Schiavo - Case Closed

The Schiavo Case is finially closed after a faithful husband's name has been shit upon by the self-rightous right-wing nutcases.

The following article was taken from CNN.com. The Bush's suck, the radical-right sucks, and the media sucks for not being "fair and balanced" (despite what the Fox News Network claims).

Gov. Bush ends inquiry into Schiavo's collapse

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (AP) -- Gov. Jeb Bush has declared an end to the state's inquiry into Terri Schiavo's collapse 15 years ago, after Florida's state attorney said there was no evidence that criminal activity was involved.

Bush had asked State Attorney Bernie McCabe to investigate Schiavo's case after her autopsy last month. He said he now considers the state's involvement with the matter finished.
"Based on your conclusions, I will follow your recommendation that the inquiry by the state be closed," Bush said in a two-sentence letter.

In asking McCabe to look again into how Schiavo slipped into a persistent vegetative state, Bush had cited an alleged gap between when Schiavo's husband Michael found her and when he called 911. The governor had said the issue remained unsettled.

McCabe said, however, that while such discrepancies may exist in the record, Schiavo's statements that he called 911 immediately had been consistent.

"This consistency, coupled with the varying recollections of the precise time offered by other interested parties, lead me to the conclusion that such discrepancies are not indicative of criminal activity," McCabe wrote in a letter to Bush accompanying his report.

The report was dated June 30, but not released until Thursday.

The bitter right-to-die case engulfed the courts, Congress and White House, and divided the country.

Terri Schiavo died March 31 from dehydration after her feeding tube was disconnected despite efforts by Bush, her parents and some state national lawmakers to keep her alive.

Michael Schiavo had fought to have the tube disconnected, saying his wife wouldn't have wanted to be kept alive artificially.

The autopsy left unanswered the question of why Terri Schiavo's temporarily heart stopped, cutting off oxygen to her brain. A medical examiner was unable to determine with reasonable certainty a "manner of death."

McCabe said there must be some fact or evidence indicating a criminal act caused the death to open a full homicide investigation. He said the review revealed none.

He added that the most likely cause of Schiavo's collapse remains the one already advanced -- an eating disorder.

David Gibbs, attorney for Schiavo's parents, said the report appeared rushed, noting that Bob and Mary Schindler were not interviewed by the state attorney's office. "We had thought they would meet with the family," he said.

Michael Schiavo's attorney deferred comment until he had a chance to fully review the report.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/07/08/governor.schiavo.ap/index.html

A short Rant...

Loving v. Virginia

Richard and Mildred Loving were married in 1958 in Washington D.C. because their home state of Virginia still upheld the antimiscegenation law which stated that interracial marriages were illegal. They were married, then lived together in Caroline County, Virginia. In 1959 they were prosecuted and convicted of violating the states's antimiscegenation law. In 1967, 16 states including Virginia, still had antimiscegenation laws on the books and were enforcing them. Richard and Mildred Loving were each sentenced one year in jail, but promised the sentence would be suspended if they agreed to leave the state and not return for 25 years. Forced to move, they returned to Washington D.C. where, in 1963, they initiated a suit challenging the constitutionality of the antimiscegenation law. In March of 1966, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the law, but in June of 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled the law unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court overturned the convictions in a unanimous decision, dismissing the Commonwealth of Virginia's argument that a law forbidding both white and black persons from marrying persons of another race, and providing identical penalties to white and black violators, could not be construed as racially discriminatory. In its decision, the court wrote:

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

Now what I think:

If marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," as the court says then it is a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to discriminate gay people from marrying. If you can not say (as in the Loving's case) a white man can not marry a black woman, then how can you turn around and say that a white man can't marry a black man? A person can not choose their race and ethnicity anymore than they can choose their sexual orientation or gender! If the laws forbidding people of the same gender to marry is constitutional then the Loving v. Virginia case should be overturned.