back.

One thing we have trouble with lately is diffentiating between the handicapped and damaged person, and the person in imminent danger of death because they have reached the end of their lives. We think we don't want to live like that, and we repudiate it and equate it with people dying of alzheimer's, ALS or other horrible disease. And in our fear, we want to get rid of them.

But on the other hand, once you start talking about putting the "useless eaters" down, you are walking a slippery slope away from morality and into playing God. Our track record as a species is not good once we strip away the value of life. We end up with the Killing Fields, the Holocaust, the hacking of people by machete because we don't respect their personhood.

Don't think it can't happen here. There's all those baby boomers who are aging and need to be processed.

Natural Law, Situational Ethics and Terri Schiavo

2005-03-21T05:08:00.000-08:00

Moral absolutism vs. situation ethics.

Absolutism isn't a PC word any more. We live in an era that abhors the concept of something fixed, firm, true. Culturally, we want to play like all the world is grey, where there are no mortal sins, and everything is relative, based on its time and place.

But some things are absolute. A person is pregnant or she is not. Someone is either dead or alive. A or not A exists everywhere.

There are some things that historically have been consided natural law, things that civilized people do, or recognize as right, no matter what their religion. None of this was considered under very much attack anywhere until quite recently.

Last night, in the House of Representatives, we saw a great example of those who acknowledge natural law verses the forces and arguments of the situational ethics people. Natural law says, whenever possible, you don't withhold food and drink from your weak and vunerable. Situational ethics say a person is their brain. If a brain is severely damaged, then the person isn't there so you ought to get rid of the body - even though there is a growing body of evidence that says we don't even begin to understand the cognition people in these states have.

In working to have Terri Schaivo have a real evaluation by a new judge, instead of being caught up in some local petty politics, the Congress was reiterating the 14th Amendment's right to due process, and the acknowledgement that even the handicapped are given that right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as much as they can enjoy it.

Based on what our country is founded on and because of this outlook, President Bush summed it up well:

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.

Interesting conundrum.

2005-03-19T14:15:00.000-08:00

The only way that Michael Schaivo can claim that it is "distressing to Terri" that she is being kept alive against her wishes, would be if she IS aware of it--and if she IS aware of it, then she isn't a vegetable. If she is so brain damaged that she cannot feel the pain of death by dehydration and starvation, then she can't be distressed by being alive in the condition she's in. Therefore, the question becomes does he have the right to insist on death for someone that is cognizant of what is going on without their positive agreement to it?

Think about it.

Action Alert for Terri

2005-03-19T08:39:00.000-08:00

Bobby Schindler has asked those of us who are following Terri's plight to pass on the following, and to take action:

URGENT ACTION ALERT

This is an urgent congressional action alert from the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) in Washington, D.C., issued Friday, March 18, 2005, at noon EST. For further information, visit the NRLC website.

Please forward this message to your own lists.

URGE SENATORS, REPRESENTATIVES TO RESOLVE DIFFERENCES, PASS 'TERRI'S LAW' IMMEDIATELY

Both the House and Senate have now passed bills that would give the Schindlers the opportunity to have their claims that their daughter's starvation violates her federal constitutional and statutory rights heard in a federal court. Unfortunately, the bills have significant differences in content. Both houses must pass the same version in order for the bill to be signed by the President and put into effect to save Terri.

Now, your help is needed TODAY to contact your Senators and Representatives and urge them to do whatever is necessary to resolve the differences between the two chambers and get a bill that will save Terri to the President’s desk before it is too late.

PLEASE ACT NOW! Under court order, Terri's feeding tube is scheduled to be removed at 1:00 pm EST today, Friday, March 18.

Contact your senators and U.S. representative. Simply type your zip code in the "Take Action Now" box.

Time is precious! Only a massive outpouring from constituents will move legislators to act quickly enough to give Terri her chance at life.

Read the text of the House-passed bill (H.R. 1332).

Read the text of the Senate-passed bill (S. 653).

They Made a Desert and Called it Mercy - Hubris, Projection, and Dehydration Therapy

2005-03-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

We make a lot of assumptions about those who have been brain damaged the way Terri Schiavo has. We see them lying there, changed from the person they used to be to something different. No one wants to be there. We are repulsed, turned away, and think it is perhaps the worst of fates.

And yet how little we know about what's going on inside a person's head during all of this. We could learn more, like by using MRIs to see how much cognitive ability is really left, but too often in our rush to disassociate ourselves from the person lying there in the bed, we make judgements that are incorrect. Doctors are not immune to these feelings. There is case after case of persons who were encouraged to to what Michael Schiavo is finally getting to do to Terri, but they refused, and their loved one got better. The largest study of this problem was done in Britain, with a 40 percent misdiagnosis!

Hubris. To project our distaste about a certain life condition and then to declare, that the person cannot feel, cannot hear, cannot know what is happening because they cannot communicate. Lots of cases say this may not be true. Look at the case of Kate Adamson, who underwent something similar:

A decade ago, Mrs. Adamson, then 33, suffered a double brain stem stroke that left her completely paralyzed, unable even to blink. Inside though, she was fully cognitive, able to understand doctors telling her husband she would either die or wind up "a vegetable." She wanted to, but couldn't, scream out when "people talked about me as if I wasn't a person, as if I didn't exist. . . . It was like being trapped underground and you're praying that somebody is going to be able to find you."

During 70 days of intensive care, doctors fed Mrs. Adamson through a tube. Then her digestive system failed, forcing them to remove the tube until her body could again eliminate waste. For the next eight days, she learned what it feels like to starve.

Unable to communicate, she remembers the terror of being "on the inside screaming out, 'Feed me something! I don't want to die! . . . I'm alive! I'm a person in here! Do not let me starve!' The hunger pains were unbearable," she said. "I thought I was going insane."

On the ninth day, doctors reinserted her tube. Now at age 43, Ms. Adamson has regained most of her physical abilities and become an advocate for the disabled.

Source: World Magazine

But in a society that allows late term D&C abortions, where the unborn child, who is old enough to feel pain, is basically dismembered, and we provide no pain relief, why should we expect other? The hubris of our culture says if they cannot complain, it isn't happening.

Lord have mercy on us all.

Thought, Thirst, Mercy, Death, Darkness

2005-03-18T21:08:00.000-08:00

I am thinking about Terri Schiavo tonight.

Have you ever been really thirsty? How dry your throat feels, how thick your tongue?

Now imagine laying there, not really able to move much, not really able to communicate well, yet alive and aware, and you feel that thirst building up. Other people have gone through this, been brain injured, in a something that looked like a pvs, gotten better and lived to tell about it. They knew exactly what was going on, yelled out in their heads and hearts about how it felt, how it hurt, how the dream of something to drink, the hunger, the thirst built up till it's an obsession never ending before their eyes - sometimes even with IV fluids.

Can anyone guarantee that unless they are SURE via significant MRI or PET type testing that a person really has too low a consciousness to experience dehydration, that people who are put down because someone else is horrified at their quality of life or wants to wrap up lose ends aren't merely in the "locked in" type condition and incommuncative?

A recent British study said that 40 percent of patients called PVS are misdiagnosed, and most get better.

Think about it. Laying there with a burning thirst and a body crying out for food. And you can't make anybody understand how much you need it.

If we did this to horses or cats or dogs, the world would be at our door, condemning us, threatening us in court, tearing down the walls to make us stop. But we are only doing it to our loved ones, our vunerable ones, our damaged ones, so it doesn't really count.

I want to know how can torturing the vunerable, something you would be prosecuted for if you did to an animal, be done as an act of righteous love in the name of mercy?

Those who Live at the Mercy of Others

2005-03-18T08:58:00.001-08:00

The case of Terri Schiavo raises complex issues. Yet in instances 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. Those who live at the mercy of others deserve our special care and concern. It should be our goal as a nation to build a culture of life, where all Americans are valued, welcomed, and protected - and that culture of life must extend to individuals with disabilities.

-George W. Bush

Not much more could be added to this.

Summers, Harvard and Freedom of Thought

2005-03-18T04:43:00.000-08:00

Larry Summers received a "No Confidence" vote from the faculty of arts and sciences at Harvard.

Mostly, I believe it was for his daring to say that there is evidence to prove thatmen might be statisically more likely to do well in math and science than women(and even they admit it was a factor for the vote). There is evidence to back up his assertion.

But in the new dark age of intellectual dishonesty that our universities have created in the name of political correctness, where freedom of though is carefully channeled into acceptable areas, people have been throwing snit attacks.

Harvard is not a parlimentary style government, and Summers could weather the storm if he had the strength of character, but I suspect he will go. After spending months apologizing for stating a truth, I don't think he has what it takes to ride out the situation.

Mostly though, what makes me sad about this is that he hasn't been attacked by drumming up data to prove his statements wrong. He hasn't been argued to be an intellectual crackpot through superior use of data. What he said was taken as politically incorrect. One of his critics, hearing him speak said she was going to pass out or throw up.

Academic research by snit fit? Is truth supposed to fit our politics?

University of Northern Colorado Story Confirmed

2005-03-17T05:40:00.001-08:00

Indocrination vs. education strikes once again....

By Ryan Call--SAF Central Regional Coordinator--03/14/05

The student was a sophomore at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, enrolled in a three-credit Criminology course in the Sociology Department during the spring semester of 2003. The course was required for the "Criminal Justice Emphasis" for the Sociology B.A. degree. The course was taught by Assistant Professor Robert Dunkley, who is still with UNC as an Assistant Professor in the newly-formed Criminal Justice Department. The course is now offered through the Criminal Justice Department, as opposed to Sociology, which may explain why some members of the media failed to find it listed among the current course offerings in the Sociology Department at UNC.

Taken from the 2002-2003 UNC Course Catalog, the course description is as follows: "SOC 346 - Criminology. Prerequisite: SOC 100 or equivalent. Survey criminal behavior generally, including theories of causation, types of crime, extent of crime, law enforcement, criminal justice, punishment and treatment."

The final exam format was a four-question essay exam. The student recalls that the fourth exam question was phrased: "Explain why President Bush is a war criminal." The student instead answered the question by discussing why Saddam Hussein was a war criminal, and received a failing grade. The student, deeply upset by both the unfair and politically-loaded question, as well as her failing grade, contacted the department chair and filed a complaint to begin the official appeals process.

During the appeals process, the professor claimed the exam question read: "Explain why President Bush could be considered a war criminal." During the appeals process, however, the professor was unable to produce copies of either the final exam or the student's final exam essay, for which she had received a failing grade. The student reported that the reason given by the department chair and the dean was that it was Professor Dunkley's first semester teaching at UNC, and he didn't know he should have kept copies of the exam.

UNC President Kay Norton was both aware of and involved with the appeals process as it unfolded regarding this incident. In fact, when President Norton appeared along with the presidents from other top Colorado universities before a legislative hearing of the Joint Education Committee on September 9, 2004, not only did she acknowledge that she was aware of the situation, but she was able to describe to the members of the committee what steps the university had taken to deal with the student's complaints.

For an example of the press coverage of the September 2004 legislative hearing, see Valerie Richardson, "Academic Bias Cited at Colorado Schools," Washington Times, 10/9/2004, available at http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20040909-110959-3265r.htm. For example, the Washington Times article included information about a number of other students who shared examples of bias in the classroom, including an alarming report from a CU-Boulder law student who reported that his property law instructor, Professor David Hill, told his class during the first few days of class that '"the R in Republican stands for racist,' called Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas an 'Uncle Tom,' and when confronted about such remarks, said "there are plenty of other Nazis like you out there.'"

An audio file of the relevant portions of UNC President Norton's testimony can be heard here. In addition, the student has agreed to allow us to post a copy of letters she received from the department chair during the appeal's process. These letters, with only the student's name excised, will be posted as soon as the student returns from spring break.

The student is now a senior at UNC, but given both the current uproar involving Ward Churchill at CU-Boulder, as well as the fact that the student has recently been accepted to a graduate program, she is still reticent to reveal her name and we have agreed to respect her wishes.

Ryan Call, a regional director for Students for Academic Freedom spoke with the student just a couple of days ago to confirm her story, and is willing to speak with any member of the media who would like additional details or clarification. Ryan Call, a third-year law student at the University of Denver, may be contacted at rcall05@law.du.edu. In addition, Erin Bergstrom, who originally interviewed the student in 2003, has agreed to be contacted to verify the student's claims, and can be reached by contacting Ryan Call.

Impacts

2005-03-14T04:59:00.000-08:00

"Marriage is not about being loved. It is about loving." So says Bob Just in an excellent piece on the impact of divorce on our society, the hurt it generates, and the emotional and political implications of it. Read it.

When Ideology Comes Before Reality

2005-03-11T16:22:00.000-08:00

"'You don't understand the situation. We are anti-imperialists, anti-capitalists, communists,'
they said. The Iraqis only kidnap American sympathizers, the enemies of the Americans have
nothing to fear."

So said three Italian women, including Guiliana Sgrenia according to veteran journalist Harald Doornbos, who safely went to Baghdad on the same flight and advised them differently.. Read Tom Elia's analysis of this sad story of not realizing the difference between one's political rhetoric and the reality of the world in his excellent piece "Journalist as Rube."

Sometimes the world we would like isn't like that at all.

The Real Million Dollar Baby?

2005-03-11T09:54:00.000-08:00

Chuck Colson has a piece about the story which may have been the inspiration for the story Million Dollar Baby, and this one has a happier ending. Worth a read, in part, because it shows that the value of human life, dignity, courage and love are worth more than an existential tear jerker.

Colson quotes journalist Sandy Allyson saying what I think are some true words:
“We can have peace and happiness,” she writes, “in the midst of situations that might have previously been thought of as unendurable. That is just one reason why virtually all disability advocacy groups . . . are so vehemently opposed to this idea of ‘helping’ someone die, which may sound warm and fuzzy, but in the searing light of truth, is just murder.”

Think about it.

Values

2005-03-11T07:10:00.000-08:00

I took a couple of days off blogging because sometimes, when you look hard at the world and the values it seems to embrace, it's disheartening.

Death is valued over life, if the person doing the valuing doesn't think that the life involved has worth. But this is an awful lot like getting older. When you are six, twelve seem old, and when you are 15, forty seems forever. But when you are forty, sixty doesn't seem so old after all. The same is true with quality of life issues.

We strip personhood from people we deem to be undesirable. The unwanted unborn, the unwanted crippled, the unwanted. Once they lose their personhood, then people find ways to do whatever they want with them.

We see this acted out in multiple ways:

Abortion, of course. The ultimate sacrifice of personhood. It's not a person, just some tissue, therefore we can do what we want with the unborn. The mentally damaged, like Terri Schaivo.

But it becomes more subtle than that. Some places, its anti-woman. You commit a crime against another person in some places in the world, the females in your family or extended family can be made to pay part of the price with their own body, and then they are expected to kill themselves because they were ritually made impure.

In Darfur, it's perfectly ok to go and rape the darker ones because they are just whatever, infidels, darkskinned, or whatever. Their personhood doesn't count. You can see this pattern all over the world. Your group doesn't matter because you aren't like us. You don't have full-fledged personhood.

In America, it's even more subtle. For some, the person who has inadequate personhood is the person who disagrees with you politically. This person is open to having their tires slashed, their car keyed, property vandalized, to be told they should be euthanized, to be denied freedom of association, to be belittled in classrooms. For some, behaving like a normal member of your sex is enough to get your personhood threatened.

Yet there is a higher way to behave than Carthago delenda est.

Our country was founded on this idea, that goes back to the sacredness of human life, the respect in theory at least, of a variety of viewpoints, and a commonality of humanness that gives us all value:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

This concept, derived in large part, no doubt from the Judeo-Christian idea that we are all children of God, and all worthy to be treated with respect, give us a way around the denial of personhood that leads to so much of the world's tragedies.

It is an ideal, of course, one that fails often in the reality of day to day life, but one we should keep to the forefront. Like Abraham Lincoln, I would like to say:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us ... and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Can there be true dignity of man, true freedom that does not acknowledge the personhood of all people, rich, poor, high status, low status, vunerable, weak, strong and able?

We saw the ripples through the middle east of the taste of liberty that the Iraqi elections created, because the hope of another way, based on human worth.

Cathago delenda est, the way of might making right is not the only way. But without valuing human life, there can be no true basis for liberty.

Victory for Freedom of the Press at University of Oregon

2005-03-08T08:07:00.000-08:00

It is important for people to always realize that true freedom of speech means you will not always be happy with the opposition - but that they do have a right to speak. Taking away that right is not American, and is against the Constitution.

March 3, 2005

FIRE Press Release

EUGENE, Ore., March 3, 2005—The Oregon Commentator, a conservative student magazine, has won a three-month-long battle for press freedom against the University of Oregon (UO) student government. The Commentator had been derecognized and denied funding after it published items satirizing a transgendered student senator. Acting in response to student complaints, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) intervened, writing letters to the administration and to relevant campus leaders. On March 2, FIRE learned that the student government had reversed its unconstitutional actions and re-recognized the Commentator.

“We are pleased that the Commentator has finally been restored to its rights,” remarked David French, president of FIRE. “It is shameful, however, that the administration allowed this brazen and flatly unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination to persist for so many months,” he continued.

The Commentator’s trouble with UO’s student government, the Associated Students of the University of Oregon (ASUO), began in December 2004, after a transgendered student senator complained of being offended after being mocked in the magazine. ASUO’s Program Finance Committee (PFC) subsequently rejected the publication’s mission statement, which, according to Commentator staff, has remained unchanged for the past 21 years. The PFC revisited the issue on February 1, 2005, to clarify the reasons for its decision. During this discussion, several PFC members publicly denied the committee’s constitutional obligation to distribute student fees on a viewpoint-neutral basis. When Commentator staff members explained that the PFC was legally obligated to uphold free speech under the First Amendment, one PFC member argued that he felt justified in disobeying an “unjust law,” meaning the First Amendment’s requirement of viewpoint neutrality in student fee funding. At the end of the meeting, a second PFC decision left the Commentator, again, derecognized and ineligible for funding.

The Commentator immediately contacted FIRE for assistance. On February 11, FIRE wrote UO President Dave Frohnmayer to protest the student government’s actions. FIRE explained to President Frohnmayer that “[a]s a state institution, the university and its administrators should understand that it has a non-delegable duty to ensure that the First Amendment rights of its students are protected.” (Emphasis in original.)

In a February 15 response to FIRE, President Frohnmayer stated that it would be “unwise and premature” for him to intervene in the funding process and remarked that he had “confidence [that] the final decision regarding funding of the Oregon Commentator will be viewpoint neutral.” In other words, Frohnmayer appeared to recognize the illegality of the PFC’s action but was unwilling to take any action to correct it.

“President Frohnmayer’s refusal to correct the PFC was irresponsible,” commented Greg Lukianoff, FIRE’s director of legal and public advocacy. “The students needed guidance on the law from the administration, and from President Frohnmayer’s response it looks as though the students were never provided with the guidance they needed—until FIRE decided to write the students directly.”

In light of the UO administration’s refusal to act, FIRE wrote a February 21 open letter to the ASUO and to the student media explaining that the Commentator’s expression was fully protected satire, and that “denial of constitutional rights, even for a day, constitutes ‘irreparable harm’ and can open an institution to liability for denying these rights.” (Emphasis in original.) The letter also requested that ASUO immediately recognize the Commentator and restore fundamental rights to all UO students.

On March 1, 2005, the PFC met again and this time approved the mission statement of the magazine, clearing the way for the magazine to be funded on a viewpoint-neutral basis. The Commentator’s budget was even increased by 5.63 percent, according to the Oregon Daily Emerald, the daily student paper at UO.

“We certainly hope that the ASUO—and the UO administration—has learned its lesson and that, from now on, student fees will not be used as a tool to favor or disfavor particular viewpoints. FIRE will continue to monitor the situation at UO to ensure that this attempt at censorship does not happen again,” concluded FIRE’s French.

FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation that unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, due process, freedom of expression, academic freedom, and rights of conscience at our nation’s colleges and universities. FIRE’s efforts to preserve liberty at UO and on campuses across America can be viewed at thefire.org.

CONTACT:
Greg Lukianoff, Director of Legal and Public Advocacy, FIRE: 215-717-3473; greg@thefire.org
David French, President, FIRE: 215-717-3473; david.french@thefire.org
Dave Frohnmayer, President, University of Oregon: 541-346-3036; pres@oregon.uoregon.edu

Modern Academic Diversity at Work

2005-03-08T06:04:00.000-08:00

I don't know all the details of this case, but it sort of dovetails with Bill Maher's recent statement about those who believe in God have a mental problem:

Jury selection began today (March 7) in a federal trial in which a public university in Pennsylvania is being sued because school officials tried to have a Christian student involuntarily committed to a mental hospital.

Back in 1999 Temple University sponsored the controversial and blasphemous play Corpus Christi, in which Christ is portrayed as a homosexual. Michael Marcavage, then a Christian student at the Philadelphia school, complained to administrators. Temple officials eventually tried to have Marcavage committed to a mental institution because of his opposition to the play.

Steve Crampton, an attorney with the AFA Center for Law & Policy, says it is to Marcavage's credit that he relied on God throughout his clash with the university and became stronger as a result of the experience. "Of course," the lawyer notes, "that doesn't excuse the wrongdoing." He says the AFA Law Center is expecting and hoping the jury will recognize the 1999 incident for what it is.

The complaint filed on the former Temple student's behalf alleges that two university officials "unlawfully and intentionally assaulted and forcibly restrained" Marcavage on November 2, 1999, and then unlawfully ordered police to handcuff and transport him to the university hospital, where he was involuntarily committed for psychiatric evaluation.

Crampton believes the Pennsylvania school tried to muzzle Marcavage's religious viewpoint, ignoring his First Amendment rights in the process. "So we expect and hope that the jury will want to send a message to Temple and to its officials that interference with constitutional rights simply can't be tolerated," the pro-family attorney says.

Academic diversity too often means, I will respect your diveristy if it's one of the groups I think are cool - but if it's not I will try to crush you. I don't know the details of how they tried to push this person, but doing things they call art which are blashpemous to someone's religious beliefs may be an exercise in free speech - but it also is not grounds to try to crush the free speech of another who wants to protest it.

Want to send a letter?

2005-03-07T17:03:00.000-08:00

RightMarch.com has a webform mail program that you can use to send a letter to Jeb Bush, or the Florida Senate President or the House Speaker regarding Terri Schaivo. You can write your own message or send the form letter. Click here to check it out.

Sickness - body, soul, culture

2005-03-07T08:21:00.000-08:00

Ronan Mullen writes:

We want to deny ageing, sickness and death more than we ever did before. It’s not just that many of us botox our bodies out of their natural state. Sick and elderly people are made to believe they are a burden on society or their relatives and are encouraged to despise their condition. In Holland, what started out as ‘mercy killing’ soon became voluntary euthanasia. Before long, it wasn’t even the elderly person’s call any more. Now relatives and friends are the ones to determine a sick person’s ‘best interests’. Involuntary euthanasia is widespread and some old people in Holland prefer to attend doctors over the border in Germany because they are apprehensive about what might happen locally. Meanwhile, Britain’s best-known bioethicist, Baroness Warnock, who was feted by the Irish Commission for Assisted Human Reproduction at a recent conference here, has suggested that elderly people should request euthanasia rather than linger on as a burden on their families.

I have a friend who had a really bad case of Gillian Barre, that left her unable to walk, with limited use of her hands, but a very sound mind. She is officially a quadreplegic. And yet, because she has a husband that loves her and takes care of her, kindly, even acting as her assistant at work for those tasks that her hands can't manage, she has a rich and full life.

Some people would think she should ask to die because they don't want to think of life that way (or perhaps because they think that being such a burden on her husband is unfair, or just on general principles that the handicapped are somehow less deserving of living.)

When it is your turn to face that time of weakness, of being frail and vunerable, sick, but yet still able to contribute, loving your grandchildren, your spouse, the light of a summer's day, your favorite movie, do you want them to come and tell you it's time to go? Just because you're in the way?

This is the direction the world is heading. And it's a sadness.

A Perspective on Love, Life, and Terri's Plight

2005-03-07T05:42:00.000-08:00

This is a piece out of an essay written by J.B. Williams, and is something to think about in the struggle for Terri's life.

Meanwhile, Terri’s life remains of great value to those who have loved her since birth, those who never loved her for her outward beauty, her ability to cook and clean, to perform the expected duties of a wife. Those who simply loved her for who she was, their daughter, their friend, loved her for who she still is today in their hearts and minds.

I have now seen enough of the allegations concerning the husband’s questionable behavior throughout this affair. I have seen the medical report ordered by the court, and the review by independent physicians I trust personally.

This matter could not possibly be any more cut and dried than it is… To remove Terri’s feeding tube is no different than denying a plate of food to millions sitting in nursing homes across this country, just because they are physically unable to pick up a fork or spoon and feed themselves…or unable to swallow…

My father has Alzheimer’s and while he remains able to feed himself today, there well may come a day when he is not able to anymore. If and when that day comes, I will happily help him eat… When he no longer knows my name or my face, I will remind him daily. When he is no longer able to manage even restroom visits, I will gladly manage them for him, as he managed mine before I learned to manage them myself…

This is all a part of life…the caring for each other, those who represent great value in our lives.

To deny Terri’s parents the chance to care for her on the basis that her husband no longer has a use for her should not be a debate, it should be a crime…

This matter is just that simple… I stand for Terri, who still has great value in this world, who only requires love and care and basic nourishment to sustain life…all the same things you and I require… I fear what our society has become if we allow her to be starved to death… Who will be next?

At the end of the day, it seems to me that every life is precious to someone and it should be. We must respect every life, no matter how imperfect, or we will risk respecting none… Some things can be subjective… The value of life is not one of them!

Upcoming Events for Terri Schaivo

2005-03-06T17:55:00.000-08:00

From Justice for Terri Schaivo

Monday - March 7, 2005 - 1.30pm
Hearing on 10 Motions, including permitting Terri to be fed by mouth should her feeding tube be removed.
Clearwater Courthouse
315 Court Street
Clearwater, Florida (MAP)

Tuesday - March 8, 2005 - 3.00pm
Hearing on medical motions and Karen Ann Quinlan testimony
Clearwater Courthouse
315 Court Street
Clearwater, Florida (MAP)

Wednesday - March 9, 2005 - 1.30pm
Hearing on DCF intervention and stay
Clearwater Courthouse
315 Court Street
Clearwater, Florida (MAP)

Thursday - March 10, 2005 - 1.30pm
Potential slip-over hearings
Clearwater Courthouse
315 Court Street
Clearwater, Florida (MAP)

Saturday - March 12, 2005 - 2.00pm
Vigil and Press Conference
Woodside Hospice
6770 102nd Avenue North
Pinellas Park, FL (MAP)

Sunday - March 13, 2005 - TBA
Rallies in Largo and Tallahassee

http://www.terrisfight.org/

To keep up with the updates, go to Justice For Terri Schaivo.

I am reminded of a song that was influencial in my own youth about justice - If you believe in justice, if you believe in freedom, then do what you can. Write. Call. Pray. Pass the word around. Be there. But do something.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

2005-03-06T14:30:00.000-08:00

Saw this piece by Matt Wallace and wanted to share it, because on a blog that is dedicated most to the goals of freedom enshrined by the American constitution to all of its members, vunerable, powerful, and inbetween, this struck a real chord:

As I contemplate the Declaration of Independence on the anniversary of its signing, I am chastened by the tragic fact that too many Americans are denied their "unalienable rights" of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Ironically, these same rights are used as an argument for alienating these oppressed and persecuted Americans from their rights as human beings. These Americans are the more than one million preborn children violently killed annually by abortion.

We cherish the freedom to order our lives in the most personally satisfying way. Abortion denies preborn Americans this right to the pursuit of happiness.

We cherish the freedom which empowers us to take advantage of our myriad opportunities. Abortion denies preborn Americans this right to liberty.

We cherish the life for which freedom is so vitally important. Abortion denies preborn Americans this right to life.

The mother's right to go on about her life without even taking nine months off for the sake of a person she helped bring into existance says that her rights are more valuable than the rights of her unborn child. Her inconvenience is worth the death of another.

That's a pretty high price for convenience.

Sort of goes against the founding dream of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness for one and for all. Can't do much pursuing if you don't get a chance to live.

Day By Day Gets It Right

2005-03-05T12:21:00.000-08:00

McCain-Feingold's Desire for the Voice of the People:

Affidavits Filed on Behalf of Terri Schindler-Schaivo

2005-03-05T12:11:00.000-08:00

If you have been following the story of Terri Schaivo, you might find the following worth thinking about:

For Immediate Release
March 5, 2005 - 3.30pm ET (GMT-5)
Attorneys for Bob and Mary Schindler have filed 17 affidavits in support of their motion asking Judge Greer to let medical evaluations be performed on Terri in light of recent advances in medical technologies.

The affidavits are from various experts in the medical field. They are urging that Terri be evaluated based on the fact that new evaluation and therapeutic technologies can significantly impact brain damaged and disabled persons. Many of them have stated that there is strong likelihood that Terri is in a minimally conscious state.

More affidavits are expected to be filed next week in support of the Schindler's

motion.

The link takes you to where you can read the affidavits

First Amendment Rights, the Internet and McCain-Feingold

2005-03-04T18:05:00.000-08:00

Bogus Gold puts it very well:

John McCain and Russ Feingold. Two rumored presidential hopefuls who ought not earn a dime of revenue, or a word of support from any blogger, from now until forever.

Not only was their "campaign finance reform bill," which was lauded for taking the money out of politics, proved laughably ineffective by the last election. Now they are pushing the FEC via a lawsuit to stifle political speech on the Internet. It seems as long as they call it a "contribution" instead of "speech," they see no First Amendment violation.

Obvious to anyone but a modern judge, this violates the letter and the spirit of the First Amendment. Heck, it might as well spit on the Constitution altogether. It's simply a power grab by a bi-partisan elite who fear the power of democracy the Internet is enabling. They want something easier to control. Well tough.

Should blogging be considered an in-kind contribution to a political campaign? Is there an official designation for freedom of speech and freedom of the press which requires that you are a large corporate institution before you are considered worthy of having a true voice?

What part of "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." does McCain and Feingold not understand?

Bloggers of the right or left, if you want the right to petition the government, to have a voice in politics, to have the right to be heard on the internet, it is time to make your voice heard. Write. Email. Complain most loudly!

Need an idea of how to complain? Go see the letter that the Captain's Quarters has.

Some others blogging this:

Josh's Weblog
Mount Virtus
Bunker Mullican
Polipundit

There's a lot more out there, but I am sure that's enough to get you excited about this power grab!

The DCF Petition Investigating Terri Schiavo

2005-03-04T05:24:00.000-08:00

It's out on PDF. You can read it here

Diversity vs. Freedom of Assembly and Freedom of Speech

2005-03-04T05:07:00.000-08:00

RALEIGH (AP) — The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill must recognize a Christian fraternity that has waged a legal fight challenging the school's nondiscrimination policy.

The preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Court Judge Frank W. Bullock Jr. will remain in place until the case is resolved, possibly by trial.

Alpha Iota Omega was stripped of its status as an official campus group because the fraternity wont accept nonbelievers or gay students. The university revoked the recognition after fraternity members refused to sign the school's nondiscrimination policy.

The three-member fraternity sued last year, saying UNC-CH had violated their constitutional rights to free speech, free assembly and free exercise of religion.

Recognition gives the fraternity access to student funds and university facilities.

The preliminary injunction put the Christian fraternity "on the same footing as nonreligious organizations which select their members on the basis of commitment ... ," Bullock wrote in an order issued Wednesday.

The merits of the case probably favor the fraternity, but the order is consistent with the university attorneys "current unofficial interpretation of their nondiscrimination policy," Bullock wrote.

The university's policy "raises significant constitutional concerns and could be violative of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution," he also wrote.

Attorneys for the fraternity were happy with the judges preliminary injunction.

Another case of a university preferring totalitarian techiniques vs. the US Constitution. Diversity is has it's place, but forcing one's views on a person to the point of forbidding them or interfering with their constitutional rights is not. Beyond that, universities lose depth and strength and potential when they force world views on people. Learning and critical thinking are not aided by forcing feeding in this way.

A Judge to Determine if Terri Schaivo Has a Right to Last Rites?

2005-03-02T09:05:00.000-08:00

A Certain Slant brought up this point:

I'm Catholic, so when I read at BlogsforTerri just moments ago that among the motions Circuit Court Judge Greer will rule on during a hearing in his court scheduled for 1:30pm EST on Friday, March 4th, is whether or not Terri Schiavo is permitted to receive the sacrament of Extreme Unction, I came out of my chair. I'm not a lawyer. If a lawyer reads this post, I would very much appreciate an explanation of why this poor woman, a baptized, practicing Catholic at the time of her brain damage in 1990, needs the approval of a judge to receive the sacrament of Extreme Unction as she approaches death (should Judge Greer's death sentence not be overruled by a higher court)?

For non-Catholic readers of this post, Extreme Unction, otherwise known as the "Last Rites" of the Catholic Church, is an annointing of the dying by an ordained priest to give strength to the soul, mind, and body of the soon departed. It is a blessed sacrament.

Why is Terri Schindler-Schiavo's "Freedom of Religion" under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution a matter on which Judge Greer must rule?

For someone who is Catholic, this is an outrage. The implications, and possibly the precident have frightening implications:

Silent Raindrops asks, discussing this:

Where are we going if we allow the courts to decide if and when we can receive the Sacraments of our faith? This is extraordinarily dangerous ground. Not only do we jeopardize our ability to receive the Sacraments, as this author wisely points out, do we also run the risk of judicial interference in the right of the Church to withhold those Sacraments when it is appropriate as a matter of dogma?

Does the court have a right to tell a person how and when they can worship, or tell that church how to manage its normal affairs?

The fact that there is a dispute (no doubt part of the tug of war between Michael Schaivo and the Schindlers) is sad. But if the judge rules against the allowing a priest to be with her for her passing, a normal Catholic procedure, we could be entering a slippery slope of court controlled religious practice.

Not a pleasant thought.

Speech Codes, vs. Freedom of Speech

2005-03-02T04:52:00.000-08:00

It has been the thing the last several years for universities to pass speech codes in the name of diversity, that when pushed in courts of law almost always fail because they are infringements of the first amendment.

Douglas Kern over at Tech Central Station wisely notes: Big academia promulgates the illusion of free speech while quietly enforcing the de facto reality of opinion censorship. A great example of this has been the brohaha over Larry Summers at Harvard mentioning that statisically, men do better at maths than women, and as a result there are fewer women in the math and science fields in acadamia as a result. The data is there, it is a real fact, but he has spent the last half year it seems apologizing for stating what it true because uts not acceptable speech in his circles. Opinion (even backed by the facts) censorship.

Mike Adams tells us this story about the University of Alabama:

Last semester, the faculty senate at the University of Alabama (UA) passed an Orwellian speech code designed to restrict “any behavior that demeans or reduces an individual based on group affiliation or personal traits, or which promotes hate or discrimination.”

Anyone armed with an 11th grade education can see that such a speech code is unconstitutional. Indeed, many of the UA “diversity initiatives” such as the Vagina Monologues would be banned under such a code, if the university had any intention of applying the code equally. Come to think of it, booing an Auburn football player would be banned under the code, too.

There evidently is some double talk that they are using this as a way of not being obligated to pay for performances that the faculty deems offensive and that they never intended to really use it as a speech code.

The student senate, though, isn't buying it. They recently passed the following:

WHEREAS the right to free speech is an inalienable human and civil right that is protected by the United States Constitution and the Constitution of
Alabama;

WHEREAS free speech is absolutely vital to the mission of any university, where new and often controversial ideas must be discussed openly and rationally in order to make advances in knowledge;

WHEREAS the Faculty Senate of the University of Alabama has recently passed a resolution urging the University of Alabama to regulate the speech of students at the University of Alabama;

WHEREAS speech codes have been used by other colleges and universities to silence dissenting speech, not merely so-called “hate speech”, and to persecute those with unpopular opinions;

WHEREAS there are currently numerous legal challenges pending against such speech codes, and the adoption of such a speech code at the University of Alabama would invite a lawsuit against the University that would be costly and would greatly tarnish its public image;

WHEREAS in the words of Thomas Jefferson, “Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it”;

WHEREAS by defending free speech for all students, one in no way condones any kind of hate or intolerance; On the contrary, one is promoting tolerance of others despite their differences, especially their differences of opinion;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT the University of Alabama Student Senate most strongly urges the Administration and the Faculty Senate of the University of Alabama to refrain from adopting any form of speech code, even one that purports to ban only so-called “hate speech”;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT the University of Alabama Student Senate most strongly urges the Administration and the Faculty Senate to adopt policies that explicitly protect free speech for all students at the University of Alabama;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT copies of this resolution also be sent to Dr.
Robert Witt, President of the University of Alabama, Dr. John Mason, President of the Faculty Senate of the University of Alabama, the Tuscaloosa News, the Crimson White and Dateline Alabama for informational purposes.

I do not know why, really, that universities, once the bastion of free thinking, became a hothouse of totalitarian behavior done in the name of liberty, but example of example of this subjugation of the academic ideal has been in the news as of late.

Who will suffer for it? America>

Who is fighting it? Liberty loving Americans, especially the young.

And that is a wonderful thing to see.

Campaign for Terri Schiavo

2005-03-01T13:19:00.000-08:00

WriteWingBlog is passing around this message. It's a good message, and I encourage you, if you feel that Terri is being railroaded into the hand of a painful, judicially mandated death when noone knows for real if this is something she would have ever chosen for herself, then read it, pass it on, and act on it.

Dear Friend:

I’m writing to you today because we are at a critical point in our efforts to save the life of Terri Schindler-Schiavo. Her estranged husband, Michael, will remove her feeding tube on March 18th at 1:00 p.m., as mandated by the courts. Never was there a more crucial time for you to get involved. YOU can help make a difference in saving Terri’s life with very little effort on your part. Time is of the essence.

The first thing you can do is to become informed, quickly, about the misinformation being perpetuated in the mainstream media and by Michael Schiavo and his attorney. Please visit BlogsForTerri and TerrisFight for extensive resources.

One of the most heinous distortions being reported is that Terri is in a “coma,” “persistent vegetative state,” or even “unconscious.” The truth is, Terri laughs, speaks from a small vocabulary of words, responds to others and is very aware of her surroundings. Numerous witnesses have testified to this and videos taken by her family also prove her abilities.

No one can “pull the plug” on Terri, as some have advocated, as she is not hooked up to any life support machines. She is simply being given nourishment through a feeding tube. Nothing more. Is helping someone eat and drink artificial life support?

Secondly, the mainstream media would have us believe that Terri’s guardian, Michael, is looking out for her best interests. In fact, Michael has denied Terri any rehabilitative therapy whatsoever and won’t even allow for her teeth to be brushed or sunlight to shine into her room.

Michael is now living with a woman (his “fiancé’) and has two children by her. That, at the very least, creates a conflict of interest in his guardianship. But there are other questions that may further compromise his role as guardian.

Medical experts have testified that bone scans show that Terri suffered some sort of physical trauma during the time of her collapse, injuries that one doctor suggests is consistent with having been beaten and possibly even strangled. And experts have testified that Michael’s behavior fits that of an abusive husband. (Again, you can find this evidence at Terri’s site: http://www.terrisfight.org ) No one knows the truth about what really happened but the suspicious circumstantial and anecdotal evidence should have motivated an investigation. None was conducted.

Although it is speculation, if Michael is the cause Terri’s injuries, it would explain why he doesn’t want her to receive rehabilitation and why he wants her to be starved to death. It would also explain why he wants her cremated immediately after her death (to hide any evidence implicating him in her injuries). Again, this is speculation. Only an investigation can reveal what actually happened.

Terri deserves to have her OWN legal counsel (which she has been denied so far) and Michael should be removed as her guardian since sufficient evidence proves there is at the very least, a conflict of interest.

Michael claims that he is merely carrying out Terri’s wishes and says that she expressed a desire to die in such circumstances. However, such a desire was never made known to her family and friends and no written documentation exists to support his claim. Furthermore, Michael’s former girlfriend, Cindy Shook, testified that when she asked Michael what Terri’s wishes were, his reply was, “How the h*** should I know we never spoke about this, my God I was only 25 years old. How the h*** should I know? We were young. We never spoke of this."

In addition, Terri's friends, family, co-workers and fellow church members dispute Michael's claims, and state that Terri was extremely upset when comatose woman Karen Ann Quinlan was disconnected from the respirator that had been keeping her alive years ago.

Another myth just surfaced recently, when the AP reported that Terri collapsed from an eating disorder. But the AP writer cited not one shred of evidence to support this claim.

Pamela Hennessy, spokesperson for the Schindlers stated, "there was never a determination by any court nor the Florida Department of Health that Terri Schiavo ever suffered from any eating disorder, bulimia, anorexia or compulsive behavior that would lead to a heart failure at the age of 26. Though Michael, Terri's estranged husband, accused Terri's general practitioner of ignoring a supposed eating disorder, Florida's Department of Health cleared him of wrongdoing or negligence in the case."

Finally, Terri has never received a proper medical evaluation by a team of experts that can testify as to her current abilities and her future potential with rehabilitation. At the very least, such an evaluation should be mandated before any decision is made in this case.

Now that you know the facts, here’s what you can do to help fight for Terri’s rights:

Here is what you can do to help Terri:
1. Pray for Terri and her family.

2. Blog - communicate the truth about what is going on and rally support for Terri and the Schindlers.

3. Visit BlogsforTerri ( http://www.blogsforterri.com) for information and to join the team of blogs for Terri.

4. Deluge Gov. Jeb Bush with emails and phone calls. He has the power to intervene. Here is his contact information:

Governor Jeb Bush
jeb.bush@myflorida.com
850 / 488-4441
850 / 487-0801 (fax)

(A sample letter for you to use can be found here: http://writewingblog.blogspot.com/2005/02/sample-letter-to-use-for-terri-schiavo.html#comments)

5. Support HB701(click here).

6. Important - Bypass the Mainstream Media - pledge support paid advertisements in various newspapers to inform subscribers about what is really happening to Terri. [http://www.blogsforterri.com/pledge.php] Your participation in help is desperately needed.

7. Call, write, fax, or email the contacts listed at Blogs For Terri: http://www.blogsforterri.com/archives/contacts/index.php

Please forward this email to all of your friends and family. Together, our voices can make an impact in the fight for Terri’s life. Please don’t remain silent while her life hangs in the balance. She needs each and every one of us to speak up for her. Now, more than ever.

Free Speech is not the right to impose your will

2005-03-01T08:19:00.000-08:00

There has been some weird things done in the name of free speech lately. During the elections, evidently people thought that stealing people's property, slashing tires or keying cars was an acceptable exercise of free speech. It didn't matter that destroying stuff that didn't belong to them might be considered theft or vandalism. What mattered was their viewpoint.

Lately, we still see this mentality exposed. First there's the person who was in the news last week bragging about how he feels it perfectly fine to rip off and destroy those yellow ribbon car magnets because he disagrees with the speech they represent.

I don't think it dawned on him that it's repressive to prevent other people from having free speech too, much less small scale vandalism.

We see this in colleges a lot. One of the complaints about the Ohio bill based on the Horowitz Academic Bill of Rights is that instructors complain how this will infringe on their rights. But the ones complaining frequently already infringe on the rights of students who disagree with them by forcing them to discuss only viewpoints that match the professors politics, and often punish those who disagree with them.

Free speech is the right not just for my viewpoint, but for all viewpoints. It's in the dialog between the two that truth is worked out. Surpressing either side of the dialog because you don't like it is repressive, and has more to do with totalatarian behavior than the American way of life.

Thomas Sowell mentioned something today that I thought was worth thinking about:

Back in the days of the divine rights of kings, it might be understandable why a given monarch might think that what he wanted was all that mattered. But, in an age of democracy, how can millions of people live together if each one asserts a divine right to impose his or her will on others?

That's not free speech, and it is the antithesis of what our country was founded on.

Watch Terri for Yourself

2005-02-28T06:57:00.000-08:00

Windows media video of Terri Schiavo

Court Mandate

2005-02-27T08:46:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, Judge Greer allowed Michael Schaivo the right to starve his wife to death, because he believed it to be more humane. But as Blogs for Terri notes: On Friday Judge Greer put us on notice that he has ordered Michael Schiavo to remove the feeding tube in three weeks (as opposed to allowing him to do it, now he is ordering him to do it).

Some people would call this judicial tyranny, that a judge would execute someone in this situation.

Others might just call it legal murder.

If you don't want the future of our country to allow non-criminals to be killed by judicial fiat, I suggest you take the time in these days we have left to make your voices heard.

The Role of the Professor

2005-02-26T08:32:00.000-08:00

This is the most excellent exposition about what college ought to be about that I cannot improve on it one bit. Read it and wonder why this isn't the ideal any more.

The role of the professor is to teach - to enable students through careful tutelage in critical reading and careful research to reach their own conclusions. The role of the professor is not to spout off, and the definition of a good university is not a place where the spouting is equally balanced between left and right.

Wherein, then, lies quality and diversity in the social sciences and humanities? Not in the university as a whole. Not in a faculty equally liberal and conservative. But in the integrity of every single classroom. Professors in a genuine bastion of the social sciences and humanities expose their students to a variety of interpretations of history, politics and literature, without favoring any particular position.

The professor with integrity in, for example, political science can teach an entire course without his students being able to guess at his political predilections (at least based on his classroom performance).

The professor with integrity can debate, at least to a draw, any religious, political, or cultural position diametrically opposed to his own.

Such a professor will grade his students not on any position they take, but on thoroughness of research and felicity of expression. This professor will, with no twinge of conscience, award an A to a student he disagrees with, provided only that the student's knowledge rises to excellence. Real professors rejoice in their students' advancement, regardless of the direction of their reasoning.

....It is not a professor's free speech, but the student's rigorous, unbiased training, that is the university's purpose. If a professor must fall back on free speech or academic freedom to defend himself, it's usually because he violated his mission: focus on the student.

Source: Rabbi Hillel Goldberg via Rocky Mountain News

Abstracting out the human factor

2005-02-26T05:48:00.000-08:00

Musing Minds has noted:

The judge has ruled that Terri Schiavo's feeding tube can be removed in three weeks, stating "The court is no longer comfortable granting stays simply upon the filings of new motions..."

How could a court make such a callous statement, as if it wasn't a human life at stake, but rather a house deal gone bad, or a contested will? The problem isn't the judge, though his statements seemed to be grotesquely insensitive. The problem is the fact that courts determine legal issues and nothing more. The same courts, the same judges and the same legal procedures that were developed to determine the validity of a will, or a house sale, are now determining the existence of someone's life.

The process has abstracted Terri out of the equation. It doesn't matter if she feels pain, it doesn't matter if she has people who love her. It doesn't matter if she's been left badly cared for by her husband's orders as he can legally get away with.

Blogs for Terri wants to get this information out:

Terri Schiavo is not a “vegetable” and is not “brain dead”. She recognizes and responds to others and makes attempts to verbally communicate.

Terri is not on life support but does receive food and water through a removable tube, which experts testify would not even be necessary if she were given therapy. This assisted feeding is a natural means of preserving life and not a medical act of life support or heroic measures.

Twelve medical experts and nurses who cared for her confirmed these facts*. Video available through BlogsforTerri.com shows Terri responding and interacting with others. Health care workers have testified under oath that she expresses herself using words, such as “mommy” and “help me”.

Terri is a person with disabilities who thinks and expresses her moods and desires. She is loved by her family and responds to their visits with smiles and laughter.

Terri Schiavo may be the victim of ongoing negligence and injustice. She has been denied therapy and rehabilitation by her guardian since 1991*. Florida’s guardianship laws REQUIRE that these necessary services be given to her.

In 1992, Terri’s husband Michael won $1.7 million in negligence lawsuit under the pretext of funding her rehabilitation and care. He testified, “I believe in the vows that I took with my wife. Through sickness, in health, for richer or poorer. I married my wife because I love her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I'm going to do that.” *Since that time, Terri has received no rehabilitation, all beneficial forms of stimulation (e.g. music) have been prohibited and basic health care, such as treatment for a life threatening urinary tract infection, has been purposefully withheld at Michael’s direction*.

Even though Terri’s husband has started a family of his own with another woman and their two children, he refuses to end his marriage to Terri or relinquish her care to her immediate family.

Terri’s “collapse” has become controversial after a previously hidden bone scan surfaced in 2002 which revealed multiple fractures consistent with a traumatic event. *To date, no investigation has been conducted to determine the source of Terri’s injuries*, but a radiologist gave a sworn statement that the date of those injuries would fall sometime near the time of her mysterious collapse.

Remarkably, The Florida Courts have sided with Michael, accepting the testimony of two “expert witnesses”, one of whom is a known advocate of “mercy killing”, over that of twelve independent medical professionals (6 of them neurologists). *Judge Greer admitted to not even reviewing their sworn statements*.

Without intervention by the Florida Governor and Legislature, Judge George Greer is set to give Michael the legal empowerment to withhold food and water from his wife *for the purpose of starving her to death*.

Terri Schiavo deserves to have medical tests and therapy. She does not deserve to be starved and dehydrated to death.

Advancements in the understanding of brain activity and misdiagnosis and the recent recovery of a patient after 20 years in a persistent vegetative state, further calls into question any decision that would end the life of Terri Schiavo.

Action Items:

Contact Florida’s Governor, Jeb Bush at jeb.bush@myflorida.com, and demand that he invoke Florida Statute 415.1051 to provide protective custody until investigations into abuse and neglect can be carried out.

Contact Florida Senate at www.myflorida.com and ask them to institute an immediate moratorium on withholding assisted nutrition and hydration until Florida can adopt a new standard of testing protocols for brain-injured patients.

Contact Florida’s House of Representatives at www.myfloridahouse.com and ask them to pass legislation that would forbid the removal of food and water without the informed consent of the patient.

Visit www.terrisfight.org and see for yourself the woman who has been called a house plant by her husband’s attorney and why

Get a Protective Medical Decisions Directive from the International Anti-Euthanasia task force at www.internationaltaskforce.com and make your medical treatment desires known to your family and friends. You don’t have to be starved or dehydrated to death simply because your life is effected by disability.

Even if they succeed in killing Terri, remember that death by dehydration is one of the most painful ways to die. They could apply this to you sometime in your life. And as you lay there screaming, possibly only in your head because you are damaged and can't communicate well, remember the day you read the story in the paper about the woman in Florida.

It is time to take action to protect the vunerable.

Fourth Annual Tarnished Halo Awards

2005-02-25T08:21:00.000-08:00

This is something you might like to take a moment and check out, and see if you agree.

The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) has announced the winners of its 4th annual “Tarnished Halo” Awards. CCF awards these prizes to America’s most notorious animal-rights zealots, environmental scaremongers, celebrity busybodies, self-anointed “public interest” advocates, trial lawyers, and other food & beverage activists who claim to “know what’s best for you.”

Was Terri a Victim of Bulimia?

2005-02-25T06:16:00.000-08:00

There's a news story circulating that the situation that led to Terri Schaivo's collapse was brought on by bulimia. But is it true?

Clearwater, FL – On February 24, 2005, Associated Press released a report penned by Vickie Chachere which cited an eating disorder as the cause of Terri Schiavo’s mysterious collapse and ensuing brain injury on February 25, 1990.

Contrary to the account of writer Chachere, there was never a determination by any court nor the Florida Department of Health that Terri Schiavo ever suffered from any eating disorder, bulimia, anorexia or compulsive behavior that would lead to a heart failure at the age of 26.

Indeed, Florida’s Department of Health had completely and absolutely cleared Terri’s general practitioner of any negligence or wrong-doing in her case. This was after the physician had been accused by Terri’s husband of ignoring evidence of an eating disorder.

Additionally, at the time of her mysterious medical episode, Terri Schiavo stood 5’3” and weighed somewhere between 115 and 118 pounds – a slim, but normal stature and weight.

Associated Press writer, Vickie Chachere cites not ONE medical document that would affirm her careless contention that Terri Schiavo was an irresponsible dieter or a compulsive victim of an eating disorder. The Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation asks Ms. Chachere to readily produce the facts upon which she penned such assertions.

The Schindler family feels she was abused, and Terri did have evidence of broken bones no one has successfully explained away. This is part of the situation the the Florida Department of Children and Families is asking for 60 days to investigate.

(source: Blogs for Terri)
It's something sad about a justice system when it takes this long to clear up something like this. Let us hope that true justice is served this time.

Some followup on the tsunami

2005-02-25T06:09:00.000-08:00

It is mindboggling the loss. In Aceh province, which got some of the worst of the earthquake and tsunami damage, Reliefweb sit report number 30 passes the following information:

The latest figures from BAKORNAS (24 Feb.), on the human toll of the earthquake and Tsunami for Aceh Province indicate 123,597 bodies have been buried, 113,937 are missing and 400,901 are displaced. For Northern Sumatra Province, BAKORNAS reported that 19,620 are displaced. Meanwhile, the numbers of people buried and missing remain at 130 and 24.

In Indonesia alone, that makes for about a quarter of a million dead or probably dead, and nearly half a million displaced.

We need to remember them. Their disaster is not yet over. The article from Relief Web has more information.

Sign the Petition

2005-02-24T08:00:00.001-08:00

These are petitions to sign to ask help for Terri Schaivo and her family

Terri Schiavo's plight sparks grassroots petitions
Interest high in saving severely disabled woman

February 24, 2005
RenewAmerica staff

As Terri Schindler Schiavo is pushed closer to death by starvation at the hands of her husband Michael Schiavo and Circuit Judge George Greer, thousands of incensed Americans are registering their support for Terri at several online petitions.

Go here to the page where you can get to the petitions

The Importance of Free Speech

2005-02-24T07:44:00.000-08:00

Bruce Thorton has an article on Victor Davis Hanson's website discussing current problems with free speech. Now anyone who reads my blog on a regular basis knows this is an issue dear to my heart. In his essay, he says something very good:

The whole point of free speech is to get at the truth, a process that often requires airing all kinds of troubling, unpopular, or even offensive ideas. Limiting this process by putting some topics out of bounds means that the truth will be harder to find. Nor should the possibility of hurt feelings prohibit the expression of ideas or subvert the search for truth. We all learn as children that the truth hurts; that's why we all tell so many lies and entertain so many gratifying delusions. But in a democracy, where the citizens are called upon to make decisions on a great variety of issues, an open discussion of ideas directed towards finding the truth is essential. Once you limit that search by letting some people's feelings or sensibilities or ideologies trump the truth, you've made it much more difficult for truth to emerge, and much more likely for dangerous lies, myths, and half-truths to dominate the public discourse.

Silencing students who don't like the left wing is to close off fresh insights. Silencing professors, like Larry Summers is to deny the potential truth of science for political reasons (and we complain about Galileo and his run-in with some church authorities - there isn't much difference here). Knowing that its not PC to criticise the drug and promiscuious sex lifestyle that leads to STD in the gay community when the latest outbreak of drug resistant HIV hit might mean the difference between life and death for some young men. (I had a family member and people I knew who died in the 80s from the first wave of AIDS...I hope we don't PC ourselves into a new one!)

There are those who are screaming for Ward Churchill's job because of what he said. Now if they fire him, it ought to be not because he is a jerk who said some bad things, but because as an academician he did things like falsify his research or other academic wrongs.

There used to be a saying like "I hate what you say, but I'll die for your right to say it." We seem to no longer believe that in this world where political correctness says "I hate what you say, and I will do EVERYTHING I can think of to take away your freedom to say it."

And with that viewpoint, we all lose.

Terri is not alone...

2005-02-23T07:57:00.000-08:00

It is amazing the eagerness that some folks have to kill people who are vunerable, who don't match someone's criteria of quality, or who are just weak and able to be put down because they can't fight back.

Life Matters notes some of the following cases:

But those of us for whom the fight for Terri Schindler-Schiavo is not our first, our tenth, or even our 100th battle—not our first fight for life nor our last—know only too well that that surrender to the law of the jungle was made long ago and that rather than high noon, it is, if seen from an optimistic viewpoint that rivals Pollyanna, minutes to midnight in America.

* Where was the national outrage, a quarter century ago when Clarence Herbert, a 55-year-old security guard, was starved to death on doctors' orders in the Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Harbor City, CA, in 1981?

* And where was the public outcry in 1983 when the nephew of Claire Conroy, an 84 year-old resident of a New Jersey nursing home, described as "conscious but confused," sought to have her starved to death?

* And how many protested when the Florida Second District Court of Appeal—yes, that District Court—ruled that 75-year-old Helen Corbett, deemed "incompetent," could be starved to death in 1986?

* Or when 45-year-old Massachusetts fire fighter, Paul Brophy, became the first person to be starved to death on court order that same year?

Wesley Smith describes this horror story:

The worst of these cases of which I am aware is the tragic dehydration of Marjorie Nighbert. Marjorie was a successful businesswoman until a stroke left her disabled. She was unable to swallow safely, but not terminally ill. She was moved from Alabama to a nursing home in Florida where she would receive rehabilitation to help her relearn how to chew and swallow without danger of aspiration. A feeding tube was inserted to ensure that she was properly nourished during her recovery.

Marjorie had once told her brother Maynard that she didn’t want a feeding tube if she were terminally ill. Despite the fact that she was not dying, Maynard believed that she had meant that she would rather die by dehydration than live the rest of her life using a feeding tube. Accordingly, he ordered all of Marjorie’s nourishment stopped.

As she was slowly dehydrating to death, Marjorie began to beg the staff for food and water. Distraught nurses and staff members, not knowing what else to do, surreptitiously snuck her small amounts. One staffer—who was later fired for the deed—blew the whistle, leading to a hurried court investigation and a temporary restraining order requiring that Marjorie receive nourishment.

Circuit Court Judge Jere Tolton appointed attorney William F. Stone to represent Marjorie and gave him twenty-four hours to determine whether she was competent to rescind the general power of attorney she had given to Maynard before her stroke. After the rushed investigation, Stone was forced to report that Marjorie was not competent at that time. (She had, after all, been intentionally malnourished for several weeks.) Stone particularly noted that he had been unable to determine whether she had been competent at the time the dehydration commenced.

With Stone’s report in hand, Judge Tolton ruled that the dehydration should be completed! Before an appalled Stone could appeal, Marjorie died on April 6, 1995.

The implication begins to move that once you reach a certain condition, you ought to be put down.

Prolife Blogs shares this story:

A somewhat different experience is recounted by Christianity and Middle-Earth who had to make difficult decisions regarding her brother’s life after he suffered acute respiratory failure.

... by the end of that first week in the new hospital a doctor ambushed me and informed me my brother was going to die anyway, so I should let him 'die with dignity'...so they needed my permission to bring him off the paralytic long enough for him to be able to breathe on his own, then they’d pull the life-support. Otherwise, it would be legally murder.

After some contemplation, the writer stood firm stating to the doctors, “If you can make him comfortable enough to die, why can't you make him comfortable enough to live?" We can always kill him later; we can't resurrect him." Although the experience was difficult, the story has a good ending,

Two months later he was buying books and shopping at Walmart. He’ll be on a lot of medicine for the rest of his life, but that’s a minor detail. And the reference to the news*? If I hadn't been seething for weeks over the attempted murder of Terry Schiavo, my brother would now be ashes.

Tom McMahon asks the question that anyone who has a disabled loved one should be thinking in this day and age:

In February 1991 our son Ryan suffered a severe brain injury. He was in the hospital for 6 months, and has never regained the ability to walk or talk. He cannot answer Yes or No by any means. He is totally dependent on our care. When he came home from the hospital, he had a feeding tube to his stomach just like Terri Schiavo does now. Through a lot of repetition he learned how to eat and drink again at home, and since we didn't need the feeding tube we removed it and the hole in his stomach healed quite well, quite naturally. He likes to be around people, and he watches a lot of TV.

In short, Ryan's pretty close to the level of functioning of Terri Schiavo, as far as I can tell from the news reports about her. And now her husband, Michael Schiavo, is very close to having her feeding tube removed and having her starved to death. It's at this point I hear the words of actress Frances McDormand as Fargo's Police Chief Marge Gunderson in my head: "And for what? A little bit of money." A little bit of money. The hundreds of thousands Michael Schiavo got to help her, he now stands to receive when she is starved to death. So he can continue on with the other woman he now lives with, and their children. The honorable thing would be for him to simply walk away and let Terri live, but I guess precedent-setting case law is not often set by honorable men doing the honorable thing.

So Terri Schiavo is about to die of a court-ordered thirst, to be starved to death. Ironic, isn't it? In this country a condemned man gets a Last Meal of whatever he wants -- steak, lobster, you name it. So the only thing you can conclude is that mass murderers have more rights than Terri Schiavo. But that's not the worst of it. If a demented disk jockey were to attempt to stage a wacky radio stunt that involved starving a bunch of small rodents, he would be run out of town on a rail. In this country, even gerbils have more rights than Terri Schiavo.

Right now the chess game in the courts continues. And when Terri Schiavo is put to death, you all will feel bad about it for a while, but it will slowly fade from memory as you move on to other things. But for us, a haunting question will remain: When Will They Be Coming For Ryan?

Who decides on what makes "quality of life?" When will your imperfection be the next up on the list of "ought to be put down?"

Pain Filled Judicial Murder -The Loss of Personhood and The Lie of Death with Dignity for Those Unable to Protect Themselves

2005-02-23T05:45:00.003-08:00

Terrence Jeffery notes:

Under the 14th Amendment, the Constitution requires the census to count "the whole number of persons in each State." Accordingly, the 2000 Census counted 88,828 "persons" living in nursing homes in Florida, 3,538 living in "hospitals/wards and hospices for the chronically ill" and 4,233 living in psychiatric hospitals or wards. Nationwide, it counted 1,720,500 persons living in nursing homes.

There was no degree of disability, incapacitation or illness that disqualified someone from being counted as a "person" under the Census Bureau's 14th Amendment mandate to count "the whole number of persons."

Under the 14th Amendment, Terri Schiavo and other disabled people are indisputably "persons."

Even judges who wrongly deny that unborn babies are persons cannot deny that the 41-year-old Shiavo is a person. Every member of the U.S. House of Representatives is elected from a district drawn a certain way because all disabled persons such as Schiavo were counted just like any other person under the plain meaning of 14th Amendment.

Yet as Wesley Smith notes:

Unfortunately, the academic philosophers who now dominate bioethics shifted the predominant ideology of the field sharply away from the Ramsey approach and toward the “quality of life” ethic. This measures the moral value of human lives subjectively based on levels of cognitive capacity. Thus, most bioethicists today distinguish between “persons” and so-called human “non-persons,” people denigrated on the basis of their low level of cognitive functioning.

These invidious distinctions matter very much in the medical setting. Being categorized as a non-person is dangerous to life and limb, since most bioethicists assert that only persons are entitled to human rights. In the full expression of personhood theory, non-persons are killable, subject to the harvesting of their body parts, and candidates for non-therapeutic medical experiments.

Jefferies makes an important point:

This presents what ought be an insurmountable constitutional obstacle for those who want state governments -- either through their courts or legislatures -- to legalize the killing of innocent persons like Schiavo, no matter by what means the intended killing is affected. The same 14th Amendment that considers Terri a "person" when it comes to taking a census and apportioning Congress also says, "No State shall ... deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

But when we allow someone who says they remember five years after the fact that the person mentioned once in passing they didn't want to be put on a ventillator and how that is grounds enought to kill them in a most painful manner, where is due process? Where is protection of their right to life and liberty?

So You Think You Own Your Property?

2005-02-22T05:32:00.000-08:00

Neal Boorz notes this about the eminent domain case coming up before the Supremee Court:

On one side, you have the government of New London, Connecticut. They argue that confiscating land and selling it to a private developer under eminent domain serves the public good because it provides much-needed government revenue. Don't you think that you should read that again? This city is saying that a person's right to their property ends when the government figures out that that property in the hands of another private owner would generate more tax revenue. When does this concept arrive at the doorstep of your local city council or county commission? How do you like the idea that your home is yours only so long as some developer doesn't convince a politician that if he could get his hands on that property he would build something that would be so much more valuable and pay many more dollars in taxes? What country do we live in again?

Here are some other writers talking about this story:

Mark Noonan says:

Anyone can make a reasonable argument that any particular property can be "better" used by some other person or group - my home is just my house, but gather my property and that of my neighbors together and you can build a new Las Vegas megaresort which would generate far more tax revenue than the individual property owners will ever pay. My home "ownership" under such a rule would merely be my right to use the property until someone comes up with what goverment officials consider a better use.

Timothy Sandfer, at Pittsburglive.com, tells us:

Consider the infamous Poletown case. In the early 1980s, the General Motors Corp. persuaded Detroit -- which was reeling from recession -- to condemn a neighborhood called Poletown (due to the large number of Polish immigrants living there) and sell it cheap to GM to build an auto factory. The Michigan Supreme Court held that the condemnation was legal: If the government declared that a condemnation would benefit the public, the courts would not stand in the way.

In a whirlwind of litigation that lasted only a few weeks, neighbors watched as their community was pulverized.

The Poletown decision led to an epidemic of eminent domain abuse. In 1999, the city of Merriam, Kan., condemned a Toyota dealership to sell the land to a BMW dealer instead. That same year, Bremerton, Wash., condemned 22 homes to resell the land to private developers. In one notorious case, billionaire Donald Trump persuaded the government of Atlantic City, N.J., to condemn the home of an elderly widow so he could build a limousine parking lot.

Unfortunately, the victims of eminent domain are most often the elderly, the poor and minorities. They lack the money and political power to persuade the government to respect their rights. But corporate lobbyists are very effective at persuading cities to give them someone else's land on the pretense that it will create jobs and improve the neighborhood -- especially when it will increase the city's tax base.

Fortunately, things may be changing. Last year, the Michigan Supreme Court overturned its Poletown decision. "If one's ownership of private property is forever subject to the government's determination that another private party would put one's land to better use," the court said, "the ownership of real property is perpetually threatened by the expansion plans of any large discount retailer, 'megastore,' or the like."

Now it's up to the U.S. Supreme Court to put an end to eminent domain abuse nationwide. When Kelo is argued before the court, the justices will be asked a simple question: Does "public use" mean the government can take people's homes and small businesses and resell the land to Pfizer, Donald Trump or other private parties?

The court needs to make a definitive ruling on this. The areas condemned frequently house the poor and the elderly, but are also neighborhoods that are run down and unsafe. The temptation to use eminent domain on these areas will remain high until this issue is settled.

On Death by Dehydration

2005-02-21T08:10:00.000-08:00

By Wesley J. Smith, Human Life Foundation

A Potentially Painful Death

Advocates for dehydrating the neurologically disabled assert that it is a painless end. But there are substantial reasons for doubt. St. Louis neurologist Dr. William Burke told me:

A conscious person would feel it [dehydration] just as you or I would. They will go into seizures. Their skin cracks, their tongue cracks, their lips crack. They may have nosebleeds because of the drying of the mucus membranes, and heaving and vomiting might ensue because of the drying out of the stomach lining. They feel the pangs of hunger and thirst. Imagine going one day without a glass of water! Death by dehydration takes ten to fourteen days. It is an extremely agonizing death.

Minnesota neurologist Dr. Ronald Cranford, an avid supporter of dehydration, who has often appeared as an "expert witness" in litigation over withholding food and water, testified in the Robert Wendland case about the effect of dehydration on cognitively disabled patients:

After seven to nine days [from commencing dehydration] they begin to lose all fluids in the body, a lot of fluids in the body. And their blood pressure starts to go down. When their blood pressure goes down, their heart rate goes up . . . . Their respiration may increase and then . . . the blood is shunted to the central part of the body from the periphery of the body. So, that usually two to three days prior to death, sometimes four days, the hands and the feet become extremely cold. They become mottled. That is you look at the hands and they have a bluish appearance. And the mouth dries a great deal, and the eyes dry a great deal and other parts of the body become mottled. And that is because the blood is now so low in the system it's shunted to the heart and other visceral organs and away from the periphery of the body. . . .

Since the people to whom this is done generally can't communicate, we mostly don't know what they actually experience. But in at least one case we do: that of a young woman who had her tube feeding stopped for eight days and lived to tell the tale.

At age 33, Kate Adamson collapsed from a devastating stroke. She was diagnosed as likely to develop a persistent vegetative state (PVS) but was actually "locked in"-that is, she was completely awake and aware but unable to communicate. Even after the doctors realized that Adamson was entirely conscious, they urged her husband to "let her go." He refused, and indeed, when she developed a bowel obstruction, he authorized surgery. However, to clean the bowel enough to permit surgery, her nourishment was stopped. When, eventually, she recovered her ability to communicate, she wrote Kate's Journey: Triumph over Adversity. Appearing on The O'Reilly Factor, Adamson described the experience of being denied nourishment.

When the feeding tube was turned off for eight days, I thought I was going insane. I was screaming out in my mind, "Don't you know I need to eat?" And even up until that point, I had been having a bagful of Ensure as my nourishment that was going through the feeding tube. At that point, it sounded pretty good. I just wanted something. The fact that I had nothing, the hunger pains overrode every thought I had.

In preparation for an article in the Daily Standard, I asked Adamson to provide more details about what she experienced while being deprived of tube-supplied nourishment. As an illustration, she told me that she was administered inadequate anesthesia during her bowel-obstruction surgery. Yet, as painful as that was, it was not as bad as the suffering caused by being denied nourishment:

The agony of going without food was a constant pain that lasted not several hours like my operation did, but several days. You have to endure the physical pain and on top of that you have to endure the emotional pain. Your whole body cries out, "Feed me. I am alive and a person, don't let me die, for God's sake! Somebody feed me."

Moreover, although Adamson was not deliberately dehydrated-she was constantly on an IV saline solution-she still had horrible thirst:

I craved anything to drink. Anything. I obsessively visualized drinking from a huge bottle of orange Gatorade. And I hate orange Gatorade. I did receive lemon flavored mouth swabs to alleviate dryness but they did nothing to slake my desperate thirst.

Doctors who withhold nourishment and hydration with the purpose of causing death may prescribe morphine or other narcotics to alleviate the pain. But who knows whether this is sufficient? For example, when Cranford was asked during his Wendland testimony what level of morphine would have to be given to prevent the patient from suffering, he testified that the dose would be "arbitrary" because "you don't know how much he's suffering, you don't know how much aware he is. . . . You're guessing at the dose." He added that he would probably put Robert Wendland back into a coma to ensure that he did not feel pain!

Processing

2005-02-21T07:05:00.000-08:00

Barbara Simpson asks us some questions:

Who gets "processed"? Maybe the person is old, not necessarily sick, just old – too old. Perhaps young, too young to be worth spending time, effort and expense to bring to health. Perhaps sick, requiring "too much" money or time or bed space to heal. Perhaps handicapped, so the person can't live a "normal" life – whatever that means.

Michael Schiavo wants Terri's feeding tube removed. That will kill her. She will die a prolonged, painful death from starvation and dehydration. He says she'd want that, but he has no written proof. He just says it, and has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in the legal system to get his wife dead.

Terri's family is Roman Catholic. Her parents say she wouldn't allow this. They've spent every dime they have in a legal battle with their son-in-law to keep their daughter alive and care for her for the rest of her life. (See their story at terrisfight.org.)

Michael Schiavo won't allow it. He won't divorce Terri even though he's had at least two liaisons with other women and has two children by the current one. He wants Terri dead. So does the justice system. It's the "letter of the law" with no compassion, no humanity and no skeptical look at the circumstances.

The legislative system is against Terri, although the Florida Legislature wrote a law to protect her and Gov. Jeb Bush signed it. That got Terri's feeding tube reinserted after her being starved for six days. But the state Supreme Court ruled against Terri, claiming the law was illegal. The governor says he can do nothing more.

The media conspire against Terri. Virtually every news report says she is "vegetative" and "brain dead." The media have so bought into the idea of the "right to die" that they are complicit in the false reporting of Terri's condition creating the impression she's on the verge of death

Uh – no.

She wakes and sleeps, responds to people, smiles, reacts to her family – especially her mother – and vocalizes, making sounds in response to statements and questions as though trying to speak.

But Terri can't, and it appears there's no one with power who speaks for her, who will help save her life – who will help prevent the law, medicine, the state of Florida, the system, from deliberately starving her to death.

Terri is not sick. Her brain is damaged. She doesn't look or act "normal." Apparently that makes her life dispensable. It's become OK to kill her.

Consider that if you starved your dog or cat to death, you'd be in jail. In San Francisco, a new law regulates how to feed, water and house your pet. Why is a human life worth less?

We need to answer this question. Why is a human life worth less kindness? Are we really looking at what we're doing?

Pro-life Thought for the Day

2005-02-21T06:58:00.000-08:00

Why help the poor if we don’t believe all lives are equal in God’s sight? If you support ending the life of a child because it will be born into poverty, how can you logically call yourself an advocate for the poor?

--Charles Colson

Linguistic games we play...

2005-02-20T07:24:00.000-08:00

J.B. Williams on using language to disguise things:

The problem with political correctness is, has always been and will always be the results. Calling something ill conceived or evil by a friendlier more acceptable name has a tendency to make the act itself seem more friendly and acceptable. Do we have compassion for terrorists? No… But insurgents? Sure… it almost sounds patriotic to be an insurgent, doesn’t it?

Would we support a “pro-infant-murder” movement? No, so we call it “pro-choice” and by doing so, it makes a heinous act sound reasonable, worthy of defense.

Coalition forces went out of their way, taking additional casualties to avoid firing upon terrorists intentionally hiding in mosques. But these insurgents, alleged Muslim jihadists, they didn’t think twice about attacking innocent civilians in those mosques did they?

That’s because they are not insurgents rising up against some brutal tyrannical regime. They are just common terrorists attacking innocent Iraqi men, women and children. They have no respect for human life, their fellow countrymen or their religion.

So we need to stop kidding ourselves. We need to stop referring to common terrorists as insurgents. We need to stop calling their heinous acts by a nicer name, justifying their tactics and motives as if they demonstrate anything honorable.
The use of the term insurgents in this case in not only inappropriate, it’s an outright lie and it’s dangerous…

The Struggle to Communicate

2005-02-20T05:40:00.000-08:00

Common Sense Runs Wild reminds us:

Terri Shiavo can be counted among the disabled who struggle to communicate; those with severe forms of autism, Down's syndrome, multiple sclerosis, and cerebral palsy.
Helen Keller was disabled and at one time a blind, deaf and mute child considered by many in her family to be a monster who should have been institutionalized. With time Helen learned to communicate through sign language and went on to go to college. She became a champion of the disabled though her speech never really improved beyond the sounds those very close to her could understand.

Kate Admason suffered a double brain stem stroke, was completely unable to respond and in what doctors had diagnosed as a persistent vegetative state. Doctors pulled her feeding tubes and for eight days she lay in severe pain dying from starvation and dehydration. Her husband fought to have the tube reinserted and saved her life. Today she is a motivational speaker and author.

Rus Cooper-Dowda had developed a serious form of lupus and slipped into what doctors thought was a persistent vegetative state. She overheard as doctors described her prognosis as hopeless and discussed ending her life with her husband. Luckily for her the nursing staff began to believe her diagnosis was wrong. Rus went on to give birth to a son and become a teacher, minister and writer.

A new medical study released recently estimates that as many as 40 percent of those determined to be in a persistent vegetative state may be misdiagnosed. These people may hear and register what is going on around them and simply be unable to respond.

Contrary to what you may have heard or read in the media Terri Schiavo is not in a coma. She is not on a ventilator, she breathes on her own. She is not being kept alive by artificial means. She receives food and fluids through a tube in her stomach. Her husband wants this tube to be removed and when it is removed the medical staff and the courts will NOT allow her to be fed by mouth. They say that they are afraid that she would choke to death and they think that would be more cruel than starving and dehydrating her to death, a painful process that could take weeks.

Dr. Victor Gambone testified, after viewing the court videotapes that he was surprised to see Terri's level of awareness. This doctor is part of a team hand-picked by her husband, Michael Schiavo, shortly before he filed to have Terri's feeding removed. 14 independent medical professionals (6 of them neurologists) have given either statements or testimony that Terri is NOT in a Persistent Vegetative State.

Terri Schiavo's death is being promoted by Michael Schiavo, his attorney's and much of the media as being compassionate. The truth is, that for the disabled, it is the first step down a very dangerous road.

Richard at BlogsforTerri has more on the recent research indicating that a number of patients may have been misdiagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state.

Terri is about to be excuted in a cruel and painful manner, mostly because one man wants to get rid of her. If she were a criminal, this would most certainly be declared cruel and unusual punishment. If she were a prisoner of war, there would be massive protests all over the country about how evil the government was. But because she is vunerable, frail, and cannot communicate easily, and had the misfortune to marry the wrong man, and the misfortune to live in the wrong county, she is going to be put to a horrible death. God have mercy on all of us who don't try to do something to save her.

This is judicial murder at its worst.

Terri Schaivo - victim

2005-02-19T09:44:00.000-08:00

Read this affidavit by Heidi Law. It's in PDF format.

After you do that, go check out the fact that this supposedly totally non-responsive woman makes documented attempts at communication:

From the Empire Journal

Witness: Nurse Heidi Law

* mommy
* momma
* help me

Witness: Nurse Carla Sauerlyer

* pay (meaning “pain” when she was in discomfort)
* Haaaiii (meaning “Hi” in response to “Hi Terri")
* mommy
* help me ("Help me was, in fact, one of her more frequent utterances. I heard her say it hundreds of times.”

Terri’s Mediplex records:

* stop (in reference to one medical procedure being done on her)

Terri’s family members:

* ugh-hugh (meaning yes)
* ugh-ugh (meaning no)
* yea (’yea’ was a word she reportedly first re-learned to speak in 2002.)
* No

All this, despite being refused any rehabilitative services, such as speech therapy.

(Read the article. It has more about them asking for new brain scans to prove once and for all about how unresponsive she is. Thanks to My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy)

Do you want to see what the protocol and the pain involved in starving a healthy human body to death is like? Read here - the Lie of a Painless Death

If this bothers you, you can be a part of those taking action.

Florida State Contacts:Governor Jeb Bush (R)Office of The GovernorFlorida Capitol Building, PL-05Tallahassee, FL 32399-0001(850) 488-7146(850) 488-4441mailto:488-4441jeb@jeb.org

Attorney General Charlie CristOffice of Attorney GeneralState of FloridaThe CapitolTallahassee, FL 32399-1050(850) 414-3990Fax: (850) 487-2564mailto:487-2564ag@oag.state.fl.us

State Attorney Bernie McCabe14250 49th Street NorthClearwater, FL 33762(727) 464-6221

Senator Bill Nelson (D)United States Courthouse Annex111 N. Adams St.Tallahassee, FL 32301(850) 942-8415Fax: (850) 942-8450or:524

Hart Senate Office Bldg.Washington, D.C. 20510(202) 224-5274 Click here to contact Senator Nelson

General's Charlie Crist, AG Citizen's Services & Office
1-850-414-3990 / 850-414-3300 Bernie McCabe, State Attorney Pinellas and Pasco Counties
727-464-6221
bmccabe@co.pinellas.fl.us Advocacy Center for Persons with Disabilities 800-342-0823
850-488-9071
info@advocacycenter.org Pinellas County GOP 727-539-6009 Gov. Jeb Bush 850-488-4441
jeb.bush@myflorida.com, fl_governor@myflorida.com,
jeb@jeb.org,jeb@myflorida.com State of Florida Office of Civil Rights 954-712-4601 Senator Mel Martinez
Washington: Phone: 202-224-3041 Congressman Jim Davis
Washington: Phone: (202) 225-3376
FAX: (202) 225-565
DISTRICT: Phone: (813) 354-9217
Florida Toll Free: 1 (888) 266-0205
Fax: (813) 354-9514 Satellite Office: (727) 867-5301
FAX: (727) 867-5302 Florida Senate 800-342-1827
http://www.flsenate.gov/Legislators/index.cfm?Mode=Member%20Pages&Submenu=1&Tab=legislators Senate President Tom Lee: 1-800-560-4403 Daniel Webster
Capitol Office: Phone: (850) 487-5047
District Office: (407) 656-0066 The Florida Senate-2004-2006 Senators alexander.jd.web@flsenate.gov
argenziano.nancy.web@flsenate.gov
aronberg.dave.web@flsenate.gov
atwater.jeff.web@flsenate.gov
baker.carey.web@flsenate.gov
bennett.mike.web@flsenate.gov
bullard.larcenia.web@flsenate.gov
campbell.walter.web@flsenate.gov
carlton.lisa.web@flsenate.gov
clary.charlie.web@flsenate.gov
constantine.lee.web@flsenate.gov
crist.victor.web@flsenate.gov
dawson.mandy.web@flsenate.gov
portilla.alex.web@flsenate.gov
dockery.paula.web@flsenate.gov
fasano.mike.web@flsenate.gov
garcia.rudy.web@flsenate.gov
geller.steven.web@flsenate.gov
haridopolos.mike.web@flsenate.gov
hill.anthony.web@flsenate.gov
jones.dennis.web@flsenate.gov
king.james.web@flsenate.gov
klein.ron.web@flsenate.gov
lawson.alfred.web@flsenate.gov
lee.tom.web@flsenate.gov
lynn.evelyn.web@flsenate.gov
margolis.gwen.web@flsenate.gov
miller.lesley.web@flsenate.gov
peaden.durell.web@flsenate.gov
posey.bill.web@flsenate.gov
pruitt.ken.web@flsenate.gov
rich.nan.web.@flsenate.gov
saunders.burt.web@flsenate.gov
sebesta.jim.web@flsenate.gov
siplin.gary.web@flsenate.gov
smith.rod.web@flsenate.gov
villalobos.alex.web@flsenate.gov
wilson.frederica.web@flsenate.gov
daniel.webster.web@flsenate.gov Florida House of Representatives 850-488-6026
http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/legislators.aspx Speaker Allan Bense
Capitol Office: Phone: (850) 488-1450
District Office: Phone: (850) 914-6300
speaker@myfloridahouse.gov Frank Peterman
Capitol Office: Phone: (850) 488-0925
District Office: Phone: (727) 552-1370 Florida Department of Law Enforcement 850-410-7000 Florida Agency for Persons with Disabilities 850-488-4257 Federal Bureau of Investigation
202-324-3000
tampa@fbi.gov, jacksonville@fbi.gov
U.S. Department of Justice
AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
202-514-2000 Main Switchboard
202-353-1555 Office of US AG U.S. DOJ Disability Civil Rights
Section Chief John L Wodatch
Phone: (202) 307-2227
Fax:(202) 307-1198
John.L.Wodatch@usdoj.gov Section Deputy Chief Renee M Wohlenhaus
Phone: (202) 307-0663
Renee.Wohlenhaus@usdoj.gov Philip Breen
Special Legal Counsel
U.S. Department of Justice
Phone: (202) 616-7526
Fax:(202) 307-1198
Philip.L.Breen@usdoj.gov Liz Savage
U.S. Department of Justice
Phone:(202) 514-7173
Fax:(202) 514-0293
E-mail: liz.savage@usdoj.gov

(contacts from Knitting a Conundrum )

Reality in Darfur

2005-02-19T09:30:00.000-08:00

BY SEAMUS FARROW
(Seamus Farrow is a UNICEF youth ambassador and is currently on deferral from Yale Law School.)

In recent weeks, we have seen the world unite in the face of one humanitarian catastrophe. But another has slipped quietly off the radar. A new wave of violence is convulsing Darfur. For its victims, there is no relief. Continuing attacks on villages by rebel factions, the Sudanese army and government-backed Arab militias known as Janjaweed, have left more than 70,000 dead and sent 2 million fleeing. Last week, eight villages in south Darfur were burned to the ground. In the north, another was bombed by government aircraft. Half of Darfur's population is homeless, living in 137 swollen refugee camps and countless makeshift settlements.

Both camps and villages are utterly defenseless. It is clear that the international community's current policy on Sudan is not working.

This fall I crossed Darfur as part of a UNICEF team. Plans had to be continually adjusted as outbursts of fighting severed access to refugee camps. Currently, more than half are inaccessible to relief workers. In every camp I reached, women told me of their dread of going out to gather firewood, which they need for cooking and trading. Men who leave the camps are killed. As months pass, women must walk farther and farther to find wood. It is on these missions that they are raped. When I asked who their attackers are, the women answered, variously, "Janjaweed," "Arab soldiers," "men in uniform." They are indistinguishable. Every day the women of Darfur face a terrible dilemma: Who will get the wood?

Fatima is 16, my own age. She described the burning of her village. Janjaweed killed her father and two brothers, she said. They tied her mother's wrists while Fatima was gang-raped. Alone, she walked for weeks across the desert to reach the camp outside of El Geneina where we met. She never saw her mother again. Now Fatima is eight months pregnant. She showed me a blue plastic sheet neatly folded in a Ziplock bag, provided for the birthing of her baby. She whispered that she is taunted by the women around her. In an Islamic culture where the victim of rape is often held culpable, no one welcomes these births. And even Fatima must gather wood. There will be no safety for her or her child....
At African Union headquarters, a sandy barracks at the outskirts of El Fasher, I met with Brig. Gen. Festus Okonkwo, a charismatic and affable Nigerian, who is the commander of the AU cease-fire commission for Sudan. I asked about protection, about the people in the camps. "We do not have the capacity," he told me. With only 790 troops patrolling an area the size of Texas, his forces were overstretched just trying to monitor the cease-fire.

I asked how many troops he would need to protect the refugees. A trace of frustration crossed Okonkwo's face. "Protection is the responsibility of the Sudanese government. We are only to intervene within the resources available to us and the areas we are in," he said, quoting the mandate nearly verbatim. Behind Okonkwo, a large map of Darfur illustrated precisely what he was referring to. Six tiny circles, areas under AU defense, were scrawled with arrows and numbers indicating troop activity. But more notable was the vastness of the unmarked area: no arrows, no AU presence.

Poor, forgotten. Caught up in a squabble that involves oil, religious sects and political strength, and possibly just gangbanging for the fun of it, a mess created and continued by a government that's pretty sure nobody cares enough to make it an international issue.

Don't forget. Don't let these people suffer for realpolitik and corruption. See the sidebar for more information and links.

Prolife thought for the day:

2005-02-18T11:11:00.000-08:00

If you are not relevant before birth, what makes you relevant afterwards?

Victims

2005-02-18T09:43:00.000-08:00

Clifford D. May has noted this sad fact:

It is a common misperception that most terrorism is directed against Jews and Christians. The fact is no group has suffered more than Muslims from radical Islamist violence. Especially at risk are those bold enough to speak out for such values as freedom, human rights and democracy.

In Beirut this week, former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri was killed by a powerful car bomb – apparently in reprisal for his opposition to Syria's continuing occupation of Lebanon.

In Iraq, scarcely a day goes by when innocent men, women and children are not murdered for such “crimes” as following the Shi'a tradition of Islam, joining the police force, exercising their right to vote or simply going to the marketplace when supporters of Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden are in the mood to create carnage for the evening news.

Tunis, Casablanca and Istanbul are among the Muslim-majority cities that have been attacked. Terrorist groups have turned Palestinian communities into ghettoes where every mother must worry that one day a “militant leader” will fit her child for a suicide bomb vest.

But it is in Algeria, with relatively little international attention, that the slaughter has been most extensive: Over the years, more than 100,000 Algerians have been murdered by Islamist terrorists.

Too often the choices given to those in Moslem areas has been a choice between a religious dictatorship, or a ruthless authoritarianism. This has been in the interest of both sides, not giving a third option where justice and hope of freedom might strip away the hotbed of unrest and dissatisfaction that continues to breed hate and pain and grief.

This now may be changing. The old dichotomy from rule by Sharia only or rule by authoritarian strongman (or traditional authoritarian) may be being put to the challenge by the voting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Will the president's desire to export freedom be enough to fan the flame of an alternative future? All the purple fingers showed people's hopes. May God the merciful, the everloving give the region and its longsuffering people a chance to see.

Le Moyne College Dismisses Student for Personal Beliefs, Violates Own Policy on Free Expression

2005-02-18T06:08:00.000-08:00

February 15, 2005

FIRE Press Release

SYRACUSE, N.Y., February 15, 2005—Administrators at New York’s Le Moyne College, which claims to protect academic freedom, have summarily dismissed an education student for writing a paper advocating strict discipline for students. The chair of Le Moyne’s education department expelled master’s student Scott McConnell because of a “mismatch” between his personal beliefs and the goals of the college’s graduate education program.

“Le Moyne College says it respects academic freedom, yet it has dismissed a student purely for expressing personal beliefs that are different from those espoused by administrators,” stated David French, president of FIRE. “This shows a profound lack of respect for the opinions of its students. Le Moyne must not promise freedom and then allow extensive and arbitrary censorship on an administrator’s whim.”

In November 2004, McConnell submitted as part of an assignment a paper expressing his personal views on classroom management, including various ideas for attaining a classroom environment that is “based upon strong discipline and hard work” and that allows “corporal punishment.” The paper received an “A-,” with his professor noting that his ideas were “interesting” and that she had shared the paper with the department chair, Cathy Leogrande. McConnell ultimately received an “A” as his final grade in the course.

Yet in January 2005, with no prior warning, Leogrande dismissed McConnell from Le Moyne. In the dismissal letter, Leogrande stated that she had reviewed McConnell’s grades for courses he took during the summer and fall semesters and had “discussed” his work with his professors. Leogrande wrote, “I have grave concerns regarding the mismatch between your personal beliefs regarding teaching and learning and the Le Moyne College program goals. Based on this data, I do not believe that you should continue in the Le Moyne [Master of Science for Teachers] Program.” At the time he was dismissed, McConnell had achieved a grade-point average of 3.78 for the fall semester and had received an “excellent” evaluation for his work in an actual classroom.

“Scott McConnell is being kicked out of school for an ‘A-’ paper,” noted FIRE’s French. “It appears that at Le Moyne, ideological uniformity trumps any other ideal.”

McConnell soon contacted FIRE for assistance. On February 3, FIRE wrote Le Moyne President Charles Beirne and reminded him that dismissing a student based solely on his expression would undermine the college’s own standards, which state that students who interfere with others’ expression are subject to “the maximum penalty of suspension or dismissal.” FIRE noted that making an arbitrary administrative decision to censor expression “sends the message to the campus community that official censorship is acceptable and that those with controversial ideas should keep silent or risk being deemed a ‘mismatch’ and summarily dismissed.” Furthermore, FIRE pointed out that Le Moyne’s acceptance letter to McConnell stated that his academic performance, not his personal beliefs, would be the determining factor as to whether he was allowed to continue with the master’s program.

On February 8, Le Moyne responded to FIRE, stating that “the College does not believe it is appropriate to enter a public debate with your organization concerning the College’s admission decision concerning any particular student.”

“The fight for the academic freedom of Scott McConnell and for all Le Moyne students will not end just because administrators don’t feel like addressing the issue,” remarked Greg Lukianoff, FIRE’s director of legal and public advocacy. “Le Moyne College administrators must learn that the freedom to dissent is everyone’s business.”

CONTACT:
Greg Lukianoff, Director of Legal and Public Advocacy, FIRE: 215-717-3473; greg@thefire.org
David French, President, FIRE: 215-717-3473; david.french@thefire.org
Reverend Charles Beirne, President, Le Moyne College: 315-445-4120; beirnecj@lemoyne.edu
Cathy Leogrande, Education Department Chair, Le Moyne College: 315-445-4375; leogracc@lemoyne.edu

Press Release Contact

David French, President, FIRE: 215-717-3473; david.french@thefire.org
Greg Lukianoff, Director of Legal and Public Advocacy, FIRE: 215-717-3473; greg.lukianoff@thefire.org

Some Choice Words on the UN Scandals

2005-02-17T05:15:00.000-08:00

Mark Steyn has some choice words on the UN scandals:

It's a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice cream and a quart of dog poop and mix 'em together the result will taste more like the latter than the former. That's the problem with the UN. If you make the free nations and the thug states members of the same club, the danger isn't that they'll meet each other halfway but that the free world winds up going three-quarters, seven-eighths of the way. Thus the Oil-for-Fraud scandal: In the end, Saddam Hussein had a much shrewder understanding of the way the UN works than Bush and Blair did.

But another week, another scandal; corrupt organizations rarely stop at just one kind of corruption. If you don't want to bulk up your pension by skimming the Oil-for-Food program, don't worry, whatever's your bag the UN can find somewhere that suits – in West Africa, it's Sex-for-Food, with aid workers demanding sexual services from locals as young as four; in Cambodia, it's drug dealing; in Kenya, it's the refugee extortion racket; in the Balkans, sex slaves.

But you get the general picture: On a UN peace mission, everyone gets his piece. Didier Bourguet, a UN staffer in Congo and the Central African Republic, enjoyed the pleasures of 12-year-old girls, and as a result is currently on trial in France. His lawyer has said he was part of a UN pedophile network that transcends individual missions and national boundaries.

Now how about this? The Third Infantry Division is raping nine-year-olds in Ramadi. Ready, set, go! That thundering sound outside your window is the great herd of BBC/CNN/New York Times/Le Monde/Moose Jaw Times Herald reporters stampeding to the Sunni Triangle. Whoa, hold up, lads, it's only hypothetical.

But think about it: The merest glimpse of a freaky West Virginia tramp leading an Abu Ghraib inmate around with frilly panties on his head was enough to prompt calls for Rumsfeld's resignation, and for Ted Kennedy to charge that Saddam's torture chambers were now open "under new management," and for veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk to be driven into an almost orgasmic frenzy: "Just look at the way US army reservist Lynndie England holds the leash of the naked, bearded Iraqi," wrote Fisk. "No sadistic movie could outdo the damage of this image. In September 2001, the planes smashed into the buildings; today, Lynndie smashes to pieces our entire morality with just one tug on the leash."

Who's straining at the leash here? But, if Lynndie's smashed to pieces our entire morality with just one tug, what would be left for Bush's Zionist neocons running a pedophile network of Congolese kindergartners?

Fisk would be calling for US expulsion from the UN – no, wait, from planet Earth: slice it off from Maine to Hawaii and use one of those new Euro-Airbuses to drag it out round the back of Uranus.

But systemic UN child sex in at least 50% of their missions? The transnational morality set can barely stifle their yawns. If you're going to rape prepubescent girls, make sure you're wearing a blue helmet.

And at least the Pentagon put a stop to Abu Ghraib. As a UN official in Congo put it: "The crux of the problem is that if the UN gets bolshie with these governments then they stop providing the UN with troops and staff."

And the problem with that is...?

IN CONGO, the UN has now forbidden all contact between its forces and the natives. The rest of the world should be so lucky.

I take it from his use of "bolshie" that the quoted UN wallah is British. If so, that's the system in a nutshell: when a British bigwig is with British forces, he'll enforce British standards; when a British official is holed up with an impeccably "multilateral" force of Uruguayans, Tunisians, etc., he's more circumspect. When in Rome, do as the Visigoths do.

He has a good point. We so something wrong, we kick our own people, clean house, and the press acts like we're the huns running rampant. Where is the outrage over what the UN does to vunerable people all over the world? Could it be that the UN's press payola scandal has bought them the good coverage and silence they need?

At the Gate

2005-02-16T10:15:00.000-08:00

Reporters on the UN dole?

2005-02-16T09:33:00.000-08:00

MichNews is reporting:

WASHINGTON -- Accuracy in Media (AIM) charged today that the United Nations has been paying journalists to promote its message in the U.S. and abroad, and that billionaires George Soros and Ted Turner have been paying for journalism prizes to make pro-U.N. reporters look good. AIM editor Cliff Kincaid urged the U.N. and any journalists on its payroll to completely come clean by disclosing how much money has changed hands.

In a special report posted on the AIM website (www.aim.org), Kincaid cited direct evidence of U.N. money going to a past president of the U.N. Correspondents Association (UNCA). He said that a key U.N. official has admitted paying other journalists but that she refuses to name names or amounts. Kincaid also cited financial contributions to UNCA from organizations associated with billionaires George Soros and Ted Turner. The money underwrites the awarding of journalism prizes to those covering the U.N.
For merely asking questions about these matters, Kincaid said that he has been personally attacked as "far-right" and a "U.N. basher." He previously revealed that Linda Fasulo, U.N. correspondent for NBC News, had taken $26,000 from the pro-U.N. lobby to write a book favorable to the world body and its Secretary-General, Kofi Annan.

In the crooked, bribe and sex scandal laden world of the UN, somehow, hearing that they may be pocketing reporters somehow is not very surprising.

AIM has the following special report on the issue here.

They also have the following press release here:

"Journalists" on UN Payroll - Unbiased Reporting Impossible
February 15, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Accuracy in Media (AIM) charged today that the United Nations has been paying journalists to promote its message in the U.S. and abroad, and that billionaires George Soros and Ted Turner have been paying for journalism prizes to make pro-U.N. reporters look good. AIM editor Cliff Kincaid urged the U.N. and any journalists on its payroll to completely come clean by disclosing how much money has changed hands.

In a special report posted on the AIM website (www.aim.org), Kincaid cited direct evidence of U.N. money going to a past president of the U.N. Correspondents Association (UNCA). He said that a key U.N. official has admitted paying other journalists but that she refuses to name names or amounts. Kincaid also cited financial contributions to UNCA from organizations associated with billionaires George Soros and Ted Turner. The money underwrites the awarding of journalism prizes to those covering the U.N.

For merely asking questions about these matters, Kincaid said that he has been personally attacked as "far-right" and a "U.N. basher." He previously revealed that Linda Fasulo, U.N. correspondent for NBC News, had taken $26,000 from the pro-U.N. lobby to write a book favorable to the world body and its Secretary-General, Kofi Annan.

"It was right to condemn conservative commentator Armstrong Williams for taking federal money to promote Bush Administration policies," said Kincaid. "We should also condemn the U.N. for hiring and using journalists to spread its propaganda."

Accuracy In Media (AIM) is a non-profit, grassroots citizens watchdog of the news media that critiques botched and bungled news stories and sets the record straight on important issues that have received slanted coverage.

To schedule an interview with AIM Editor Cliff Kincaid, contact Anne Tyrrell at (703)739-5920 or atyrrell@sbpublicaffairs.com

Live in the Right Part of Florida? Want to help Terri?

2005-02-16T09:16:00.000-08:00

Protesters Gathering In Florida TODAY

Protesters from across the country including a number of Christian groups are gathering in Pinellas Park and Clearwater, Fla., in an attempt to save the life of brain-damaged Terri Schindler Schiavo.

Spread the word:
1:00 PM Woodside Hospice
6774 102nd Avenue N.
Pinellas Park, Florida
(near 66th Street N and 102nd Avenue N)
An indoor meeting at 4:00 PM will follow for all of Terri's supporters. Location of indoor meeting will be announced at the Hospice

Source: Prolife Blogs

Griping about Bloggers and Responses

2005-02-16T08:25:00.001-08:00

Lots of griping about bloggers going on out there.

Here are some responses:

From the Washington Times:
<>

Add "salivating morons" to the mainstream media's growing canon of stupid things to say about the ever-vigilant bloggers. Steve Lovelady, managing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, the self-styled flagship of journalism, said this in the fallout of CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan's resignation on Friday: "The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail." Add also, as loath as we are to do so, the Wall Street Journal's editorial comment from yesterday that professional journalism, of which it proclaims membership, is much better than "the enthusiasms and vendettas of amateurs.".....
The meme among those outlets that didn't provide coverage is that the bloggers were on a headhunting spree, when in fact very few called for Mr. Jordan's immediate resignation. If any underlying theme could be found, it is called truth-hunting — and CNN had an obligation to get it. When influential members of the media defame our troops, they should answer for it. If that's moronic, sign us up.
We also can't understand the WSJ's dismissal of the bloggers as "amateurs." At least CNN, or perhaps Mr. Jordan, felt the bloggers' reporting to be important enough to warrant the resignation of their top news executive. After all, this isn't the first time the bloggers have been proved right.
The Wall Street Journal stands on the wrong side of the barricades in this battle, despite the fact that the mainstream media got beat badly by the morons — again.

Jane Novak says:

In 2004, seventy-one journalists were murdered, in 2003 fifty-three, in 2002 forty-six. Only when the allegation is that the US is doing the targeting does the US media lift its sleeping head.

According to the World Association of Newspaper Editors (WAN) 130 journalists are currently in prison around the world. At least somebody is counting them, but these journalists and editors have no vocal advocates among the powerful and free American talking heads.

Some organizations, like WAN, provide important training, prizes, publications, legal advice, and scholarships for developing media. International organizations like CPJ and RSF regularly send protest letters. But the big boys with their big bats and big voices are missing from the fight.

New York Times weekly columnists Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert, and Paul Krugman have a world audience but no time for anything but Bush bashing. Do they understand that speaking the names of these 130 may keep the prisoners alive, get them released, diminish their literal torture, or increase their food rations?

Their atrocities can only continue in the darkness of obscurity. American media titans have the power to shine the light into the prison cells, but they don't.

Is it impolitic, not PC, to advocate for victims of repression? That used to be a liberal thing. Are they expecting the journalists in the censored media to break the story?

These are their colleagues, other journalists after all. Is there no loyalty, no outrage, no dedication to the concept of a free press? Apparently not enough to speak 130 names.

Editors and journalists are censored, imprisoned and murdered in the regimes that are the most cancerous and dysfunctional. It’s a story that would serve the American public as well.

A study in oblivion, the stars of American media ignore the blood of their brothers and instead, in big offices and on comfy chairs, they focus their ire on the guys in pajamas. Bush Derangement Syndrome has taken its hold.

As penance for Eason Jordan's transgression, CNN should have Wolf Blitzer do a daily segment on currently imprisoned journalists. The series would run out of faces to show by July.

L. Brent Bozell III notes:

When Congressman Barney Frank suggested at the conference that journalists dying in Iraq have been "collateral damage," Jordan objected. On the forum's own weblog, journalist Rony Abovitz reported that Jordan "asserted that he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by U.S. troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted. He repeated the assertion a few times, which seemed to win favor in parts of the audience (the anti-U.S. crowd) and cause great strain on others."

If these charges were true, they would make Abu Ghraib's naked pyramids pale by comparison. But they were wild and reckless accusations, which explains Jordan's subsequent, furious backpedaling and denials. Still, it begs the question: Why would a man whose profession and expertise was "newsgathering" make such wild charges without evidence? Jordan quickly drew angry objections from fellow panelist Frank, as well as a condemnation from Sen. Chris Dodd. When you're outraging Frank and Dodd, you're really putting yourself out on an extreme limb.

But then Jordan and CNN added to the outrage by refusing any attempts to release a transcript or videotape of the off-the-record panel discussion. What a spectacle: a news outlet always championing the public's "right to know" and crusading for "full disclosure" clamping down like the stereotypical arrogant multinational corporation they like to expose. Richard Nixon, meet Eason Jordan. Does anyone believe that if President Bush (or Vice President Cheney or Secretary Rumsfeld or fill in the blank) claimed in an off-the-record forum overseas that Ted Kennedy was a murderer, that CNN wouldn't be in the front of the line demanding that the administration release the videotape?

The controversy was deepened by the fact that Jordan already carried heavy baggage on this issue. He admitted to the world in 2003 that CNN kept a lid on news exposing the horror of Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime to maintain its access to Iraq and preserve the lives of its staffers there. CNN plays the same shut-up-for-access-to-dictators game with its Havana bureau to this day.

Controversy was also deepened when bloggers like Ed Morrissey (at his blog "Captain's Quarters") reported that this was not a one-time gaffe for Jordan. Morrissey said Jordan had also "accused the U.S. military of torturing journalists (November 2004) and the Israeli military of deliberate assassinations (October 2002) at journalistic forums, all overseas and outside the reach of most American media."

These accusations are stop-the-presses huge. So why didn't CNN ever produce some evidence for these charges and put them on the air? And if they weren't true, why wasn't this man fired long ago?

Amazingly, most of the major "news" media avoided this news -- especially CNN. So when Jordan resigned, it made the blogs seem so powerful that liberals started attacking them for recklessly destroying Jordan's career, even using goofy terms like "cyber-McCarthyism" to denounce it. But what the bloggers did here was deliver information and accountability, the same things the major media purport to be providing -- unless it's one of their own in the hot seat.

I suspect that this intention to discredit bloggers is the latest recirculation of that old propagandist tool - tell a big lie often enough and loud enough people will believe it...but you have to control the information media to make that happen. And the truth is, things have changed, and there are a lot more channels of information nowadays, and a lot more eyes watching.

UN Oil For Food Troubles

2005-02-16T08:18:00.000-08:00

NEW FINDINGS IN U.N. OIL-FOR-FOOD SCANDAL DETAIL BRIBERY, CORRUPTION, MISMANAGEMENT, AND NEW QUESTIONS ABOUT ROLE OF SECRETARY GENERAL’S SON
Chairman Coleman urges U.N. to waive immunity to clear way for potential prosecution of Benon Sevan, former Executive Director of the U.N. Office of the Iraq Programme

Listen to Radio Clip | View Television Clip

Witnesses being sworn in by Chm. Coleman at 2nd PSI Hearing regarding OFF

February 15th, 2005 - Washington, DC - In the second hearing by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) on the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program, Chairman Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) said new evidence suggests Benon Sevan, former Executive Director of the U.N. Office of the Iraq Program, personally received oil allocations worth $1.2 million and called for the United Nations to waive Sevan’s diplomatic immunity from criminal prosecution immediately. The Oil-for-Food program (OFF) was instigated in 1996 to provide food, medicine and humanitarian goods for the Iraqi people through the controlled sale of Iraqi oil, but ultimately generated an estimated $21.3 billion in illegal revenue for Saddam Hussein through smuggling, kickbacks, and other schemes in contravention of U.N. sanctions regimes.

“I believe that Mr. Sevan’s misconduct goes well beyond a mere conflict of interest – instead, these documents, when combined with the evidence presented in the Volcker report, certainly establish probable cause that Mr. Sevan’s actions rose to the level of criminal liability,” Senator Coleman said in his opening statement. “Accordingly, I call upon Secretary-General Kofi Annan to strip Mr. Sevan of his diplomatic immunity so that a criminal prosecution against him may proceed unfettered.”

Several additional disclosures at today’s hearing, The United Nations Management and Oversight of the Oil-for-Food Program, provided new details of bribery, conflicts of interest and mismanagement on an unprecedented scale at virtually every level of the scandal-plagued U.N. program. PSI investigators uncovered and presented extensive evidence that:

- A U.N. oil inspector, Armando Carlos Oliveira, a Portuguese national working for Saybolt, received a bribe of more than $105,000 to facilitate smuggling of $9 million worth of oil in contravention of U. N. sanctions.

- A clear and unresolved conflict of interest existed at the time that Cotecna Inspection S.A. was awarded a multi-million dollar contract to inspect humanitarian goods under the program, during the time Kojo Annan was employed by Cotecna as a paid consultant. Evidence suggests that Kojo Annan did not restrict his activities only to Nigeria and Ghana as purported by Cotecna. Kojo Annan’s activities in New York during the 1998 U.N. General Assembly have not been sufficiently explained.

- The U. N. Secretary General and the Office of Iraq Program’s oversight of Cotecna Inspection S.A. during the OFF program failed to account for overpricing of humanitarian contracts and kickbacks procured by the Hussein regime. OIP mandated only a limited quality and quantity analysis, which may have facilitated the use and enforcement of kickbacks by the Hussein regime under the program.

- Cotecna was not required to test medicines for quality, and foodstuffs were tested only under a “fitness for human consumption” standard, despite concerns expressed by Cotecna inspectors. OIP defined this to mean “if you eat it and don’t die, it passes the test.” These oversights may have resulted in the procurement of substandard goods and medicine at the expense of the Iraqi people. One Iraqi official told PSI of tainted imported blood that infected 150-180 children with HIV.

- Waste, abuse, and mismanagement by the U.N. in relation to the OFF program amounted to over $690 million based on a PSI analysis of the 58 Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) audit reports released in January, 2005.

“The gross mismanagement of almost every aspect of the Oil-for-Food program is simply inexcusable and wasted over $690 million,” Coleman said. “Every organization has its shortcomings, but I cannot recall any organization where the scope of its problems encompassed every basic management skill needed to ensure an effective program. American taxpayers pay close to 22 percent of the U.N.’s operating costs. They need assurances that their tax dollars are well spent, especially in light of the fact that sanctions will likely be imposed upon rogue nations in the future.”

Witnesses included Robert M. Massey, CEO, Cotecna Inspection S.A., Andre E. Pruniaux, Former Senior Vice President, Cotecna Inspection S.A., John Denson, General Counsel, Saybolt Group, Verne Kulyk, Former Customs Officer, U.N. Office of Iraq Program, Joseph A. Christoff, Government Accountability Office, Stafford Clarry, Former Humanitarian Affairs Advisor, U.N. Oil-for-Food program, The Honorable Patrick F. Kennedy, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations for Management and Reform..

Coleman reiterated his call for U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to take responsibility for the tainted Oil-for-Food program by resigning his post, an essential step in restoring accountability, transparency and credibility to the important world body. The PSI chairman also indicated he expects to hold more hearings on the OFF scandal as new evidence and developments warrant.
Contact(s):
Tom Steward

The Ninth Amendment as an Excuse for Bad Political Behavior?

2005-02-16T04:43:00.001-08:00

Al Knight at the Denver Post noted this about Ward Churchill:

Back in 1991, he helped cancel a Columbus Day parade in Denver and later defended himself on the basis that he was adhering to international law, which he said compelled him to protest against genocide.

He has since elaborated on this claim, and now says the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives him the authority to interfere with the free-speech rights of Italian-Americans.

The Ninth Amendment says, in its entirety: "Reserved rights. The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

In Churchill's mind, as he explained last week, this means that if he finds a "right" - such as the one he says he found in international law to protest genocide - that "right" trumps the right of Italian-Americans to march in a parade.

To label this a novel interpretation of the Ninth Amendment is to badly understate the case. Under Churchill's reading, the amendment is nothing less than a license to suspend or selectively enforce any or all of the other provisions of the U.S. Constitution. It is highly doubtful, of course, that Churchill would allow the Italian-Americans to employ the same logic to block one of his parades.

A license to trample the rights of Americans so that you can be activist in the way you feel? I don't think so. But it's clear that certain members of society would like this right. Several areas are getting close to pushing free speech to the point that anyone who feels offended will have the right to take legal action. Might get hard to live in some of those areas if that happens - particularly for activists!

Want to help Terri Schiavo?

2005-02-15T11:59:00.000-08:00

She really didn't do anything wrong but perhaps marry the wrong man and not leave a living will.

She is fast running out of time.

If you would like to make your voice heard, hear are some contacts:

Florida Attorney General’s Charlie Crist, AG Citizen’s Services & Office
1-850-414-3990 / 850-414-3300
ag@oag.state.fl.us

Bernie McCabe, State Attorney Pinellas and Pasco Counties
727-464-6221
bmccabe@co.pinellas.fl.us

Gov. Jeb Bush
850-488-4441
jeb@jeb.org, jeb@myflorida.com

Tom Lee, Senate President
(850) 487-5072
lee.tom.web@flsenate.gov

Allan G. Bense, Speaker
(850) 488-1450
speaker@myfloridahouse.gov

St Pete Times President - timespresident@sptimes.com

Customer Service - custserv@sptimes.com

Letters to the Editor - letters@sptimes.com
Letters to the Editor
P.O. Box 1121
St. Petersburg, FL 33731

Mr. Bill Levesque - levesque@sptimes.com

Check out Pro-Life Blogs for more info: www.prolifeblogs.com

Blogistan or the Truth will Out?

2005-02-15T07:57:00.000-08:00

Before you go around talking about the bloggers as the Taliban, (ala Mike Moran at MSNBC) you might want to decide if there were any truth to the accusations - "J'accuse" in the manner of Zola without proof means little, but with evidence it means a lot. The evidence does not favor the press.

Check out the timeline at Easongate.com.

The true question becomes, if the "official press" is so interested in the truth, why wasn't it on top of this story?

Good demographic analysis of the Iraqi election...

2005-02-15T06:55:00.000-08:00

Patrick Ruffini has some great analysis and an excellent map of the Iraqi election returns here.

One interesting tidbit he noticed:

Belying the image of a restive population electing anti-American leaders, the Allawi bloc actually did best in the regions where the insurgency ran strongest, picking up nearly 25% in Baghdad, 21% in Karbala, and an outright win with 38% among the brave few who turned out in Anbar province. In rural precincts where the U.S. presence was more distant, the Shia felt more free to vote their religion.

All in all, it will be an interesting new day for Iraq, and no matter what the doomsayers say, it is the Iraqis right to choose that matters.

Bruhaha in the Media Mix

2005-02-15T06:00:00.000-08:00

Jack Kelly comments:

Bloggers are entitled to mount Eason Jordan's scalp on their lodgepoles, next to those of Dan Rather and Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss), all of whom lost jobs because bloggers kept reporting and commenting on stories the "mainstream" media initially ignored, and (except in the case of Lott) would have preferred to go on ignoring.

But the key fact is not that Eason Jordan is now looking for work, but that bloggers were trying to uncover the truth about what he said, while "professional journalists" were trying to suppress it. For us, the "people's right to know"— which we invoke in self-righteous tones when we're prying into the private lives of people who are not journalists — takes a back seat to protecting the reputations of members of our club.

What happened to Eason Jordan — and what happened to Dan Rather before him — shows that we can no longer cover up the stories we don't want you to know about — and there are consequences when the cover-ups fail. That's why there is panic mixed in with our disdain.

We feel about bloggers the way Custer must have felt when he charged that village at the Little Big Horn, and discovered it was much, much bigger than he'd imagined it to be. The bloggers' wigwam is large, and growing. There is plenty of room on the lodgepole for more scalps.

Calling bloggers names won't change the fact that the internet is allowing huge amounts of fact checking, distribution of information, and a distributed network that speeds the news cycle up tremendously. Name calling when your hand is caught in the cookie jar isn't really a proper response.

Welcome French supporters of a convicted copkiller and give them liberty bells?

2005-02-15T05:11:00.000-08:00

According to the Philadelphia Daily News:

French politicians and activists seeking a new trial and freedom for convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal were welcomed in a Friday rally at City Hall and given replicas of the Liberty Bell.

Mjenzi Traylor, the city's first deputy director of commerce, told the crowd of about 150 that he was there to "make certain that we are receiving the message that you would like for us to deliver to Mayor Street."

Maureen Faulkner, the widow of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, later called that greeting an "absolute outrage."

Abu-Jamal was convicted of murdering Faulkner in 1981.

"This man stood over him and shot him, point-blank, in the face," Maureen Faulkner said. "For them to give them replicas of the Liberty Bell and welcome them with open arms, I think it's an embarrassment for the city."

Faulkner said she planned to call Street on Monday to protest the city's actions.

"This is a disgrace," she said. "It is a slap in the face for all of law enforcement."

Street planned to attend the meeting with the French politicians but canceled due to a busy schedule, his staff said.

Instead, Traylor was scheduled to meet in private with Connie Little, the mayor's executive assistant, and the French politicians.

But when the large crowd arrived with escorts from the Philadelphia Police Department's Civil Affairs unit after marching around City Hall chanting Abu-Jamal's name, Street's staff decided to let them all into the mayor's reception room.

The OmsbudGod responds with a quiz.

Hube's Cube has comments on it

Read also the Environmental Republican, who encourages to learn about the background of the killing Mumia is being tried for at this link.

Captain's Quarters, Michelle Malkin and Blogs for Bush are also covering it.

Thomas Sowell on Freedom of Speech

2005-02-15T04:57:00.000-08:00

Too many people -- some of them judges -- seem to think that freedom of speech means freedom from consequences for what you have said. If you believe that, try insulting your boss when you go to work tomorrow. Better yet, try insulting your spouse before going to bed tonight.

While this column is protected by freedom of speech, that does not stop any editor from getting rid of it if he doesn't like what I say. But, even if every editor across the length and breadth of the country refused to carry this column, that would be no violation of my freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech does not imply a right to an audience. Otherwise the audience would have no right to its own freedom. Editors, movie producers, speakers' bureaus and other intermediaries have every right to decide what they will and will not present to their audiences.

Unfortunately, many of those who talk the loudest and longest about "freedom of speech" and "academic freedom" are in fact trying to justify the imposition of propaganda on a captive audience in our schools and colleges.

At one college, some gutsy students start chanting "OT" -- for "off topic" -- when one of their professors starts making political comments that have nothing to do with the subject of his course.

Source: Townhall

Reductio ad Absurdum - if someone's speech, even when not directed at you, bothers you, is that harrassment?

2005-02-14T12:22:00.000-08:00

February 10, 2005

FIRE Press Release

LOS ANGELES, February 10, 2005—Since June 2004, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has been part of a national coalition urging the California Supreme Court to reverse a state appellate court decision that has profoundly chilling implications for free speech. The broad coalition includes the National Association of Scholars, the Student Press Law Center, the Center for Individual Rights, the Motion Picture Association of America, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, Rubin Postaer and Associates (a prestigious advertising agency), and the Los Angeles Advertising Agencies Association, all of whom are concerned that an adverse decision in Lyle v. Warner Brothers Television Productions et al. (Lyle) would redefine a great deal of constitutionally protected expression as unprotected “harassment.” Such a ruling would have frightening consequences for free speech on college and university campuses. The amici, whose brief was filed on Monday, February 7, were represented by Horvitz & Levy, the largest civil appellate firm in California and one which frequently argues before the California Supreme Court.

“The free exchange of ideas both on and off campus will be threatened if this decision is not overturned,” remarked David French, FIRE’s president. “The Supreme Court of California must realize that the wrong decision in this case will have an impact far beyond the realm of TV comedy. Colleges and universities in California will likely face many speech-related lawsuits if this decision stands, and will inevitably react with strict prohibitions on speech to avoid costly litigation. Students who do not have the resources to defend their rights will feel the brunt of these restrictions,” he added.

Plaintiff Amaani Lyle, who was briefly a writer’s assistant for the popular sitcom Friends, has alleged that the frequent sexual banter of the show’s male and female writers subjected her to harassment as they discussed ideas and developed storylines and scripts. While admitting that she was not the target of any of the comments, Lyle claimed that some of the comments were generally derogatory towards women and therefore created a “hostile environment.”

The amicus brief, written for the national coalition by attorney Frederic D. Cohen of Horvitz & Levy LLP in Encino, California, argues that “communicative workplaces,” such as writers’ offices and universities, depend on free-wheeling and uninhibited dialogue and discussion to function. Giving offended individuals the power to sue anyone whose speech bothered them—even if not directed at the offended individual—could spell the end of the open exchange of ideas. Activities that could be suppressed might include “a feminist studies course criticizing pornography, a medical school class on human sexuality…or a public health series on means of combating the spread of AIDS,” according to the brief. Any employee of the university—from a professor to an eavesdropping groundskeeper—might take offense to conversation on such topics and could sue the institution.

Discussions involving speech that anyone might find religiously or racially offensive would also be at risk. As the brief points out, the legal risks inherent in making any person within the range of hearing potentially offensive speech a possible plaintiff would create “a de facto mandatory speech code for all universities.”

Such a situation is not farfetched. FIRE has documented instances on hundreds of campuses where overbroad definitions of “harassment” have been abused to stifle speech. For instance, in November 2004, FIRE defended a student at the University of New Hampshire who was kicked out of his dorm and forced to live in his car after he was accused of violating the university’s “harassment” policies for putting up posters suggesting that freshman girls who wanted to lose weight should take the dorm stairs rather than tying up the elevator. (Under pressure from FIRE, the university relented.)

Greg Lukianoff, FIRE’s director of legal and public advocacy, concluded, “Institutions throughout California that rely on the free flow of ideas, from state universities to the entertainment industry, face a dire threat from the Lyle case. The wrong decision in this case will make an already absurd situation on campus and beyond even worse.”

FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation that unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, due process, freedom of expression, academic freedom, and rights of conscience at our nation’s colleges and universities. Please visit thefire.org to read more about FIRE’s efforts to preserve liberty on campuses across America.

CONTACT:
David French, President, FIRE; 215-717-3473; david.french@thefire.org
Greg Lukianoff, Director of Legal and Public Advocacy, FIRE: 215-717-3473; greg@thefire.org
Frederic D. Cohen, Horvitz & Levy LLP: 818-995-0800; fcohen@horvitzlevy.com

Attached Files

Lyle Amicus Brief, PDF, 224.9 KB
FIRE Press Release

Press Release Contact

David French, President, FIRE: 215-717-3473; david.french@thefire.org
Greg Lukianoff, Director of Legal and Public Advocacy, FIRE: 215-717-3473; greg.lukianoff@thefire.org

A New Yellow Journalism?

2005-02-14T09:17:00.001-08:00

With Eason Jorden's decision to resign from CNN, we see shockwaves hitting the press. Michelle Malkin notes:

The ad hominem hysterics of Jordan's defenders stand in stark contract to the way the vast majority of bloggers approached the search for truth in this matter. Veteran journalist and blogger Jeff Jarvis (buzzmachine.com) got it right when he said on CNN's Reliable Sources on Sunday: "We didn't want his head — most of us didn't. We wanted the truth." We're still waiting.

It was Jordan who tossed out reckless remarks about American troops deliberately targeting journalists. It was bloggers, starting with American businessman and Davos eyewitness Rony Abovitz, who asked that Jordan back up his bombshell assertion with facts.

Abovitz's courage in this matter cannot be overstated. He raised his voice against Jordan at an international forum of media bigs, political heavyweights and Europe's most influential America-haters. Abovitz's remarks prompted Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) to press Jordan for details. Abovitz also received thanks from an outraged Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.).

It seems clear from a number of eyewitness accounts, including Rep. Frank's, that while Jordan may have backtracked, he did not completely back off — rendering his Friday night explanation that he "never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent" disingenuous at best.

After Abovitz spoke to some journalists in the audience who didn't consider Jordan's remarks news and weren't going to cover it, he bypassed the mainstream media and exposed the controversy with a simple click of the mouse.

From there, a network of bloggers — connected only by their modems — pressed the story. Minnesota-based blogger Ed Morrissey (captainsquartersblog.com), southern California blogger/talk show host/author Hugh Hewitt (hughhewitt.com), Washington, D.C.-based blogger La Shawn Barber (lashawnbarber.com), Tennessee-based blogging giant/law professor Glenn Reynolds (instapundit.com), Jarvis, Rosen and the ad hoc group blog at Easongate.com were among those who provided context for Jordan's remarks, carefully assembled facts, requested release of the videotape/transcript and forcefully challenged the mainstream media blackout of the story.

For their fine efforts, these citizen bloggers are being attacked as "morons" and "bible-thumping knuckledraggers" and "hounds" by nervous media nellies aghast at the sight of unwashed amateurs beating down effete journalism's gates. Meanwhile, CNN continues to spin.

Is this the new yellow journalism? Or will the old guard learn that things are forever different, that innuendo will be fact checked, and because there are so many willing to get the word out, that the old ways of manipulating the news won't work any more?

Name calling won't work either.

Doing credible jobs with real facts and real figures, verifiable, are what will get you noticed.

Alan Dershowitz on Columbia University's Approach to Academic Freedom

2005-02-14T08:55:00.000-08:00

Columbia, when it comes to hatred of Israel, has become France on the Hudson.

Carrying on the tradition is Joseph Massad, one of Said's followers and an untenured professor in the Middle East department. I am told that he is a mediocre scholar whose main claim to fame is his vocal extremism.

Yet he is likely to receive tenure, largely because there are some on the Columbia faculty who fear that denying him tenure would open the school to criticism from anti-Israel zealots around the world.

A Columbia committee is looking into charges that Massad denied some students academic freedom in his classroom. According to one student, and at least one other witness, she raised her hand during a discussion of Israel's incursions into the West Bank to point out that Israel often issued warnings to civilians prior to its bombings. Massad allegedly replied:

"If you're going to deny the atrocities being committed against the Palestinian people, then you can get out of my classroom."

The committee appointed to look into the charges includes, among others, at least two anti-Israel extremists. They signed a petition calling for Columbia to divest only from Israel, a democracy struggling to fight against terrorism.

By singling out Israel for economic capital punishment and ignoring such real violators of human rights as Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Libya, the Sudan and China, these committee members have demonstrated their own bigotry against the Jewish nation.

Read the rest here. Reasoned discourse about what is going on is one thing. Rabid anti- type behavior is another thing. I posted this because higher ed seems to have become a home for those who have axes to grind in nasty ways. Ward Churchill, and a number of others have recently hit the national spotlight as poster children for hate groups. Hate groups are a bad thing on the left and on the right. But it's particularly sad when we give the sanction of academia, with its veneer of reasoned, learned respectability, to those who would transmit hate rather than true analysis.

Freedom of Speech and Job Security

2005-02-13T12:24:00.000-08:00

Michael Bowers with the Star in Chicago writes:

Now comes Ward Churchill, a history professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder, who believes those who died in the World Trade Center on 9-11 were "little Eichmanns."

The reference is to the banal Austrian bureaucrat, surprisingly ordinary-looking, who was in charge of the infrastructure of Hitler's Final Solution.

Adolf Eichmann never piloted a train through the night in Poland. He never sealed the hermetic door of a "disinfection chamber." No, Eichmann was the desk-murderer.

Now we know from Ward Churchill that those in the Twin Towers were banal American bureaucrats in charge of a new Final Solution that murders Iraqi infants for profit. What do you know?

Churchill would like you to think he's fighting for free speech. He's not. He's fighting for his right to be a jackass and still keep his job. This case has nothing to do with the First Amendment. It's about employment at will.

You see, in America, having a job is like having a girlfriend. Like it or not, each party has the right to end the relationship at any time, for any reason.

The First Amendment simply keeps you out of jail. It does not protect your employment. It does not give you immunity to the consequences of your speech that may arise in the American marketplace of jobs and ideas.

Ward Churchill does not grasp this point. Nor do performers such as Natalie Maines.

Two years ago, Maines, who is a Texan, told an audience in London, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." Angry fans stopped buying her CDs, and she complained her First Amendment rights had been violated.

Al Gore added that the Dixie Chicks "were made to feel un-American and risked economic retaliation because of what was said. Our democracy has taken a hit."

Oh no! Made to feel un-American! That's funny, I never knew there was a constitutional right to feel American.

Furthermore, our democracy did not "take a hit" here. It got a boost. You see, another definition of Gore's "economic retaliation" is: "people voting with their dollar."

In short, the First Amendment is not about CD sales. Can we please dispense with this silliness now?

All that said, I still must conclude it would be a mistake for the school to fire Ward Churchill.

Michael talks about the fallout that could happen, from the left as well as the right if this becomes precident. Academic freedom has long included freedom to say the thing that the politicians don't want to hear. But should there be a point of reductio ad absurdum, where it reaches the point of absurdity, of being so far from rationality that one loses one's job because of it?

I've always admired the concept of academic freedom, argue for it, fight for it, and point out where it is being abused. Churchill has abused it by lying about who he is, by possibly making up data for his academic papers and other things. If he has crossed the line for academic fraud, he most certainly needs to go, like anybody else.

But it is a good question: how far do we allow academic freedom to go? If Churchill comes out of a honest audit of his academic work and hasn't lied on his applications, should he still be let go?

Does that mean that Larry Summers at Harvard should be fired because he said something the feminists are unhappy out?

The answers to these questions will do a lot to shape the future of higher education.

Why is this not surprising?

2005-02-13T06:08:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK - The U.N. oil-for-food program chief under scrutiny for alleged corruption and mismanagement blocked a proposed audit of his office around the same time he's accused of soliciting lucrative oil deals from Iraq according to investigators.

A U.N. auditing team, which was severely understaffed, said running the $64 billion oil-for-food program was "a high risk activity" and a priority for review. But Benon Sevan denied the internal auditors' request to hire a consultant to examine his office in May 2001 — an act top investigators of the program are now calling into question.

"I think the auditors thought they were steered away from some areas," Paul Volcker, who's leading the independent probe, told The Associated Press. "Our judgment is that the main office should have been audited. And that leaves the inference that perhaps the auditors were not encouraged to do the work. I think we draw the inference that it was at least suspicious."

Two months after Sevan refused the auditors' request, a Panamanian company, African Middle East Petroleum, purchased 1 million barrels of oil, which Iraq had allocated to Sevan — one of nine allocations made between 1998 and 2002 involving Sevan and believed to have netted the company $1.5 million, said an interim report Volcker's committee released this month.

The head of AMEP, Fakhry Abdelnour, a friend of Sevan, told investigators he paid $160,000 as a kickback to an Iraqi-controlled account in Jordan in October 2001 under one of the oil-for-food schemes under examination.

Volcker did not say that Sevan received kickbacks but expressed concern at $160,000 in cash that Sevan said he received from an aunt in his native Cyprus in 1999-2003. The investigative report questioned this "unexplained wealth," noting that the aunt, who recently died, was a retired government photographer living on a modest pension.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan last week suspended Sevan after Volcker accused him of a "grave conflict of interest," saying his conduct in soliciting oil deals for AMEP was "ethically improper and seriously undermined the integrity of the United Nations."

On the day Volcker issued his report, Sevan's lawyer, Eric Lewis, accused the panel of trying to make his client a "scapegoat," saying: "Mr. Sevan never took a penny." He said Sevan was proud of his 40-year U.N. career and of the oil-for-food program, which saved tens of thousands of Iraqis "from death by disease and starvation."

The oil-for-food program was the largest U.N. humanitarian aid operation, running in 1996-2003. It was designed to let Saddam Hussein 's government sell limited amounts of oil in exchange for humanitarian goods as an exemption from post-Gulf War sanctions imposed in 1991.

Faced with a $64 billion program involving multiple U.N. agencies, the small team of auditors assigned to monitor it were overmatched and underfunded. For other programs, Volcker's investigators said, the United Nations mandated one auditor for every $100 million in funding. At that ratio, the oil-for-food program managers should have expected more than 160 auditors, because the program's budget totaled about $16 billion in 2000.

Instead, in 2001, they had only five, according to Volcker's report.

Via Yahoo News

Reality

2005-02-13T05:36:00.000-08:00

By Pamela Hess

Last May, members of the 2/4 dropped in on an elementary school they had paid an Iraqi contractor to rebuild. He told them he was finished, but before they handed over the cash, they wanted to see that the work was actually done. So they got into four Humvees loaded with soccer balls, coloring books and candy and went to the school. They were in and out within 10 minutes. By the time they got outside, children were crowded around the trucks, scrambling for the candy and toys they had come to associate with the Marines.

This part was actually something they all look forward to -- tossing balls to the kids, seeing happy faces in a town that was roundly hostile to them.

Within moments the air around them exploded: two "insurgents" down a side alley had fired a rocket into the crowd of children, killing five instantly and wounding many others.

Marines are trained for crisis. Some went after the shooters. Others, carrying wounded children, ran from door to door to try to call an Iraqi ambulance. No one would let them in. Still others tended the children lying like litter around the Humvees. That's when a second rocket came, tearing the leg off a Marine who was tending to the injured kids. He died a week later.

I defy anyone to suggest to the Marines present that day they should feel ambivalent about killing their enemy in Ramadi.

When I returned to Mattis' headquarters after my time with the 2/4, he summoned me into his office -- rarely a good thing -- and asked for my observations. I was still sorting out my thoughts, so I repeated something a young lieutenant told me: If nothing else comes out of this war, the Marines have a battle-hardened force.

Mattis nodded, not at all ambivalently. He then told me this: Go into any VFW or American Legion Hall in the United States and the true combat veterans are easy to spot. They are invariably huddled together off to the side. They are not talking about war, or battles, or the friends they lost. They talk about anything but that.

After General Mattis' experience last week, perhaps we know why. We don't want to hear it.

Campus Outrage Award Nominations

2005-02-13T05:25:00.000-08:00

ISI is calling for nominations for stories of outrageous academic/adminstrative behavior on college campuses:

The national press routinely turns a deaf ear toward the outrageous excesses of politically correct students, faculty, and administrators in higher education. Radical campus activists continue to undermine the traditional curriculum, implement speech codes that persecute politically incorrect students, enforce group-identity politics with sensitivity seminars, and treat students with a double-standard emanating from a multiculturalist perspective.

Now, however, you can do something about it.

Nominate the outrage of your choice for a Campus Outrage Award, popularly known as the "Pollys." The Grand Prize Winner will receive $1,000; four second-prize winners will each take home $500. The awards are announced April 1.

We created the Campus Outrage Awards to expose the excesses of college administrators and professors who misuse their authority to silence dissent and impose their own political agendas on unwilling students," says Collegiate Network president, T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr.

Winning entries can be outrageous events, kooky course listings, politicized textbooks, totalitarian student groups, intolerant administrators, and illiberal faculty. Anything, in short, that violates the spirit of liberal learning.

Entries are limited to college students currently enrolled in undergraduate or graduate programs of study.

Submission Requirements:

• A short narrative of 300 words (one double-spaced typed page) describing the Outrage on your campus.

• Supporting documentation such as newspaper clippings, photographs, letters, memos, bios, course descriptions and syllabi, etc.

• Your name, class, school, major, address, phone number, and e-mail address.

• If multiple nominations are received for the same Outrage, a drawing will be held to determine the winner.

The eagerly anticipated "Polly" awards have become the national standard against which outrageous episodes of political correctness are measured. The Washington Post has referred to the "Polly" awards as "the coveted Campus Outrage Award for loony political correctness." The Wall Street Journal has called the annual awards "a great public service."

Contact outrage@isi.org for more information.

Darfur...the Disaster Wends On...

2005-02-12T05:31:00.000-08:00

Don't think that just because the UN decided that Darfur wasn't genocide, that the ethnic cleansing and chaos over there has suddenly vanished.

The Washington Post reports:

Sudan is stalling efforts by the United Nations to survey death rates in Darfur, contributing to confusion over the number of people who have died since a government-backed Arab militia launched a bloody counterinsurgency campaign nearly two years ago against the region's black villagers, according to U.N. officials.

The conflict has produced widely varied estimates of the death toll in Darfur, with the United Nations estimating that as many as 70,000 displaced Darfuris died between March and October 2004 and some outside analysts suggesting more than 400,000 have been killed or perished from disease or malnutrition since the violence began in February 2003.

Sudan Watch has a wrap up of current needs, problems, issues.

So much misery. So easy to forget. And that is what people are counting on.

•	A short narrative of 300 words (one double-spaced typed page) describing the Outrage on your campus.
•	Supporting documentation such as newspaper clippings, photographs, letters, memos, bios, course descriptions and syllabi, etc.
•	Your name, class, school, major, address, phone number, and e-mail address.
•	If multiple nominations are received for the same Outrage, a drawing will be held to determine the winner.