The Terri Schiavo vote in effect ends the independence of our Judiciary. Now, every court will know that its rulings can be undone by Congress. The will of Tom Delay will rule in every hospital room or courtroom that he desires.
We now join the ranks of countries whose judiciary is weak, the league of banana republics. Those with political connections and the power to persuade Congress will prevail. Mob rule will prevail. The ability of the right wing to reach into everyone’s lives has just been established never more than today.
My friends here at Booman this is the worst night for our country since the election last November. The Republican right-wing drunk on their own power has coerced the moderates and now runs this country without restraint.
The Congress has now passed a Bill of Attainder. Here is some information on Bills of Attainder:
“The Bill of Attainder Clause was intended not as a narrow, technical (and therefore soon to be outmoded) prohibition, but rather as an implementation of the separation of powers, a general safeguard against legislative exercise of the judicial function or more simply – trial by legislature.” U.S. v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437, 440 (1965).
“These clauses of the Constitution are not of the broad, general nature of the Due Process Clause, but refer to rather precise legal terms which had a meaning under English law at the time the Constitution was adopted. A bill of attainder was a legislative act that singled out one or more persons and imposed punishment on them, without benefit of trial. Such actions were regarded as odious by the framers of the Constitution because it was the traditional role of a court, judging an individual case, to impose punishment.” William H. Rehnquist, The Supreme Court, page 166.
“Bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and laws impairing the obligations of contracts, are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation. … The sober people of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has directed the public councils. They have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences, in cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares to the more-industrious and less-informed part of the community.” James Madison, Federalist Number 44, 1788.
So, will Rehnquist be consistent and hold that this bill is an unconstitutional Bill of Attainder? I doubt it very much. This is about the naked exercise of power.
Now we will see what the District Court in Florida does with this blatantly unconstitutional law. I am afraid the U.S. Constitution died tonight.
I’m not familiar with the details of this legislation. If it is narrowly drawn to be used for one person only, that does seem troublesome. But I’d like to see a broad change in law, that does not allow for hearsay statements like Schiavo’s husband’s to be treated the same as a legal document like a “living will”.
Sure, Terri Schiavo is pretty messed up (though, I believe, not as messed up as many claim), and will never have anything approaching the quality of life most of us take for granted. But this is a dangerous path we set down, you might call it a “slippery slope”. I take seriously the warning Nat Hentoff gave in the Village Voice about a year and a half ago: “‘It is much like Germany in the ’20s and ’30s. The barriers against killing are coming down.’…If the courts finally permit the husband of brain-damaged Terri Schiavo to continue to press for her death by starvation by again removing her feeding tube, more of the barriers to killing may come down in other states. So this isn’t only about Terri Schiavo. It could be about you.”
Alan
Maverick Leftist
besides the husband who said that Terri said she would not want to live like this….
BINGO. it’s one of the first things that crossed my mind but I thought, oh Susan … I’m grieving
What would our country’s founders say? Or Justice Brennan? Or Thurgood Marshall? Or WIlliam O. Douglas? And on and on… my god.
you STRICT constitutionalists (ha) … from KO’s Countdown daily newsletter:
The fate of Terri Schiavo once again was in the hands of a judge Monday, following an extraordinary political fight over the brain-damaged woman that consumed both chambers of Congress and prompted the president to rush back to the White House from his Texas ranch. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7254897/
‘Grotesque’ or life-saving drama at the Capitol? Extraordinary Sunday session raises political questions. In what some House Democrats assailed as “a grotesque session of Congress” and “the manifestation of a constitutional crisis,” Republican leaders convened rare Sunday sessions of both the House and Senate to try to keep Terri Schiavo alive. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7243574/
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Hmmm, where is that?
I wish he would do a story on the Texas law and the removing of life support under than law last week of an infant against the wishes of her mother–because she did not have the money to pay for the treatment and the baby’s situation was deemed irreversible.