The New Road

Schiavo pickel

Whether you agree with the Schiavo ruling from Congress or not you have to see what a pickel they have gotten themselves into. Sometime in the next 96 hours there is going to be an appeals court ruling, then a Supreme Court opinion on Schiavo. Frankly I doubt that these courts will put the feeding tube back in, though they may if only to save the ass of the Republican party.

If they don't then the Republicans have themselves in a real bind. I was listening to the local Republican radio station this morning and they were of the opinion that Bush should send in Federal Marshalls to seize Schiavo, and to of course, arrest the husband and try him for attempted murder. But what a hell of a mess that would be. Now you would have a woman in a permanent vegatative state in the custody of the Federales.

At which point, who knows what the hell is going on. There is no law or precedent because this is all new. Never before has the Congress ruled this way in such flagrant disregard against the Constitutional ban on bills of attainder. And it's obvious to me that, like the war in Iraq, the reactionary Republican party jumped on an opportunity without understanding the consequences.

They clearly saw a way to motivate the base and they jumped at it without thinking about it. Now they are potentially in danger of inheriting Federal control of a woman in a vegitative state. In addition they mistook their support. So now only the real hardliners support them. 70% of American's think that Congress overstepped it's bounds. This could backfire on them big time and demonstrate, hopefully once and for all, that having fascist extremists in control of the Federal government is a recipe for disaster.

Federal marshalls seizing Schiavo with guns drawn. That's going to look really bad on Democratic ads against Jeb Bush in 2008.

I've actually been trying hard to stay away from this Schiavo mess. For me personally, it's something that has been decided already by the courts in Florida and is a personal family matter. I think it's disgusting how the Republican party specifically mentioned this case in their memorandum and how they could use it as a political tool against the Democrats. But now that they have I think it's fair for me to make a political analysis of it. And from what I can see, they have dug themselves a huge hole and jumped right into it.

From what I can see the Democrats have shown remarkable restraint. They understand the complexity of the situation, and understand that the Federal government has no jurisdiction in it. So they backed of until the Republicans decided to abuse their power.