SC bounces Schiavos: what next for the GOP?
Surprising no one, the Supreme Court has just rejected the appeal by Terri Schiavo’s parents to reinsert her feeding tube.
No doubt GOP grandstanders will try to find a way of spinning this into even more cynical, pro-life base-energizing gold. But the thing that’s worth noting is just how quickly all the federal courts appealed to since Congress passed “Terri’s Law” scuppered the put-up job. If you’re going to be really effective at this kind of tactic, you need to come up with something that’s at least legally plausible enough that you can find one or two of your own judges to rule in favor of it (hell, not even Justices Thomas or Scalia, Cheney’s very own hunting buddy, could be bothered to pen a few words of righteous dissent – a fact that’s more than a little significant).
On the positive side, they did manage to create a good two weeks worth of important distraction and misdirection (so far), a broad media blast shield behind which they had the freedom from scrutiny to do who knows what. As long as the “press” continues its complicitity in trucking the slack-jawed bread-and-circuses crowd from one politically staged trainwreck to the next, we have the moral equivalent of totalitarian news suppression, only funner! The power elites have demonstrated they can effectively shut down the investigative function without resorting to the off-putting ham-handedness of Soviet-style censorship.
Of course, they can’t do it without us. The dumber we are, the more easily we’re distracted by shiny baubles and carny shows, the easier we are to manipulate, to herd.
Eye on the ball, people….
lullaby pit 
Reminds me of the way I hear the Nazis would put on carnivals and street plays and beer hall singalongs, to keep the people entertained..
Did you expect this to keep going? New news came out of the Social Security Board of Directors yesterday. That’s what they needed this diversion for! Your right, though….eyes on the ball
Yes, this is good for distraction. But there is a serious legal issue (or three — I don’t even want to touch the federalism thing) going on here as well. Accept the point of view of many of the parents’ supporters and you have effectively canceled the usefulness of any health care proxy/living will. What we seem to be hearing here is that if the patient can’t speak for him/herself and the family can’t agree, then you can throw out any formal (proxy) or informal (who’s the next of kin) designation of who CAN speak. IOW, if you’re being kept alive by artificial means and your next of kin can’t agree, you are assumed to want to be kept alive by any means possible, regardless. Of course, if they all lived in NYS, this thing would have been settled the other way — NYS won’t allow removal of feeding tubes without something in writing. Do you care about not being in Terri Schiavo’s position? Then don’t tune this one out entirely.