January 29, 2006
Frist: Government Should Butt Out
Frist: Gov’t Unwanted in End-of-Life Cases
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who took a leading role in the Terry Schiavo case, said Sunday it taught him that Americans do not want the government involved in such end-of-life decisions.
Frist, considered a presidential hopeful for 2008, defended his call for further examinations of the brain-damaged Florida woman during the last days of a bitter family feud over her treatment. Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state.
…
Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” if he had any regrets regarding the Schiavo case, Frist said: “Well, I’ll tell you what I learned from it, which is obvious. The American people don’t want you involved in these decisions.”
What’s odd is that I think many Congresscritters would be genuinely surprised to find that the American people prefer to make their own decisions. They’ve got this inherent god complex as legislators, and they actually think we turn to them for guidance on this.
Earth to Frist: we don’t want you making most of our other decisions either. National policies are one thing. Stepping into the most personal bits and pieces of our lives is an unwelcome intrusion.
And while you’re at it, you can leave Major League Baseball alone too.
Below The Beltway linked with A Politician Admits The Truth
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I’m looking at the ads on the left side of your blog and I’ve come to the conclusion that you have a gambling problem.
Not to answer for Brad, but this seams to fit:
To parapharse Frank Sinatra:
I gamble, I get broke, I wake up.
No problem
A Politician Admits The Truth
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist reflects on his involvement in the Terry Schivavo fiasco and admits that the majority of Americans want the government to butt the heck out of the kind of life and death decisions that were involved in that case. ……
Isn’t the problem that there was a dispute about who wanted what?
The courts are the government too you know. And I don’t think anyone who has looked at the evidence could possible conclude “by clear and convincing evidence” that Mrs. Shavio wanted to die. If she did, great. She won.
If she didn’t, then too bad. Mr. remarried to mom of his bastard children while Teri was alive and I spent all the medical malpractice money we won that I promised in court would be used to keep you alive forever honey Shavio won.
But I agree that Congress had no business in that case. That was the State of Florida’s mess, and Congress had no constitutional power, much less political power, to get involved.
KJ,
Either way you look at it, it’s a matter of guardianship. Michael Schiavo had legal guardianship that was upheld through several court cases. Considering the state that she was in, it was his decision to do what he thought was best for her (or what he though she would have wanted done).
There were a lot of allegations thrown around about Michael Schiavo, whether he might have abused her, etc. I can’t know either way whether any of those allegations were true, but apparently they weren’t proven in court, because the courts upheld his guardianship. Michael Schiavo might have been honestly doing what he thought Terri would want, or he may have been hoping to get rid of her to live with his girlfriend and their kids. I can’t know, but apparently a conflict of interest wasn’t proven in court, because the courts upheld his guardianship.
All I think is that if I were in Terri Schiavo’s position, I would want the decision of what to do with me (absent a living will or written instructions) to be in the hands of my legal guardian. Not in the hands of the government. The state and the courts have a rightful place to determine (again, absent written instructions from me) who that guardian should be, and in the Schiavo case, the statute and the courts upheld that Michael still held that position. That’s where it needs to end, not with politicians second-guessing the decisions of the legal guardian or the diagnosis of the doctors.