Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that the Smallholder has declared this blog to be all Schiavo all the time. And since your Maximum Leader does have a few things to say on this subject, he will continue with this theme.

In case you are living under a rock or just ignoring the news, a Federal Judge (empowered by the new - and bad - law) has denied the Schindler’s request to reinsert Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube. They are appealing the decision.

Your Maximum Leader, up to this point, hasn’t said much on this case. Indeed, he finds himself in nearly total agreement with his good friend the Smallholder on this.

Let us revisit the tragic facts here. Terri Schiavo had an attack related to an eating disorder. She recieved incorrect or otherwise bad care from doctors immediately after the attack. The result of the attack and subsequent mistreatment was that many portions of Terri’s brain were liquified. For 7 years Michael Schiavo and Terri’s parents, the Schindlers, worked with many different doctors and specialists to try and treat Terri’s condition. All attempts failed. After 7 years of trying, Michael Schiavo determined that Terri’s feeding tubes should be removed, and action that would result in Terri’s death. (He did this in the absence of some legal document stating the same.) The Schindler’s objected and have been fighting the action in court for 8 years or so. In the intervening 8 years, Michael Schiavo has moved on, started a new family - while not divorcing Terri - and has fought to remove the feeding tubes.

What is in dispute here? From a legal perspective few items are in dispute. First is if Terri would have wanted to “live” in her current condition. Second is if Terri’s due process rights have been denied to her. Basically that is it. Those are the two legal issues here. And frankly, legal issues are all that we are left with in this case.

Allow your Maximum Leader to state a few opinions of his own on this. First off, insofar as your Maximum Leader is concerned Terri Schiavo died 15 years ago. Large portions of her brain have been liquified. No doctor has ever disputed this point. Nothing will regrow brain tissue. Nothing! The video distributed by her family, as well as many stories about her vocalizing sounds ultimately mean nothing. The human brain is as fragile as the rest of the body is strong. What we have in this case is, unfortunately, a body that is kept going by the autonomic nervous system of the brain. It is capable of making vocalizations. Itis capable of some muscle movement. It may make some basic responses to outside stimuli (like sounds and light). But that is it. No amount of therapy, medicine, or treatment will change any of this.

Legally speaking, when you have a person in this condition, the next of kin is responsible for taking decisions concerning the person’s care - or withdrawl of care. In this case the legally competent person to make that determination was Michael Schiavo.

It is clear that when this case began, Michael Schiavo had the legal right to do what he has sought to do - remove the feeding tubes and starve Terri’s body to death. When the Schindler’s first objected to this course of action, hearings were heard and a judge adjudicated according to established case law and tradition that Michael’s wishes were those that would prevail.

That is it from a legal perspective. Michael Schiavo had the legal authority to take a decision. He took a decision. The Schindler’s objected. A court heard the evidence. The court examined the records. And the court decided the case according to the law and the Constitution.

Your Maximum Leader will go so far as to say that this case can be heard by any in the land, and the same decision will be reached.

What makes this case hard are the other facts. The fact that now Michael Schiavo has moved on, had kids with another woman, and generally seems to be an unreasoning asshole. The fact that the Schindler’s still hold out false hope. And the fact that Terri Schiavo doesn’t look dead.

Your Maximum Leader will grant anyone that Michael Schiavo appears to be a bastard of the first rank. But that doesn’t matter from a legal perspective. Even the rankest bastards are entitled to equal justice under the law.

Your Maximum Leader must also confess that he feels pity for the Schindlers. Pity that they engage in, what the Smallholder has called, “magical thinking.” Nothing anyone can do now will restore Terri’s liquified brain. Nothing anyone can even speculate about doing will restore Terri’s liquifed brain. The parents want to keep the husk of their daughter alive because they want to believe that somehow something will happen to change the facts.

Excursus: Your Maximum Leader is familiar with the basic breakdown here between Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers. It is a breakdown that could have occured in his own family. You see… Your Maximum Leader’s venerated mother was drafting her Advanced Medical Directive (Living Will) and designated your Maximum Leader as the person with authority. She chose to bypass your Maximum Leader’s sainted father. This caused a little bit of surprise when it was revealed to your Maximum Leader in the lawyer’s office. He specifically asked why his dad was not to have the legal authority over his mother should an Advanced Medical Directive be required. His mother spoke bluntly to your Maximum Leader. She said, “Your father believes that where there is breath there is life. You know that isn’t the case. He can’t pull my plug. You can. And I want you to if it comes down to it.”

Excursus Pt 2: Your Maximum Leader had a difficult converstation with Mrs. Villain on this same subject. (That is Advanced Medical Directives.) When his attorney was drafting the documents for your Maximum Leader; Mrs Villain confessed that she wasn’t sure she could pull the plug on your Maximum Leader. We discussed the possibilities over and over again. Finally your Maximum Leader just told Mrs Villain that to avoid the pain and anguish being put on her shoulders - he would designate someone else (either the Big Hominid, Smallholder, or AirMarshal). Indeed a first draft was done naming people other than Mrs. Villain. But in the end, she determined that she could carry out my wishes - should it ever come to that.

And your Maximum Leader will admit that when he sees the video of Terri, he finds it hard to believe that so much of her brain could be liquified. But that is the fact. Other bloggers have mentioned that Terri hasn’t had a CT scan, or MRI on her brain. What would they show that wouldn’t be shown on the X-rays which have been taken? You would see the missing parts of Terri’s brain in glowing colour?

It is tragic. It is heartbreaking. And is it all repulsive. Starving a body to death. That is horrifying. Absolutely horrifying. But that is the only recourse in this case. Administering life-terminating drugs is a crime. So we are left with a barbaric way to go.

Your Maximum Leader is very sad that it has come to this. But the situation is what it is. You have a man who will not give up his position for anything. And a family who will not give up in their attempts to stop him. This is a family dispute gone horribly horribly wrong. One wishes that Michael Schiavo would just up and leave. That he would just give in, but he will not. 8 years should have proven that to everyone.

But that said, it is not appropriate for Congress to intervene in these affairs. The special session of Congress, the actions of many Representatives and Senators on both sides of the asile, they are all replusive. This is not a case where the Federal Government has any standing. It is horrifying to thing that there is serious business before the Congress, but it is not getting done so that a debate that is more about grandstanding than policy can occur. It goes against every principle your Maximum Leader wants his elected representatives to live up to.

So. Where do we stand now? The courts will not reverse themselves. Politicans are grandstanding. Everyone is leaping to conclusions based on emotional hype - not the law, the facts, or anything else it seems. And the body that was once Terri Schiavo keeps dying slowly from starvation.

It is a horrible spectacle. And it is sickening.

Carry on.

Eugene Volokh’s law blog has a lively discussion going on in its comments thread about the Schiavo law. Check it out.

Plunge writes:

“There’s no need to go digging for a fundamental right to food and water (although I assume some enterprising jurist could find it as an emination formed by penubras). This is one of the rights that’s actually in the text: the right to due process before someone’s life can be taken.” AK, I’m sorry, but this is not a death penalty case, and no court is going to treat it as such. Legally, Terri Schiavo is not being put to death by the state, she is by proxy refusing the use of artificial life support from _doctors_ as defined in Florida law. The real problem here is that, as I don’t think a lot of people recongize, this is a very common and well established and really very uncontroversial process. Refusal of care, whether directly or by proxy, is not considered murder or euthanasia. The only issue any court is going to review, de novo or not, is whether Terri really would have wanted to be maintained in this state in the way that the original court found that she would not. Given that a state appeals court affirmed the original decision, saying that it passed even the “err on the side of life” test, I think arguments for putting the tube back in are going to have to be pretty inventive. “In line with TM Lutas’ post, which I think raises good points, would medical advancements during the past 15 years be relevant in a de novo review? I understand that there are affidavits of medical experts that have been submitted by the parents stating that incomplete medical testing was done (by today’s medical standards) in diagnosing Terri as in a persistent vegetative state.” To be honest, after reviewing these affidavits, I can see why no court takes them seriously. Almost all are based purely on viewing the video clips being passed around by the family, and thus they speak in ignorance of her actual clinical findings. There have been no medical advances in the last 15 years tat can regrow missing brain tissue, and none of the experts even mention or address that matter. Most seem to think she’s in a sort of coma or minor stroke situation. She is not. She is so clearly missing her cerebral cortex that it shows up on a CT. No serious doctor can have both looked at that CT, appreciated what it means, and then turn around and suggest that she might be improved by speech therapy or acupuncture: which is exactly what these cited experts do. For instance: the speech centers of her brain aren’t just damaged, they are completely missing! Asking for finer detail and diagnosis is medically absurd at this point. Every doctor I’ve talked to that’s actually looked at the clinical findings and read the reports of her various examinations agrees that she is classic PVS (motions and vocalizations and all: those are not uncommon in PVS) and that there is no hope of recovery. This is not like a coma, or stroke damage. The only serious issue here was whether the original court correctly inferred her wishes from the several testimonies and consideration of her known values and personality.”

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader had planned to write a post or two today… But in light of the rash of postings by the good Smallholder, your Maximum Leader has decided to save his “content” for tomorrow.

Lest you all get too much of a good thing. And as we all know, too much of a good thing can kill ya.

Carry on.

The good foreign minister and I share a love for cider presses. I have plante a pretty good sized apple orchard. Some of the varieties were chosen specifically for their cider-making potential.

When they come into production, I will borrow the neighbor’s press. I’ll probably never be able to afford one of my own - they can get quite pricey.

But if I had a million dollars?

I would build a two story frame into the hillside. The top level, accessible from the uphill side, would contain grape pressing and cider making equipment. I would situate them so that the pressed juice could flow by gravity into oak barrels on the lower level. The lower level, almost entirely underground, would stay at around 55 degrees year round - the right temperature for fermentation.

In the front half of the building, I’d keep syrup making supplies so that I could carry them out to the firepit (which I already have) when I was boiling down sugar maple sap. The giant cauldron could also be used to make apple butter. Mmmmm.

I would also put in a still. Of course, since fermenting cider into brandy is illegal, the still would be for “display purposes only.”

The United States Military does not leave its bodies behind.

This is criminally stupid.

I clearly remember an ROTC military ethics class in which I got into an extended dispute with the instructor.

The correct answer for the “tactical problem” was to send soldiers into enemy fire to recover the body of the point man prior to a withdrawal.

I explained that I would order my men to withdraw from the kill zone and to leave the corpse behind. I was not going to risk the lives - Private Snuffy was dead and his family would have to grieve, with or without the shell.

The instructor railed about honor and dignity. I stood fast. Obligations are for the living. I was not about to write a family and tell them that they had to grieve too - all because I sent Private Smith out to grab a body.

Heh. I was never very good at accepting asinine policy.

The living Schiavo has come in for a fair amount of calumny.

People hate him with an intense, visceral passion.

Why does he persist in his chosen course?

Many claim that he is just interested in the money. He’s a murderer for cash, the Schindler camp proclaims to the world.

But their are a few problems.

By the Schindlers’ own admission at Terrisfight.org, Michael offered to give his inheritance to charity if they allowed his wife to die.

The inheritance now stands at less than $50,000.

A businessmen offered Michael ONE MILLION dollars to turn custody over to the parents. Michael refused.

So it is not money.

Michael must be motivated to carry out what he believes his wife’s wishes to be. And he has endured a tremendous amount of libelous abuse in the process.

Perhaps he should stop.

Allowing Terri’s parents to take over guardianship will not influence him in any appreciable economic way. In fact, it might allow him to move on with his life and turn his efforts to remunerative pursuits.

If we accept that his attempt to withhold food is an attempt to carry out Terri’s wishes, perhaps he should consider this: She is already dead and we have no obligations to the dead*.

Terri’s frontal cortex is gone. She is incapable of feeling pain. Can it make any moral difference if her shell continues to breathe for decades? One would think that Terri, aside from being outraged at her parents’ actions, when faced with those actions and their implacable determination to deny the obvious, that she would want Michael to get on with his life.

Turning Terri’s shell over to the parents ends the controversy with no harm to Terri and an end to the litigation to all involved. It sounds like a win-win.

* See upcoming post.

COMMANDO XERXES: What exactly are the demands?

REG: We’re giving Pilate two days to dismantle the entire apparatus of the Roman Imperialist State, and if he doesn’t agree immediately, we execute her.

MATTHIAS: Cut her head off?

FRANCIS: Cut all her bits off. Send ‘em back on the hour every hour. Show them we’re not to be trifled with.

REG: And of course, we point out that they bear full responsibility when we chop her up, and that we shall not submit to blackmail!

COMMANDOS: No blackmail!

REG: They’ve bled us white, the bastards. They’ve taken everything we had, and not just from us, from our fathers, and from our fathers’ fathers.

LORETTA: And from our fathers’ fathers’ fathers.

REG: Yeah.

LORETTA: And from our fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ fathers.

REG: Yeah. All right, Stan. Don’t labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?!

XERXES: The aquaduct?

REG: What?

XERXES: The aquaduct

REG: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that’s true. Yeah.

COMMANDO #3: And the sanitation.

LORETTA: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?

REG: Yeah. All right. I’ll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.

MATTHIAS: And the roads.

REG: Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don’t they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads–

COMMANDO: Irrigation.

XERXES: Medicine.

COMMANDOS: Huh? Heh? Huh…

COMMANDO #2: Education.

COMMANDOS: Ohh…

REG: Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.

COMMANDO #1: And the wine.

COMMANDOS: Oh, yes. Yeah…

FRANCIS: Yah. Yeah, that’s something we’d really miss, Reg, if the Romans left. Huh.

COMMANDO: Public baths.

LORETTA: And it’s safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg.

FRANCIS: Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let’s face it. They’re the only ones who could in a place like this.

COMMANDOS: Hehh, heh. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.

REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

XERXES: Brought peace.

There have been several comments/posts that I have left hanging.

Minion S asked the Maximum Leader about tax policystrong>.

The Maximum Leader has it partially correct. As usual. The part about which his opinion overlaps with mine.

Tax cuts for the wealthy can lead to long-term economic growth by generating additional investment. However, if the tax and economic scales are tipped too far towards the Thurston Howell Yacht Club, the economic growth will fail to materialize because of a reduction of consumer demand.

Tax cuts for the middle class and lower class are generally acknowledged (even by the Great Guru Greenspan) to generate a short-term boost to the economy because common folks are more likely to go spend their tax refund on a new computer or a nice vacation. Some might argue that trickle-up works better than trickle down - the rich will benefit in the long term because the new consumer demand will fuel the expansion of business and drive job creation.

You can guess where your progressive Smallholder comes down: Middle-class and lower-class tax cuts give a more immediate boost to a lagging economy AND also drive long term growth.

A post for a later date will be a discussion of how discussions of tax policy and the Laffer curve often erroneously assume that economic calculus is the only (or even primary) influence on corporate chieftans’ work ethic.

The BigHo asks about the right-left continuum.

I find that it is better to think of the right-left continuum as a horseshoe rather than a straight line. The ends of the horseshoe almost touch at “dictatorship.” It seems to me that the further a political position gets from the natural inclinations of man, the greater the government authority required to force him to conform. Moonbat leftists looking for the dictatorship of the proletariat are pretty similar, when you get down to brass tacks, to the right wing theocracy nuts. The only real difference between their visions of 1984 are the color of the drapes.

And, just so you don’t think I’m ducking the second part of the question: Darth Vader is a right-wing fascist. Ordnung im der Force!

BigHo, turning introspective (but not, I repeat, not as the result of angst), tells us about being an Introspective Intuitive Thinkinging Judgemental person.

This is interesting, because your humble Smallholder is an INTJ as well. BigHo and the Minister of Agriculture - blood (personality type-wise) brothers.

To celebrate our newfound kinship, I offer these haiku to the Poer Laureate:

INTJ Men
Smallholder and the Big Ho
They are hefty too!

Organic farming
One wonders: shall the twain meet?
Vulgar poetry

Batesville Virginia
T’aint so very far from
Se-oul Korea

Seriously, I send out good thoughts and prayers for the Big Ho’s job search. He is even considering (highly paid) stateside gigs.

You know, I can’t do the highly paid part. I can’t even do the paid part. But if worse comes to worse, buddy, I can give you room and board in return for manual labor. You’ll lose weight AND we don’t have to tell your student loan holders where you are.

UPDATE FROM THE MAXIMUM LEADER: As unlikely as it sounds, your Maximum Leader is also an INTJ. Wow! Three on one blog.

What exactly did the Government Reform Committee accomplish in its investigation of steroids in baseball?

A bunch of politicians got their faces on ESPN, appealing to Joe Sixpack.

Friggin’ democracy.

I have gotten several e-mails from folks about my apple grafting post.

Gratified that others find farm life as interesting as I, I offer the following advice:

When scratching your goat’s chin and teling him what a good goat he is, try to avoid letting him sneeze directly into your open mouth because goat snot comes in little slimy pea-sized globules that cling to the roof of your mouth.

Or so I’m told.

This was the FIRST special session of Congress in 56 years.

To pass a law to “save” a woman who died fiteen years ago.

A law that is patently unconstitional as a bill of attainder and a violation of the equal protection of law.

But the law doesn’t actually do anything.

It allows a federal judge to review state court rulings. The federal judges will uphold the state court rulings - which were all solid and proved immune to challenge. As a matter of medical fact, Schiavo is brain dead. As established finding, Terri would not have wished to be kept alive. Even barring her wish, if she did not express a wish, her husband has the decision-making authority. None of those issues are open to legal dispute.

So essentially we have the picture of our federal government posing for the mob as if they were taking action.

I can’t wait for the Mike World Order.

To explain how the Transcendentalists were distrustful of reason divorced from personal introspection, I offered my students the following analogy:

Locke is to Spock
as
Transcendentalists are to Kirk

A girl raises her hand: “Who is Spock?”

Attention cabal members:

The Maximum Leader has returned.

Obviously, our geisha assassin failed to achieve her objective.

The coup will be rescheduled later.

Resume your faux minionly ways.

Several months ago, one member of our blogosphere had/saw a collision with a black bear while driving over Afton mountain. I can’t remember who it was.

At any rate, I have an update.

I took my daughter on a tour of the Virginia Wildlife Center in Waynesboro, Va., yesterday. We toured the facilities and learned how they help injured wildlife recover and eventually return to the forest primeval.

They had a bear. The bear had been hit by a car last fall and was slowly recovering. Remembering (dimly) the bear discussion in our blogosphere neighborhood, I asked if the bear had been hit near Afton. The volunteer tour guide only knew that it came from the local area. So it could be the bear in question.

UPDATE: It was Rick over at Brutally Honest. See here.