President Bush today hailed Pope John Paul II as "a hero for the ages" and said ... "[T]he world has lost a champion of human freedom ... [who] launched a democratic revolution that swept Eastern Europe and changed the course of history."
I am reminded again and again of why Poles, for a few decades, felt that their tiny complexed voice could be heard through this man and why they suffer the loss of their spokesperson, because really, in their eyes, this leaves them alone and vulnerable on the map all over again. And if you think I am exaggerating, listen to the spot TV interviews with Poles and the recurring themes: “other countries noticed us” “we felt protected” “he gave us courage” etc.
Yes, of course, the religiousness of the nation comes through. But it would be wrong to view this particular transition as important to only the devout Poles. History has created a pained nation. Not many world leaders pay much attention to this anymore. The Pope, of course, did, during all his years at the Vatican.
In the 1970's, Mr. Perdue started the ad campaigns that would make him famous. He appeared in 200 different ads from 1971 to 1994.
It helped that he looked like a chicken. And Ross Perot. And Edward I. Koch, the mayor of New York. His bald head, droopy-eyed expression and prominent nose made people smile and feel comfortable with him. They tended to trust him more than they did slick-looking announcers.
According to Matt Stone, who created the series with Trey Parker, "South Park" was able to parody the politics of the Terri Schiavo legal battle so quickly because they began the episode from scratch the Thursday before it was telecast. "There's kind of nothing funny about the Terri Schiavo thing," Mr. Stone said on the telephone from Los Angeles, "so that's why we did it." He added: "We, like everyone else, found that whole thing fascinating. That show, and humor in general, is how we work it out."
"If I should ever be in a vegetative state and kept alive on life support, please, for the love of God, don't ever show me in that condition on national television."
I remember back in the 70s when the NRA was going to be passed. Opponents were saying it meant no more gender-segregated public toilets. The proponents responded with the usual three things: vilification of their opponents as bigots, saying it was an illusory fear and of course it didn't mean that, and that if that happened it would be OK. I recall David Brudnoy, RIP, having cops on his radio show who were seriously alarmed by this. Women get attacked in public bathrooms all the time, and if the cops could not remove men who were in there they were stumped about what they were going to do. I remember one cop with a thick Boston accent saying "the whole thing is ludicrist." He was right. This would be a serious problem of safety for women. Another consideration. Every time the Left puts some abstract ideal of equality ahead of public safety, they suffer in the democratic process. As a Republican I welcome that, but not at the cost of women -- like my mother, my sister, my wife or my daughters -- being hurt, or even made to feel unsafe. If someone looks like a man and has a man's build, that person may just have to evacuate his/her bladder and bowels in the men's room. We all suffer some impositions for the sake of public safety.Women get attacked in public bathrooms all the time. I know if I went into a women's room and thought someone in there was a man, I would leave. If I had a daughter, I would teach her to do the same thing. Before we change the law to accommodate the tiny number of people who have made personal choices about how they want to live and who feel uncomfortable or threatened going into a men's room, consider the huge number of women who are going to be disaccommodated and threatened and the significant number who will actually be attacked.
Who has a greater chance of being beat up or raped in a public bathroom; Transsexuals or "normal" women? I dare you to statistically prove that "normal" women are at greater danger and that therefore we should be protected at the cost of our transsexual sisters' freedom and rights.I sent the emailer a personal reply, but the email address was rejected. Apparently, it's not a real email address. And here I was dared. Actually, I readily concede that a transsexual who looks like a man and uses a women's bathroom is in the greatest danger of getting beaten up, precisely because women feel extremely threatened by a man in the women's bathroom. Any person who looks like a man who goes in the women's bathroom has to know, unless he or she is in deep denial, that it is going to cause anxiety and fear. I cannot imagine wanting to disturb other people that way.
Drawn by the flame of the klieg lights and the television money that powers them, lawyer-commentators have been a fixture at widely publicized trials at least since William Kennedy Smith was tried and acquitted of rape in Palm Beach, Fla., in 1991. The tribulations of O. J. Simpson, Kobe Bryant, Scott Peterson and now Michael Jackson have brought this traveling band of analysts to the media bivouacs that spring up around America's celebrity show trials.Nicely played. I particularly like the phrase "television teeth."
Greta Van Susteren, who cut her television teeth on Mr. Smith's trial and then gained nationwide fame covering Mr. Simpson's trial, was one of the trailblazers and remains the Platonic ideal of the talking head, with a law degree and her own television show. (Plato himself, who offered expert commentary on Socrates' bombshell trial in 399 B.C., would have been the first, except there was no cable back then.)
We’re not praying for him, really. We’re praying for ourselves and for our Church. At a time when the Catholic Church desperately needs principled leadership, we’re losing one of our greatest leaders. So, although we do pray for his peaceful death and in gratitude for his life of service, we pray mostly for guidance and grace in a time of great uncertainty.
[My family nickname] was Suze (Sooze). For some reason I rebelled against it in about 4th grade. In junior high I began to hate (still do at age 58) my name, Myrna, and wanted Suze back -- but it was too late -- they couldn't get back into the swing of it.I love the name Myrna! If the vowels switched places, it would be Marny, which would be quite dull. Putting a "y" in the first syllable of a name is distinctive, because there are so many names with a "y" on the end, and "y" is so often excluded from the early part of words and relegated to the tail end. This is why "Cynthia" is such a great name, and if you're lucky enough to have it, you shouldn't use the nickname "Cindy." And don't think you can fix the nickname by writing in "Cyndi," because that just looks wrong -- it makes me feel cynical ... cyndical ... cylindrical. It makes me think of cyanide. But "Myrna," I like.
I've always liked this old proverb: "A child that is loved has many names."
"I didn't feel guilty because I didn't do anything wrong," he told The New York Times four decades later. "Every day in school, we said the pledge to the flag, 'with liberty and justice for all,' and I believed all that. I was an American citizen, and I had as many rights as anyone else."
Nearly 30 years after the parents of another brain-damaged woman, Karen Ann Quinlan, injected the phrase "right to die" into the lexicon as they fought to unplug her respirator, Ms. Schiavo's case swung the pendulum in the other direction, pushing the debate toward what Wesley J. Smith, an author of books on bioethics, calls " the right to live."It will be hard to craft legislation that satisfies everyone, since the interests are so profoundly and fundamentally opposed.
"This is the counterrevolution," said Mr. Smith, who has been challenging what he calls the liberal assumptions of most bioethicists. "I have been frustrated at how difficult it is to bring the starkness of these issues into a bright public discussion. Schiavo did it."
Experts say that unlike the Quinlan case, which established the concept that families can prevail over the state in end-of-life decisions, the Schiavo case created no major legal precedents. But it could well lead to new laws. Already, some states are considering more restrictive end-of-life measures like preventing the withdrawal of a feeding tube without explicit written directions.
Around the country, state lawmakers are contemplating changes, as well. The Alabama Starvation and Dehydration Prevention Act would bar the withdrawal of a feeding tube without explicit written instructions. A lawmaker in Michigan is proposing a measure that would prevent an adulterer from making medical decisions for an incapacitated spouse.Just as the fight over abortion must go on forever, this controversy will never be resolved, and it will never be disentangled from the political struggles that exploit the deep beliefs and genuine emotions people feel about life, death, killing, autonomy, and the terrible disputes that take place within families.
Some medical ethicists say they are horrified. R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, foresees a chilling effect on hospitals and doctors, who may become uncomfortable carrying out a patient's wishes against the backdrop of a family feud. Professor Charo said there was no way for lawmakers to predict all the permutations that play into decisions on death and dying.
"If you go back to Cruzan, the presumption was in favor of extending biological life," she said. "Over the last 30 years, the presumption has slowly shifted toward allowing people to die. What we are seeing is the counterinsurgency."
This brought back memories I haven't thought about in years. I spent a day, 30 some years ago, in a Kirby vacuum cleaner sales training session. That was one of the recommended demonstrations. Take the vac head with the special demo filter attachment and vacuum a bed. Then show the potential customer what you pulled out of the sheets/pillow/mattress etc. Suposed to be a real deal closer for a certain kind of housewife. Did your grandmother have a Kirby, by any chance?I can't remember the brand name Kirby, but I would be willing to bet that a vacuum cleaner salesman taught her to concern herself with the skin cells in her bed.
Just one of my mother's oddities -- she'd always cut about an inch off the top of one end of a cucumber, then rub it around the cut end "to get the poison out" before she sliced it up to serve her family.
Under the present law we have daylight time in October but not in March, even though the sun rises at similar times in both months. The European Union starts daylight time on the last Sunday in March, with few complaints. Adding one spring week of daylight time would synchronize us with Europe. Adding two weeks in the spring would double the benefit while not making a single sunrise later than those we already experience in October, thus reducing concerns about dark mornings for farmers and children heading for school.
[O]ver the course of his visit, he laid out what sounded like the elements of an embryonic Feingold strategy - for himself or his party - for how to win back lapsed and teetering Democrats.
Put another way, he provided some clues about how a "Russ Feingold for President" campaign, were it ever to happen, might look.
If the theme of the trip was making inroads in red states dominated by culturally conservative voters, Feingold's prescriptions involved both style and substance.
Along with jobs and health care, he repeatedly brought up the deficit and trade, suggesting both issues could be used to win back conservative and blue collar voters upset by the nation's growing debt or the loss of jobs overseas. He argued that the environment could be a winning issue in red states, especially if Democrats linked it to hunting and fishing and conservation, something John Kerry sought with mixed success to do in 2004.
"John Kerry was a laughingstock in his hunting attire," complained one Democratic activist at a meeting with Feingold in Birmingham.
"I don't think the answer was having hunting attire," said Feingold, who doesn't hunt.
Feingold, a hunting-state senator who voted against renewal of the assault weapons ban, singled out guns as a hot-button cultural issue that Democrats could neutralize by convincing pro-gun voters that Democrats respect their right to bear arms.
"If we can change the perception about guns, I believe that would be the most useful thing we can do, not only in the state of Alabama, but also in Wisconsin," he said in an interview Tuesday.
Feingold suggested that abortion and gay rights represented more fundamental differences, less easily bridged. But he argued that some voters can live with such differences "if we present ourselves as pragmatic, honest and willing to listen."
In fact, much of what Feingold had to say in Alabama about expanding the party's appeal was stylistic, about speaking "straight" and "connecting" with ordinary people, the sort of things Kerry was criticized for failing to do.
"Maybe it's more about character and about how we present ourselves as people," Feingold said at the listening session he held for some 20 Alabamians in a heavily Republican suburban county south of Birmingham.
Throughout the trip, he criticized the tone of Bush's harshest critics, saying that "some of the language I heard Democrats use was very bad. . . . Don't say, 'I hate the president.' Don't say things like, 'We need regime change in the United States.'"
The panel ... said bathroom exclusion based on biological "gender" rather than "self-image" is not discrimination...I've seen arguments demanding that special bathrooms be set up to accommodate transgender persons, but this is different. This is denying people the right to chose which sex to identify with when they choose whether to use the men's or the women's room. The issue of frightening women and girls is interesting. Frightening only occurs if the person is perceived as a man. Should it matter how masculine or feminine the transgender person in question actually looks?
Emanuel Gold, lawyer for the landlord, the estate of Joseph Bruno, said he argued before the Appellate Division in May 2004 that, "If you're biologically a man, if you're born a man, then you use the men's room. There's no bias against anyone."
Gold said women and girls who worked in or visited other offices in the building were startled and frightened when they found men in the women's rest rooms.
"I don't think there's anybody in America who doesn't understand this," he said.
But [the plaintiff's lawyer Edward] Hernstadt said, "This is not a bathroom case."
"This is a case about whether transgendered people are covered under New York state and New York City civil rights laws," he said. "This decision does a disservice to the transgendered community."
[T]he complaint, as it stands, alleges not that the transgender individuals were selectively excluded from the bathrooms, which might trigger one or both of the Human Rights Laws, but that they were excluded on the same basis as all biological males and/or females are excluded from certain bathrooms -- their biological sexual assignment.”
Because the pyramid is stable, all you have to do is put a different top on it and it works fine.The Democrats, on the other hand, have a completely unstable, inverted pyramid. The point is at the bottom, and the whole party structure needs to balance on the strength of the one charismatic character who is able to win the Presidency. When he's gone, they're back to nothing.
It is not quite the "right wing conspiracy" that Hillary Clinton described, but it is an impressive organization built consciously, carefully and single-mindedly. The Ann Coulters and Grover Norquists don't want to be candidates for anything or cabinet officers for anyone. They know their roles and execute them because they're paid well and believe, I think, in what they're saying. True, there's lots of money involved, but the money makes a difference because it goes toward reinforcing a structure that is already stable.
There is no clearly identifiable funding base for Democratic policy organizations, and in the frantic campaign rush there is no time for patient, long-term development of new ideas or of new ways to sell old ideas. Campaigns don't start thinking about a Democratic brand until halfway through the election year, by which time winning the daily news cycle takes precedence over building a consistent message. The closest that Democrats get to a brand is a catchy slogan....Very well put -- by a man with a fancy educational background who once ran for President and wiped out early, because of a woeful lack of charisma. He's right, though, isn't he?
Candidates don't risk talking about big ideas because the ideas have never been sufficiently tested. Instead they usually wind up arguing about minor issues and express few deep convictions. ...
If Democrats are serious about preparing for the next election or the next election after that, some influential Democrats will have to resist entrusting their dreams to individual candidates and instead make a commitment to build a stable pyramid from the base up. It will take at least a decade's commitment, and it won't come cheap. But there really is no other choice.
Two key lawmakers said Tuesday they would recommend removing a provision of Gov. Jim Doyle's proposed budget extending insurance benefits to the domestic partners of unmarried University of Wisconsin System employees.I would argue that those who are against same-sex marriage ought to support equalizing benefits. Gay state employees shouldn't be stuck with a systematically inferior pay package and shouldn't be singled out for special burdens when we need to save money. Those who want to make an argument about the essential nature of marriage shouldn't want to connect that argument -- which they try to phrase in lofty, idealistic terms -- with shortchanging a set of employees. A lot of us are already skeptical of your lofty -- we might say sanctimonious -- presentation of the argument against same-sex marriage. If you link this argument with rank cost-cutting, you can expect us to become even more skeptical.
Rep. Dean Kaufert, R- Neenah, co-chairman of the Legislature's budget-writing committee, and committee member Rep. David Ward, R- Fort Atkinson, said the $1 million proposal was ill-timed.
"It is impossible to think of extending employee benefits to a whole new demographic of people at the same time we are watching the UW System struggle to cover their current set of bills," Kaufert said, calling the decision "a fiscal issue, plain and simple."
But university officials who testified before the Joint Finance Committee at a daylong hearing on the budget said the provision is a key part of an overall effort to attract and retain star faculty, which also includes $5 million for campuses to counter offers from competing institutions.
"On a fairness basis, I think there's a pretty strong case that can be made for extending domestic partner benefits," Regent Charles Pruitt said. "But on a competitive basis, it's an even stronger case. We are the only university system in the Big Ten that doesn't offer domestic partner benefits."
Gov. Jim Doyle has budgeted $500,000 in each of the next two years for the benefit, which would let same-sex and unmarried heterosexual couples qualify for the same family insurance coverage spouses of university employees get.
The provision is seen as a long shot in a Republican- controlled Legislature seeking to ban same-sex marriage and civil unions....
I always just thought it was the verb having to do with the seating and form locomotion. Train conductors drive a train, passengers ride on it. You drive a team of oxen, but you ride a horse. You especially ride a motorcycle, and drive a car (or drive a "cage").
I believe it comes from something to do with "mounting" astride the horse or the bike, as opposed to sitting-down on an upholstered bench in a cocoon of comfort.
You especially only ride a dirtbike until you fall off - it's a temporary thing, the riding. That's why we wear a lot of protective gear.
If you say that you drove a motorcycle you'd be laughed out of the big Harley gathering at Sturgis, even though many ostensibly badass-looking accountants and dentists types trailer their bikes to a nearby motel, and then ride-in.
But by the end of the lively argument pitting Grokster and its allies on the electronic frontier against the entertainment community's stalwart defense of intellectual property rights, any prediction about what the court will actually decide appeared perilous.
Justice Antonin Scalia said he was concerned that legitimate uses of a new technology might need some time to become established; in the meantime, the developer would be defenseless against a copyright infringement suit. "What I worry about is a suit right out of the box," he said. "Do you give a company a couple of years to show 'substantial' noninfringement?"
[Acting Solicitor General] Clement replied that in the government's view, there should be "a lot of leeway at the beginning." But that was "not this case," he said, asserting that Grokster and StreamCast had "a business plan from Day 1 to capitalize on Napster."
A team of scientists at UW-Madison have found a new use of bacteria to build tiny electronic circuits. Eventually the discovery could lead to the creation of micro sensing devices that could warn of the presence of dangerous biological agents such as anthrax.
Please baby can’t you see
My mind’s a burnin’ hell
I got razors a rippin’ and tearin’ and strippin’
My heart apart as well
College faculties, long assumed to be a liberal bastion, lean further to the left than even the most conspiratorial conservatives might have imagined, a new study says.
By their own description, 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative, says the study being published this week. The imbalance is almost as striking in partisan terms, with 50 percent of the faculty members surveyed identifying themselves as Democrats and 11 percent as Republicans.
Harvard's faculty of arts and sciences hit President Lawrence Summers with a vote of no confidence after he privately wondered about the abilities of women in science and math.
The disparity is even more pronounced at the most elite schools, where, according to the study, 87 percent of faculty are liberal and 13 percent are conservative.
"What's most striking is how few conservatives there are in any field," said Robert Lichter, a professor at George Mason University and a co-author of the study. "There was no field we studied in which there were more conservatives than liberals or more Republicans than Democrats. It's a very homogenous environment, not just in the places you'd expect to be dominated by liberals."
In the decision on Monday, the dissenting judges said the majority had confused the internal codes of right and wrong that juries are expected to possess in such weighty moral matters with the outside influences that are always to be avoided, like newspaper articles or television programs about the case. The jurors consulted Bibles, the minority said, not to look for facts or alternative legal interpretations, but for wisdom.Most American jurors, I would think, remember "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth" along with other Biblical sayings. They are going to think about these moral concepts that have become part of their minds and, unless carefully instructed to refrain from saying such things, they are likely to quote the verses they know. But is an important line crossed when the actual text is seen in the jury room?
"The biblical passages the jurors discussed constituted either a part of the jurors' moral and religious precepts or their general knowledge, and thus were relevant to their court-sanctioned moral assessment," the minority wrote.
Legal experts said that Colorado was unusual in its language requiring jurors in capital felony cases to explicitly consult a moral compass. ...
"The court says we're asking you to be moral men and women, to make a moral judgment of the right thing to do," said Thane Rosenbaum, a professor of law at Fordham University School of Law in New York City, and author of the book "The Myth of Moral Justice: Why Our Legal System Fails to Do What's Right" (HarperCollins, 2004). "But then we say the juror cheated because he brought in a book that forms the basis of his moral universe," Professor Rosenbaum said. "The thing is, he would have done it anyway, in his head."
Other legal experts say the Colorado decision touches on an issue that courts do not like to talk about: that jurors, under traditions dating to the days of English common law, can consider higher authority all they want, and can convict or acquit using whatever internal thoughts and discussions they consider appropriate.
In this instance, lawyers said, there was simply a clearer trail of evidence, with admissions by the jurors during Mr. Harlan's appeal that Bibles had been used in their discussion. One juror testified she studied Romans and Leviticus, including Leviticus 24, which includes the famous articulation of Old Testament justice: "eye for eye, tooth for tooth."...
The Bible is hardly monolithic about what constitutes justice. Some legal experts say the jurors might just as easily have found guidance that led them to vote to spare Mr. Harlan's life. Lawyers for Mr. Harlan also specifically urged the jurors to consider biblical wisdom, according to the Supreme Court's decision, with a request that they find mercy in their hearts "as God ultimately took mercy on Abraham."
The lawyers also made several references to Mr. Harlan's soul and his habit of reading the Bible with his father, the court said....
The jury deliberated on the penalty phase late into Friday evening, but did not reach a unanimous verdict. Several jurors studied Bibles Friday night in their hotel rooms, looking for passages relating to capital punishment and a citizen's duty to obey the law, and took notes on the location of particular passages.Thus, it was like earlier cases – one in which jurors looked up the word “burglary” in the dictionary, and another where jurors looked up “Paxil” on the internet. The court was explicit about the distinction between bringing the book into the jury room and holding the same text in one’s head and even quoting it aloud in the jury room:
Juror Eaton-Ochoa took notes on two passages. The first was Leviticus 24:2021: "fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, as he has caused disfigurement of a man, so shall it be done to him. And whoever kills an animal shall restore it, but whoever kills a man shall be put to death." The second was Romans 13:1: "let every soul be subject to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and the authorities that exist are appointed by God."
Juror Eaton-Ochoa brought a Bible into the jury room Saturday morning when deliberations resumed. Other jurors testified that more than one juror brought in a Bible, and that one of the Bibles present contained a study index with which a reader could locate passages on particular subjects. Jurors Eaton-Ochoa and Trujillo also brought their notes on biblical passages into the jury room. Juror Eaton-Ochoa showed juror Cordova the Bible text from Leviticus commanding the death penalty for murder, as well as the Romans text. By noon that day, the jury returned a unanimous verdict imposing the death penalty on Harlan.
We do not hold that an individual juror may not rely on and discuss with the other jurors during deliberation his or her religious upbringing, education, and beliefs in making the extremely difficult "reasoned judgment" and "moral decision" he or she is called upon to make in the fourth step of the penalty phase under Colorado law. We hold only that it was improper for a juror to bring the Bible into the jury room to share with other jurors the written Leviticus and Romans texts during deliberations; the texts had not been admitted into evidence or allowed pursuant to the trial court's instructions.
We expect jurors to bring their backgrounds and beliefs to bear on their deliberations but to give ultimate consideration only to the facts admitted and the law as instructed. The judicial system works very hard to emphasize the rarified, solemn and sequestered nature of jury deliberations; jurors must deliberate in that atmosphere without the aid or distraction of extraneous texts that could prejudicially influence the verdict.
The written word persuasively conveys the authentic ring of reliable authority in a way the recollected spoken word does not. Some jurors may view biblical texts like the Leviticus passage at issue here as a factual representation of God's will. The text may also be viewed as a legal instruction, issuing from God, requiring a particular and mandatory punishment for murder. Such a "fact" is not one presented in evidence in this case and such a "legal instruction" is not the law of the state or part of the court's instructions.
It would be overstating things to suggest that Ms. Klausner, 53, has never met a book she didn't like. It would be more on the money to say she's of the "if you don't have anything nice to write, don't write anything at all" school of literary criticism. "If a book doesn't hold my interest by page 50 I'll stop reading, which is one of the reasons I give a lot of good ratings," says Ms. Klausner, whose voice suggests she's taken more than a few nips of helium. "And why review a book to give it a low rating or to tear it apart? Nothing in that."...
Ms. Klausner's taste runs to fantasy, chick-lit romance--particularly the paranormal and supernatural variety--horror and science fiction. Pet authors include Laurell K. Hamilton, Jan Burke, Nora Roberts, Jayne Ann Krentz and particularly Patricia Cornwell. "I need a lot of variety. There's never enough for me to read," says Ms. Klausner, who has zero truck with poetry, westerns ("You put on a cowboy hat, place the story in the wild west and you have a police procedural") or nonfiction ("unless it's a subject I'm really into. Otherwise it's too time-consuming.")
At a news conference last week, Mr. Bush joked that he did not have the time "to sit around and wander, lonely, in the Oval Office, kind of asking different portraits, 'How do you think my standing will be?' "That reminds me of how a lawprof feels a liberation and a new sense of fun in the last few days of the semester, after the students have written their evaluations.
And at the end of an interview with a Belgian television correspondent last month, Mr. Bush blurted out to the young woman that she had "great eyes," glanced away slyly and then a little sheepishly, but for the most part seemed sorry that the session was over.
Is this a new George Bush?...
Clay Johnson III, the deputy director for management in the White House budget office and Mr. Bush's roommate at Yale, had a simple explanation for the president's mood: "He never, ever has to run for office again."
That the Congress basically climbed into Terri Schiavo's private deathbed is not only disgraceful, it's scary.
This was a family matter and nobody else's business. Five years ago, in the midst of their guardianship battle with her husband, Schiavo's parents conceded that their daughter was in a persistent vegetative state.
Then they went national, and that's when the circus started -- the wailing Bible-thumpers, the goofballs with their homemade crucifixes, the pious anti-abortion lobby and their rabidly misinformed bloggers.
Close behind were politicians on the scent of votes and money....
The whole thing was one of the most cynical charades in memory. From the Congress to the White House to the statehouse, they all got their piece of Terri Schiavo.
By the time this column appears, she might be gone, but you can be sure that the politicians and the zealots they're courting will never let this poor woman die.
Even when she's dead.
"Obviously they've seen that there's a market for chocolate crosses at Easter," said Lisbeth Echeandia, a consultant for Candy Information Service, which monitors candy-industry trends. "I don't see it growing tremendously, but I think there would be growth in the Christian market." However, not all Christians are happy about it. Chomping on a chocolate cross can be offensive to some, said Joseph McAleer, a spokesman for the Diocese of Bridgeport in Connecticut "The cross should be venerated, not eaten, nor tossed casually in an Easter basket beside the jelly beans and marshmallow Peeps," he said. "It's insulting."But the point of the Easter candy cross is to satisfy people who think it's offensive to make Easter about rabbits and chicks. And is it wrong to eat a cross? What about the longstanding tradition of hot cross buns? UPDATE: A reader writes:
Not just hot cross buns. What about pretzels, which were designed by monks to resemble arms folded in a traditional prayer posture? Christianity is an incarnational religion. Eating signs of the faith isn't disrespectful. After all, the Eucharist is a preeminent expression of faith. If you can consume God, I can't imagine why you can't nibble on a cross.
For President Bush and the social conservatives who comprise the central rampart of his base, the courts' naked assertion of judicial supremacy in deciding the fate of Terri Schiavo represents an important moment. This is because the premise of the Democratic filibuster of the president's conservative judicial nominees is that the Roe v. Wade decision must never again be called into question.Did you enjoy that slab of red meat? I thought it had an off taste.
The judicial confirmation debate will now unavoidably be about whether democratic decision-making on abortion should continue to be prohibited by our courts and (effectively) by the American legal profession. From the beginning, those who believed Roe would corrupt the rule of law feared that state sanction of private killing would put all public order and all private restraint in doubt. The fate of Terri Schiavo makes clear that those fears were utterly on target.
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