This guy wants to kill babies who are born alive.

This man is a monster.

At WND - Another story that mirrors that of Terri Schiavo. Only this one is not between loving parents and a hateful ex-husband who collected insurance money to rehabilitate her only to turn around and move to have her feeding tube removed.

This time it’s between a father who loves his daughter, and his ex-wife, the mother of the disabled girl, who is moving toward having their daughter starved and dehydrated to death.

It defies the imagination that the courts and the system have the right over families to decide what ‘quality of life’ is.

The father of a disabled Delaware woman who recently earned the support of state lawmakers says the system – of courts, lawyers, hospitals and disability agencies – literally is combining to bring about the death of his daughter.

Read the rest.

There is a youtube video there of interaction between Lauren and her father.

The court-appointed lawyers have now banned him from showing any pictures or videos which reflect Lauren’s condition.

Sickening.

For Terri Schiavo, God rest her soul.

I hate to say it, but this sickens me.

ROME — Pope Benedict XVI reinforced the Vatican’s growing concern with protecting the environment in the traditional midnight Christmas Mass on Tuesday, bemoaning an “ill-treated world” in a homily given to thousands of pilgrims here in the seat of the world’s billion Roman Catholics.

On the day Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ some 2,000 years ago, Benedict referred to one early father of the church, Gregory of Nyssa, a bishop in what is now Turkey. “What would he say if he could see the state of the world today, through the abuse of energy and its selfish and reckless exploitation?” the pope asked, according to the Vatican’s English translation.

Rome bent over for the nazis, too.

That’s because America should be, in the opinion of the ACLU, a place where you’re free to have an abortion any time, even if your baby is born alive after the process is finished.

In that case, they just throw the placenta on top of the baby so that it can’t breath fresh air, while it cries in agony for its mother.

It’s no wonder that there is a lobby out there which is trying to allow for death certificates for stillborn children. The abortionists object to that, because it might get the “pro life” peoples’ feet in the door to claiming that a fetus is a person; a living being, separate from its mother. The only time they recognize that now is if the child is ‘wanted’.

I’m not sure what the legal grounds are for the medical community to kill an infant that they’ve tried to abort and failed, because it was born alive….but that’s what Partial Birth Abortion is all about, and that’s the nasty word that the ACLU didn’t use in the article on its website here. Stressing women’s rights, autonomy and health concerns doesn’t diminish what it is we’re talking about here, which is a horrifying Joseph Mengele type procedure that should be outlawed in all of its forms. In my opinion, even a back alley abortionist should be jailed or given capital punishment if it can be proven that they’ve perpetrated this horrendous, vicious, murdering crime against a child.

WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Abortion Federation (NAF) today sharply criticized a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court upholding a federal law banning certain abortions. It is the first abortion decision from the Supreme Court since Justice Sandra Day O’Connor retired. Both organizations said that the Court’s decision will endanger women’s health.

Now how can banning certain abortions ‘endanger women’s health’? As far as I can tell, this has to do with the health of the baby, and not a woman’s health. Notice how they’re not mentioning the actual name of the Act that they’re attacking, which is the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. Let’s stop obfuscating the facts, shall we, and call things by their real names and get down to what it is precisely that these people are advocating: The procedure at issue involves partially removing the fetus intact from a woman’s uterus, then crushing or cutting its skull to complete the abortion. (FoxNews, 2007) The abortionists who are wailing about the decision have come out and said that this decision isn’t going to affect the number of abortions that are done in this manner, because it doesn’t prevent them from using an alternative method of murdering these children: dismembering the fetus in the uterus — which is an available alternative, and, is indeed, much more common.

“Today’s decision has placed politics above protecting women’s health,” said Vicki Saporta, President and CEO of NAF. “This ruling is a set back for all Americans who believe politicians should not legislate medical decision-making. The decision disregards the opinion of leading doctors and medical organizations that oppose the ban because it is harmful to women’s health.”

This is a rather disingenuous argument when you consider ripping apart an innocent baby who’s done nothing wrong inside the mother’s uterus before pulling the parts out. This is Joseph Mengele type science, and what’s even more outrageous and sickening is how calmly the proponents of it are arguing in favor of it.

The Supreme Court upheld the Partial Birth Abortion (hereafter referred to as PBA) ban based on Gonzalez v. Carhart, (Through a Glass Darkly) which might be another one of the reasons that the leftists are so adamantly opposed to Gonzalez; he’s made some serious headway on issues that all conservatives consider important. The firing of the 8 US Attorneys is just obfuscation as far as I’m concerned, under Clinton, all 93 US Attorneys were fired by Janet Reno, and there was not a peep out of the media or anyone else over that.

The majority clearly wants to revisit Roe Versus Wade, based on what happens to an infant during PBA:

At this point, the right-handed surgeon slides the fingers of the left [hand] along the back of the fetusand “hooks” the shoulders of the fetus with the index and ring fingers (palm down).

“‘While maintaining this tension, lifting the cervix and applying traction to the shoulders with the fingers of the left hand, the surgeon takes a pair of bluntcurved Metzenbaum scissors in the right hand. He carefully advances the tip, curved down, along the spine and under his middle finger until he feels it contact the base of the skull under the tip of his middle finger.“‘[T]he surgeon then forces the scissors into the base of the skull or into the foramen magnum. Havingsafely entered the skull, he spreads the scissors to enlarge the opening.“‘The surgeon removes the scissors and introduces a suction catheter into this hole and evacuates the skull contents. With the catheter still in place, he appliestraction to the fetus, removing it completely from the patient.’” H. R. Rep. No. 108–58, p. 3 (2003).

Here’s court testimony from a nurse who assisted Dr. Haskell in a partial birth abortion:

“‘Dr. Haskell went in with forceps and grabbed the baby’s legs and pulled them down into the birth canal. Then he delivered the baby’s body and the arms—everything but the head. The doctor kept the head right inside the uterus. . . .“‘The baby’s little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his little feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors in the back of his head, and the baby’s arms jerked out, like a startle reaction, like a flinch, like a baby does when he thinks he is going to fall. “‘The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening, and sucked the baby’s brains out. Now the baby went completely limp. . . . “‘He cut the umbilical cord and delivered the placenta. He threw the baby in a pan, along with the placenta and the instruments he had just used.’” Ibid.

The Court ruled today on two challenges to the federal abortion ban, called by its sponsors the “Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.” The two cases are Gonzales v. Carhart, brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of Dr. LeRoy Carhart and three other physicians, and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, brought by Planned Parenthood Federation of America on behalf of its affiliates throughout the country.

Planned Parenthood was started by Margaret Sanger, who was a racist communist. Sanger’s goal wasn’t even something that she covered up; she bragged about it.

“We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population”-Margaret Sanger, Founder of Planned Parenthood, the largest provider and promoter of legal abortion in the United States.

So using Planned Parenthood as an example of an organization which is involved in attempting to legitimize this ill-conceived and sick practice of PBA is also very telling.

Margaret Sanger, through her Planned Parenthood organization, advocated abortions on Afro-Americans in order to eliminate what she called “socially undesirable people”. This site is an excellent Afro-American response against Sanger’s racist eugenics: Genocide against Afro-Americans

It looks as though it’s worked, because the birth rate for black people across the country has decreased by incredible numbers: Blacks make up 12% of the population, but 35% of the abortions in America. (blackgenocide.org)

On average, 1,452 black babies are aborted every day in the United States.

This incidence of abortion has resulted in a tremendous loss of life. It has been estimated that since 1973 Black women have had about 10 million abortions. Michael Novak had calculated “Since the number of current living Blacks (in the U.S.) is 31 million, the missing 10 million represents an enormous loss, for without abortion, America’s Black community would now number 41 million persons. It would be 35 percent larger than it is. Abortion has swept through the Black community like a scythe, cutting down every fourth member.” (blackgenocide.org)

That’s fitting, because Engels, who helped Karl Marx write the Communist Manifesto, wrote that NATIVE BLACKS DUMBER THAN AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD

Engels. “Notes to Anti-Duehring”: “If, for instance, among us the mathematical axioms seem self-evident to every eight-year-old child, and in no need of proof from experience, this is solely the result of “accumulated inheritance.” It would be difficult to teach them by a proof to a bushman or Australian negro”.

This is the reason that we need affirmative action, apparently - so that Blacks can get into universities and obtain good jobs - based not on good grades or academic prowess, but instead on the assumption that they’re not able to compete in a free marketplace. This is also a reason that Stanger felt that they’re ‘undesirable’, and why, in her twisted thinking, they needed to be ‘exterminated’ through legitimizing and socializing abortion as a method of birth control.

A third challenge to the ban, National Abortion Federation v. Gonzales, was brought by NAF and seven individual physicians, represented by the ACLU, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, the ACLU of Illinois, and the New York Civil Liberties Union. In 2006, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit put that case on hold until the Supreme Court issued a decision in the other two cases. Today’s Supreme Court decision requires that the ban be upheld in this case as well.

We know all too well the junk science they prop in order to pull off their legal gymnastics.

“Today’s decision undermines a core principle of Roe v. Wade that women’s health must remain paramount,” said Louise Melling, Director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. “The decision invites politicians to meddle even further into the doctor-patient relationship by passing additional restrictions on abortion.”

Not a very intelligent statement when you consider the history behind this and the facts of the sickening medical procedure they’re they’re trying to legitimize through the courts, but then leftists at the ACLU are all about ‘feelings’ and not about ‘facts’.

What’s irritating to me is their stupidity over the ‘health of women’ rather than recognize whose health this procedure truly affects. We are not facing overpopulation in the United States, I don’t know why it is that they keep pursuing this in the face of all those who still believe that protecting the innocent is a moral imperative.

Leading doctors and medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which represents 90 percent of OB-GYNs in this country, opposed the federal ban.

Could that be because their cash registers wouldn’t be ringing anymore? Then again, if they keep whining about embryonic stem cell research, this might be another source of income for heartless scientists who use the theory of evolution as their guide for medical ethics.

Congress passed the federal abortion ban and President Bush signed it into law in 2003, despite numerous court decisions striking down similar state bans, including the decision in 2000 by the Supreme Court in Stenberg v. Carhart.

As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in her dissent to today’s opinion: “Though today’s opinion does not go so far as to discard Roe or Casey, the Court, differently composed than it was when we last considered a restrictive abortion regulation, is hardly faithful to our earlier invocations of ‘the rule of law’ and the ‘principles of stare decisis.’”

The ‘rule of law’ has completely ignored the rights of the innocent who can’t speak for themselves, and the cruel, heartless murder of unborn innocents because it gets in the way of the sexual lives of their cold and irresponsible mothers.

Today’s cases are Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, No. 05-1382 and Gonzales v. Carhart, No. 05-380.

The National Abortion Federation (NAF) is the professional association of abortion providers in the United States and Canada. Our mission is to ensure safe, legal, and accessible abortion care to promote health and justice for women. Our members include health care professionals at clinics, doctors’ offices, and hospitals, who together care for more than half the women who choose abortion each year. For more information, visit our website at www.prochoice.org.

They should change the name of that website to legitimized back alley abortionists dot org.

The ACLU is our nation’s guardian of liberty, working daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States. For more information, visit: www.aclu.org/reproductiverights.

What a lie.

X Posted at STACLU

The story of Ashley, a 9-year-old disabled girl, who cannot move and usually stays in the same position she is placed in, on a pillow. What’s at issue is her doctor recommended ‘treatment’, which includes a series of surgical operations (including a hysterectomy) and a regimen of hormones that will keep her small. Her parents, two college-educated professionals, have chosen to remain anonymous. Perhaps this is a good thing; because as the news of the ‘treatment’ are hitting the airwaves, people are upset.

She was diagnosed, they explain, with brain damage with unknown causes just after birth and has remained at the same developmental level since about three months. Three years ago she began to show early signs of puberty, and they grew anxious about the impact of fertility and of her rapidly increasing size and weight on the quality of her life. In discussions with doctors at Seattle Children’s hospital they devised the treatment: removal of Ashley’s uterus to prevent fertility, excision of early buds on her chest so that she would not develop breasts, and medication with high doses of oestrogen to limit her growth by prematurely fusing the growth plates of her bones.

The parents insist that the treatment, carried out in 2004, was conceived for Ashley’s benefit and not their own ease or convenience. With a lighter body and no breasts, Ashley will have fewer bed sores and lie more comfortably. And a smaller Ashley can be cared for and carried. “As a result we will continue to delight in holding her in our arms and Ashley will be moved and taken on trips more frequently instead of lying in her bed staring at TV or the ceiling all day long,” they write.

But as news about the treatment became known, Ashley’s parents were surprised by the virulence of some of the response. Comments on chatboards have included: “Ouch - this smacks of eugenics”; “I find this offensive, truly a milestone in our convenience society”; “This smells, I can’t agree with this”.

Raven has more on this at And Rightly So!

Jerry Newcombe Discusses Darwinism Special Part II

Jerry Newcombe Discusses Darwinism Special Part I

In this interview Stacy talks to author and all around nice guy, Jerry Newcombe, about The Coral Ridge Hour’s television special on Darwinism called Darwin’s Deadly Legacy.

This is great, from Concerned Women for America:

1. Origin of Life. Why do textbooks claim that the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment shows how life’s building blocks may have formed on the early Earth—when conditions on the early Earth were probably nothing like those used in the experiment, and the origin of life remains a mystery?

2. Darwin’s Tree of Life. Why don’t textbooks discuss the “Cambrian explosion,” in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil record fully formed, instead of branching from a common ancestor—thus contradicting the evolutionary tree of life?

3. Homology. Why do textbooks define homology as similarity due to common ancestry, then claim that it is evidence for common ancestry—a circular argument masquerading as scientific evidence?

4. Vertebrate Embryos. Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities in vertebrate embryos as evidence for their common ancestry—even though biologists have known vertebrate embryos are not most similar in their early stages, and the drawings are faked?

5. Archaeopteryx. Why do textbooks portray this fossil as the missing link between dinosaurs and modern birds—even though modern birds are probably not descended from it, and its supposed ancestors do not appear until millions of years after it?

6. Peppered Moths. Why do textbooks use pictures of peppered moths camouflaged on tree trunks as evidence for natural selection—when biologists have known since the 1980s that the moths don’t normally rest on tree trunks, and all the pictures have been staged?

7. Darwin’s Finches. Why do textbooks claim that beak changes in Galapagos finches during a severe drought can explain the origin of species by natural selection—even though the changes were reversed after the drought ended, and no evolution remained?

8. Mutant Fruit Flies. Why do textbooks use fruit flies with an extra pair of wings as evidence that DNA mutations can supply raw materials for evolution—even though the extra wings have no muscles and these disabled mutants cannot survive outside the laboratory?

9. Human Origins. Why are artists’ drawings of ape-like humans used to justify materialistic claims that we are just animals and our existence is a mere accident—when fossil experts cannot even agree on who our supposed ancestors were or what they looked like?

10. Evolution a Fact? Why are we told that Darwin’s theory of evolution is a scientific fact—even though many of its claims are based on misrepresentations of the facts?

Source: Web site for Jonathan Wells, Ph.D., Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2000). Dr. Wells is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, a member of several scientific associations, and has been published widely in academic journals.

Dr. D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries is showing a documentary called “Darwin’s Deadly Legacy” this weekend. This documentary will show you how what you believe can lead to a horribly deadly end; case in point, Hitler and the holocaust.

Some folks like meathead are having a fit about this subject matter, and to be honest, I think that’s terrific! It means people are talking about it. Horrified that his idols would be taken to task or be exposed for their true belief systems rather than swallow the stupidity of leftists lulled into a trance with mantras and eastern chants–it is satisfying to see bloggers attacking Kennedy, because where they’re leftist outrage, you know you’ve struck a chord with the truth.

From the Coral Ridge Ministries website here:

Ann Coulter is stunned. How is it, she asks, that she could go through 12 years of public school, then college and law school, and still not know that it was Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution that fueled Hitler’s ovens.

“I never knew about the link between Darwin and Hitler until after reading Richard Weikart’s book,” said Coulter, a popular conservative columnist and a featured expert on the new Coral Ridge Hour documentary, Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, which airs August 26 and 27. Hitler, she said, “was applying Darwinism. He thought the Aryans were the fittest and he was just hurrying natural selection along.”

Coulter is among those who appear on Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, a disturbing look at the historical impact of the theory of evolution and the shaky scientific ground on which it rests.

Other guests on the program include Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler, Lee Strobel, author of The Case for a Creator; Jonathan Wells, author of Icons of Evolution; Phillip Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial; Michael Behe, author of Darwin’s Black Box, and Ian Taylor, author of In the Minds of Men. “Among German historians, there’s really not much debate about whether or not Hitler was a social Darwinist,” said Weikart. “He clearly was drawing on Darwinian ideas.”

No Darwin, No Hitler
“To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler,” said Dr. Kennedy, the host of Darwin’s Deadly Legacy. “Hitler tried to speed up evolution, to help it along, and millions suffered and died in unspeakable ways because of it.”

But the social fallout from evolution has not been limited to Hitler. Eugenics, the idea that social engineers should monitor and manage choices to marry and have children, is the intellectual offspring of evolution. Darwin’s own cousin, Francis Galton, coined the term and campaigned for using human genetics as a means to breed a superior breed of humanity.

Eugenics took root in America in the early twentieth century—some 33 states adopted forced sterilization programs to prevent the “feeble-minded” and other “defectives” from reproducing. Planned Parenthood is a direct result of the eugenics movement in America. Its founder, Margaret Sanger, believed in removing what she called “the dead weight of human waste.” “Eugenics is applied Darwinism,” said Coulter. “And it sticks out like a sore thumb that all of these German eugenicists preceding the Nazi regime were enthusiastic Darwinists.”

Evolution is taught in every public school in America, and not without consequences, as Darwin’s Deadly Legacy documents. Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 people and themselves in the worst school shooting in U.S. history. Their goal was to bring death to more than 500. Harris wrote on his website, “YOU KNOW WHAT I LOVE??? Natural SELECTION! It’s the best thing that ever happened to the Earth. Getting rid of all the stupid and weak organisms.”

The autopsy report for Harris revealed that on the day of the attack, he wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Natural Selection.” Harris and Klebold, who planned their rampage for a year, paid homage to their hero, Adolf Hitler by carrying out their killing spree on April 20, Hitler’s birthday.

Grim Legacy
The legacy of Charles Darwin, Dr. Kennedy said, is “millions of deaths, the destruction of those deemed inferior, the devaluing of human life, and increasing hopelessness.” All this from a theory based on a crumbling scientific foundation—as the special makes plain.

“The time has come,” Dr. Kennedy said, “to recognize that evolution is a bad idea and should be, frankly, discarded into the dustbin of history.”

At WorldNetDaily:

Rabbi defends show linking Darwin, Hitler
Coral Ridge production stirs controversy before broadcast

Rabbi Lapin, whose organization (Toward Tradition) works to advance the nation toward “the traditional Judeo-Christian values that defined America’s creation and became the blueprint for her greatness,” had a different perspective.

“I believe it appropriate for thoughtful Jews to support the Coral Ridge documentary and perhaps even for it to be shown in Jewish schools because there really are only two ways to account for human presence on our planet. One is that God created us in His image. The other is that by a lengthy and random process of totally unaided materialistic evolution, primitive protoplasm evolved into Bach, Brahms, and Beethoven. This approach, ruling out any role for God, is simply incompatible with Jewish values,” he said.

At the American Chronicle there’s an article about it, go read it.

And while you’re at it, watch your television programming for “Darwin’s Deadly Legacy,” or purchase several copies of the CD and distribute to friends and family!

From The Christian Post:

The 60-minute special will feature Coulter; Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler; Lee Strobel, author of The Case for a Creator; Jonathan Wells, author of Icons of Evolution; and other experts.

Also see

‘Darwin’s Deadly Legacy’ Gives Shocking Look at Social Impact

Also see this post at the ID Report

“‘Evolution’ Study implies U.S. Science Education Lagging behind Europe,” Agape Press, Aug. 21, 2006

“Darwin-Hitler connection sparks attacks,” WorldNetDaily.com, Aug. 22, 2006

“ADL Furious Over Darwin Documentary,” NewsMax.com, Aug. 22, 2006

“Americans Stubbornly Refuse to Accept Evolution,” NewsMax.com, Aug. 23, 2006

I have noted quite a bit of this before, but it’s always amusing to see meatball come out of idiotaria to offer his stupidity on the subject…as though all of these experts don’t know what they’re talking about.

Previous:

Why Evolution breeds monsters like Hitler, Trotsky and Stalin

Marx & Engels: writings quotes and parallels to today’s leftists

Eugenics and the left

Incidentally there is some evidence here regarding the Third Reich’s persecution of the Christian Churches. Hitler was not a creationist; he was a GREEN who believed in the ‘animal element’ one of the reasons why they made smoking illegal, and made the Black Forest a ‘preserve’.

From Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience comes an excellent piece called Fascist Ecology: The “Green Wing” of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents by Peter Staudenmaier, which presents a brief and necessarily schematic overview of the ecological components of Nazism, emphasizing both their central role in Nazi ideology and their practical implementation during the Third Reich. A preliminary survey of nineteenth and twentieth century precursors to classical ecofascism should serve to illuminate the conceptual underpinnings common to all forms of reactionary ecology.

“We recognize that separating humanity from nature, from the whole of life, leads to humankind’s own destruction and to the death of nations. Only through a re-integration of humanity into the whole of nature can our people be made stronger. That is the fundamental point of the biological tasks of our age. Humankind alone is no longer the focus of thought, but rather life as a whole . . . This striving toward connectedness with the totality of life, with nature itself, a nature into which we are born, this is the deepest meaning and the true essence of National Socialist thought.” 1

1. Ernst Lehmann, Biologischer Wille. Wege und Ziele biologischer Arbeit im neuen Reich, München, 1934, pp. 10-11. Lehmann was a professor of botany who characterized National Socialism as “politically applied biology.”

From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany was released in 2004 (paperback edition in 2005) with Palgrave Macmillan in New York, a major publisher of historical scholarship. Here’s a short blurb from the narrative on the dust jacket:

…many leading Darwinian biologists and social thinkers in Germany believed that Darwinism overturned traditional Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment ethics, especially those pertaining to the sacredness of human life. Many of these thinkers supported moral relativism, yet simultaneously exalted evolutionary “fitness” (especially in terms of intelligence and health) as the highest arbiter of morality. Weikart concludes that Darwinism played a key role not only in the rise of eugenics, but also in euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, and racial extermination, all ultimately embraced by the Nazis. He convincingly makes the disturbing argument that Hitler built his view of ethics on Darwinian principles rather than nihilistic ones. From Darwin to Hitler is a provocative yet balanced work that should encourage a rethinking of the historical impact that Darwinism had on the course of events in the twentieth century.

This post is in honor of beautiful Terri Schiavo and I pray that she forgives us all.

Recently I came across an audio file of Mariah Blake complaining about how the Christian right has ‘their own facts’. That is twisted thinking, isn’t it? I mean…aren’t FACTS just…FACTS?

Here’s an excerpt from that interview–from Public Radio in Wisconsin.

Dave: And…this is Media Talk here on the ideas network of Wisconsin public radio, I’m Dave Berkman.

Most Americans get their news from what is often shorthanded as the MSM -the mainstream media. For an increasing minority, the nation’s 60 million evangelical Christians, the source for what many know about their communities, the nation and the world, are what my guest this hour, Mariah Blake, in her cover story in the current issue of Columbia Journalism Review, terms quote ‘an alternative universe of faith-based news’ endquote. And you can join us in our exploration of these faith-based media by dialing anywhere in or out of state: Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, everywhere in Wisconsin- 1-800-486-8655. In Milwaukee, though, please use the local number 227-2050, and thank you for joining us this evening, Mariah Blake.

Mariah: Thank you for having me, Dave.

Dave: Let’s begin, Mariah Blake, with some of the basics of the alternative universe of Faith-Based News. First, the kinds of numbers of over the air tv and radio stations and cable networks where we’ll find this kind of news.

Mariah: Well there’s basically–in terms of television–there’s very little in the way of local stations. It tends to be these massive networks that either reach across the country or reach across broad swoths of the country…

Dave: We have a full power UHF full-time Christian station here in Milwaukee that devotes quite a bit of its time from picking up national news.

Mariah: Oh really? Ok. I’m not familiar with this- I don’t know if it’s one of these large national networks.

Dave: No, no, I’m saying it connects up with them. It’s a local group called Voice of Christian Youth and the stations I think the most powerful FM transmitter and a powerful UHF transmitter going to the call letters of WVCY.

Mariah: Ok, so there may be in your particular market there may actually may be a local station. In many cases these national or even international networks have very high-powered local transmitters and communities across the country. Sometimes they’re non commercial licenses which means they’re competing for space with the likes of NPR and public television. But there’s 6 national networks-at least 6 television networks and each of them reaches tens of millions of homes.

Dave: Reaches and viewed are two very different things.

Mariah: Reaches and viewed are two very different things. And part of the issue with measuring the impact of these networks is the fact that– that most of them are not measured by Arbitron or Nielsen–or Nielsen at least, when it comes to television. But the ones that are rated, the largely viewed shows like the 700 club, about 1 million people view the 700 club every day. So…

Dave: That’s now broadcast –actually isn’t it on the ABC family channel?

Mariah: That is broadcast on the ABC Family channel. And that’s one of the interesting things that’s happening on television and on radio which is that a lot of the Christian news and talkshows are actually finding their way onto mainstream channels or stations. And it’s happening much more in the radio realm than it is in the television realm.

Dave: As a matter of fact, we got a wonderful example of a station that’s widely listened to here in Milwaukee out of Chicago which is the CBS Infinity-owned all news station WBBM. And I suspect this is true of other all news stations in New York, Philly, LA and San Fran. It was carrying a daily commentary by perhaps the most influential force in evangelical politics and I’m speaking of Focus on the Family’s James Dobson. They billed it, though, as a straight family advice segment with no indication of who Dobson is. So what are we seeing this bleedover this spillover into the so-called mainstream media?

Mariah: I know that Dobson reaches 7 million listeners, which is enormous. That’s on par with some of the most influential rightwing talk radio hosts.

Dave: BBM—WBBM has dropped him, I should note.

Mariah: Ok, but yeah, I think he’s on—to give you an example-The USA radio network-which is one of these Christian radio networks- evangelical networks that has a conservative political slant to their news- they are carried by about 800 stations and more than half of those are what you’d call mainstream stations so they’re not Christian stations.

Dave: There are about 1500 stations I understand in radio and about 100 generally low power UHF stations in tv that identify themselves as full time Christian.

Mariah: Actually the number of radio stations is….well there’s over 2000 religious radio stations and almost all of them are conservative evangelical.

Dave: Not too many owned and operated by the Unitarians.

Mariah: (laughs) But um I would say that’s just a fraction of- in terms of television, where the vast majority of people are viewing Christian television, is on cable and on satellite stations. And that’s really how the Evangelical television networks have grown. They’ve added tens of millions to their distribution lists by getting onto these high tech broadcast platforms. And one of the most interesting things that I think has happened is there’s 3 direct broadcast satellites that are operating in this country. There’s direct tv, there’s ecostar, and many fewer people have probably heard of sky angel.

Dave: And all of its transponders transmit Christian fare.

Mariah: Yeah it’s 100%-It’s 36 channels of Christian programming and nothing else. So this means-and here’s one of the interesting things that is happening-these means that people now have the option of viewing exclusively conservative evangelical programming. So you have this universe-this alternative universe-which not only includes news, but now includes sitcoms, reality shows, documentaries, film, basically the entire spectrum of television entertainment–and it’s all delivered with this conservative Christian slant. So people don’t have to be exposed to anything that differs from their point of view.

Dave: There are those that would contend, therefore, that the significance of faith-based news is often exaggerated, given that –no pun intended, it mainly preaches to and reaches the converted. Is that an accurate assessment?

Mariah: Well I think that one of the most alarming trends in our culture today is sort of the Balkanization of information – so that you have people-people don’t have a common understanding ‘cause they don’t have a common source of information. It used to be that you had a relatively limited number of news sources and now you have more and more partisan news sources that are just giving people the information that already–that builds upon their existing ideas and stereotypes. It doesn’t challenge them. It doesn’t—and it-I guess it helps to—I think it creates a culture in which people are thinking less and questioning less.

Oh, and we must be ‘questioning’ everything with that moral relativist’s eye, right? Because the entire wingnut ideology is so incorrect.

Dave: And reinforcing. And of course the other side of that is -do you end up when you talk about a journalism which tries to achieve this myth of objectivity as something more than a rather bland he said she said. I know, as a matter of fact I had your publisher on about two or three months ago on a pc had (head?) and talking about that concern.

Riiiight, Dave. We wouldn’t want to ‘reinforce’ anything. You know, ‘love the one you’re with’ and ‘peace, my brother’!

Mariah: Boy, I don’t know exactly how to res(pond)—I guess the thing is that the delivery on these Christian networks I’m talking about the news now and..

Dave: Yes.

Mariah: and not the talk shows which inject a lot of opinion-but the delivery is actually –it tries to mimic this objective news –

Dave: Visually, they are straight news casts.

Mariah: They appear very much to be straight news casts. But the information they deliver—the story selection is very different. There’s a real-they’re really focused on values issues which makes a lot of sense, but also, the facts are different–I think we’re all entitled to our own opinions, as I’m saying, we’re all entitled to our own opinions, but we’re not all entitled to our own facts.

Dave: I want to come to two major current news stories where that has been the case. But first let me ask you this. Who are the journalists? And what criteria do they have to meet to get a job in faith-based news?

Mariah: This is an interesting question and actually it varies dramatically. So some of these people, many of the people I met are actually people who come out of a mainstream news background. They happen to be people of faith, maybe they are disgruntled with what’s happening in mainstream newsrooms. Then there are people who have—and it depends because there is a variation among these networks-there are actually some people who come out of a marketing background. Which I think is very interesting- and I think that reflects sort of the differences in the news products-some of these networks actually provide something that looks very much like news. It has a conservative Christian slant to it, and some of them– it’s just dressed up like news– propaganda dressed up like news.

Oh that’s interesting come from her when she’s been part of the cabal! Propaganda? Mariah Blake is part of the profuse progressive propaganda pumping of the Village Voice now!

Dave: Ok let’s take two current stories that are getting attention now.

Mariah: Ok.

Dave: How are they playing the struggle over the appellate judicial nominations that George Bush has made and what about the coverage of the Terry Schiavo case?

Mariah: Ok. Do you mind if I start with the Terri Schiavo case?

The Terri Schiavo case is actually a very interesting story. I started working on broadcasting before that became a big story in the media and I wasn’t very familiar with Terry Schiavo’s name- but actually Terry Schiavo has been a huge story on these Evangelical networks for three years. And in many ways, their coverage helped build momentum, I believe, for this upsurgent support for keeping her alive. James Dobson, who you mentioned earlier, was repeatedly in the early stages of the process, calling on his listeners to call Jeb Bush’s office. And he would shut down phone lines in Jeb Bush’s office before this escalated to the level that the Whitehouse was involved.

Dave: These stations are very good at that. We had with this Christian station which probably gets more than 5,000 viewers although their FM station has a lot more listenership here. They began attacking a station which about 18 years ago—a television station-decided to run very late night Friday night uncut R movies. And they literally tied up their switchboard and the station was unable to function, and finally it just gave up the ghost.

Mariah: Really? (laughs) That’s fascinating. That’s a very fascinating anecdote. I think that illustrates something about these stations and their relationship to their audiences. The audiences are not necessarily as large as the mainstream networks, but their listeners and viewers– there’s a sense of loyalty and commonality of purpose. And they take these calls to action very seriously. They act on what they hear and they see on these networks. I think much more than you or I would turn on the television and view what we see with a certain amount of skepticism. I think there’s less skepticism among these audiences about the facts.

Oh you think so, heh? Maybe they just have skepticism about the progressive nature of Ivy League-ers like you, and the fact that our elitist halls of academe have been pumping them out into our newsrooms for the past 25 years.

Dave: I’m Dave Berkman joined here on media talk by Mariah Blake is the cover story in the Columbia Journalism it explores how what she terms is the expanding universe of faith-based news is becoming a major news source for evangelical Christians. You can join us by calling anywhere in or out of state 1-800-486-8655 in Milwaukee, though, local number 227-2050. The rundown for Ben Marin’s show is on Monday at 3:00. “Problems faced by gifted kids”, something I never had to worry about, at 4:00 the Annual Rolling Thunder Annual Ride For Freedom, and it’s by the national president of American Gold Star mothers and you’ll hear that and Marins, Monday 3-6 here on the ideas network of Wisconsin Public Radio.

break

Dave: I published a study going back about 15 years on the origins of religious broadcasting; its role in radio during the twenties in the Journal Of Popular Culture and two things struck me. One was that many of the leading clergy who broadcast in that era were mainstream protestants, and that there was almost no concern with politics by the evangelicals. When and why, Mariah Blake, did religious radio become almost exclusively rightwing fundamentalist and so politically focused?

Mariah: This was in large part the outcome of a struggle between the mainline churches and the evangelicals in the early days of broadcasting. The big C networks basically donated airtime to religious broadcasters and the evangelicals felt that this disadvantaged them because basically the mainstream churches were getting most of the airtime. So they formed the national association of evangelicals, which in turn formed the national religious broadcasters, and that group lobbied federal regulators and made it so that you had to pay for airtime. Now, the evangelicals had more entertaining flamboyant pastors who were able to basically bring in more donations and therefore buy more airtime, and eventually it was almost all evangelicals who were on the radio dials, the mainline ministries almost disappeared. And that’s continued to this day in terms of religious broadcasting it’s almost all evangelical-conservative evangelical.

Dave: And the..

Mariah: I’m sorry-

Dave: And the national religious broadcasters association is perhaps one of the most powerful lobbying groups supporting the agenda—of the conservative republican agenda.

Mariah: Yeah I don’t really say they’re one of the most powerful, but they’re certainly quite powerful and they influence FCC policy with their lobbying clout. So it’s not just- they work to help religious broadcasters to ensure that the policy is such that religious broadcasters can continue to grow rapidly- but they also influence– they do lobbying surrounding indecency issues and all kinds of other things that effect the media landscape in general.

Dave: As I’m not surprised, we have an absolutely full phone bank, let’s begin with Jim from Winona who has a profound question. Jim, you’re on.

Jim: Thank you very much. I’d like to get back to what your guest mentioned about facts. And how we’re not entitled to the facts is what she said. And my concern is that-

Dave: No, she meant to alter facts not entitled to their facts.

That’s right, Dave, cover for her.

Jim: What I’m trying to get to is-is there any standard for what we would consider to be factual? Is it always from a faith perspective, or is it possible from a reasoned perspective, is there any way we can come to agreement about what constitutes the facts? I remember back when I was in college, the science in the soviet system was laughed at because science had to reflect the soviet’s materialistic theory. Are the faith-based people now saying that science has to reflect the faith-based notion of science so there are no scientific facts?

Apparently you’re only looking at the scientists who are trying to fit within ancient evolutionary ideology rather than progress with science, like the Creationist scientists and so on. I bet you’ve never read anything about those ‘facts’ now, have you? You know, how science has advanced past that silly theory of evolution? Like how science has produced scientific reasoning for those pesky little vestigal organs? C’mon now.

Mariah: David, would you like me to respond to that?

Dave: Yeah, please.

Mariah: This is a complicated question. Facts are inherently-facts are inherently slippery in some respects. Some of the information that is being conveyed on these stations-I think they would have you believe that evolution and creationism or intelligent design-that those two theories-that there’s equal evidence scientifically to support those two theories when in reality there is not equal evidence.

Not that you’ve seen, anyway, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. You haven’t been provided with all those ’slippery facts’, obviously.
A fact is a fact as far as I’m concerned. You don’t dismiss facts because they don’t fit in your predetermined story line!

Dave: And we’ve seen where cat scans and the overwhelming majority of physicians with specialties in dealing with patients like Terry Schiavo- it’s said that her brain had turned to liquid, and they kept saying “no she’s functional”, even with Tom Delay going so far as to say she’s merely mentally-challenged.

Mariah: I think yeah, that is a very good example. One of the most-more alarming things that I’ve heard on some of these Christian news networks they were actually reporting as facts-her parents claimed that she sat up and said that she wanted to live –that Terry Schiavo sat up and said she wanted to live– right before her feeding tube was pulled.

Dave: Yes.

Mariah: Now, you can imagine that if you’re a person who isn’t getting their news from any other source, you would feel that this innocent person who is able to sit up and speak is basically being murdered.

That’s right, but apparently you never read Nat Hentoff at your very own Village Voice who had a similar to position to the ‘religious rightwing’ on this one.

I have covered highly visible, dramatic “right to die” cases—including those of Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan—for more than 25 years. Each time, most of the media, mirroring one another, have been shoddy and inaccurate.

The reporting on the fierce battle for the life of 39-year-old Terri Schiavo has been the worst case of this kind of journalistic malpractice I’ve seen.

Mariah, you’re still wet behind the ears on all kinds of issues, aren’t you? Your irresponsible reporting isn’t isolated to Jack Idema, then!

Dave: I would take issue with one of the things that you said-If those people were getting news from other sources–and many of them do monitor the mainstream media…. This is only proof to the degree that they differ from what they’re hearing. This is only proof of the bias and the anti-Christian nature of the mainstream media.

Mariah: I think you’re probably right on that one. Yeah. I’ll give you the point on that one.

Yes, Mariah, he’s right on that one. And by acknowledging the truth in what he said, you just acknowledged the very real possibility that perhaps what her parents were saying about her sitting up in bed was the truth, and the media lied, which is why we were so outraged about the entire situation.

The media is complicit with Terri’s murder because they didn’t report those nasty little “slippery” facts, as you indicated.

Terri is in a better place, and I wish I could say that about us. But with the progressives bearing down on us in this manner, we need to be getting our message out now…more than ever.

God forgive them…! And God Bless you, Terri.

Thanks to Stop the ACLU for “Remembering Terri“

Today MB and his family have Justice Holman and millions of us on their side…Crystal Clear with the Groningen Protocol… being Dutch would have been disastorous….Think it can’t happen here in the USA? Read this.:

The paper concludes by emphasising the need, at least in the United States, to clarify the legal status of this relatively common medical practice.

Damn I wish these type of Doctors murderers came with tattoos across their foreheads…

Cross posted at
Crystal Clear

Terri Schindler-Schiavo Blogburst 2006 Day One:

Crystal Clear the care for Terri Schindler-Schiavo should have been very simple.

• Effective and Efficient: Her Mother, her Father, her Sister,  and her Brother all wanted to care for her and love her.
  • Direct-Nothing is as everlasting and pure as a Mother’s love for her child.Nothing.
  • Economical-No hospice care was ever necessary or required. It bucked the whole system contemptuously to put her in a hospice Felos and Greer were connected with.
  • Comfortable-Life at home with family and love instead of 24/7 clinical care by those serving those entering the final stages of life with death waiting on the doorstep
  • Few Steps- Judge Greer could have legally, ethically, and morally bestowed guardianship on one or both of her siblings as requested early in the proceedings if he hadn’t had another interest
  • Fast-Could have been done and over with in one hearing
  • Suitable-Physical, Occupational, and Speech Therapy at home instead of receiving NONE of the above and LESS on account of your husband’s  legals guardian’s demand
  • Adapted-Could have recognized the change in Mikey’s guardianship eligibility as there was a Crystal Clear conflict of interest as Mikey was living with his concubine and fathered 2 children .. ya’ think?
• Simple,Reduced: Her Mother, Father, Brother and Sister and COUNTLESS OTHERS all wanted her to live and there was absolutely NOTHING in writing and only a few hearsay comments  (from biased and connected witnesses) and not even RELEVANT comments or statements that allegedly alluded to her saying she wouldn’t want to "live like that" when the "that " of her situation (with a feeding tube) wasn’t even considered extraordinary means and would not have been considered when she made the alleged statement by interested parties!

• Transparent & Learnable
  • Behaves as Expected- A husband who would like to supposedly get on with his life with a new family and has the option to do so would take the path of least resistance and… relinquish guardianship to her family and would have let her live. Mikey has stated he and NONE of us know what Terri would have wanted …it should have been an assumption of life with care by family who would be devastated and were by her starving…He was and is no hero… it was not expected behavior…
  • Familiar: There had been no so hotly contested case as this… logic and morality and life should have been default. Life and the presumption of life when loved and wanted by others is a familiar assumption and was until Terri…
  • Consistent: Terri’s Mother, Father, Brother, and Sister and countless supporters always supported Terri’s life. Mikey on the other hand went from asking for millions to care for her to using the million plus to finally finish her off…Remembering after receiving the malpractice settlement that she had said she wouldn’t want to live like that…
  • Intuitive/Understandable/: The public can understand a promise a husband makes to a wife. However, it is intuitive and understandable a wife in a similar predicament would not only understand but WANT her husband to let her live and let her family care for her and love her and take her home. It is beyond intuitive a woman who was in no pain and whose family wanted to take her home and care for her would want the family to do so and have her husband go on with his life. It is against common sense and not intuitive or  understandable an otherwise healthy woman would want to put her Mother, her Father, her Brother, her Sister, and countless millions through such a horrific death. It just does not compute. It does not match up with the person her family OR Mikey describe.

Instead we had this…

The Web of Lies

Murder with the world watching.

More to follow tomorrow.

From Crystal at Crystal Clear:

Around the time I wrote my post about the anniversary of the murder of Terri Schindler-Schiavo ,
which was soon after published as a letter to the editor of the Honolulu Star Bulletin, I thought about a Terri blogburst to commemorate the thirteen days the world watched in horror and the legacy she has left behind.

Unfortunately, as I went here and there on the list of Blogs for Terri,
I was disappointed to learn so many bloggers, who had so passionately written and acted on behalf of Terri and her loving family, were no longer blogging at all.

I hope this Blogburst in Memory of Terri will spread far and wide and inspire them to return and for many others to join us. Please make certain you let us know you are participating and feel free to copy any and all of my posts during that time. Please also plan on annually honoring the memory of Terri with "Terri’s Day" , 
a celebration of the "Culture of Life" as well as celebrating the woman who sacraficed her life for this cause.

Technorati Tags: Terri Schiavo

Do you remember Terri?

Those of us on the Right, (not to mention in the Right), fought hellaciously to, at the very least, have more tests done to prove once and for all if she were truly so brain-damaged that there was no help for her.

As a short aside I still don’t believe the autopsy results.

Aside from wanting to make certain that she was truly beyond all aid, we wanted to head off the setting of a precedent that would devalue life even more than it already is in this country. The rampant use of abortion as birth control is bad enough without letting people decide whether someone lives or dies on the basis of whether or not that person wants to continue to deal with a very ill relative or an insurance rep decides that the ill person is costing too much money to the company.

The left in America heaps adulation on the european union and their highly socialist systems, holding them up as a paragon of enlightened virtue and reminding us backwards, God-fearing rednecks in America just how caring they are across the pond.

The left in America would gladly have us go down this road, turning America into a country with an ever decreasing economy, leaving us in the same freedomless system of the EU, where a man is almost certain to never be able to move up the ladder of success because the socio-economic mobility simply doesn’t exist due to onerous taxes and a system that promotes laziness and an expectation that the government will be there to take care of you from the cradle to the grave.

Yes, those folks in the EU certainly do have a great idea, don’t they?

Forget for a moment the sky-high unemployment.

Nevermind the miniscule growth rate, the dangerous policies of appeasement, the lack of socio-economic mobility and the hateful attitude towards America for daring to defend ourselves and all free peoples.

Let all of these things slip from your mind as you ponder this little question.

Do you want to live in a society that values life so little that doctors can kill your newborn child without your knowledge or consent simply because that child is not born “normal”?

XPOSTED@Kender’s and Conservative Angst

That gives me the absolute creeps: “I kept my promise”. Can you imagine how her parents feel when they see that? This is all just another slap in the face to Terri’s family, as if the asshole hasn’t done enough to them. The murder of her daughter for money is the highest on my list. He has an “agent” now and is looking for the highest bidder for his book deal.

Even though Dr. William Polk Cheshire who worked for the Department of Children and Family Services said that Terri’s diagnosis of PVS was incorrect, it didn’t matter.

Recently the scrubbed autopsy results were released by the Coroner who did Terri’s autopsy. As you may recall, Michael denied an independent coroner to witness or take note at the autopsy, so there’s no doubt in my mind that just as in the case of other scientology-related deaths like Lisa McPherson, Albert Jacquier, Carrie Slaughterbeck, Andreas Ostertag, Greg Bashaw, Bob Mills, Noah Lottick, Philip Gale, Herbert Pfaff, Quentin Hubbard, Jocelyn Dorfmann, Susan Meister, John Buchanan, Josephus Haverith, Konrad A. Passau, Margaret Winkelman, Patrice Vic, Peter Frei, Richard Collins, Rudolph Willems, Wilhelm Mack and others. The autopsy was scrubbed to make Michael appear justified in his actions, but the questions will continue to linger with no answers. At the Empire Journal, they point out that Terri’s grave marker is virtually identical to that of Nancy Cruzan’s, another victim of euthanasia enthusiasts.

Sheriff Doug Seneker guarded Cruzan’s room at the Missouri Rehabilitation Center. Lawrence County Sheriff Doug Seneker was a deputy sheriff at the time. He questions whether Nancy Cruzan was in a persistent vegetative state. His opinion is based, in part, on her reactions three days before her death when he went into her room to check on her.

“She turned and looked at me and stared at me with a panicky look, sweating profusely, and the thought I had was, she was thinking, ‘Oh, here’s a policeman, he’ll help me.’ But we weren’t allowed to do that,” said Seneker.

In fact, Seneker and other officers were required to prevent others from helping her.

No, because murdering Nancy by dehydration was the goal. She wasn’t, in fact, “terminal”, she was deemed “inconvenient, just like Terri was. Terri was worth more to her husband Michael dead than alive, and he had many willing accomplices to help him do it.

Raven, a medical professional at And Rightly So! has this to say about it Terri’s autopsy results:

That report is just what many of us expected….it has been scrubbed down and made to look good for Michael.

Of course her brain is half it’s normal size….IT is an expected outcome of someone with a brain injury (caused by whatever). What is missing from the report is the very important info about the state of her brain. Was it normal?

Was it liquified? Was there mass? People live with only half a brain, and live normal lives…it’s an amazing organ. It does re-connect itself, and the neurons will start working again-when there is therapy and stimulation.

Of course she died of dehydration. And no evidence of harmful drugs being used prior to her death? Morphine and other legal drugs are never considered harmful when it comes to these things.

Had people given her little drops of water by mouth after the tube was removed, it would have prolonged her life by a few days and most likely caused her more pain. Either you give enough to sustain life, or none at all.
Once someone is actively dying of dehydration, an IV slow drip (30 drips/hour) is the only way to save the person. An IV or central line…

Blind? BS. The staff who worked with her don’t agree with this assessment and they say right up til about 3 days before she died…she was following people, tracking things with her eyes. Her vision may have been blurry or she might have only had peripheral vision, but she was not blind.

The conclusions one can inevitably draw as a result of all of this and the gaping holes as far as science justifying it and Dr. Cranford’s obsession with killing the “inconvenient” right down to Alzheimers victims and others who still have long lives ahead of them, are obvious to a person who doesn’t subscribe to the cult of death.

Dr. Hammesfahr points out that the conclusions drawn in the autopsy are not correct:

“Unlike the constant drumbeat from the husband, his attorneys, and his doctors, the brain tissue was not dissolved, with a head of just spinal fluid,” Hammesfahr explained. “In fact, large areas were ‘relatively preserved.’”

Hammesfahr reviewed the autopsy findings and said medical examiner Dr. Jon Thogmartin’s presentation of them was not totally accurate.

“Obviously, the pathologists comments that she could not see were not borne out by reality,” he said.

“The autopsy results confirmed my opinion … that the frontal areas of the brains, the areas that deal with awareness and cognition were relatively intact,” Hammesfahr added.

As a result, the Florida physician said Terri likely had little trouble with her eyesight in the years leading up to her death.

“In fact, the relay areas from the frontal and front temporal regions of the brain, to the spinal cord and the brain stem, by way of the basal ganglia, were preserved, thus the evident responses which she was able to express to her family and to the clinicians seeing her or viewing her videotape,” he said.

“The videotapes clearly showed her seeing, and even Dr. Cranfoed, for the husband, commented to her that, when she could see the balloon, she could follow it with her eyes as per his request,” Hammesfahr explained.

The neurologist pointed out that scan confirmed those areas were functional and not scar tissue.

“Ultimately, based on the clinical evidence and the autopsy results, an aware woman was killed,” he concluded.

He also said that Thogmartin’s comments that Terri couldn’t swallow were not borne out by the fact that Terri was swallowing her own saliva.

Meanwhile, though the weights of Terri’s brain were accurate, Hammesfahr suspects much of the weight loss was due to the two weeks of dehydration.

Hammesfahr pointed out that the autopsy shows Terri’s collapse was not the result of bulimia, eating disorders or a heart attack. That leaves open the possibility that Terri’s collapse could have been the result of physical abuse.

“As we noted in the press, there was no heart attack, or evident reason for this to have happened (and certainly not of Terri’s making),” he said.

He also indicated that the autopsy did not completely check for all types of physical abuse and he and a neurologist for Michael both agreed neck injuries were present.

There were a few people that came here and to The Wide Awakes website mocking those of us who fought so hard to save Terri’s life from the euthanasia death cult enthusiasts. The sick sadistic representatives of that movement who say that the release of the autopsy should be proof to us that there was no foul play and that her murder by starvation is justified, just punctuates how low the courts are willing to go in order to push this on a population that doesn’t believe that people should be killed because they’re “inconvenient”.

What surprised me was the news that Michael Schiavo had a change of heart, apparently, and buried Terri’s remains in Clearwater. Perhaps that’s so that the scientology cult can go to her grave and celebrate their “win” as the Roe vs. Wade of the Euthanasia movement. Clearwater, in Pinellas Park County, is Scientology central.

I have no doubt that her family is happy about this unexpected turn of events, at least they’ll be able to visit her grave now without travelling to Pennsylvania. Michael is still hiding out and not responding to inquiries by reporters, but he has an “agent” and is looking for the highest bidder for his story, book deal, and whatever else he can milk out of Terri’s death.

Update: Jeb Bush has called an investigation around the circumstances of her collapse. What’s even more interesting to me is how–even though there is a lot of evidence that was ignored during the course of the different court proceedings that indicated that Michael attempted to strangle his wife to death, and left her on the floor for 70 minutes when he’s a nurse and could have helped her…it was all ignored. I don’t know if this investigation will help, but the libs want the republicans to drop it, of course. Terri never had her own representation in court, the least we can for her now is take an honest look at what really happened to bring on her “collapse” other than the false accusations that she was bulemic and had a potassium imbalance. Those presumptions were not based on the factual medical evidence, but her bone scan showed that there was trauma to her neck that was consistent with attempted strangulation.

Mae Magouirk is dead, God called her home. And that’s much better than dying of forced nutrition and hydration by despicable people who play God. God bless her and her family.

This is an amazing story and I can hardly believe it…we fought long and hard for Terri Schiavo’s life, the human body is miraculous in its power to heal itself, if just given the chance…

Nearly a decade after being left virtually speechless, a firefighter in Buffalo, New York, has suddenly started talking. Doctors are stunned, and trying to fully understand how the change came about.

Firefighter Donald Herbert rushed into a blazing apartment in Buffalo, New York, in 1995. The roof caved-in, crushing him and depriving him of oxygen for about six minutes. He was left virtually blind, unable to speak, and without memory, even of his loved ones.

Doctors expressed little optimism he would ever recover. New York University neurologist Dr. Orrin Devinski says people who recover from brain damage usually do so quickly.

“With the lack of improvement for a decade, the prognosis is terrible. It is essentially one in a million,” says Dr. Devinski.

But Mr. Herbert defied the odds.

After nearly 10 years in a coma, he has suddenly started speaking again. Last week, he lucidly told staff at his nursing home that he wanted to talk to his wife.

What followed was 14 hours of emotional conversation with his family, including his son Nicolas, who was just three when his father was injured.

Experts are struggling to understand what happened.

The physician overseeing his care, Dr. Jamil Ahmed, says he had recently changed the combination of drugs Mr. Herbert takes. “I put him on medication that would not interact, and combined together I thought may make a difference,” says Dr. Ahmed.

Mr. Herbert’s wife Linda, says she is overwhelmed. “He has had several infrequent moments of lucidity, which has given us much hope for further recovery.”

Doctors are also hoping for his full recovery. And, they hope to learn from his case in order to treat other brain-damaged patients.

It’s a heartwarming and incredible story of love…that the family has stayed with him, visiting and talking with him, with infrequent glimmers of hope shining through when he showed them brief moments of lucidity. We keep hearing about cases like this one, where people who were in a coma wake up and talk, and start to recover. I have no doubt we’ll continue to hear about them as time goes on. Just because you’re brain damaged, doesn’t mean you’re dead. And with enough time and TLC, all things are possible.

Many new technologies and treatments are available now for injuries like this…neurologists have discovered ways to stimulate brain function and help stroke victims and brain injured victims. Apparently Herbert had been receiving drugs normally used to treat Parkinson’s disease, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression. Three months later, on a Saturday, something clicked in Herbert’s brain. He started talking. Not only talking, his doctor said, but talking sensibly. Even making people laugh.

NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.

Conservative eugenics?

I should note that economist Steven Levitt’s work suggests that the old leftist eugenics program of reducing the birth rate (via abortion) among the “lower classes” was not totally misconceived. Levitt’s findings seem to show that making voluntary abortion available to poorer mothers reduces the crime rate years later. He is at pains of course to indicate that his empirical findings are not an endorsement of either eugenics nor abortion. Slate featured a three-day correspondence between him and Steve Sailer dealing with the issue.

Given the traditional conservative regard for individual liberty, it seems to me that the only eugenics programs that conservatives could justify would be voluntary ones, such as the large material incentives to reproduce that the Singapore government offers to highly educated Singaporean women. Christian conservatives, however, tend to regard all reproduction as God-given so would oppose even voluntary eugenic programs that limit reproduction, such as the Woodhill Foundation programs that pay crack-addicted mothers to undertake contraception.

Leftists, however, oppose the Woodhill programs because they are voluntary and privately-funded. They like such matters to be in the hands of the State (i.e., under their control).

And the problem of a self-perpetuating and substantially criminal underclass does not need to be addressed by eugenics. It can be addressed by addressing its major causes, such as the over-generous welfare system that the Left has created to thunderous praise.

And despite everything, there are useful and non-coercive eugenics programs in operation right now. Genetic screening in the U.S. Jewish community has now all but eliminated the awful hereditary disease Tay-Sachs.

Today I went into the city to represent Blogsforterri and CURE. It was an educational experience. I realized from that trip just how competitive the media is to get a “scoop”.

Here’s the post at Blogsforterri. I have to prepare for work tomorrow, but one thing I discovered is I need new batteries for my digital camera! The pictures from the gathering for Clara in the afternoon on Sunday will be posted within the next couple days after I get new batteries, upload them the pictures, and resize them.

In the meantime, tomorrow I’m BACK TO WORK, people!

I’m grateful to CURE for giving me the opportunity to represent them, Tim at Blogsforterri, and all the wonderful people I’ve met on this journey to oppose the euthanasia movement here in my home state. I’m relieved that -for now-Clara is back on nutrition. She had been without food for 35 days, according to the wonderful and courageous Pastor Guillermo Espinoza.