
 |
|
March 19, 2010
JWisdom.com Stewards of sacrifice
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama is waging war on Israel
March 18, 2010
JWisdom.com Love me not?
with Rabbi David Aaron (5 minutes)
Jonathan Rosenblum: Washington Throws a Tantrum
March 17, 2010
JWisdom.com How to perform a miracle
with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair (4 minutes)
Anne Bayefsky: Behind Obama's Dangerous Overreaction on Israel
March 15, 2010
JWisdom.com Moody, Grumpy, Irritable Children
with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
JWisdom.com Manufacturing mediums
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (4 minutes)
Glenn Garvin: Conspiracy theories, why people believe them and how they spread
JWisdom.com For Yourself, Not By Yourself
with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Paul Richter: Biden promises 'viable Palestine' is in the offing
March 10, 2010
JWisdom.com How To Get A (Real) Life
with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( EXTENDED EPISODE)
Paul Richter: Israel exerts soverign right to its capital as Biden looks on astounded
March 9, 2010
JWisdom.com Free To Be (Responsibly) You and Me!
with Rabbi Naftali Brawer ( 8 MINUTES)
David G. Savage: Supreme Court to rule on free speech in case of soldier's funeral
March 8, 2010
JWisdom.com Finding or Losing Yourself? Here's How!
with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Steven Emerson: America must learn from the UK about the future of Islamist subversion
March 5, 2010
JWisdom.com The Limits of Eternity
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 MINUTES)
March 4, 2010
JWisdom.com Using Things, Loving People
with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff ( 7 MINUTES)
March 3, 2010
JWisdom.com Grasping The Name of Your Life Game
with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( 8 MINUTES)
March 2, 2010
March 1, 2010
JWisdom.com Whole in One
with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Michael Muskal: Hillary meets with Israeli official, discusses gefilte fish dispute
Feb. 26, 2010
JWisdom.com A Biblical Secret for a More Powerful You
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Feb. 25, 2010
JWisdom.com The Second Most Important Question in Your Life
with Rabbi Yehoshua Karsh ( 5 MINUTES)
Seema Mehta : U.S.-Israel relations raised in California's Senate race --- by conservatives
Feb. 24, 2010
Feb. 23, 2010
JWisdom.com The Last Laugh of Enlightenment
with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair ( 5 MINUTES)
Feb. 22, 2010
JWisdom.com Esther and the third Truth with Rabbi David Aaron ( 9 MINUTES)
Feb. 19, 2010
JWisdom.com Olympic Faith
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Israel and the West are perpetrators of a myth that endangers the Jewish State
Feb. 18, 2010
JWisdom.com A Wedding Disaster to Remember
with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein ( 3 MINUTES)
Feb. 17, 2010
JWisdom.com Think your life is messed up?
with Rabbi David Aaron ( 11 MINUTES)
Greg Logan: 'Greatest Jewish sporting event of all time since David versus Goliath' may be postponed because of bar mitzvah
Feb. 16, 2010
JWisdom.com Feet On The Street Spirituality
with Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 8 MINUTES)
Marty Peretz: Let Europe Mind Its Own Business. It Brings Nothing To The Table Save For Mischief
Feb. 15, 2010
JWisdom.com Are Our Children Really Ours?
with Rabbi Mordechai Becher ( 5 MINUTES)
Susan King: 'Wolf Man' reflected writer's wartime Jewish experience
|
| |
Jewish World Review
March 26, 2008
/ 19 Adar II 5768
Barack Obama vs. Terri Schiavo
By
Nat Hentoff
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
In none of the endless presidential candidates' debates has there been a meaningful discussion of the rights of disabled Americans. However, in the Feb. 26 debate in Cleveland, Barack Obama casually and ignorantly revealed his misunderstanding of the basic issue in the highly visible and still-resonating official death sentence of a disabled woman, Terri Schiavo. I have repeatedly called her death the result of "the longest public execution in American history."
When moderator Tim Russert asked Hillary Clinton and Obama if "there are any words or votes that you'd like to take back ... in your careers in public service," Obama answered that in his first year in the Senate, he joined an agreement "that allowed Congress to interject itself (in the Schiavo case) into the decision-making process of the families."
Obama added: 'I think that was a mistake, and I think the American people understood that was a mistake. And as a constitutional law professor, I knew better."
When he was a professor of constitutional law, Obama probably instructed his students to research and know all the facts of a case. The reason Congress asked the federal courts to review the Schiavo case was that the 41-year-old woman about to be dehydrated and starved to death was breathing normally on her own, was not terminal, and there was medical evidence that she was responsive, not in a persistent vegetative state.
One of the leading congressional advocates of judicial review was staunchly liberal Democratic Tom Harkin of Iowa, because he is deeply informed about disability rights. By contrast, in all of this inflamed controversy, the mainstream media performed miserably, copying each other's errors instead of doing their own investigations of what Terri's wishes actually were. Consequently, most Americans did not know that 29 major national disability-rights organizations filed legal briefs and lobbied Congress to understand that this was not a right-to-die case, but about the right to continue living.
Among them were:
The National Spinal Cord Injury Association; the National Down Syndrome Congress; the World Association of Persons with Disabilities; Not Dead Yet; and the largest American assembly of disability-rights activists, the American Association of People with Disabilities. AAPD's head, Andrew J. Imparato, has testified before the Senate that:
"When we start devaluing the lives of people with disabilities, we don't know where that's going to stop. You also need to take into account the financial implications of all of this. We have an economy that is not doing as well as it once was and ... one way to save money is to make it easier for people with disabilities to die."
I recommend to Obama if he wants to make amends that he consult the disability-rights experts at Not Dead Yet for the facts of the Terri Schiavo case and its acute relevance to many Americans in similar situations.
Not Dead Yet is about 12 miles from Chicago at 7521 Madison St., Forest Park, Ill.
If this presidential contender and former law professor had bothered to do his own research, he would have discovered as I did in four years of covering this story and interviewing participants, including neurologists, on both sides, that:
The husband of the brain-damaged Terri Schiavo, Michael Schiavo, had stopped testing and rehabilitation for her in 1993, 12 years before her death. Moreover, for years he had been living with another woman, with whom he had two children, and whom he has since married. Michael Schiavo has continually insisted that he finally succeeded in having Terri's feeding tube removed because he was respecting Terri's wishes which she could no longer communicate that she did not want to be kept alive by artificial means.
But at a January 2000 trial as reported by Notre Dame law school professor O. Carter Snead in "Constitutional Quarterly" (published by the University of Minnesota Law School) in its winter 2005 issue:
Five witnesses testified on whether Terri would have refused artificial nutrition, including water, in the condition she was in. Her mother and a close friend of Terri testified she had said clearly she would want these essential life needs. The other three witnesses said Terri would have approved the removal of her feeding tube.
These last three were in alliance on what became a death penalty: Michael Schiavo, his brother and his sister-in-law!
It was on the basis of that 3-to-2 vote that Florida state judge George Greer ruled that "clear and convincing evidence" allowed him to remove her from life and then 19 judges in six courts, including federal courts agreed. Like the press, those judges did no independent investigations of their own. And those careless judges are now joined by the equally irresponsible robot-like judgment of Sen. Barack Obama. He should be proud of the Senate vote he now recants and learn a lot more about the disabled.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights and author of several books, including his current work, "The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance". Comment by clicking here.
Nat Hentoff Archives
© 2006, NEA
| |

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Michael Barone
Dave Barry
Tony Blankley
Andy Borowitz
David Broder
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
John Fund
Frank J. Gaffney
Lloyd Garver
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Lewis Grossberger
Victor Davis Hanson
Froma Harrop
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Laura Ingraham
Cheri Jacobus Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Dick Morris
Bill O'Reilly
Jim Mullen
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Jonathan Rauch
Celia Rivenbark
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Culture Shlock
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
Gary Brookins
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holber
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Ranan R. Lurie
Jimmy Margulies
Rick McKee
Michael Ramirez
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters

How 2
Lori Borgman
Elder matters
Fixit
Dr. Peter Gott
GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
Richard Lederer
Tech Maven
Every Monday Matters
Nutrition Myths
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
How Stuff Works
|