Comments Posted By Mona
Displaying 11 To 20 Of 20 Comments
CIA VS. THE WHITE HOUSE: McCARTHY AND THE DC REVOLVING DOOR
goy writes:
I submit that the reason for your confusion is that you have arrogated to yourself – as McCarthy apparently has – the role of arbiter regarding what actions may legally be taken against an enemy, the likes of which we have never faced, in the midst of a war, the likes of which we have never fought.As it turns out, we elect people for that role. During their tenure they’re typically referred to as the President.
As a citizen, I vote for congressional representatives who pass laws. My Senate ratifies various treaties. When the laws and treaties take effect, I expect them to control everyone's behavior, including the Executive's. Warrantless wiretaps on U.S. soil are, in the relevant circumstances, illegal. Torture has just been prohibited by the Congress and is precluded by treaties to which we are signatories.
If my President believes the laws my representatives have passed do not bind him, I want to know that. I disagree, and would hold him accountable. But I can not do that unless I know he is violating laws; hence the value of the leakers.
Contrary to the opinion of many non-lawyers, Congress shares national security authority, including wrt policy, with the President. Such "liberal" justices as Scalia and Thomas not only concede this, but insist on it. Bush has no business arrogating to himself the power to violate duly enacted laws of Congress. He is not a monarch, but he is acting like one.
Terrorists are going to be an issue for the U.S. and the West for many decades to come. In the meantime, I profoundly object to a theory of Executive power which makes my president -- no matter who he or she is now or will be in the future -- a virtual monarch.
Comment Posted By Mona On 23.04.2006 @ 14:16
tyk says: The government’s job, Mona, is to protect its citizens (that includes me, and I presume it includes you). Its job is not to deal delicately with non-citizens...
This nation made it through a Cold War without torturing people or throwing them into black holes.
My country, tyk, stands for certain things. The rule of law, civilized behavior, and a respect for the opinions of mankind. If my country has decided we need to "disappear" people and torture them, even killing them while doing so, I want to have a public and national discussion about that. The idea that we have to resort to such measures to be safe from terrorists is, frankly, preposterous. Not to mention that it is illegal.
We are not Joseph Stalin's USSR. We are not the Taliban. We are not Iran. Or at least I didn't think we were any of those things.
Comment Posted By Mona On 23.04.2006 @ 14:05
I am perplexed that people are questioning the black prisons claim, since it is precisely all of that that has Mary McCarthy in hot water for revealing it to WaPo and winning reporter Dana Priest a Pulitzer. Excerpt from lengthy article:
The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country... CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning. ... In November 2002, an inexperienced CIA case officer allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets. He froze to death, according to four U.S. government officials. The CIA officer has not been charged in the death.
If most or all of that article is true, I don't care who it is doing this, whether it is George Bush, Bill Clinton or Mother Teresa. It is not how Americans conduct themselves as I ever understood the morality of my country to be.
Comment Posted By Mona On 23.04.2006 @ 13:09
Steve writes: Regardless of her motivations, she has violated her obligations to the American public. We exepect our employees who handle secrets to keep secrets secret.
Is that asking too much?
In some circumstances, yes. If the Bush Administration is launched on a path of violating laws left and right -- and it is -- then the American people are entitled to know that. The warrantless NSA surveillance violates a federal criminal statute that We the People passed in 1978 -- by overwhelming margins of both parties. It is illegal to maintain "black prisons" here or elsewhere; we do not "disappear" people, or at least we didn't until now.
If an Executive classifies all of his illegal programs, then he puts those who know about them in an intolerably difficult position. The American people are entitled to know that this country now throws people into black holes where they die and are waterboarded. We are entitled to know that the surveillance statute we passed is a law the President has decided to ignore.
These are the dots that need to be connected, not McCarthy's Dem credentials or the fact that she knows Joe Wilson. I could not care less. The important fact is that Bush is operating pursuant to extreme and fringe legal theories given him by John Yoo, which cause him to believe he literally is above any law, if he utters "national secuity." Those legal theories are what connect all of these things.
Comment Posted By Mona On 23.04.2006 @ 09:57
Consider this: Is it coincidence or conspiracy that Mary McCarthy, partisan Democrat, was placed in exactly the right position to scan a massive amount of intelligence about a wide variety of political hot button topics that, if selectively leaked, could cause the Bush Administration enormous embarrassment and damage?
Rick, with all due respect, I do not care. If Mary McCarthy moonlights as an exotic dancer and she serviced Joe Wilson while also having a lesbian affair with Valerie, I don't care.
The salient issue here is that the United States of America is operating illegal, black prisons, where at least one person has died after being chained to a freezing floor. If what McCarthy told WaPo is true, this is an issue the American people are entitled to know and to debate.
I would ask my Congresspeople to vote "no" about my country operating such ghastly things. But I would not be in a position to do so if not for McCarthy's leak.
Comment Posted By Mona On 23.04.2006 @ 09:35
JUST ANOTHER THOUGHT EXPERIMENT
ohmygod, yes, when I saw The Producers I, also, literally laughed until I spilled a bit of fluid. Buzzbee Berkelyesque "Springtime for Hitler" just blew me away.
But really, what so many contemporary Germans are willing to believe is good deal less than funny.
Comment Posted By Mona On 16.06.2005 @ 20:33
LIFE, DEATH, AND TERRI SCHIAVO
What if your son wished to live, but your daughter-in-law insisted he didn’t?
Or what if your son wanted no extraordinary measures taken to prolong his life, but eight years after he fell into a PVS the law was changed to reclassify an ordinary care measure he is receiving as an extraordinary measure?
As to the last, it would be irrelevant. I drafted my son's Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care and therein he specifies the removal of a feeding tube if he has been diagnosed as PVS for at least 18 mos. His DPA should control.(However, not necessarily, as you can read about at the Abstract Appeal blog I linked to above. In many jurisdictions written directives can be found to have been orally revoked, which retains potential for a can of worms like Schiavo no matter that wishes have been recited in a formal document. There is an ironclad rule that testamentary wills cannot be orally modified, and some think this should also be true of advance directives. But then again, what if a person who had a DPA like my son's changed her mind after the Schiavo thing but did not get around to modifying it before she became PVS? Should her tube be pulled even if every member of her family testifies she had changed her mind?)
As to the first, same thing. His DPA should control. If he had none, there would be no conflict as in Schiavo, because both of his parents as well as his wife are fully aware that he does not wish his body to be kept alive if he is PVS. Terri's body joined her mind on 3/31, and the following Sunday was Easter. At a family dinner held at my son's attended by my ex, myself, and the rest of our clan who live in the area, we discussed the issues surrounding Terri's tube removal. We were unanimous that that is what we all would want. I hope many families have had such discussions, and also that they have drafted DPAs and/or Living Wills.
Comment Posted By Mona On 16.06.2005 @ 17:35
And I disagree with Michelle Malkin and La Shawn Barber: the autopsy report vindicates both Michael Schiavo and the Florida courts. Florida lawyer Matt Conigliaro maintains a fine legal blog and has excellent analysis as well as links to all available legal documents in this long litigation. Matt says this:
Concerns about the cause of [Terri's] collapse were injected into the feeding tube litigation in 2002 -- twelve years after the fact and after two trials on her wishes and her condition -- through claims that Michael attacked Terri and provoked the collapse. Those claims were intended to discredit Michael and cast a criminal pall over the situation, which to an extent is what happened. But one of the medical examiner's strongest findings was that the evidence is inconsistent with the notion anyone caused her collapse by beating or strangling her.
I would strongly recommend a perusal of Matt's Abstract Appeal blog, where he also addresses the bulimia and eating disorder findings. (Michael Schiavo did not diagnose Terri with cardiac arrest; physicians at the time of her collapse did, as you can read in the many court documents at this site. The autopsy report rebuts those doctors on that score, not Michael Schiavo.)
Matt concludes his discussion of the autopsy report by stating: When everything is said, the medical examiner's report substantiates that the court system did its job well in handling Terri's case .
I agree. And those who ranted that Michael beat and strangled Terri, or in any manner abused her -- findings debunked by the autopsy report -- owe him a huge apology. Not the sneering about irrelevancies that Malkin and Barber are engaging in.
Comment Posted By Mona On 16.06.2005 @ 13:20
Ah, my 'puter issues that I emailed Mr. Moran about notwithstanding, I was able finally to return to this site, and I want to post this:
Mr.Moran, thank you for your consideration of my comments. And to answer your question, no, I most adamantly do not believe that retarded people should be killed. The reason I am involved in the program I referenced is because my 22-year-old son is serviced by it; he, however, is mildly retarded and semi-autistic, not profoundly retarded. But all of the people in that program have minds and are able to interact with the world, however minimally.
I oppose abortion, and have only recently, and reluctantly, concluded that for purely pragmatic reasons it should be legal in the first trimester. The fetus may not be aware at 8 weeks, but leave him/her alone and s/he will awake to awareness.
By contrast, people in PVS are gone. There is no mind left to generate personality (profoundly retarded people do have personalities) and they will never reawaken. Their self is dead but their body lives, if artificial feeding is undertaken; in prior generations their bodies would have joined their minds in death, because before feeding tubes the same reason they lack self/mind would cause them to be unable to take in sufficient nourishment to keep the body going.
In my view, when it comes to PVS, artificial feeding technology is not a blessing. Many see it the same way, and after the Quinlan and Cruzan cases made their media splash, we saw the advent of advance directives in which most of us (in my legal experience) direct to have the tube pulled in case of PVS. (Mae Magourik's advance directive so stated: But that term in her living will was not implicated or controlled by the episode that came to publicity. More on that if anyone cares to hear it.)
You make note of Captain Ed's discussion of Michael Schiavo allegedly having a conflict of interest. That would be the case for any spouse where the other becomes PVS. In no sense at all could Terri continue to provide any spousal supports to Michael, not physically and not emotionally.
I do not for one minute believe that most spouses would not, when PVS became established and all hope for miracle cure subsides, move on to other romantic interests. That is human. It is what I would want my daughter-in-law to do if my 26-year-old son became PVS, and I would still trust her to carry out my son's known wishes. And in any event, the guardian ad litem appointed by Governor Jeb Bush found that Michael had behaved with extraordinary solicitude toward Terri, even flying to California with her to pursue an experimental therapy that failed. Guardians and the courts were well-satisfied that Michael was upholding his duties to his wife.
The demonization of Michael Schiavo -- buttressed by lies and slanders spewed all over the Internet that are flatly contradicted by GAL reports and court findings -- have been appalling. Ditto the extreme and baseless attacks on the judiciary. For the first time, I began questioning my vote for Bush, altho I no longer do (the war on terror remains a paramount issue for me).
And for the first time, I am willing to entertain that the religious right can be a force for serious harm. I had not been in that camp before.
Comment Posted By Mona On 16.06.2005 @ 12:41
Mr. Moran, thank you for a very measured and obviously heart-felt analysis. Myself, I was appalled by the Save Terri! forces, and largely continue to be. Further, there are issues in the Mae Magourik matter that were, to say the least, under-reported and do make a difference to understanding what Mae's granddaughter was doing. In both the Schiavo and Magourik cases there were somewhat complicated but important legal issues at play that were so entirely misunderstood by so many.
Longstanding Florida law required Judge Greer to take testimony as to Terri's wishes, in the absence of her having executed an advance directive. Indeed, the FL constitution had long been held to require that this be done, to preserve Terri's (or any other Floridian's) right to privacy.
Greer heard from three people -- including Michael Schiavo's sister whom it was not disputed had been Terri's closest friend -- that she would want the tube pulled if she was PVS. Greer also took testimony from a psychologist with expertise in the views of people in Terri's age cohort and her demographics -- we came of age during the Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan cases, and many of us made loud statements to friends and family that we would want the tube pulled. (In the Cruzan PVS case, Nancy's parents were eventually permitted to pull the tube based on testimony about her orally stated wishes -- were Mr. and Mrs. Cruzan "murdering" their daughter?)
So, Judge Greer followed the law he was mandated to follow, and he also, in my view, came to the correct decision where he enjoyed discretion.
The anti-judiciary feeding frenzy that exploded from the Save Terri! forces obscured these facts with appeals to increasingly feverish and bizarre conspiracy theories implicating Greer, the hospice in which Terri resided, the medical personnel, and even the police. To listen to these folks, a horrible plot initiated by wife-beating Michael Schiavo had taken grip in Pinellas County, Florida.
We were told she could track balloons and that her face lit up when her mother entered a room -- but she was blind. Randall Terry and some on the Schindlers' legal team insisted that Terri wept in her mother's arms when "informed" the tube was to be removed; that she began articulating the sentence "I want to live."
Mr. Moran, I volunteer in a program that services retarded adults, some of whom have IQs as low as 15. The profoundly retarded are entirely incapable of comprehending the purpose of a feeding tube, or what it would mean if it were removed. The highlights of one individual's day is seeing his mother visit and he coos at her, and he also enjoys playing with his feces, which the staff seek to prevent his doing. The idea he could comprehend the implications of an order to remove a feeding tube and beg to live is absurd, and he HAS a measurable IQ. Terri had none at all.
Lies were told. Many of them. All buttressing an increasingly rancid attack on the Florida judiciary. Judge Greer had to begin living under armed guard.
Mr. and Mrs. Schindler can be entirely forgiven for deluding themselves that Terri was interacting and responding. But the cretins, legal and otherwise, who surrounded them and nurtured these fantasies and peddled them all over the media, can only be reviled.
The Florida courts are not Murder, Inc. Terri was PVS and had a right, per Florida law, to have testimony taken as to her wishes, and her tube removed if that was determined to be consistent with her wishes. Floridians who object to this state of affairs should amend their constitution (and several facilitating statutes) if the results in Schiavo displease them. But as it stands, the courts there proceeded entirely properly, and it is unpatriotic to carry on a jihad against our probate courts, a bedrock institution of our nation of laws. (And no, I'm not a liberal; I'm a hawkish libertarian who voted for Bush in '04, and was not concerned about the Christian right until beholding their harmful antics in the Schiavo matter.)
Well, I've gone on long enough. Perhaps I will contribute my views on the Magourik case in a subsequent post, if any are interested.
Comment Posted By Mona On 16.06.2005 @ 11:01
