Let this one go everyone. I think we're all looking on with puzzled horror at the whole Schiavo mess. I firmly believe that this is a matter of giving the Republican enough rope and letting them hang themselves. It's revenge of the base.
The federal judge will hear the evidence and decide the same way every court before has. Soon in The Republic of Talk Radio and throughout East Blogistan United States District Judge James D. Whittemore who will be conducting the federal trial will be the poster child for Liberal Activist Judge. He's going to be bombarded with slime. They won't even care if they are true or not. He kicks puppies! He smeared his feces on my child! He wears white after Labor Day!
Not that it will affect the case one way or another. Federal Judges are pretty much untouchable, politically. All this will end up doing is pissing off all the Federal trial judges. A group one annoys at one's own risk.
This train wreck is just getting started, and the Democrats in Congress are wise to steer clear.
Oh have I mentioned that Judge Whittemore is a Clinton appointee? (1. not that that makes a difference, trial judges are almost uniformly non-partisan in most of their rulings 2. Not that Rush and his ilk care about #1)
If DelayCo in Congress want to spend all their time proposing Schiavo bill after Schiavo bill. Let them. Hell vote for it, too. It really doesn't matter they will own this issue. And a large portion of the population was had to make this sort of decision at some point. More than a few might have had intra-family disagreements about it. But right now they are imagining having themselves at the center of this circus. The husband is being slandered six ways from Saturday like the Right does with everyone (Clarke, the first Treasury Guy, etc). Even the most obtuse moderate must be wondering - "Shouldn't these people be, um, taking care of the people's business, rather than sticking their nose in my family's business?"
The sad part is that the whole thing is just another symbolic victory for the base. I like to think of it as the "win the battle, lose the war." I'm really surprised that the Religious Right hasn't caught on to this game yet. It seems really unlikely that the federal judge will reach a different conclusion than the trial judge. SO they will come out in 2006 with Judge Whittemore as "out of control liberal judges are trying to kill you!!1!11one1!" But perhaps not as subtle.
Let them throw around words like "judicial murder" "death party" The vast, vast majority of voters simply do not want to have this discussion. At least not at a political level. People everywhere have a hard time talking about this with loved ones, let alone total strangers. Republicans were looking for a fight on this and Ds that were around just shrugged and said "well if you guys feel that this is THAT important then yes we're in favor of this horrible piece of congressional intervention - after all you're in charge" Stupid laws can always be repealed once we win back the majority. It's just that easy.
They will own this issue because they will not be able to stop arguing against the `liberals are in favor' of death strawman. It's true that I'm sure that we've said this before - that surely now the public will see how extremist Republicans are after outrage X. This is something that everyone views as a personal decision and here is the republican congress swooping down. The only people out there bringing it up again and again will be the republicans.
People are naturally predisposed these days to dislike Congress and the more Republicans keep on about this the more unseemly and ghoulish they appear. The reform mantra for 2006 looks more and more viable with every overreach, we may not stop all of them. But every tactless thing like this causes a few more people to wonder.