for the latest on Schiavo

Father Rob Johansen's Thrownback is one the best for the most extensive and latest information regarding Terri Schiavo. He cites several medical authorities on various parts of the debate.

"We are witnessing the second breakup of the Soviet Union."

Glenn Reynolds links to this Christian Science Monitor story about the repercussions of the most recent revolution in Kyrgyzstan (for more on this and all democratic movements throughout the world see Publius Pundit). Those former Soviet states mentioned experiencing popular protests are Belarus, a couple of states within Russia, and, in the far east, Mongolia. Here is a map.




Excerpts:

Some experts see a common thread among these upheavals that began 17 months ago when Georgians overthrew Eduard Shevardnadze in a peaceful revolt and continued with Ukraine's "Orange Revolution" late last year.

"Every situation is different, but a single process is unfolding," says Valentin Bogatyrov, a former Akayev adviser and director of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in Bishkek. "Kyrgyzstan is a kind of trigger that will spread this unrest to our neighbors, and beyond. We are witnessing the second breakup of the Soviet Union."

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Some argue that it's only a matter of time before the revolutionary tide sweeps over Russia. Several of the country's 20 ethnic republics have a similar political profile to Kyrgyzstan, with a long-time ruler monopolizing power and often extending corrupt tentacles into business. "Events around the former Soviet Union have raised the possibility that similar things can happen here too," says Andrei Piontkovsky, director of the independent Center for Strategic Studies in Moscow. "The situation in several of our republics, including Tatarstan and Bashkortistan, look very much like Kyrgyzstan."

Hadley Arkes on Schiavo

For what it's worth, Hadley Arkes has opined in the Terri Schiavo legal fiasco, joining Hugh Hewitt, Scott Hinderaker, and Stephen Bainbridge on one issue and Bill Bennett on another.

He agrees with the former that Judge Whittemore read Congress' act in a "crimped way." And that Jeb Brush, on this basis, could seek, as Bennett says, to enforce a new trial, as Congress required.

The Governor can make it clear—if he is asked—that he will not accept any orders handed down by Judge Greer, for he has the responsibility to direct the marshals and police in Florida, and he feels obliged to direct them according to his earnest understanding of the requirements of the Constitution and the mandate of Congress, an understanding rather at odds with the understanding of Judges Greer and Whittemore.

Journalist Michael Malone: "Newspapers are Dead"

A high-tech journalist of newsprint for 25 years, Michael Malone, writes today that he has given up reading newspapers. This is not too surprising given the development of the Internet's myriad news resources but also the general shoddy reporting, plagarism, and rampant even virulent bias of newspaper media. But it is interesting to hear a print journalist says these things. Some key excerpts:

I've been involved with newspapers, in some form or another, for a quarter century. If I don't see a compelling reason to read them, why should anyone else?

And I'm not alone. In talking with some of my colleagues, men and women who had spent as many years, if not more, than me in newspapers, most of them have also admitted to rarely opening a paper anymore. One friend sheepishly said that he didn't even read the newspaper at which he had shared two Pulitzer Prizes.

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In any other industry, a product that lost 1 percent of market share for two decades -- only to then double or triple that rate of decline -- would be declared dead. The manufacturer would discontinue it and rush out a replacement product more in line with the desires of the marketplace. So, let's finally come out and say: Newspapers are dead. They will never come back. By the end of this decade, the newspaper industry will suffer the same death rate -- 90-plus percent -- that every other industry experiences when run over by a technology revolution.

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The last redoubt for the survival of newspaper was, in my mind, accessibility. Hopping from section to section, story lead to story jump, just seemed so much easier than crawling through a long story on a computer screen. Then I saw the first links embedded in blogs. There was simply nothing in the physical world that could ever hope to match the ability to leap through cyberspace from story to story, file to file, with almost infinite extension.

Looking back, it was then that I stopped reading print newspapers.

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Needless to say, I still read the news, much of it coming from the newspapers I used to religiously read. But I am not reading the "paper," either literally or figuratively, that the publishers want me to read. Throughout the day, I construct my own newspaper in cyberspace, a real-time assemblage of wire service stories, newspaper features, blogs, bulletin boards, columns, etc.

Courtesy of No Left Turns.

"Thus saith the Judge"

Related to my post immediately below, is Jonathan Last's post, "Slaves to the Law," on the "easy faith" of some liberals--but also some religious conservatives, as I heard on Hugh Hewitt's show yesterday--to take the ruling of the court (in this case, Judge Greer's findings of facts regarding Terri Schiavo) as the voice of God.

A reader sent Last an extended excerpt of Lincoln's debate with Douglas, in which Lincoln points out the sole basis for Douglas' support of the Dred Scot ruling:

because a decision of the court is to him a "Thus saith the Lord."

Lincoln goes on to say that Douglas refuses to judge the merit of the case on it own grounds. Indeed, for Douglas, neither reason nor faith address the right or wrongness of the Supreme Court's decision regarding the humanity of slaves.

This is, of course, extraordinary. Any liberal today would rightly denounce such a position as immoral or patently untrue. However, as Last points out, this is what they are doing regarding Judge Greer's decision on Terri Shiavo. They mistake the decisions of a judge (and or court) as the highest authority, above which there is no other arbiter. This casually overlooks, and in so doing, demeans the relevance, indeed, the relative importance of the American citizen's conscience and our understanding of right and wrong.

As some anonymous reader, in the comments under Last's post, says:

The law is a human construct, and it's failures are self-evident to any person who doesn't think Marbury v. Madison was revealed to Moses as an appendix to the Ten Commandments. Whenever the laws and courts fail us, as they are doing with respect to Mrs. Schiavo, the response isn't to shrug our shoulders and bloviate about Judge Greer and the wisdom of the Florida Supreme Court. The response is to change the law, or change the judges. Either one will do in this instance.

And change them we must.

Tyranny of the Judiciary

Barbara Boxer at a Moveon.org rally (17 March):

Why would we give lifetime appointments to people who earn up to $200,000 a year, with absolutely a great retirement system, and all the things all Americans wish for, with absolutely no check and balance except that one confirmation vote. So we're saying we think you ought to get nine votes over the 51 required. That isn't too much to ask for such a super important position. There ought to be a super vote. Don't you think so? It's the only check and balance on these people. They're in for life. They don't stand for election like we do, which is scary.

Hugh Hewitt pointed out Boxer's amazing admission that the liberals actually do want a super-majority votes for the confirmation of the President's judges. Evidently, the Constitution's provision for a mere majority is not good enough. But instead of offering arguments and motions to amend the Constitution, the Democrats offer instead to make use of the filibuster in an unprecedented, systematic way for all the judges that they deem out of the mainstream of America.

But I wonder whether if this doesn't show another important liberal position.

The reason that such a "super important position" needs a "super vote" now is that judges are indeed more important now than they were in the Founders days. In fact, set in the context of America's recent cultural and political history--a mainstream which is moving slowly, incrementally but definitely to the right--is that, according to its conservative nature (as Boxer notes, because of the appointment for life), the judiciary is the last federal institution to follow these recent changes.

We have seen the change in the other two branches of Federal government: the House in Gingrich's so-called revolution of '94, the Senate also recently, and the moderately liberal Democratic presidency of Clinton and conservative George W. Bush. I think it helpful to also throw in the long-term trends of the MSM's (Main Stream Media) loss of influence, culminating in the recent discrediting of CBS in "Rathergate"--and, one can add this week's revelations of ABC's making hay out a doubious Republican Schiavo memo (courtesy Powerline).

The line in the sand for the judiciary has been drawn for several years, I suppose. But, it now appears to have escalated: the Democrats have invested themselves, like the Texicans in the Alamo, in such a desperate way. This desperation over the nominations to the judiciary is in fact their last position of power (even if only slight) in our country. Through the judiciary, the Supreme Court in particular, they maintain the legitimacy of their important social and political decisions--among other things, abortion on demand being one of the most important--not to mention the looming questions, "gay marriage" primary among them.

In other words, this recent appeal for a "super majority" vote is an attempt to preserve their tyranny of the judiciary. They can no longer (at least as recently as November, '04) can win a majority of support, so they fall back to their last stronghold and pull up the drawbridge of change to the judiciary, a simple rule of the majority, the means of change available to every other branch of federal government.