Sowell On Congress On Schiavo

Thomas Sowell argues that the clear meaning of the law Congress passed to help save Terri is being ignored by the courts:

When a case goes up to a higher court on appeal, the issue before the appellate court is not whether they agree with the merits of the decision of the lower court. In a criminal case, for example, the issue before the appellate court is not whether the defendant was guilty or innocent, but whether the trial was conducted properly.

In other words, the defendant is not supposed to be tried again at the appellate level. So, no matter how many appellate judges rule one way or the other, that tells you absolutely nothing about the fundamental question of guilt or innocence.

Similar principles apply in a civil case, such as that of Terri Schiavo. Liberals can count all the judges they want, but that does not mean that all these judges agreed with the merits of the original court’s decision. It means that they found no basis for saying that the original court’s decision was illegal.

What the law just passed by Congress did was authorize a federal court to go back to square one and examine the actual merits of the Terri Schiavo case, not simply review whether the previous judge behaved illegally. Congress authorized the federal courts to retry this case from scratch — "de novo" as the legislation says in legal terminology.

That is precisely what the federal courts have refused to do. There is no way that federal District Judge James Whittemore could have examined this complex case, with its contending legal arguments and conflicting experts, from scratch in a couple of days, even if he had worked around the clock without eating or sleeping.

Judge Whittemore ignored the clear meaning of the law passed by Congress and rubberstamped the decision to remove Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube.

As dissenting Judge Charles Wilson of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals put it, the "entire purpose of the statute" is to let federal courts look at the case "with a fresh pair of eyes." But, by the Circuit Court’s decision, "we virtually guarantee" that the merits of the case "will never be litigated in a federal court" because Terri Schiavo will be dead.

GET THE STORY.

Good Friday Bread

I’m not a baker so I can’t vouch for the recipe, but the accompanying picture of hot cross buns made the buns look yummy.  I couldn’t help but wince at this tidbit included with the article:

"Babka isn’t the only Easter bread.

"The season for hot cross buns usually begins the first day of Lent and lasts until Easter.

"The sweet yeast rolls, which often are flavored with dried fruits, originated in medieval England and commemorate Good Friday. A cross is slashed in the top of the bun, which is decorated with confectioners’ sugar icing after baking. In pagan times, the cross was said to ward off evil spirits, writes Sister Schubert in her cookbook ‘Secret Bread Recipes’ (Oxmoor House, 1996)."

The cross was said to ward off evil" in pagan times? Sigh. Written in such a sloppy manner, this gives the impression that Christ’s own cross was just the ultimate good-luck charm.  Perhaps this could have been re-written: "The cross, especially meaningful to Christians because Christ was put to death by crucifixion, is a shape used since pagan times in attempts to ward off evil."

Revised that way, the cross-shape that was perhaps used by ancient pagans in a superstitious manner becomes a prefigure of the Cross through which God’s work of salvation would definitively triumph over evil.

Alaska, 1964

40 years ago on Good Friday (March 27th) 1964, the second largest earthquake ever recorded shook southern Alaska, generating tsunamis that struck as far away as Japan and California. A whopping 9.2 on the Richter scale, the quake also lasted for over three minutes (not counting the numerous aftershocks), causing landslides, liquefaction and really crazy cracks in the earth in this (mercifully) sparsely populated state. The ground moved like your Grandma shaking out a rug on the back porch, is what I’m sayin’. And why do I care? Because, aside from all the devastation noted above, it also knocked my favorite TV show "Fireball XL-5" off the air, and cracked several of our Easter eggs! That’s right. In the words of Pee Wee Herman, "I lived it.".

On the same street in the picture above was the B&B Cafe. My dad was a city cop at the time, and as he made his way around, looking for survivors, he was surprised to find the cafe entirely intact. Spoons still in soup, soup still in bowls, bowls still on tables. He pulled a piece of pie from the countertop display and, in this cafe now 30 feet below the street, took a much-needed break.

FIND OUT MORE about "THE BIG ONE".

Fortunately, Alaska was home to a relatively small population of outdoor-savvy adventurous types, who took it all in stride, rather than being, say, home to millions, some of whom (being super-rich) might have felt compelled to erect very tall buildings.

Queen Camilla

Not especially a surprising development for a country of which the national church’s founder insisted that his second wife be styled Queen within his first wife’s lifetime, but a disappointing possibility nonetheless:

"Camilla Parker Bowles can become queen after all, despite earlier statements by Prince Charles that she will take a lesser title after marrying him, the government said Monday.

"Replying to a question from a lawmaker, Constitutional Affairs Minister Christopher Leslie said in a written statement that the marriage of Charles and Parker Bowles would not be ‘morganatic’ — in which the spouse of inferior status has no claim to the standing of the other.

"’This is absolutely unequivocal that she automatically becomes queen when he becomes king,’ said Andrew Mackinlay, the lawmaker who raised the question.

"The Department for Constitutional Affairs confirmed that interpretation, saying that legislation would be required to deny Parker Bowles the title of queen. Similar legislation apparently would be required in more than a dozen countries — such as Australia, Jamaica and Canada — in which the British sovereign is the head of state."

Now I happen to be an Anglophile with a particular love for the British monarchy. (My knowledge of British history is primarily focused after the Norman conquest in 1066.) But if I were a Brit, I’d be sorely tempted to vote for any measure that would abolish the monarchy after Queen Elizabeth II passes away. The soap-opera foibles of the Windsors may be entertaining, but surely less expensive and more professional entertainment can be found.

Since I’m not in a position to vote, all I can do is shake my head and sigh over the demise of the once-majestic legacy of the British monarchy.

GET THE STORY.

Starved for Justice

Excerpts from provocative thoughts on the Terri Schiavo outrage from Ann Coulter:

Democrats have called out armed federal agents in order to: (1) prevent black children from attending a public school in Little Rock, Ark. (National Guard); (2) investigate an alleged violation of federal gun laws in Waco, Texas (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms); and (3) deport a small boy to Cuba (Immigration and Naturalization Service).

So how about a Republican governor sending in the National Guard to stop an innocent American woman from being starved to death in Florida? Republicans like the military. Democrats get excited about the use of military force only when it’s against Americans.

In two of the three cases mentioned above, the Democrats’ use of force was in direct contravention of court rulings. Admittedly, this was a very long time ago — back in U.S. history when the judiciary was only one of the three branches of our government. Democratic Gov. Orval Faubus called out the Arkansas National Guard expressly for purposes of defying rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts…

Liberals’ newfound respect for “federalism” is completely disingenuous. People who support a national policy on abortion are prohibited from ever using the word “federalism.”

I note that whenever liberals talk about “federalism” or “states’ rights,” they are never talking about a state referendum or a law passed by the duly elected members of a state legislature — or anything voted on by the actual citizens of a state. What liberals mean by “federalism” is: a state court ruling. Just as “choice” refers to only one choice, “the rule of law” refers only to “the law as determined by a court.”…

Just once, we need an elected official to stand up to a clearly incorrect ruling by a court. Any incorrect ruling will do, but my vote is for a state court that has ordered a disabled woman to be starved to death at the request of her adulterous husband…

President Andrew Jackson is supposed to have said of a Supreme Court ruling he opposed: “Well, John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” The court’s ruling was ignored. And yet, somehow, the republic survived.

If Gov. Jeb Bush doesn’t say something similar to the Florida courts that have ordered Terri Schiavo to die, he’ll be the second Republican governor disgraced by the illiterate ramblings of a state judiciary. Gov. Mitt Romney will never recover from his acquiescence to the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s miraculous discovery of a right to gay marriage. Neither will Gov. Bush if he doesn’t stop the torture and murder of Terri Schiavo.

Read the full article

The Crisis Cluster

The scripts that the news media uses to write its stories are so powerful that the absence of a script can cause a story to go completely unreported, even if it is quite important. The creation of a new script can then cause a story to take off like wildfire.

One such script is the "crisis cluster" script. It aggregates together multiple things of a disturbing nature and then queries why they are happening, asking if the cluster amounts to a crisis of some kind.

That’s what happened with the priest scandal in 2002. Prior cases of priest abusers had percolated through the press sufficiently that eventually reporters connected the dots and wrote an unwritten script into which the facts of new cases could be poured. Then they noticed a cluster of these cases and poured those into the "crisis cluster" script, whereupon they hyped the story to enormous proportions.

Now: The story was real. Dioceses had been grossly delinquent in their handling of such cases. But if you remember the madness of those days, every priest every priest was being looked at as a potential pedophile. There were reports of mothers were shielding their children from priests as they walked down the street, as if they were about to pounce on their children in public. That was simply disproportionate. Nor did the media get all of its facts right in reporting the story. (The homosexuality aspect was notably underplayed, as was the fact that it was ephebophilia, not pedophilia, that was the larger issue.)

It’s interesting to see what gets the "crisis cluster" treatment and what doesn’t. Some things that have include:

  • School shootings
  • Workplace shootings
  • Shootings by postal employees

Some things that haven’t yet but one day might be given such treatment include:

  • School teachers who have sex with students
  • Protestant ministers who have sex with minors
  • Priests who have had sex with parishioners

Incidentally, note the two themes running through these crisis clusters: sex and death.

Here’s another things that hasn’t received crisis cluster treatment:

MOTHERS WHO MURDER THEIR CHILDREN.

As the author of the piece notes, a notible cluster of mothers murdering their children occurred last month, but the MSM didn’t put the pieces together and do a crisis cluster story. He concludes:

As we can see, the phenomena of clusters is in many ways an artificial
one created and perpetuated by the news media. The facts are right
there. Are we truly in the midst of an epidemic of hideous abuse by
murderous mothers? Or is this just an unusually bloody snapshot of
randomly-distributed killings? Or is this pattern actually a sign that
mothers abuse and kill their children more often than most people
realize? You’ll have to decide for yourself; the news media won’t tell
you.

Spike!

Earlier today I blogged about the scripts that the news media uses to write it stories. It’s interesting when you deal with reporters on a regular basis, as you get a clear sense of what elements they’re trying to put together in order to have a story. Without those elements, the story won’t go.

F’rinstance: The A-#1 element that has to be in the story is that there has to be something that’s just happened. If it didn’t just happen, even if it’s an otherwise interesting story, then there is no story to the reporter. This was clear, for example, when I was called by a TV reporter from Texas who wanted to do a story about our booklet critiquing The Da Vinci Code. She really liked the booklet and thought it would make a good story–except for one thing: The booklet had been released a few months ago and thus there was nothing "new" for the story. After querying me several different ways to find out if there was anything that could be pitched with a "This just happened!" angle, she concluded that an essential element of the story was missing and it never got done.

Without a "This just happened!" angle then, even if the story is frightfully important due to its lingering effects, the media won’t run with it. I suppose that they’re afraid to excitedly tell a story with no new tidbit and then have others look at them and say "You just discover this or something?"–the way kids will sometimes tell a joke only to have another kid disgustedly say "You just heard that?" The "This just happened!" tidbit gives them a shield against that happening.

(And yes, before someone points it out, "That’s why they call it ‘news.’")

Another nigh-onto-essential element in is controversy. While there are some stories that don’t involve controversy ("Exciting New Discovery!"), most do. I’ve dealt with a number of reporters who have called, asked for perspective on something, and then when I give it to them they disappointedly say things like "I’m having trouble seeing where the controversy is here." That may be because There Isn’t One or because I refuse to be drawn into one. If that doesn’t happen, the story doesn’t go. It gets spiked.

That’s what happened once last year with the Voters Guide. I got a
call from a reporter whose local bishop (allegedly) had said that the
Voters Guide wasn’t to be used in his diocese, and he wanted my
"reaction" to that.

I told him (a) that I didn’t have any knowledge of the bishop having
said this and I don’t comment on situations where I haven’t verified
the facts and (b) it’s up to others to decide for themselves whether
they want to use the Voters Guide or not.

This, however, wasn’t good enough. The reporter had scented a
potential controversy and was trying to whip one up in order to get a
story he could write. What he wanted to happen was for him to call me
up, orally tell me what the bishop had said without giving me any
proof, get me emotionally worked up, and then get some harshly-worded
negative reaction that he could print in order to have a typical
"conflict between two parties" story.

Note also: He wasn’t reporting the news. He was trying to create the news (i.e., stirring up a controversy where there was none).

I wouldn’t take the bait.

No matter how many different ways he tried asking the question, I
kept reiterating my answer, refusing to get mad or say anything
negative about the bishop.

This caused the reporter to get more and more mad.

Finally, he huffily said, "Well! If that’s the way you feel, maybe we don’t write about this at all!"

Which was fine by me.

How Our Robed Masters Also Affect You

The last few days we’ve been having commentary from Thomas Sowell on the need for judges to read the law instead of trying to make the law.

How far things have gotten out of whack is illustrated by

THIS STORY.

It’s an op/ed piece titled "High Court Must Protect Innovators" and has to do with the Grokster case, whereby Grokster is being sued because users of Grokster are trafficking in illegal music and movie downloads.

Unless they’ve got evidence that Grokster is encouraging users to do this (and I don’t know whether or not they do), my sense is that Grokster ought (that’s a moral ought, not a predictive ought) to prevail. If you’ve got a network that has legitimate purposes some or even many are putting to illegal purposes then the preferred remedy would be to go after the people putting it to those purposes rather than the people who established the network.

F’rinstance: People must connect to the Internet in order to illegally download stuff. If any network that is being used by such people is liable for damages then the recording and motion picture industries might as well SUE YOUR INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER since some people using it are undoubtedly using it for illegal downloads. That logic would shut down the Internet.

Now, I know that someone can argue that a service like Grokster is more proximate to the practice of illegal downloading than your ISP is, but still: If something (e.g., a knife) has a legitimate purpose (cutting food) but also may be put to an illegitimate purpose (stabbing someone), the preferred solution should be to go after the person who is putting it to the illegitimate purpose (the stabber) instead of the person who made it (the knife manufacturer).

You might agree or disagree with me on that, but consider the headline of the editorial I linked: "High Court Must Protect Innovators."

It’s true that if innovators like Grokster aren’t protected then it will cramp technological and (ultimately) economic development, but in what way are Our Robed Masters being asked to protect innovators?

If "protecthing" innovators simply meant reading what’s in the law and applying it because the law says that innovators must be protected, well and good. But if it means creating policies not called for in the law then it’s an appeal to judicial subversion of the democratic process.

Which is the author of the editorial calling for? Consider:

Unless the courts maintain a proper balance between protecting
innovation and discouraging piracy, the steady pace of technology
advancement we have come to expect over the years could be in jeopardy.

So the Court is being asked to strike a balance between competing interests (the need for innovation and technological advancement vs. the needs of intellectual property rights holders).

I’m sorry, but isn’t striking balances between competing interests the business of legislatures rather then courts? We’re talking public policy here, guys. Judges should not be striking public policy balances. That’s what legislators are for. Judges should simply be making determinations of fact concerning whether a particular situation falls within the law that the legislators enacted or not. If it ain’t clear then the legislators should clarify the law. Judges shouldn’t simply make up their own standards to cover sloppy law writing by the legislatures.

The expectation that the editorial writer seems to have that courts should do the work of legislators is deeply troubling, but it’s what both the behavior of the Court in recent years has fostered, as well as what legislators themselves have been doing: The rigor of law-writing in the U.S. has suffered because legislators feel free to throw together a bunch of words that gesture in the direction of what they want to happen because "the courts will sort out" the details.

The Script

Reporters are driven by "scripts" that tell them how to frame and write a story. These scripts, which aren’t (usually) written down (making it a paradox to call them "scripts") are templates into which reporters pour the facts of particular stories. I recently blogged about

ONE SUCH SCRIPT.

But there are others.

Reporters really need scripts. They often don’t know how to do their job without them, and they often try to impose them on stories where the facts are otherwise.

Just yesterday I was doing an interview with a local TV reporter who kept trying to frame an ecclesiastical issue in terms of the Church "gaining support" or "losing support" regarding a particular matter. I kept having to explain to him, "This is not a political matter. It’s not about gaining or losing support. It is about being faithful to historic Christian values."

What happens when a reporter comes across facts that don’t fit his script? One of several things. He may dig deeper to try to make the facts fit the script. That’s what was happening with the reporter who kept asking me politically-framed questions about the Church. He was trying to get the facts to fit the script he had in mind for the story.

If digging deeper doesn’t work, an unscrupulous reporter may simply make stuff up to get the story he wants.

But if he doesn’t go that route and the facts still don’t fit the script, he may simply spike the story.