The Lonely Goatherd Blog And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats - Matthew 25:32
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Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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All original content on MoreThings.com copyright 2008 Albert Barger or the respective authors
March 31, 2005
Ann Coulter, please meet Separation of Powers Ann Coulter should be put to the lash. I'm afraid, however, that a setting of Ann Coulter, Al Barger and a lash would somehow result in me being her woman in some terribly shameful way.
So from a keyboard at a safe distance, I'll call her out for willful ignorance regarding the Terri Schiavo case, as evidenced in THIS COLUMN. Now besides all the ugly and irrelevant attacks on Michael Schiavo, she was willfully blind to the limited powers of government. The significance of this separation-of-powers business should be central to any political conservative, yet she willfully viciously discards this basic principle when it interfered with the pro-prolonging Terri's torture stance Ms Coulter was intent on making. FOUL!
She was particularly peeved over arguments against federal or state legislative interference in the Schiavo manner based on principals of federalism. She acknowledges the argument that it wasn't W's proper place to get involved, and then simply mocks rather than actually answers the argument. Her best argument there was the simply factually unsubstantiated claim that "strict constructionist" states rights opponents of federal involvement in the Schiavo case were the same people who opposed the 1964 Voting Rights Act. She's just pulling that one out of her ass.
She had one interesting summary sentence about this whole legal process:
"Our infallible, divine ruler is a county judge in Florida named George Greer, who has more authority in America than the U.S. Congress, the president and the governor."
Why yes dear, the weight of local judges generally should be deciding how to apply the laws on custodial matters, not legislatures or the US Congress. Of course, this local judge was scrutinized by a half dozen layers of judges over him, challenged repeatedly all the way to the US Supreme Court.
It is the job of state legislatures, and still not really of the US Congress to make the laws determining who gets to make major medical decisions. They set the policy, and it is primarily the job of the courts to neutrally enforce these policies made by the legislature in individual cases. That's the main thing courts are supposed to do.
So yup, as regards personal custody cases in Pinellas County, Florida, George Greer swings a bigger gavel than the US Congress or even his mighty highness King George. That's exactly how it's supposed to be.
Thank God and the founders for that, and now poor Terri has truly gone to her rest.
