Rebuke
Mood:  sharp
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued its denial of appeal this afternoon to the parents of Terri Schindler Schiavo.

It's probably just my ignorance of the law, but I am always amazed at all the personality in the language of court decisions and briefs, in general. And the concurring opinion has a whole lot of personality. Here's what Judge Stanley F. Birch, Jr. had to say:

"In resolving the Schiavo controversy, it is my judgment that, despite sincere and altruistic motivation, the legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people -- our Constitution."

And this Birch guy is a Republican.

My conservative friends need to recognize that this case has been an absolute disaster for the Republican Party. At first, I tried to rationalize it by analogy to the marketing concept of the "loss leader": something that's sold below its actual value in order to draw even more people in to purchase other items at higher prices, thus making a profit. But, nope. This was an utter fucking lapse in judgement. The Bush Brothers, DeLay, and Frist may have proved their bona fides to the Fundamentalist Christian Right, but they've done it at the cost of alienating people like me ---people who don't want the goddamned Government convening itself in the middle of the night for the purpose of passing a law for the alleged benefit of a single, private individual.

That's what gets me the most.

Get back to your job as Commander-in-Chief, Mr. President. This other role you tried to play is a supreme embarrassment to more people than you realize.