On the radio driving home tonight I heard Tom DeLay say Terri Schiavo has a constitutional right to live. If that's the case, then how can we ever send anybody off to war?
Posted by Bobby Farouk at March 18, 2005 04:08 PM1) We send armies off to war.
2) Our armies, these days, are composed of volunteers.
That doesn't explain or justify "stop-loss orders" that in effect turn volunteers into conscripts.
Maybe the clause in the Constitution about "...according to the discipline prescribed by Congress..." has something to do with it? I don't know. Rights can be different for convicts, new immigrants, and soldiers than they are for ordinary lawful residents.
I am, however, cheered to learn that Rep. DeLay considers ordinary lawful residents to have at least one constitutional right. Wonder which others he recognizes?
P.S. Not to say any one group should have fewer rights than another, nor to say soldiers should be treated like convicts, which they shouldn't -- only that that's the way our constitutional interpretation patterns seem to run.
"Young man, this is not a court of justice. This is a court of law."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, supposedly.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at March 18, 2005 11:04 PMI guess I was just lazy last night. I didn't ask the right question and I didn't bother looking for the answer, which I suspected was in the 14th Amendment:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Well, um, yes. Put that way, I guess the question in the Schiavo case (in cold legal terms at least) is whether she received sufficient due process. Except that I'm not sure if it's the state that's depriving her of life.
It's a ghastly subject, especially because I was just visiting someone in an intensive care ward this morning. Rather not talk legalities about it if that's all the same to youall.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at March 19, 2005 12:30 PM...OK, I can't resist commenting on this matter any longer. It's too obscene to find Frist et al. suddenly discovering a respect for life after so energetically withholding public services from so many of their needy fellow Americans. Where the bleeding hell were they on, for example, this case here?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at March 20, 2005 10:31 PM