Column/Legend
1 - Prefix  - L-Life,  H-Homosexual Behavior/Perversion, R-Religion/Legal Persecution/ACLU, E-Education, M-Media Bias, O-Other
2-7 - Yr, Mo, Dy
8 - L -Letter to Editor, C-Commentary, O-Op-Ed, M-Metro

Hotlink Index of this weeks's family values related news:  [Life]   [Homosexual Behavior/Perversion]   [Religion/Religious Persecution]   [Education]   [Media]   [Other]

LIFE
L050327C    In search of justice
L050328       Necessary politics
L050328       Schiavo seen as past 'point of no return'
L050328E    Terri's tragedy
L050329       Ad campaign
L050329       Justices won't reinstate Idaho abortion law
L050329       WEST VIRGINIA   Governor signs 'Laci's bill'
L050329      Shifting arguments
L050329C    Ploy Chorus . . . law libretto
L050329E    Charges of hypocrisy
L050330C    The way of suffering
L050330Md Ehrlich torn on stem cell funding
L050331      Appeals court refuses to intervene in Schiavo case
L050331      'Save the filibuster'
L050331      Schiavo dies 13 days after tube removed
L050331C    Unwitting disciples . . . medical unknowns
L050401       Death ends Terri Schiavo's struggle
L050401       Hillary's silence
L050401C    Benchmarks of imbalance and death
L050401E    Terri's death
L050401E    The culture of life and death
L050402L    The Terri Schiavo tragedy

HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR/PERVERSION
H050328Md Delegate defends remarks on homosexual 'hate'
H050331      NEW YORK    Virulent HIV strain seen in several cases
H050401      MAINE   Lawmakers OK new gay-rights bill
H050402      More Americans oppose gay 'marriage,' poll finds

RELIGION/RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
R050328       Ohio revolt
R050328C     Rush to judgment
R050329       Court told to ignore global issues in case
R050329       Jury's Bible use voids death penalty
R050330      Colorado ruling in murder case angers Christians
R050330C    Lessons . . . and lapses
R050331       MISSISSIPPI   Legislature OKs Commandments bill
R050401       Pro-lifers hear call to overhaul 'arrogant' judiciary
R050402       Bush, Laura push faith-based effort, mentors for youth
R050402M   Local Catholics pray for pontiff

EDUCATION
E050330       Study finds liberals dominate faculties

MEDIA
M050329     Biased press corps
M050331     Not newsworthy
M050331E   Showtime in Washington
M050401C  Lowest common TV denominator
M050402C  Clean-up call

OTHER
O050330Md First cousins wed in Maryland
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By John Phillips
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Pope John Paul II was on the brink of death last night as his health took a sharp downturn, and tens of thousands of pilgrims and Romans gathered in St. Peter's Square in silent vigil for the fading pontiff.
     The Roman Catholic Church prepared the faithful for the close of one of its longest pontificates, after the Vatican said the 84-year-old pontiff had received the special Communion for those near death, the Holy Viaticum, upon suffering heart and kidney insufficiency.
    The Holy See firmly denied a series of unsubstantiated Italian media reports that the frail Polish pope already had died.
    Early yesterday, the Vatican said John Paul was in "very grave" condition after being smitten with blood poisoning from a urinary-tract infection the previous night, but that he was "fully conscious and extraordinarily serene." The pope was being treated by the Vatican medical team and declined to be hospitalized.
    By nightfall yesterday, the pope's condition had worsened, and he was suffering from kidney failure and shortness of breath, but had not lost consciousness as of 9:30 p.m., the Vatican said.
     About 60,000 people from around the world congregated in a specially illuminated St. Peter's Square under the window of the pope's study on the third story of the Apostolic Palace to pray for John Paul into the early hours today.
    In other parts of the world, specifically in the pope's native Poland, the Philippines and Nigeria, large crowds assembled to pray for the pontiff.
     Monsignor Angelo Comastri, the pope's vicar-general in the Vatican, led the fervent throng in recitation of the rosary and then urged them not to leave the square, but "to accompany the Holy Father in the silence of the evening."
     The pope "is about to die," Mexican Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan told Mexican Televisa television from the Vatican.
    John Paul "is in agony, on the point of dying," the prelate said. "I have spoken to the doctors, and they told me that there is no more hope."
     Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the pope's vicar of Rome, who, under Vatican protocol, must announce the pontiff's death, said during a special Mass for John Paul that the pope "already sees and touches the Lord."
     The White House said that President Bush and his wife were praying for the pope and that the world's concern was "a testimony to his greatness."
    Karol Wojtyla became a priest in 1946, just as the Iron Curtain descended across Europe, and the inspiration he provided as Pope John Paul II helped to tear it down.
    "Fifty percent of the collapse of communism is his doing," Lech Walesa, founder of the Solidarity movement that toppled communism in Poland from 1989 to '90, told the Associated Press yesterday. Without the pope's leadership, "communism would have fallen, but much later and in a bloody way," he said.
    Yesterday began with the chief Vatican spokesman, Joaquin Navarro Valls, announcing that the pope's condition was "very grave" after he developed a urinary-tract infection that caused a high fever, then heart failure on Thursday evening. Also on Thursday evening, the pope received the last rites from his cherished personal secretary, Monsignor Stanislaw Dziwisz.
    These conditions followed the use of a nasal tube to feed the pope, who has lost weight during weeks of precarious health and two hospital stays. Mr. Navarro-Valls, nevertheless, said then that the pope was "conscious, lucid and serene" and that yesterday morning he had concelebrated Holy Mass.
    Italian police closed off most of Vatican City to traffic yesterday, and Italy's political parties suspended campaigning for regional elections in a sign of respect for John Paul, who as the bishop of Rome earned the respect of Italians in spite of being the first non-Italian pope in more than 400 years.
     Hopes that the pope might pull through faded after a medical bulletin yesterday evening said, "The Holy Father's general and cardiorespiratory condition worsened further; his breathing became superficial," and that his heart and kidney functions were "insufficient."
     The pope early yesterday asked to be read the 14 stations of the Way of the Cross.
    "He followed the reading attentively, and I saw that he made the sign of the cross," Mr. Navarro-Valls said. The 14 stations are a set of prayers depicting the last hours of Jesus Christ.
     John Paul then asked to be read excerpts from the Scriptures, before receiving -- one at a time -- some of his closest aides to bid them farewell, including Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state, and the pope's personal theologian, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the spokesman said.
    Mr. Navarro-Valls choked up with emotion when he was asked how he felt seeing the pope's losing struggle against death.
     "Certainly, this was an image I never saw in the past 26 years," he said tearfully.
     Also tearful in St. Peter's Square were groups of young Poles.
     "This is our pope, and we want to be near him in the last moments of his life," said Anna, a young woman who was among a group of 10 Poles who traveled from Warsaw and Krakow to St. Peter's.
    "This is the first time we find ourselves near the death of a pope. The pain is immense."
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H050402   More Americans oppose gay 'marriage,' poll finds
 

By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Public opposition to "marriages" between homosexuals is at an all-time high, according to a poll released yesterday.
    When asked whether they thought same-sex "marriages" should be recognized by the law as valid and come with the same rights as traditional marriages, 68 percent of the respondents in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll said they should not.
    Twenty-eight percent said same-sex "marriages" should be valid and 4 percent had no opinion. The survey of 443 adults was conducted March 18 to 20.
    A similar poll by Gallup last year found that 55 percent thought homosexual "marriages" should not be valid, while 42 percent said they should be recognized.
    In addition, 466 adults were asked in the same time period what marital arrangements they thought should be recognized for homosexual couples.
    The poll found that 20 percent favored same-sex "marriage," 27 percent said civil unions, and 45 percent said "neither."
    When asked whether they favored a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as "between a man and a woman," 57 percent said yes, while 37 percent were opposed.
    Last year, 48 percent favored the amendment and 46 percent opposed it.
    Currently, 43 states have laws that bar recognition of same-sex "marriages," according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
    Twenty-six states have only statutes defining marriage as being between a man and a woman, and 17 have constitutional language. Seven states -- Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island and Wisconsin -- have neither.
    Kansas voters will decide Tuesday whether their state should amend its constitution to outlaw same-sex "marriage." Voters in Alabama, South Dakota and Tennessee will weigh in on the issue next year.
    The debate is a complex one. The South Carolina state Senate will vote on a bill Thursday that would place the question on the state's 2006 ballot.
    One economist told the lawmakers that the state will lose "money, talent and opportunity" if it gains a reputation as being intolerant. The economist cited a 1993 study that found anti-homosexual attitudes in Cincinnati cost the city $46 million in convention business.
    Meanwhile, Connecticut's state Finance Revenue and Bonding Committee approved a bill Wednesday granting same-sex couples the same rights as traditional married couples. The General Assembly will vote on the matter next month.
    Things differ in one corner of the consumer realm, however.
    "Same-sex marriage might have polarized lawmakers, but it has galvanized advertisers in the gay press," the Gay Press Report said March 21.
    The survey from New York-based Rivendell Media found that spending on advertising in 139 homosexual publications reached $207 million last year, an increase of 28 percent from 2003. Fifteen percent of ads for services were for same-sex "wedding" consultants, the analysis found.
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R050402   Bush, Laura push faith-based effort, mentors for youth
 

By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

President Bush yesterday said Congress must ensure that faith-based groups are "not forced to give up their right to hire people of their own faith as a price for competing for federal money."
    "Part of making sure you can do your job is to make sure regulations don't stand in the way of doing your job," Mr. Bush told a group of religious leaders and mentors at Paul Junior High Public Charter School in Northwest.
    The president and first lady Laura Bush visited the school to speak about an initiative that urges at-risk children to shun gangs and drugs and avoid making dead-end choices.
    "Children throughout America face a lot of problems," Mrs. Bush said about her initiative, Helping America's Youth, which stresses that every child needs a caring adult, a relative or a mentor.
    "In the fall, we're hosting a White House conference on helping America's youth, bringing together researchers, community leaders, educators and others who want to find solutions to the challenges young Americans face," she said.
    Before yesterday's event, the first couple met with four children whose parents have spent time in prison. Each was accompanied by a mentor.
    "We're using your example to inspire others," Mr. Bush told them. "We're saying to mentors, 'It's a very noble service. You're making a huge contribution.' "
    In his speech, Mr. Bush told the story of Lexus Henderson, a seventh-grader at the school who lives with his grandmother because his mother is in prison. The teen has big plans: He told the president he's going to attend the University of Miami.
    "I'll put in a good word with the governor," the president said, referring to his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
    Mr. Bush also pushed his initiative to give religious groups more power to compete with nonsectarian groups for federal contracts.
    During the roundtable, he noted that "the first step is to counter a certain prejudice, and you can understand why: there is separation of church and state, and there should be."
    "But there's a fundamental difference between funding a program that proselytizes and funding a program that helps meet a societal objective," he said.
    "I think there's a vital role for government to play, but first we've got to understand the limitations of government. Government can do a lot of things, but one of the things government is not really good at is love. It can hand out money, but it can't put hope in a person's heart. It can't serve to inspire a person to set goals, like going to college."
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L050401   Death ends Terri Schiavo's struggle
 

By Vickie Chachere
ASSOCIATED PRESS

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. — Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman who spent 15 years connected to a feeding tube in an epic legal and medical battle that went all the way to the White House and Congress, died yesterday, 13 days after the tube was removed. She was 41.
    Cradled by her husband, Mrs. Schiavo died a "calm, peaceful and gentle death" at about 9 a.m., with a stuffed animal under her arm and flowers arranged around her hospice room, said George Felos, the attorney for her husband, Michael Schiavo.
    No one from her side of the family was with her at the moment of her death. Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, were not at the hospice, Mr. Felos said. Her brother had been barred from the room at Mr. Schiavo's request moments before the end came.
    In yet another dispute between Mrs. Schiavo's husband and his in-laws, Mr. Schiavo will get custody of his wife's body and will have it cremated.
    Michael Schiavo's brother, Scott Schiavo, said the ashes will be buried in an undisclosed location near Philadelphia so that her immediate family cannot attend "and turn the moment into a press spectacle." A funeral Mass, sought by the Schindlers, tentatively was scheduled for Tuesday or Wednesday.
    "Mr. Schiavo's overriding concern here was to provide for Terri a peaceful death with dignity," said Mr. Felos, who also was present at the death.
    But the Rev. Frank Pavone, one of the Schindlers' spiritual advisers, called her death "a killing," adding: "And for that we not only grieve that Terri has passed, but we grieve that our nation has allowed such an atrocity as this and we pray that it will never happen again."
    Mrs. Schiavo suffered brain damage in 1990 and fell into what court-appointed doctors called a persistent vegetative state, with no real consciousness or chance of recovery, after a chemical imbalance caused her heart to stop. She had left no written instructions in the event she became disabled.
    Her husband argued that she told him long ago that she would not want to be kept alive artificially. Her parents disputed that, and held out hope for a miracle recovery for a daughter they said still laughed with them and struggled to talk.
    Outside the hospice — where during the past few weeks more than 50 protesters were arrested, many for trying to symbolically bring Mrs. Schiavo food and water — demonstrators wept, prayed and sang hymns. Some threw down their signs in protest.
     "You saw a murder happening," said one demonstrator, Dominique Hanks.
    Mrs. Schiavo's body was taken in an unmarked white van with police motorcycle escort to the Pinellas County medical examiner's office, where an autopsy was planned that both sides hoped would shed light on the extent of her brain damage and whether she was abused by her husband, as the Schindlers have argued.
    The ill will between Michael Schiavo and his in-laws became plain in other ways: The Schindlers' advisers complained that Mrs. Schiavo's brother and sister had been at her bedside a few minutes before the end came, but were not there at the moment of her death because Mr. Schiavo would not let them in the room.
    "And so his heartless cruelty continues until this very last moment," Father Pavone said.
    Mr. Felos disputed the Schindler family's account. He said Mrs. Schiavo's siblings had been asked to leave the room so that the hospice staff could examine her, and her brother, Bobby Schindler, started arguing with a law-enforcement official.
    Mr. Schiavo feared a "potentially explosive" situation, and would not allow the brother in the room, Mr. Felos said. "Mrs. Schiavo had a right to have her last and final moments on this earth be experienced by a spirit of love and not of acrimony," the attorney said.
    Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother, said that Mrs. Schiavo's death "is a window through which we can see the many issues left unresolved in our families and in our society. For that, we can be thankful for all that the life of Terri Schiavo has taught us."
    Before she was stricken, Mrs. Schiavo had recurring battles with her weight, and her collapse at age 26 was thought to have been caused by an eating disorder. Her parents, who visited her nearly every day, reported their daughter responded to their voices, and video showed her appearing to interact with her family. But the court-appointed doctors said the noises and facial expressions were reflexes.
    Both sides accused each other of being motivated by greed over a $1 million medical-malpractice award from doctors who failed to diagnose the chemical imbalance.
    Mrs. Schiavo's feeding tube was removed briefly in 2001. It was reinserted after two days when a court intervened. In October 2003, the tube was removed again, but Mr. Bush rushed Terri's Law through the Florida Legislature and had the tube reinserted after six days. The Florida Supreme Court later struck down the law as unconstitutional interference in the judicial system.
    The case prompted many people to ponder what they would want if they, too, were in such a desperate medical situation, and many rushed to draw up living wills. The case also led to a furious debate over the proper role of government in life-and-death decisions, and whether the Republicans in Congress violated their party's principles of limited government and deference to the states by getting involved.
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R050401   Pro-lifers hear call to overhaul 'arrogant' judiciary
 

By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Terri Schiavo's death is expected to have major political ramifications as pro-lifers declare war on the judiciary and galvanize for the coming fight over Supreme Court vacancies.
    "We will look at an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president," said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Texas Republican. "We will look into that."
    The Rev. Flip Benham, director of Operation Rescue, lamented, "The courts of this land have become the tool, in the hands of the devil, by which the culture of death has found access."
    Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh bluntly blamed the judiciary for "ordering the starvation" of Mrs. Schiavo.
    The Florida woman who died yesterday after her feeding tube had been disconnected nearly two weeks earlier has become a martyr for conservatives, who planned to avenge her death by fighting to put pro-life justices on the Supreme Court as soon as vacancies arise. They also vowed to prevent the Schiavo case from becoming any kind of legal precedent.
    Democrats were not relishing the prospect of open warfare against an energized, motivated pro-life movement. Yet Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, promised to mount a spirited defense against the conservatives.
    "They are seeking to take away the independence of the judiciary — the crown jewel in our system of government — so that they can advance their own ideological agenda of the day," the Massachusetts Democrat said during a speech in Boston.
    "That is exactly the kind of tyranny that our ancestors fought to prevent," he added. "And I pledge to you, that as long as I have a voice, I will continue to fight it as well."
    President Bush encouraged pro-lifers to redouble their efforts in the wake of Mrs. Schiavo's death.
    "I urge all those who honor Terri Schiavo to continue to work to build a culture of life, where all Americans are welcomed and valued and protected, especially those who live at the mercy of others," he told reporters in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
    "The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak," he added. "In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in the favor of life."
    The president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, said, "I hope that from this, that all of us can grow as people in terms of our appreciation for end-of-life issues."
    Other Republicans have blamed the courts for failing to follow through on Congress' wishes, and say there is a looming clash between the legislature and the courts.
    "This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change," said Mr. DeLay. "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today. Today we grieve, we pray and we hope to God this fate never befalls another."
    House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican, said the courts ignored Congress' intent, encapsulated in a law passed in an overnight session, that Mrs. Schiavo be given "an opportunity for a new, full and fresh review in federal court of her right to receive life-sustaining treatment."
    Now, Mr. Sensenbrenner said, Congress should pass the original broader House version of legislation intended to save Mrs. Schiavo, which stalled in the Senate.
    "Terri's will to live should serve as an inspiration and impetus for action," he said. "I am hopeful the Senate will join the House in passing the Protection of Incapacitated Persons Act to assist those whose circumstances mirror Terri Schiavo's, and ensure others with disabilities do not receive the same treatment by our legal system."
    Meanwhile, at the Supreme Court, which repeatedly refused to take the Schiavo case, questions remain about such "persistent vegetative state" cases. One key question raised by the Schiavo matter centers on whether a distinction can be drawn between life-support machines and feeding tubes when deciding the person's right to live or die.
    Although it is unlikely, given the high court's apparent lack of desire to delve into such matters in the past, the justices could address the question later this year when they weigh a case over a law in Oregon, the only state with a law specifically allowing assisted suicide.
    In February, the court said it would hear a Bush administration challenge to Oregon's Death With Dignity Act, which says doctors can help terminally ill patients commit suicide. More than 170 people have committed assisted suicide in Oregon since the state enacted the law in 1997.
    In agreeing to weigh the matter, the justices said they will review a lower court ruling that bars the federal government from pressing criminal charges against doctors who prescribe overdoses to help people die more quickly.
    Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for the high court's next term, which begins in October.
    • Stephen Dinan and Guy Taylor contributed to this report.
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L050401   Hillary's silence
    "As the nation bitterly debates the Terri Schiavo case, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has tried to stay above the fray, refusing to take sides and staying as quiet as possible," the New York Post's Deborah Orin wrote in a column published yesterday before Mrs. Schiavo's death.
    "Some strategists say that's smart as she revs up for a 2008 presidential race and helps her move to the center just like her very public push to reach out to right-to-lifers on abortion. Others say it's a big blunder," Miss Orin said.
    The columnist added: "Insiders say the strategy on the Schiavo case among Senate Democrats crafted by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) was to deliberately finesse the issue by having a voice vote on the issue so no individual senator would have to take a stand.
    "Clinton refuses to say if she'd have voted yes or no on the measure inviting federal courts to enter the case, and instead issued a noncommittal statement saying the courts should 'do what they do best' and decide Schiavo's fate."
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H050401   MAINE   Lawmakers OK new gay-rights bill
    AUGUSTA -- State lawmakers gave final approval Wednesday night to a bill to protect homosexuals from discrimination. It was expected to be signed yesterday by Gov. John Baldacci.
    The bill would amend the Maine Human Rights Act by making it illegal to discriminate in employment, housing, credit, public accommodations and education based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
    The state Senate approved the bill 25-10; the House voted 91-58. There was no debate in either chamber. A previous homosexual-rights law was repealed in a referendum.

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L050331   Schiavo dies 13 days after tube removed
 

ASSOCIATED PRESS

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. -- Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman who spent 15 years connected to a feeding tube in an epic legal and medical battle that went all the way to the White House and Congress, died today, 13 days after the tube was removed. She was 41.
    Schiavo died about 9 a.m. at the Pinellas Park hospice where she lay for years while her husband and her parents fought over her in what was easily the longest, most bitter - and most heavily litigated - right-to-die dispute in U.S. history.
    Michael Schiavo was at his wife's bedside, cradling her, when she died a "calm, peaceful and gentle" death, a stuffed animal under her arm, and flowers arranged around the room, said his attorney, George Felos. Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, were not at the hospice at the time, he said.
    "Mr. Schiavo's overriding concern here was to provide for Terri a peaceful death with dignity," Felos said. "This death was not for the siblings, and not for the spouse and not for the parents. This was for Terri."
    The feud between the parents and their son-in-law continued even after her death: The Schindlers' advisers complained that Schiavo's brother and sister had been at her bedside a few minutes before the end came, but were not there at the moment of her death because Michael Schiavo would not let them in the room.
    "And so his heartless cruelty continues until this very last moment," said the Rev. Frank Pavone, a Roman Catholic priest. He added: "This is not only a death, with all the sadness that brings, but this is a killing, and for that we not only grieve that Terri has passed but we grieve that our nation has allowed such an atrocity as this and we pray that it will never happen again."
    Felos disputed the Schindler family's account. He said that Terri Schiavo's siblings had been asked to leave the room so that the hospice staff could examine her, and the brother started arguing with a law enforcement official. Michael Schiavo feared a "potentially explosive" situation and would not allow the brother in the room, because he wanted his wife's death to take place in a calm and peaceful surroundings, Felos said.
    "She's got all of her dignity back. She's now in heaven, she's now with God, and she's walking with grace," Michael Schiavo's brother, Scott Schiavo, said at his Levittown, Pa., home.
    House Republican Leader Tom DeLay condemned the judges who at both the state and federal level declined to order that Schiavo be kept alive artificially.
    "I never thought I'd see the day when a U.S. judge stopped feeding a living American so that they took 14 days to die," he said.
    Outside the hospice, a small group of activists sang hymns, raising their hands to the sky and closing their eyes. After the tube that supplied a nutrient solution was disconnected, protesters had streamed into Pinellas Park to keep vigil outside her hospice, with many arrested as they tried to bring her food and water.
    Dawn Kozsey, 47, a musician who was among those outside Schiavo's hospice, wept. "Words cannot express the rage I feel," she said. "Is my heart broken for this? Yes."
    Schiavo suffered severe brain damage in 1990 after her heart stopped because of a chemical imbalance that was believed to have been brought on by an eating disorder. Court-appointed doctors ruled she was in a persistent vegetative state, with no real consciousness or chance of recovery.
    She left no written instructions, but her husband argued that his wife told him long ago she would not want to be kept alive artificially. His in-laws disputed that, saying that would have gone against her Roman Catholic faith, and they contended she could get better with treatment. They said she laughed, cried, responded to them and tried to talk.
    Over and over, Pinellas County Circuit Judge George W. Greer said that Michael Schiavo had convinced him that Terri Schiavo would not have wanted to be kept alive under such conditions. The feeding tube was removed with the judge's approval March 18 - the third time food and water were cut off during the seven-year legal battle.
    Florida lawmakers, Congress, President Bush and his brother Gov. Jeb Bush tried to intervene on behalf of her parents, but state and federal courts at all levels repeatedly ruled in favor of her husband.
    The case focused national attention on living wills, prompting perhaps thousands of Americans to discuss their end-of-life wishes with their loved ones and put their instructions in writing. The dispute also stirred a furious debate over the proper role of government in such life-and-death decisions. And it led to allegations that Republicans in Congress were pandering to the religious right and violating their own political principles of limited government and states' rights.
    In Washington, the president said he was saddened by the death.
    "The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak," Bush said. "In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in favor of life."
    In Rome, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, head of the Vatican's office for sainthood, called the removal of the feeding tube "an attack against God."
    An autopsy is planned, with both sides hoping it will shed more light on the extent of her brain injuries and whether she was abused by her husband, as the Schindlers have argued. In what was the source of yet another dispute between the husband and his in-laws, Michael Schiavo will get custody of the body and plans to have her cremated and bury the ashes in the Schiavo family plot in Pennsylvania.
    A funeral Mass, sought by the Schindlers, was tentatively scheduled for Tuesday or Wednesday.
    Gov. Jeb Bush said that millions of people around the world will be "deeply grieved" by her death but that the debate over her fate could help others grapple with end-of-life issues.
    "After an extraordinarily difficult and tragic journey, Terri Schiavo is at rest," he said. "I remain convinced, however, that Terri's death is a window through which we can see the many issues left unresolved in our families and in our society. For that, we can be thankful for all that the life of Terri Schiavo has taught us."
    Although several right-to-die cases have been fought in the courts across the nation in recent years, none had been this public, drawn-out and bitter.
    Six times, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene. As Schiavo's life ebbed away earlier this month, Congress rushed through a bill to allow the federal courts to take up the case. President Bush signed it March 21. But the federal courts refused to intervene.
    Described by her family as a shy woman who loved animals, music and basketball, Terri Schindler grew up in Pennsylvania and battled a weight problem in her youth.
    "And then when she lost all the weight, she really became quite beautiful on the outside as well. What was inside she allowed to shine out at that point," a friend, Diane Meyer, said in 2003.
    She met Michael Schiavo - pronounced SHY-voh - at Bucks County Community College near Philadelphia in 1982. They wed two years later. After they moved to Florida, she worked in an insurance agency.
    But recurring battles with weight led to the eating disorder that was blamed for her collapse at 26. Doctors said she suffered severe brain damage when her heart stopped beating because of a potassium imbalance. Her brain was deprived of oxygen for 10 minutes before she was revived, doctors estimated.
    Because Terri Schiavo did not leave written wishes on her care, Florida law gave preference to Michael Schiavo over her parents. But the law also recognizes parents as having crucial opinions in the care of an incapacitated person.
    A court-appointed physician testified her brain damage was so severe that there was no hope she would ever have any cognitive abilities.
    Still, her parents, who visited her nearly every day, reported their daughter responded to their voices. Video showing the dark-haired woman appearing to interact with her family was televised nationally. But the court-appointed doctor said the noises and facial expressions were reflexes.
    Both sides accused each other of being motivated by greed over a $1 million medical malpractice award from doctors who failed to diagnose the chemical imbalance.
    However, that money, which Michael Schiavo received in 1993, has all but evaporated, spent on his wife's care and the court fight. Just $40,000 to $50,000 remained as of mid-March.
    Michael Schiavo's lawyers suggested the Schindlers wanted to get some of the money. And the Schindlers questioned their son-in-law's sincerity, saying he never mentioned his wife's wishes until winning the malpractice case.
    The parents tried to have Michael Schiavo removed as his wife's guardian because he lives with another woman and has two children with her. Michael Schiavo refused to divorce his wife, saying he feared the Schindlers would ignore her desire to die.
    Schiavo lived in her brain-damaged state longer than two other young women whose cases brought right-to-die issues to the forefront of public attention.
    Karen Quinlan lived for more than a decade in a vegetative state - brought on by alcohol and drugs in 1975 when she was 21; New Jersey courts let her parents take her off a respirator a year after her injury. Nancy Cruzan, who was 25 when a 1983 car crash placed her in a vegetative state, lived nearly eight years before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that her parents could withdraw her feeding tube.
    Schiavo's feeding tube was briefly removed in 2001. It was reinserted after two days when a court intervened. In October 2003, the tube was removed again, but Gov. Jeb Bush rushed Terri's Law through the Legislature, allowing the state to have the feeding tube reinserted after six days. The Florida Supreme Court later struck down the law as unconstitutional interference in the judicial system by the executive branch.
    Nearly two weeks ago, the tube was removed for a third and final time.
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L050331   Appeals court refuses to intervene in Schiavo case

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (AP) -- A federal appeals court raised a flicker of hope for the parents of Terri Schiavo, but snuffed it out yesterday by emphatically refusing to intervene in the battle and harshly chiding the elected branches of government for getting involved.
    "Any further action by our court or the district court would be improper," wrote Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr., a member of the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "While the members of her family and the members of Congress have acted in a way that is both fervent and sincere, the time has come for dispassionate discharge of duty."
    The judge, who was appointed in 1990 by the first President Bush, went on to deliver a scathing attack on elected officials who tried to intervene to rehook the brain-damaged Florida woman's food and water tubes.
    The White House and Congress "have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people -- our Constitution," Judge Birch wrote.
    The Schindlers appealed the refusal to the U.S. Supreme Court last night, but the nine justices took less than two hours to issue a one-sentence order declining to review the Atlanta court's decision.
    The rulings came as Mrs. Schiavo, 41, began her 13th day without food and water. She was expected to survive one to two weeks after her feeding tube was removed by court order March 18.
    Mrs. Schiavo's parents said their daughter still looked "surprisingly good" and pleaded with supporters to keep up efforts to reconnect her feeding tube before it is too late.
    "I'm asking that nobody throw in the towel as long as she's fighting, to keep fighting with her," Bob Schindler said after visiting his daughter yesterday afternoon.
    The appeals court raised the Schindlers' hopes late Tuesday when it agreed to consider their emergency bid for a new hearing in the case. But 15 hours later, the court ruled against granting a hearing -- the fourth time since last week that it ruled against the Schindlers.
    The parents asked that the feeding tube be reinserted immediately "in light of the magnitude of what is at stake and the urgency of the action required."
    The Schindlers' motion included arguments that the 11th Circuit in its earlier rulings did not consider whether there was enough "clear and convincing" evidence that Mrs. Schiavo would have chosen to die in her current condition.
    To be granted, the parents' request would have needed the support of seven of the court's 12 judges. The court did not disclose the vote breakdown.
    Judges Gerald Tjoflat and Charles R. Wilson, the two judges who also issued a dissenting opinion last week when the full court considered the case for the first time, said the harried pace of appeals made it impossible to determine whether state courts properly considered the evidence.
    The two dissenters, appointed by Presidents Ford and Clinton respectively, said yesterday, "It is fully within Congress' power to dictate standards of review" for federal courts. "Indeed, if Congress cannot do so, the fate of hundreds of federal statutes would be called into question."
    Federal courts were given jurisdiction to review Mrs. Schiavo's case after Congress passed emergency legislation aimed at prolonging her life.
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R050331   MISSISSIPPI   Legislature OKs Commandments bill
    JACKSON -- The Mississippi House yesterday overwhelmingly approved a bill that would allow the Ten Commandments and other religious texts to be placed in public buildings, a day after the Senate also approved it.
    The legislation now goes before Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican who is "inclined to sign" it, his spokesman Pete Smith said.
    The measure passed the House by a 97-15 vote and the Senate by a 40-4 vote despite warnings from some lawmakers that the state should wait until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of displaying the Ten Commandments on public property.
    Mississippi has had a law since 2001 requiring the motto "In God We Trust" to be posted in public schools. The new bill would allow the motto, the Ten Commandments and excerpts from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount to be posted in all public buildings.
    The U.S. high court heard arguments earlier this month in cases involving a 6-foot granite monument on the Texas Capitol grounds and framed copies of the Ten Commandments in two Kentucky courthouses.
    It is the court's first consideration of the issue since 1980, when justices ruled the Ten Commandments could not be displayed in public schools. Mississippi's 2001 law has never been challenged.
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H050331   NEW YORK    Virulent HIV strain seen in several cases
    NEW YORK -- Health officials have identified several patients potentially infected with a rare strain of highly drug-resistant HIV, but are not sure whether the cases are related.
    The first case of the strain was reported last month in a man who had unprotected sex with dozens of other men while under the influence of crystal methamphetamine.
    Officials then contacted sex partners identified by the infected man, and began surveying city HIV laboratories for patients with possibly related strains, the New York Times reported in yesterday's editions.
    City officials would not say how many patients had been identified as possibly being infected with the strain, and said it could take months to determine whether their infections are related to the first case.
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L050331    'Save the filibuster'
    A liberal judicial-advocacy group has teamed up with Hollywood and a Republican from Los Angeles to spend millions of dollars on a campaign to "save the filibuster."
    People For the American Way, which is leading the charge against several of President Bush's nominees to the federal appeals court, began airing a commercial yesterday that would run in 18 states with Republican senators during April.
    PFAW President Ralph G. Neas said the group will spend $5 million or more on the campaign.
    Mr. Neas and many Democrats are worried about the threat by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and other Republicans to use a rare parliamentary procedure to circumvent filibusters against seven of Mr. Bush's nominees. Democrats call the maneuver the "nuclear option" for its potential to blow up Senate decorum, and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has promised to stall most Senate business if the option is used.
    At a press conference yesterday, Mr. Neas introduced a television commercial featuring a Republican Los Angeles firefighter who said he has voted for Mr. Bush twice.
    "I like that my party controls the White House and the Congress," Ted Nonini says. "But I also know that our democracy works best when both parties are speaking out and being heard."
    The ad was conceived by TV producer and PFAW founder Norman Lear, Mr. Neas said, and opens with the famous filibuster scene in the 1939 classic "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" featuring Jimmy Stewart.
    Conservative strategists dismissed the significance of the PFAW campaign, Charles Hurt of The Washington Times reports. One Republican noted that the filibuster portrayed in the fictional movie isn't even under threat because the "nuclear option" would target only judicial nominees and not regular legislation.
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M050331   Not newsworthy
    "Wherever Jesse Jackson goes the media usually follow and on Tuesday the cable news networks highlighted his arrival outside the Florida hospice care facility holding Terri Schiavo, but the day Jackson took the side of those wishing to save Schiavo, and put a Democratic face with those on the side of her life, ABC's 'World News Tonight' suddenly found the whole matter unnewsworthy," the Media Research Center's Brent Baker writes at www.mediaresearch.org.
    "For the first time in more than 10 days, the newscast had no Schiavo story and didn't utter a syllable about Jackson, but Peter Jennings found time to pick up on a liberal cause celebre, abuse of prisoners in Iraq, as he showcased how 'the American Civil Liberties Union has released' what Jennings characterized as 'a rather damning memo ... written by the former senior U.S. military commander.'
    "On CBS, Bob Schieffer gave a few words to Jackson. Of the broadcast network evening shows, only NBC aired a clip of him or showed any video of him," Mr. Baker said.
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R050330   Colorado ruling in murder case angers Christians
 

By Valerie Richardson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

DENVER — Barry Arrington can quote entire books of the Bible from memory, which could present a problem if he's ever called for jury duty, given a decision this week by the Colorado Supreme Court.
    In a 3-2 ruling, the state's high court upheld a lower court's decision to spare convicted murderer Robert Harlan from execution because jurors consulted a Bible during the sentencing phase. Harlan instead will receive life in prison without parole.
    The decision has touched off protests from Christians and social conservatives, including Mr. Arrington, who see it as another example of a judiciary determined to marginalize traditional beliefs.
    "Does this mean I can never sit on a jury?" said Mr. Arrington, a lawyer from Arvada, Colo. "Everyone brings a store of cultural, religious and moral values to the jury room. Would it have been different if someone merely quoted the Bible from memory?"
    In its opinion, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled jurors went beyond relying on their own individual religious knowledge when they brought a Bible into the deliberation room. One of the verses consulted by jurors was Leviticus 24:20-21, the "eye for an eye" passage.
    "Some jurors may view biblical texts like the Leviticus passage at issue here as a factual representation of God's will," the court said. "The text may also be viewed as a legal instruction, issuing from God, requiring a particular and mandatory punishment for murder."
    Republican Gov. Bill Owens criticized the decision as "demeaning to people of faith" and said it would allow a murderer to avoid execution on "a technicality."
    In the dissent, Justice Nancy E. Rice said the presumption that jurors could not distinguish between biblical passages and jury instructions "is to underestimate their intelligence and to belittle their participation in our legal system."
    Harlan, 40, was sentenced to death in 1995 for the kidnapping, rape and murder of cocktail waitress Rhonda Maloney. Harlan also shot and paralyzed Jacquie Creazzo, a good Samaritan who tried to aid Miss Maloney during an escape attempt.
    Harlan's attorneys argued that the jury violated the judge's instructions when they brought outside materials into the jury room.
    "It's a well-established rule that jurors can't consult outside sources in their decision-making, whether it's the Bible or 'The DaVinci Code,'" said Ayesha N. Khan, legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
    But the decision's critics said it would be impossible for most people to put aside their religious or moral beliefs when weighing life or death. They also argue that the Bible contains other passages that could be cited to oppose a death sentence, such as Jesus's admonition to "turn the other cheek."
    The Adams County District Attorney's Office now is considering whether to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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E050330   Study finds liberals dominate faculties
 

By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Nearly three-quarters of faculty members at U.S. colleges and universities describe themselves as liberals, and at elite schools, the proportion is 87 percent, a survey has found.
    What's more, half say they are Democrats and 51 percent indicate they seldom or never attend church, according to the survey, published in the March issue of the online political journal Forum.
    "You would expect the majority of English literature and sociology professors to be liberals, but our survey found that 66 percent of those in physics and 64 percent of those in chemistry are liberals," said S. Robert Lichter, a communications professor at George Mason University and an author of the study.
    In English literature, 88 percent are liberals and 3 percent are conservative, the survey found.
    "And in sociology, 59 percent said they are Democrats and 0 percent said they are Republicans," said Mr. Lichter, who also heads the Center for Media and Public Affairs.
    In addition, more than two-thirds of faculty members surveyed say they either strongly (44 percent) or somewhat agree (23 percent) that a "homosexual lifestyle" is acceptable. About 84 percent say they support abortion rights.
    The survey, based on data from the 1999 North American Academic Study Survey, questioned 1,643 teachers at 183 four-year higher-education institutions nationwide.
    It also found that 15 percent of college faculty members overall consider themselves conservative and 11 percent say they are Republicans. Fewer than a third (31 percent) describe themselves as regular churchgoers.
    The findings were compiled by Mr. Lichter, in collaboration with Stanley Rothman and Neil Nevitte. Mr. Rothman, the study's director, is a retired political science professor at Smith College. Mr. Nevitte is a political science professor at the University of Toronto.
    Said Mr. Lichter: "This is the richest lure of information on faculty ideology in 20 years. And this is the first study that statistically proves bias [against conservatives] in the hiring and promotion of faculty members."
    Mr. Rothman agreed. He said the survey "clearly showed" that faculty members who are "conservative, religious and female are less likely to get good jobs" on college campuses and be promoted than other women.
    "Republicans get worse jobs than Democrats," Mr. Lichter said.
    The ideological shift to the left among college faculty has become much more pronounced in the past 20 years. In a 1984 survey by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 39 percent of faculty said they were liberals.
    Peter Sprigg, senior director of policy studies for the Family Research Council, said the study proves that "American academia is overwhelmingly dominated by liberal secularists."
    He said it's time they engage in real "diversity" and hire faculty members who reflect the values and "conservatism of Americans at large."
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R050329   Court told to ignore global issues in case
 

By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Texas Solicitor General R. Ted Cruz yesterday told the Supreme Court that it "need not and should not address the issues of international law that surround the case" of a Mexican national on death row.
    Justice Antonin Scalia said, "But they are interesting."
    The case stems from an appeal by convicted rapist-murderer Jose Medellin, one of 51 Mexican nationals whose cases were ordered re-examined last year by the U.N. International Court of Justice (ICJ). The inmates were never told of their rights to promptly consult the Mexican Consulate upon their arrests.
    The ICJ, the United Nations' highest judicial body, said the Mexican nationals were denied the rights guaranteed under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a 1963 treaty ratified by about 160 countries, including the United States.
    President Bush bowed to the ruling last month and ordered new state court hearings for the 51 Mexicans, although it remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court, which is expected to rule this summer, will agree to do the same.
    The justices yesterday appeared to be deeply interested in debating international law and the extent to which treaties such as the one at issue apply to the U.S. Constitution and to the power of the Supreme Court and lower courts.
    There are 119 foreign nationals on death row in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Although the president's order applies to 51 Mexicans, about a week after making it, he then withdrew the United States from the portion of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations that gives the ICJ power to decide such cases.
    Medellin was one of five Houston gang members sentenced to death for repeatedly raping, then murdering two teenage girls, Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16, in a city park in 1993. During the initial trial, Medellin's defense lawyer was appointed despite being suspended from practicing law for ethical violations in another case, according to court papers.
    Texas courts denied multiple appeals by Medellin, but the case received new life in 2003, when the Mexican government filed the lawsuit at the ICJ, after learning of Medellin through letters he wrote from death row.
    At the opening of yesterday's arguments, Medellin's lawyer, Donald F. Donovan, surprised the justices by requesting that they delay ruling on the case because Mr. Bush had ordered it back to Texas courts for reconsideration.
    The justices appeared skeptical.
    "I think granting a stay could be seen as validating the position of the government," Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said.
    "Why can't we just decide the case?" Justice Sandra Day O'Connor asked.
    Justice Scalia, meanwhile, asked whether an international treaty could "give away" the power of the Supreme Court to rule on such matters.
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L050329   Justices won't reinstate Idaho abortion law
 

By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Supreme Court yesterday without comment declined to reinstate an Idaho law that required girls under age 18 to have permission from their parents to get an abortion legally.
    The rejection marked the second time in as many months that the high court has declined to weigh in on abortion matters. Last month, the justices refused to reopen Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that legalized abortion nationwide in 1973.
    Yesterday's development effectively lets stand a ruling by San Francisco's 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to permit teenage girls in Idaho to have abortions without their parents' permission. The Idaho law allowed abortions for minors without permission only in cases of extreme medical emergency.
    According to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, 44 states have laws on the books requiring parental consent or notification prior to a minor's having an abortion. Thirty-three laws are in effect, and six states and the District have no such law.
    In 1992, the last time the Supreme Court reviewed Roe v. Wade, the justices upheld the fundamental constitutional right of women to choose abortion. At the time, three of the court's current members, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, sought to have the ruling overturned.
    On another matter yesterday, the Supreme Court declined to review a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that says journalists in that state can be held liable if they report defamatory comments made by government officials.
    The case stems from a 1995 article in the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pa., which, according to the Associated Press, described one council member as "strongly implying" that another council member and the city's mayor were "queers and child molesters."
    While the council member who made the remarks was ordered to pay $17,500 in damages, a lower court ruled that the newspaper's owner, one of its editors and a reporter were protected by the "neutral reportage privilege" because they were journalists.
    However, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the ruling on grounds the privilege was not upheld by the U.S. or state constitutions. The Supreme Court's rejection yesterday of the newspaper's appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling effectively sends the case back to lower courts for the journalists to face trial.
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R050329   Jury's Bible use voids death penalty

DENVER (AP) -- The Colorado Supreme Court yesterday threw out the death penalty in a rape and murder case because jurors had studied Bible verses such as "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" during deliberations.
    On a 3-2 vote, justices ordered Robert Harlan to serve life in prison without parole for kidnapping 25-year-old cocktail waitress Rhonda Maloney in 1994, raping her at gunpoint for two hours and then fatally shooting her.
    The jurors in Harlan's 1995 trial sentenced him to die, but defense attorneys discovered five of them had looked up Bible verses, copied them down and talked about them while deliberating a sentence behind closed doors.
    The Supreme Court said "at least one juror in this case could have been influenced by these authoritative passages to vote for the death penalty when he or she may otherwise have voted for a life sentence."
    Assistant District Attorney Michael Goodbee said prosecutors were reviewing the ruling and could ask the state Supreme Court to reconsider or could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
    During oral arguments before the Supreme Court last month, defense attorney Kathleen Lord said the jurors had gone outside of the law.
    "They went to the Bible to find out God's position on capital punishment," she said.
    Prosecutors had argued that jurors should be allowed to refer to the Bible or other religious texts during deliberations.
    Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, said the ruling was "demeaning to people of faith and prevents justice from being served."
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L050329   Shifting arguments

    "The sad case of Terri Schiavo has raised passions not seen since five years ago. Then another bitterly divided family argued in Florida courts over someone who couldn't speak on his own behalf: Elian Gonzalez," John Fund writes at www.OpinionJournal.com.
    "In both cases, those who were unhappy with the courts' decisions strained to assert the federal government's power to produce a different outcome. The difference is that in Mrs. Schiavo's case, Congress backed off after passing a bill that merely asked a federal court to hear the case from scratch, something that U.S. District Judge James Whittemore declined to do. By contrast, those who wanted the federal government to intervene in Elian Gonzalez's case went all the way, supporting a predawn armed federal raid on the morning before Easter to seize the 6-year-old boy despite a federal appeals court's refusal to order his surrender," Mr. Fund said.
    "Both cases were marked with hypocrisy and political posturing galore. Both times some conservative Republicans talked about issuing subpoenas to compel the person at the center of the case to appear before Congress; they swiftly backed down when public opinion failed to support their stunt. Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, argued that by opposing Elian's return to his father in communist Cuba, conservatives were abandoning the principle that 'the state should not supersede the parents' wishes.' In the case of Terri Schiavo, many conservatives who normally support spousal rights decided that Michael Schiavo's decision to abandon his marital vows while at the same time refusing to divorce his wife rendered him unfit to override the wishes of his wife's parents to have her cared for.
    "But liberals have gotten off easy for some of the somersaulting arguments they have made on behalf of judicial independence and states' rights to justify their position that Terri Schiavo should not be saved. Many made the opposite arguments in the Elian Gonzalez case."
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M050329   Biased press corps

    "Two Washington press corps veterans have conceded that the news media have a bias against religious believers," the Media Research Center's Brent Baker writes at www.mediaresearch.org.
    "On CNN's 'Reliable Sources' on Sunday, New Republic Senior Editor Michelle Cottle asserted that journalists 'behave as though the people who believe' in widely held Christian values 'are on the fringe.'
    "Steve Roberts, who noted how he 'worked for the New York Times for 25 years,' revealed: 'I could probably count on one hand, in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, people who would describe themselves as people of faith.'
    "That disconnect hurt the media, Roberts suggested, in how 'there was so much attention ... on the rockers and the sports celebrities who were registering voters.' Roberts asked: 'And how many stories did we see about that compared to the pastors and churches in Ohio who were registering ten times as many voters?' "
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L050329   Ad campaign

    Senate Democrats and their outside allies are launching a pre-emptive attack against Republican efforts to block judicial nominee filibusters.
    Roll Call reports the Democrats will run a series of cable television advertisements as a prelude to the coming fight over a likely Supreme Court nomination while Republicans ramp up efforts to curtail the filibuster of President Bush's judicial nominees.
    Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican, has threatened to end the ability of lawmakers to filibuster judicial nominees, a so-called "nuclear option" that Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, has said will result in Senate Democrats shutting down Congress.
    With nationally sponsored ads by MoveOn.org already running, other groups are entering the fray on the Democratic side.
    The ads are part of the Democrats' efforts to continue the coordination they have applied to the Social Security reform debate.
    The judicial-nominee flank reportedly will involve not only lawmakers and their aides, but also labor unions and other interest groups.
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L050329    WEST VIRGINIA   Governor signs 'Laci's bill'

    CHARLESTON -- Gov. Joe Manchin III yesterday signed a bill that will treat unborn children in West Virginia as separate victims in most violent crimes.
    The Unborn Victims of Violence Act was dubbed "Laci's bill" after Laci Peterson, the pregnant California woman who was slain by her husband. The measure would make it a separate crime to commit acts of violence against an embryo or a fetus.
    Members of West Virginians for Life, the bill's main champions, were on hand for the signing by the Democratic governor, according to TV station WTAP in Parkersburg.
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L050328   Schiavo seen as past 'point of no return'
 

By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Easter Sunday did not bring a miracle for the family of Terri Schiavo, though the 41-year-old woman was allowed her first nourishment in nine days, when a priest gave her a drop of Communion wine.
     Nine days of starvation and dehydration have put Mrs. Schiavo beyond "the point of no return," and yesterday, she was put on a morphine drip to ease the pain of death. David Gibbs, attorney for Mrs. Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, said Mrs. Schiavo's health is "declining rapidly."
    "We believe she has at this point passed where physically she would be able to recover. They've begun to give her morphine drip for the pain. And at this point, we would say Terri has passed the point of no return," Mr. Gibbs said yesterday on CBS' "Face the Nation."
    Her family signaled increasing resignation by advising protesters to spend Easter with their families. Their estranged son-in-law, Michael Schiavo, relented to their request that Mrs. Schiavo receive Communion on the day that Christians celebrate the Resurrection of Christ.
    "I beg Michael Schiavo, for the love of God, to allow Terri Schiavo, a practicing Roman Catholic, to have Holy Communion on the highest feast of our church," Brother Paul O'Donnell, a Franciscan monk, had said earlier in the day.
    Later, Monsignor Thaddeus Malanowski, the Schindlers' lead religious adviser, told reporters that he gave Mrs. Schiavo a drop of consecrated wine on her tongue. He said he could not give her a fleck of the consecrated bread because her tongue was too dry. He also administered the last rites, anointing her with holy oil and giving a blessing.
    Doctors have said Mrs. Schiavo is unable to swallow, and her husband has won court orders against any attempt to feed her orally.
    The priest's announcement drew applause and cheers from the crowd gathered outside Woodside Hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla.
    The Rev. Rob Johansen, a Michigan priest and friend and adviser to the Schindlers, said the Communion matters because "Jesus Christ said, 'This is my body and soul' at the Last Supper. It is the most intimate connection we can make with Our Lord this side of eternity."
    Mrs. Schiavo's parents said they are not giving up hope, but urged supporters to spend Easter with their families.
    "She is fighting like hell to stay alive. I want the powers that be to know that it is not too late to save her. She does not want to die," Mr. Schindler said.
    Before Monsignor Malanowski administered Communion, ministers tried to get past police to do the same, and protesters in wheelchairs climbed out to block a driveway and shouted, "We're not dead yet."
    Nearly 40 protesters, including six children, have been arrested at the hospice in the past week, including some who were trying to bring Mrs. Schiavo water. Mrs. Schiavo's brother, Bobby Schindler, asked the supporters to tone down the behavior yesterday and "keep it prayerful and peaceful."
    "We are not going to solve the problem today by getting arrested. We can change laws, but we are not going to change them today," Mr. Schindler said.
    Mr. Schiavo had no public comment yesterday, but his brother, Scott Schiavo, said Saturday that he looked forward to ending the ordeal.
    "He knows in his heart he is doing the right thing. He is doing what Terri wanted," Scott Schiavo said. "He's having a hard time understanding why people are fighting him on this, why they are calling him a murderer. It's very tough on him."
    The Schindlers appear to have exhausted all legal remedies through state and federal courts, Congress, the Supreme Court and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who said yesterday that he is "sad that she's in the situation that she's in."
    But Mr. Bush also told CNN: "I cannot violate a court order. I don't have powers from the United States Constitution, or for that matter from the Florida Constitution, that would allow me to intervene after a decision has been made."
    Catholic Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington, appearing on ABC's "This Week," called the court orders enabling Mr. Schiavo to starve his wife to death "euthanasia."
    The church "would say, 'You cannot do that. You cannot take a life,' "he said.
    Mr. Gibbs credited Mr. Bush for attempting to intervene at the last minute through the Department of Children and Families.
    "Governor Bush has been a real friend to the Schindler family. And we believe he's done everything he can to be a help," he said.
    •This article is based in part on wire service reports.
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L050328   Necessary politics
    "Democrats, and others, have accused Republicans and President Bush of playing politics with the Schiavo case. Let's hope so. Unlike most, this is a necessary politics that ought to draw the whole country into the argument," the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger wrote on Friday.
    "For a long time, abortion has constricted the life-and-choice debate. It's bigger now. Just weeks before Terri Schiavo became a household name, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review Oregon's Death With Dignity Act.
    "To put the partisanship of the issue as crudely (and clearly) as possible: Republicans are said to have a pro-'life' litmus test for judicial nominees. Does this mean that President Hillary Clinton's litmus test would require her judicial nominees to be: pro-abortion, pro-partial-birth abortion, pro-right-to-suicide and pro-pull-the-plug on medical cases deemed hopeless?" Mr. Henninger asked.
    "I don't think the Democrats want to be the right-to-die party, though they have somehow accumulated all these lethal affiliations involving matters of individual choice. In fact, there is a constituency, even a bipartisan constituency, for this general ethic. For 20 years, ethicists such as Daniel Callahan of the Hastings Center have been arguing that a lack of resources may oblige society to withhold extraordinary care from, say, people over 85. Former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm famously popularized a 'duty to die' for the very ill elderly.
    "In 25 years, the baby boomers will be on the cusp of 85, becoming what a physician friend has called 'history's healthiest generation of Alzheimer's patients.' As the tsunami of red ink collapses the struts beneath the tar-paper shacks of Medicare and Social Security (which the congressional elders say isn't broken) the 'scarce resource' argument will re-emerge, with soothing persuasiveness, for triaging the most ill among us, very old or very young.
    "The outpouring of support to give Terri Schiavo back to her parents may prove quixotic, but it ensures that these future questions of who lives and who dies won't be decided by the professional class alone in conferences and courtrooms. It will be done in full view, where it belongs."
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R050328    Ohio revolt
    Christian conservative leaders "from scores of Ohio's fastest-growing churches" hope to elect Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell as governor in 2006 and to take control of local Republican organizations, the New York Times reports.
    "The establishment of the Ohio Republican Party is out of touch with its base," Russell Johnson, pastor of the Fairfield Christian Church and the principal organizer of the Ohio Restoration Project, told reporter James Dao. "It acts as if it lives in Boston, Massachusetts."
    The church leaders hope to mobilize 2,000 evangelical, Baptist, Pentecostal and Roman Catholic leaders "in a network of so-called Patriot Pastors to register half a million new voters, enlist activists, train candidates and endorse conservative causes in the next year," the reporter said.
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M050402C   Clean-up call
 

By L. Brent Bozell III

Parents across America should thank Time magazine for putting the issue of indecency in broadcast and cable television front and center last week, asking the question, "Has TV gone too far?" The poll commissioned by Time suggested the majority of Americans believe so. Most want a change.
    Time's poll found more than half of America's TV watchers -- 53 percent -- think the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should put stricter controls on broadcast-channel shows depicting sexual content and violence. An imposing 68 percent believe the entertainment industry has lost touch with the moral standards of the audience.
    So much for Hollywood's cushiest defense: We only reflect society. Society is now responding, loudly and unambiguously: No, you're dramatically out of touch.
    The numbers condemning Tinseltown's cascade: 66 percent said there is too much violence on open-air TV, 58 percent said there's too much cursing, and 50 percent found too much sexual content, the Time poll said. So upset is the public that about 49 percent agree FCC regulation should be extended to cover basic cable, which often includes raunchy MTV reality shows and FX's over-the-top "The Shield" and "Nip/Tuck." This is no fluke. Other polls have found similar results.
    In February, a Fox News-Opinion Dynamics poll asked: "In general, do you think Hollywood moviemakers share your values or not?" Thirteen percent said yes, but an overwhelming 70 percent said no. Fox News also asked, "Do you think Hollywood is in touch with the life of the average American, or is Hollywood out of touch with most Americans?" Nineteen percent said Hollywood is in touch; 72 percent said out of touch. The issue crosses party lines: 61 percent of Democrats agreed Hollywood does not reflect most American's values.
    After last November's election, a CBS/New York Times survey asked, "What kind of impact would you say Hollywood is having on popular culture? Is Hollywood lowering the moral standards, raising the moral standards or not having much impact on the moral standards of popular culture?" That may seem like asking if the sky is blue, but 62 percent of those polled agreed Hollywood lowers the public morality. Six percent, comprised of the clueless and those employed by the entertainment industry, ridiculously said Hollywood raises moral standards.
    The CBS/Times poll also inquired, "How worried are you that popular culture -- that is, television, movies and music -- is lowering the moral standards in this country: very worried, somewhat worried, not too worried or not at all worried?" The largest segment, 40 percent chose "very worried," and another 30 percent said "somewhat worried." That's another poll showing 70 percent of Americans are telling Hollywood it is going overboard. (The tiniest answer was "not at all worried" at 12 percent. I would bet most members of that minority aren't trying to raise children today.)
    Last year, the Chicago Tribune asked about sleazy language on the radio: "How about radio personalities who use implicit or explicit sexual expressions on the air? Should they be allowed to be on the air, or should they not be allowed?" Thirty percent said it should be allowed, and 64 percent said no.
    The Tribune pollsters explicitly asked about Washington's controversial role in policing the airwaves: "Recently, the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, began fining radio station owners hundreds of thousands of dollars for broadcasts they considered indecent. This led to the cancellation of some shows. Do you approve or disapprove of the FCC's actions?" Again, there's a chasm in public opinion: 58 percent support major fines; only 33 percent do not. And this is again bipartisan: 51 percent of Democrats favored major fines.
    Finally, consider a Gallup poll question from last year: "In your view, does the entertainment industry need to make a serious effort to significantly reduce the amount of sex and violence in its movies, television shows and music, or don't you think they need to do this?" Again, 75 percent say Tinseltown, Motown, and any other entertainment towns need to tone it down. Only 24 percent says they favored the current system of profit-seeking provocation -- for example, televised scenes of on-air orgies, forced oral sex and disembodied limbs thrown to tigers -- favoring whatever circus will goose the ratings numbers.
    The public is making its feelings known, in poll after poll. This issue won't go away. And the anything-goes entertainment elite is not on the winning end. It's time to clean up.

    L. Brent Bozell III is founder and president of the Parents Television Council and a nationally syndicated columnist.
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L050401C   Benchmarks of imbalance and death
 

By Linda Chavez

As Terri Schiavo lay dying, her organs slowly mummifying from the effects of prolonged, court-ordered dehydration and starvation, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from her parents that might have saved her life.
    Her parents argued Mrs. Schiavo's right to due process under the law had been denied, a claim summarily rejected -- without even the pretense of a full hearing -- by a District Court and upheld by the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Less than a week later, however, the Supreme Court sat in rapt attention as attorneys argued a very different life-and-death case, this one involving a convicted rapist and murderer whose case found its way to the high court because he is a noncitizen who, it is claimed, was denied full and adequate access to diplomats from his home country when criminally charged.
    In both cases, lower courts had already ordered the termination of life -- in the case of Terri Schiavo, by refusing her food and water on the basis of a Florida state court ruling; in the case of Jose Ernesto Medellin, by the judgment of a Texas jury he was guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt" of raping and murdering two teenage girls in 1992.
    So, why did the court give so much more deference to Medellin's claims than to Mrs. Schiavo's parents? It's hard to escape the conclusion it is because many people, including the judges who have considered her case, believe Terry Schiavo's disabilities render her no longer fully human. And in this judgment the medical establishment is fully complicit.
    The very term used to describe Mrs. Schiavo's condition -- persistent vegetative state -- conjures up images of a subhuman, subanimal life form.
    As one health-care professional wrote me after hearing me on television describe the pain Mrs. Schiavo might suffer as she slowly dehydrated to death, "If you touch a venus fly trap plant (a stimuli) it will immediately close its petals (a reaction). That doesn't mean it feels or cognizes [sic] that there is a fly that has landed." Few public comments have been as blunt, but the sentiment seeps through nonetheless in the words we use to describe Mrs. Schiavo's condition.
    Although the media endlessly tried to compare Mrs. Schiavo's predicament to that of cancer or Alzheimer's patients whose families choose to withhold or withdraw life-support at the end of their lives, Mrs. Schiavo was not dying -- at least not until a judge ordered she not be fed or given water. She required no machines to help her breathe, no kidney dialysis to remove toxins from her body, no pacemaker to regulate her heartbeat.
    She was even able to swallow on her own -- she swallowed two liters of saliva every day, until severe hydration turned her mouth and tongue to dry leather -- which raises the possibility she may not even have required the feeding tube the judge ordered removed. Until her court-ordered ordeal, she was a relatively healthy, if severely brain damaged woman whose longevity alone was testament to a will to live.
    Those who wanted to end Terri Schiavo's life did everything in their power to dehumanize her. But Terri was not a "vegetable." She was not "brain dead." She was severely disabled. She could not care for herself. She could not "think" or communicate normally. But she was a person in the clear meaning of the Constitution, that is unless we have now collectively written such persons out of the Constitution.
    We have been down this road before when we bought and sold Africans and their progeny as mere "property" and when our courts determined the unborn are not persons unless their mothers choose to carry them to term.
    Now we seem on the verge of declaring -- de facto -- that the severely mentally deficient are not persons either. Who will be next -- the homosexual suffering from AIDS-related dementia, the Alzheimer's patient who cannot feed herself, the infant with cerebral palsy or spina bifida or hydrocephalus? Will we suddenly find it convenient, even merciful, to let them starve?
    The Rev. Jesse Jackson joined protesters outside Mrs. Schiavo's hospice Tuesday, declaring, "This is one of the profound moral and ethical breaches of our time. ...we pray for a miracle." It should not take a miracle to convince the Supreme Court an innocent, brain-damaged woman deserved as much consideration as a convicted rapist and murderer.
    But we live in dark times.

    Linda Chavez is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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M050401C   Lowest common TV denominator
 

By R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.

Look around. We are achieving our strategic ends in the Middle East faster than expected.
    Freedom and stability unimaginable only a few years ago are now in sight. Never in the region's history has such a thing been thought possible.
    The domestic economy is sound and growing. The president is moving toward tax simplification and Social Security and tort reform: He believes in and is willing to fight for them rather than spend his last years in office shaking hands and smiling.
    So what is the talk of the media, specifically cable television? Aside from the botched discussion of the fate of Mrs. Terri Schiavo it is the saga of Michael Jackson, a creep who appeals solely to creeps and to the more sophisticated sorts who feast on stories of money and notoriety -- which is to say celebrity.
    I say the botched discussion of the Schiavo case because serious science and serious ethics have been drowned out by sentiment and ignorance. Again journalism has not been up to the challenge of history.
    Yet to return to the appalling Jackson case: He has suffered a setback. The judge has ruled the jury can hear allegations of sexual abuse in his past with at least five other boys, one of whom received more than $20 million in an out-of-court settlement. This is very good news if only because it may hasten the day when the cable news sages move on to something of greater importance -- for instance, implementation of the first U.S. shift in strategic policy since 1947 when President Harry Truman adopted the policy of "containment" toward the Soviet Union. Our new policy for confronting terrorism and Islamofascism is pre-emption. Surely it deserves equal time with Michael Jackson's teddy bears, pornography and mannequins, which he collected at his idiot manse, Neverland. After that, cable television might address the looming domestic battles over President Bush's new policies at home constituting his "ownership society."
    The tone adopted by cable news sages for the Michael Jackson trial and the nonsensical world Mr. Jackson inhabits is hypocrisy at its best. First there is the omniscience. The sages talk as if they know just everything about this case and this creep. Second is a tone of moral and intellectual superiority, about precisely what it is difficult to say. But the sages are markedly superior. So why do they gab on about it? Well, they are slumming. From their perches of superiority, they dip down to give viewers an amusing glimpse of the creep and his case.
    As for the creep himself, he has finally settled on his defense. He is the victim of prejudice and of a "conspiracy."
    In other words, he will use the same defense tactics the Clintons used. Do not be surprised if he begins talking about a "Vast White-Thing Conspiracy." Interviewed the other day by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, theologian and humanitarian, the creep claimed he is being persecuted as other "black luminaries" have been. He mentioned Nelson Mandela and two former heavyweight champions. He already has alluded to a conspiracy besetting him. He said, "A lot of conspiracy is going on as we speak." Hillary and Bill know just what he is talking about.
    Michael Jackson is one of the pop culture phenomena of the celebrity era. Modestly talented in one area, he has by clever marketing amassed a vast amount of money. With that legitimatization, he went on to claim an array of talents he manifestly lacks. He can dance. That is about it.
    He is also repulsive and spectacularly stupid. In his interview with the Rev. Jackson, this lifelong musician made this memorable statement: "I loved the album that Tchaikovsky did, the 'Nutcracker' Suite. It's an album where every song is a great song." I did not actually hear this interview, but I wonder. Did the Rev. and the King of Pop then commence to sing a few ditties from the "Nutcracker"? Did they mention any other albums by this guy Tchaikovsky?
    The level of intellect now maintained on cable news is, if possible, even lower than the intellect maintained throughout the rest of televisionland with the sane exception of C-Span.
    After the Michael Jackson trial ends, one wonders, what will come next? Perhaps this guy Tchaikovsky will be indicted for some weird transgression. They say out there on his ranch he does some strange things with those nutcrackers.

    R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator, a contributing editor to the New York Sun, and an adjunct scholar at the Hudson Institute. His latest book is "Madame Hillary: the Dark Road to the White House."
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L050331C   Unwitting disciples . . . medical unknowns
 

By David Limbaugh

There is a perverted, sinister sickness in Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, glamorizing Terri Schiavo's death, saying she looks "beautiful" and is "resting comfortably."
    Mr. Felos' statement is presumptuous, extraordinarily insensitive and powerfully offensive, especially given contrary accounts of Terri's family and their lawyers. They say she is emaciated, her eyes sunken, her skin flaking, she's bleeding from eyes and mouth and desperately trying to cry for help.
    Terri's sister, Suzanne Vitadamo, said, "It's like someone who is coming out of a bunker in Auschwitz." Brother Bobby Schindler said, "This is heinous what's happening, absolutely heinous -- this is absolutely barbaric. If she is in fact dying so peacefully and easily, why not allow a camera in there to videotape it?"
    I offer Mr. Felos' gratuitous observation as Exhibit A to the assertion made by me and others that an element in our society doesn't just promote so-called privacy, but affirmatively pushes the "death option." There is something eerily repugnant in Mr. Felos' glow about Terri's plight.
    I realize many, including some who believe Terri's life ought to be spared, believe this "pro-death" characterization is over the top, but all things considered, I truly don't.
    Of course I'm not saying everyone who believes Terri's feeding tube ought not to be restored are death-worshippers. I'm not saying that even those as callous as Mr. Felos seems, deliberately genuflect at the altar of death.
    But I am saying all too many have become unwitting disciples of a pagan death cult, which romanticizes death and the death process, and disturbingly discounts the universal human will to live. At the very least they are blind agents in the incremental, inexorable devaluation of sacred human life.
    They would have you believe, just as the pro-abortionists, that they are primarily interested in vindicating the choice, freedom and intent of the patient. Yet they don't seem remotely interested in finding what Terri's choice really is, just as the pro-abortionists do their level best to deprive pregnant women contemplating an abortion of information that might militate against making a choice for life.
    They seem completely untroubled that Terri left no written declaration of her intention not to be kept alive, much less via feeding tube. They are unfazed that the only evidence she wants to die is the testimony of an estranged husband who somehow didn't remember to mention it in the first years of her disability when he was pursuing a malpractice award. Why wasn't he trying to honor "her wishes" then?
    They appear entirely impervious to statements from Terri's parents and siblings, and from some of her medical providers, that Terri does want to live, which, if true, would cancel any past contrary expression made, if at all, many years before.
    They are so incurious about the many irregularities in this case, especially Terri's reported current will to live, one must conclude they are biased against keeping alive severely brain-damaged people, regardless of their intent, past or present.
    If Terri doesn't want to live, why did she make loud noises when told all she needed to do to stay alive was express her will to live? Even forgetting everything else, if there is any chance she was trying to express her desire to live, we have no moral authority to permit her to be killed.
    The fact Michael's defenders turn a deaf ear to Terri's cries and casually dismiss the very real possibility she has a will to live that transcends her brain damage proves it isn't her intent they seek to honor, but their superior opinion that she doesn't need to be kept alive in these circumstances. Rationalize if you must, but they are resolving all doubts against life and making their decision on subjective quality-of-life assessments.
    Some doubtlessly will respond that the courts have painstakingly considered all the evidence. While I am skeptical about that, I don't believe courts should have the authority to authorize killing an otherwise healthy woman in these circumstances, especially when she left no written directive. I hope state legislatures promptly address this travesty.
    The enlightened among us pride themselves in rejecting the idea of slippery slopes, but it hardly takes a Nostradamus to see what our approach to the Schiavo case could lead to in the near future.
    As long as we presume to play God by sanctioning killing a physically healthy, sometimes-conscious woman today, who very well might want to live, there is no reason to believe other vulnerable individuals will be spared down the road.
    Then people will be even more sophisticated in characterizing their destruction of humanity as humane. "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death."

    David Limbaugh is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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R050330C   Lessons . . . and lapses
 

By Cal Thomas

The Terri Schiavo case has been a perfect media storm and an object lesson.
    For the media, it served as a metaphor for much of what divides us: pro-life versus pro-choice; religious versus secular; wife versus husband versus parents/in-laws; church versus state.
    Many religious leaders (and certain members of Congress) at first distinguished themselves by standing on principle and appealing to the state to preserve Terri Schiavo's life. But a few called for defying authority, suggesting Florida officials disobey court orders, "rescue" Terri from her hospice bed and reinsert her feeding tube.
    The Miami Herald reported Saturday that agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told police in Pinellas Park they were planning such an operation. The newspaper said agents backed down rather than confront local police outside the hospice. Certain people seem to be arguing that only those laws and judicial rulings with which they agree are to be obeyed. That invites anarchy.
    Some of those calling for the law to be disobeyed were ordained clergy, which is especially troubling.
    What do these ordained men mean by encouraging people to break the law? Have they not read, or taken seriously, Romans 13, the chapter in which Paul, the Apostle, says, "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves."
    The footnote in the New International Version reminds the reader the "governing authorities" at the time these verses were written were probably pagans and Paul said to submit to them anyway. That's difficult to get around, especially for those who take the Bible seriously, if not literally.
    Should Gov. Jeb Bush have defied the courts and ordered that Terri Schiavo be "rescued"? Perhaps he had such authority, perhaps not. But that does not give people, especially Christians, the right to rebel against judicial authority. Only when they are ordered to stop preaching the Gospel are they permitted to disobey. They can, and should, work within the system to change judges and the way laws are interpreted.
    Christians, especially, put themselves in the position of using politics and civil authority to force those who do not accept their religious premises and beliefs to behave as if they do. To achieve their objectives, would they be more effective laboring inside hospices for days, weeks, even years in support of the infirm, or do they best advance their cause outside hospices, performing for eager cameras and quote-takers?
    This does not demean the substance of their pro-life argument, which I share, but it does suggest they may be employing inferior weapons -- such as politics and the media -- instead of superior ones, such as grace and selflessness.
    It does not help their argument that some clerical and political leaders had e-mails and Web pages that directed people to links that afford them the opportunity to make contributions, not necessarily to Terri Schiavo, but to the "ministry" of her self-appointed defenders.
    The biggest lesson from the Schiavo case -- and it is one that must be sent to as many people as possible -- is this: The courts are a mess and need reforming. Judges should be appointed who believe not only in the Constitution, but also that our rights are endowed from outside the state. Fundamental rights are not granted or denied by judges who create and eliminate them at will.
    Had Terri Schiavo been pregnant and wanted to abort, her husband would have no legal say in the matter, but he has ultimate power over her life and death. Isn't it legally inconsistent that courts may no longer sentence 17-year-old killers to death, but Terri Schiavo, who has injured no one, has been sentenced to death by the courts?
    Here is a political-moral-ethical question worthy of continued debate. That debate must not die with Terri Schiavo. If it goes on, she will have taught many a valuable lesson and her life will have made an important contribution to the nation and to others in the future who will share her condition, but not necessarily her fate.

    Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist.
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L050330C   The way of suffering
 

By Lawrence Kudlow

Life involves suffering. Too often we forget this or don't like to be reminded of it. But suffering and pain are as much a part of our lives as joy and celebration.
    Easter was celebrated this past weekend. For Christians it was a day of celebration. Jesus Christ was resurrected; He rose to heaven to be at the right side of his Father -- a glorious event. But as the Rev. John Neuhaus reminds us in "Death on a Friday Afternoon," the darkness of Good Friday preceded the light of Easter Sunday.
    Jesus had to go through extraordinary suffering and pain before he could fulfill God's plan for him. Jesus' suffering was as crucial to the salvation and redemption of Christians as was His final death and resurrection. It is not only His joyous resurrection that allows us to be cleansed from sin, it was His suffering that enables us to be born again.
    Writing in the New York Sun last week, George Weigel said, "Embracing suffering is a concept alien to us. And yet suffering embraced in obedience to God's will is at the center of Christianity. ... The Christ of the Gospels reaches out and embraces suffering as his destiny, his vocation -- and is vindicated in that self-sacrifice on Easter."
    Mr. Weigel then explained that John Paul II, in the weakness and suffering of his current illness, is a "tremendous encouragement to the elderly, the sick, the disabled and the dying, who find strength and hope in his example." The pope has suffered through a huge physical struggle. But at bottom, he is a "Christian pastor who is going to challenge us with the message of the cross," Mr. Weigel wrote, "the message of Good Friday and Easter -- until the end."
    Terri Schiavo is part of the unfortunate army of the sick, disabled and dying. She is suffering in obedience to God's will. It is an Easter story, although a very painful one. But the legal establishment and mainstream media elite do not understand suffering in this religious context. So it appears they would rather do away with her.
    Inexplicably, the U.S. court system is determined to take Mrs. Schiavo's life. I say inexplicably because the courts have chosen to disregard the morality of life, the religious belief in life, the culture of life. Inexplicable because all Americans of faith believe that in situations like this we should, as President Bush has said, err on the side of life. But the courts have chosen to disregard this thought -- this belief.
    In so many cases, our courts are not bashful when it comes to ruling on moral questions, even when it means overruling state legislatures or the intent of Congress or the thinking of other courts. It's also not uncommon for legislators to weigh in on such matters. National Review editor Rich Lowry recently reminded us of federal habeas review appeals of death sentences, reviews of civil rights violations, and legislative actions in defense of women and the disabled.
    Think of the recent Supreme Court decision that overturned capital punishment for minors. That decision was based on international opinion and the court's own interpretation of prevailing social thought on the issue.
    By all accounts it appears Terri Schiavo's parents were outlawyered by her husband's attorneys, a point made by blogger John Hinderaker. Surely the courts were absorbed by legal process -- ruling over and over in favor of past decisions -- rather than a thorough review of all recent facts.
    Just as surely the courts made no attempt to empower parenting. Doesn't this remind us of the many counterintuitive decisions by the courts to prevent parental consent, or even consultation, on abortion? Or schooling? If Terri Schiavo's parents are willing to care for her, why not simply let them?
    "Bid to save Terri Schiavo is all but finished" was the Easter morning headline in The Washington Times. But she will ultimately be saved, either in this life or the next. As Father Neuhaus suggests in his exploration, Mrs. Schiavo's suffering is another example of those "who in their troubles find themselves, as they say, at the foot of the cross."
    Haven't we all been there? Isn't suffering in pursuit of God's will the exact center of religious life? Isn't the life of faith all about steep costs and consequential losses on the road to greater wisdom and a better, more faithful life?
    For those who understand, accept and believe in this, Father Neuhaus is certainly right in saying, "If what Christians say about G