The cicrucs continues

• "Terri" tried to speak!
  
  
  

  After a federal appeals court panel rebuffed them yet again, Terri Schiavo's parents made another desperate attempt to keep their brain-damaged daughter alive, telling a judge that she tried to say "I want to live" just minutes before her feeding tube was removed a week ago.
  
  Pinellas Circuit Judge George Greer was expected to announce a decision by noon Saturday on the motion by Bob and Mary Schindler claiming their daughter said "AHHHHH" and "WAAAAAAA" when asked to repeat the phrase "I want to live."
  
  The appeal is seen as a long shot because Greer was the judge who ordered Schiavo's feeding tube removed March 18. Doctors have said Schiavo's previous utterances were involuntary moans consistent with someone in a vegetative state. Attorneys for Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband, argued the Schindlers had abandoned all pretense of the law and were simply making "a pure emotional appeal."

  
  
  
  
  
• "Jeb" Bush (quotes all around folks!) sent thugs to seize "Terri," but were stopped by local police actually upholding the rule of law...
  
  

  Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Schiavo wasn't to be removed from a hospice, Florida law enforcement agents went to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted.
  
  They stopped short when local police told them they would enforce the judge's order, The Miami Herald is reporting today.
  
  Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told police in Pinellas Park, the town where Schiavo lies at Hospice Woodside, that they were on the way to take her to a hospital to resume her feeding. For a brief period Thursday morning, local police — who have officers around the hospice to keep protesters out — prepared for what some sources called a showdown.
  
  In the end, the state agents and the Department of Children and Families backed down, apparently concerned about confronting local police outside the hospice.
  
  “We told them that unless they had the judge with them when they came, they were not going to get in,” a local police source said.
  
  

  
  
  
• Finally, Hunter's diary on Kos is well worth reading. I quote at length:
  
  
  

  
  If you have been paying attention to cable coverage of the Schiavo case, you will see two major themes repeated over and over. First, the repeated bookings of and citings of "witnesses" and "experts" that have previously been debunked, claiming that among other things Ms. Schiavo is "alert and oriented". A neurologist who touts himself as a nominee for "The Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine", an utterly false claim regarding an award that does not exist, has been given apparent run of the airwaves in order to repeatedly assert that Ms. Schiavo is "not that bad", and would be able to "communicate verbally" and "use her arms and legs" under his treatment plan -- a miraculous treatment plan for which, according to Judge Greer, he has been able to offer "no names, no case studies, no videos and no test results". We have even, as many have pointed out, been treated to "psychic" John Edward asserting he was in contact with Terri Schiavo.
  Against this background of exploitation and misinformation, the usual bevy of archconservative media pundits has in the last several days begun to increasingly endorse a premise that is, to any rational mind, remarkable: the notion that because the courts have ruled in this particular fashion, it is now time for individuals and government figures to disregard the courts, and take matters into their own hands.
  We now have a situation in which two dangerous elements are coming together in a manner that is ratings gold for exploitative "news" outlets. Yellow journalism, finally returned in all glory.
  1. Excite and incite viewers with tales that Ms. Schiavo, awake and alert, is being "murdered" within the walls of her hospice by a conspiracy between an abusive husband, bloodthirsty "expert" doctors, and every single state and federal judge to hear the evidence in the case.
  2. Endorse the notion that it may now be time to take Ms. Schiavo by force.
  Unless you are deeply stupid, you can see where this is leading. There have now been about a dozen individuals arrested for trying to enter the clinic to give Terri food or water, an action that (because she cannot swallow) in and of itself stands an excellent chance of killing her. Both Judge Greer and Michael Schiavo are under police protection; Florida lawmakers are finding their pictures on "Wanted" posters; home addresses of Greer and other judges are being distributed. Now we have this report: Media ::
  
  

  SEMINOLE, Fla. -- A man was arrested after trying to steal a weapon from a gun shop so he could "take some action and rescue Terri Schiavo," authorities said.
  Michael W. Mitchell, of Rockford, Ill., entered Randall's Firearms Inc. in Seminole just before 6 p.m. Thursday with a box cutter and tried to steal a gun, said Marianne Pasha, a spokeswoman for the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.
  Mitchell, 50, told deputies he wanted to "take some action and rescue Terri Schiavo" after he visited the Pinellas Park hospice where she lives, Pasha said. [...]
  Randy McKenzie, the owner of Randall's Firearms, said Mitchell pulled out the box cutter and broke the glass on a couple of display cases.
  "He told me if I wasn't on Terri's side then I wasn't on God's side, either," McKenzie told The Associated Press.

  
  
  Now, there are times when the news media is simply sloppy; there are times when journalists simply get stories wrong, and there are times when, as in the trials of Michael Jackson, Kobe, O.J., Martha Stewart, etc., the news channels are simply swept away by their natural tendency towards low-cost voyeurism. But this isn't one of those times. This isn't petty irresponsibility or sloppiness, to be chalked up to the dwindling resources of corporate newsrooms.
  
  

  
  
  

I have heard so much falsities on this- Robert Bork fulminating against "activist judges" on this when those "activist" judges, as it turns out, were Republican appointed conservative judges, that I tend to agree with Hunter here.

My only wish is that if violence were to come of this, and it could be linked to Rupert Murdoch directly, we could revoke his citizenship, seize his assetts under RICO, and deport him.