Bad prescident

NYT reports the Terri Schivo bill passed and a federal judge scheduled a hearing.

WizBang blogged So for all their posturing and complaining, the leadership only got 53 of their fellow Democrats to vote for Terry [sic] Schiavo's death sentence.

He is wrong. They did not vote in favor of Terri Schiavo's death sentence. They voted against having the Congress attempting to overturn something that had been fully litigated in the Florida court system. In a comment to his post, I tried to make this point, and indicated that if Congress wanted to get involved in end of life decisions, the two cases in Texas I referred to earlier would have made a lot more sense.

ThoughtsOnline raised two very valid points: One, is it safe to assume that you favor of judge/forum shopping, and that you promise to never criticize the liberals and plaintiff's attorneys when they engage in the same behavior?

Two, in light of your past criticisms of Terry's fate having rested with a 'single judge', how can you support this law which gives a single judge the authority to review the case?

discusses the constitutationality of the bill: Although this is a relatively new type of law, that does not in itself make it unconstitutional. Also, for Terri's supporters who argue she should remain alive, it is important to remember that this legislation only offers her a cause of action in federal courts, and doesn't guarantee she will ultimately be kept alive..... There is still a flaw in the proposed law that I failed to mention in the original post. Congress cannot "award" standing to someone who lacks Article III standing. Article III standing is only present where the plaintiff has suffered injury in fact, caused by the challenged action, redressible by the court. Terri's parents don't have that standing. They are not the legal guardians of Schiavo -- her husband is.

Radley Balko thinks the law smacks of both a bill of attainder and amounts to an ex post facto law

I suspect Radley is wrong, and the bill is constitutional, but I believe it sets a very bad prescident

Update 5:00 pm

ABC News reports Federal Intervention in Schiavo Case Prompts Broad Public Disapproval

The public, by 63 percent-28 percent, supports the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube, and by a 25-point margin opposes a law mandating federal review of her case. Congress passed such legislation and President Bush signed it early today.

That legislative action is distinctly unpopular: Not only do 60 percent oppose it, more — 70 percent — call it inappropriate for Congress to get involved in this way. And by a lopsided 67 percent-19 percent, most think the elected officials trying to keep Schiavo alive are doing so more for political advantage than out of concern for her or for the principles involved.

LAT reports The Midnight Coup

Republican leaders, eyeing an opportunity to appease their radical right-wing constituents, convened Congress over the weekend to shamelessly interject the federal government into the wrenching Schiavo family dispute. They brushed aside our federalist system of government, which assigns the resolution of such disputes to state law, and state judges. Even President Bush flew back from his ranch to Washington on Sunday to be in on what amounts to a constitutional coup d'etat.

Conservatives are the historical defenders of states' rights, and the supposed proponents of keeping big government out of people's lives, but this case once again shows that some social conservatives are happy to see the federal government acquire Stalinist proportions when imposing their morality on the rest of the country. So breathtaking was this attempted usurpation of power, wresting jurisdiction over a right-to-die case away from Florida's judiciary, that Republican leaders in the end had to agree to limit this legislation's applicability to the Schiavo case.

In other words, according to the bill passed by the Senate Sunday afternoon, and which the House passed after midnight, among all the cases of patients in a persistent vegetative state nationwide, Terri Schiavo's case is the only one in which parents are able to have a federal court review state court rulings on the fate of their loved one.

I disapprove of what Congress did, but I think the Left Wing Press is exagerating things.