From AP this morning:

A federal appeals court early Wednesday agreed to consider a petition by Terri Schiavo's parents for a new hearing on whether to reconnect their severely brain-damaged daughter's feeding tube.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled without comment on Schiavo's 12th day without nourishment. Last week, the same court twice ruled against Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, who are trying to keep her alive.

Story here.

Please God if this is to be - please let it not be too late.

Of course George "Death" Felos says:

"Obviously, the parents and the siblings are desperate. Desperation may lead to different perceptions," Felos told CNN. "I can only tell you what I've seen, and Terri is dying a very peaceful, cared-for death."

Dying a very peaceful, cared-for death?

Murder is murder whatever you call it JD Death.

In the wake of murder by judicial fiat in Florida - the Colorado Supreme Court has tossed out a death penalty conviction in a rape and murder case because some of the jurors consulted the Bible during their deliberations:

DENVER — The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday threw out the death penalty in a rape-and-murder case because jurors had studied Bible verses such as "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" during deliberations.

The Supremes just couldn't have this:

The Supreme Court said "at least one juror in this case could have been influenced by these authoritative passages to vote for the death penalty when he or she may otherwise have voted for a life sentence."

So, let's see - a helpless woman, guilty of no crime, is sentenced to death by a judge on the hearsay evidence of her estranged husband (and the Supreme Court in that jurisdiction as well as the Supreme Court of the land wouldn't even deign to question that decision), but a man guilty of rape and murder is allowed to live off of the largesse of society because a jury of his peers consulted the ultimate moral law in reaching their judgment?

I say again - if we have to remove every sitting judge from the bench by vote or impeachment - we must do it. Our country and its ideals are too noble for the rabble.

From the April 4th issue of the Weekly Standard are Bill Kristol's thoughts - in Evolving Standards of decency" saved Christopher Simmons's life; they weren't enough to save Terri Schiavo -  on what the murder of Terri Schiavo by judicial fiat means in terms of our judiciary - and concludes with this:

So our judges deserve some criticism. But we should not be too harsh. For example, it would be wrong to suggest, as some conservatives have, that our judicial elite is systematically biased against "life." After all, they have saved the life of [murderer] Christopher Simmons. It would be wrong to argue, as some critics have, that our judges systematically give too much weight to the husband's wishes in situations like Terri Schiavo's. After all, our judges have for three decades given husbands (or fathers) no standing at all to participate in the decision whether to kill their unborn children. It would be wrong to claim that our judges don't take seriously legislation passed by the elected representatives of the people. After all, our judges are committed to upholding the "rule of law"--though not, perhaps, the rule of actual laws passed by actual lawmakers. And it would be wrong to accuse our judges of being heartless. After all, Judges Carnes and Hull of the 11th U.S. Circuit told us, "We all have our own family, our own loved ones, and our own children."

Mr. Kristol puts a perspective to the continuing events. But it is perhaps this singular event that has broken the proverbial camel's back - the judicial outrage and impotence of the legislative and executive in the face of it leaves the governed with little choice but to permanently alter its consent.

I wish everyone a commemorative and contemplative Easter Sunday - commemorative because it is proper and fitting to be energized by a risen savior who defied death and will return again.

Contemplative because juxtaposed to the fact of resurrection is that this Easter marks a time in which our government through both proactive and impotent means is willing to breach its most fundamental guarantee to the most helpless of its citizens and has thus broken our precious Republic.

The Son has risen. The sun will rise. Something new must rise among us.

Once again we see dispatched minions trot out to the media to hammer a singular message: "The Schiavo case is just a private family decision and the government should not be involved."

Once more this is just a disingenuous attempt by the left to be confusing - and it just might be working.

Private family decision? It has been, rather, a public family dispute for many years. It has been public precisely because the family could not agree between themselves about what action to take.

The family chose to take their dispute to the government - the judicial branch of government - to seek justice. The government has been involved - publically involved in the case - for many years.

When those who are self identified with the mantra "Social Justice" and who employ strategies with every branch of government for every conceivable issue come out and say "the gonverment shouldn't be involved" they should be rightly laughed out of whatever venue they are using.

This case is a matter of justice - moral justice. When moral justice cannot be arrived at within the judiciary - especially when a significant number of salient issues are disputed and unresolved legally - it is the obligation of the legislative and executive branch to deliver that moral justice.

When the result is murder by judicial fiat and an impotent legislature and executive - we are left in constitutional crisis - and the people are left to contemplate the viability of their consent to be governed.

"You seem...to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all contitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy... The Contitution has erected no such single tribunal."
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1820

"... God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William S. Smith in 1787.

In Vermont a farmer convicted of starving his cows to death has begun serving his sentence - as of March 24th 2005.

In Florida a man is starving his wife to death in front of the entire world and is blessed by judicial fiat in the act. He will serve no time in jail on earth for this crime by license - but he and some legal illiterates that wear black robes to work will enjoy a much warmer fate in the long term.

(H/T James Taranto's Best of the Web on Opinion Journal for the cow starving story - later this will be the March 25th, 2005 archive)

WA GOP Chairman Chris Vance points out a good newspaper editorial (with the exception that it attempts to forgive Ms. Gre-Gore for her significant gubernatorial underperformance so far on election challenges) in the Tacoma News Tribune:

In an editorial yesterday, the Tacoma News Tribune called Gregoire's budget "the usual Olympia fare: Accounting gimmicks and one-time savings that put off the pain."  To read the entire editorial click here:  http://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/story/4713484p-4352601c.html

We knew that a Gre-Gore governorship would be the 'same-old-same-old'. That's what we're getting - along with an already broken campaign promise of no new taxes. What a shock!

Part of WA GOP Chairman Chris Vance's update email today contains a section by state House Representative Bruce Chandler. He includes some updates on legislative issues noting that the current legislative session is more than two-thirds over. Among other things, this is the progress on reforming our broken election system by our Democrat controlled statehouse in Olympia:

…fix our broken election system?

Provisional ballots? No action.

Illegal voters? No action.

Require ID? No action.

Require county auditors – rather than political operatives – to verify questionable signatures? No action.

Require timely election results? No action.

Reconstruct voter registration rolls and require regular reviews to make sure registered voters are legal? No action.

Make sure every vote has a voter? No action.

Should we believe the Democrats when they say that election reform is important to them? Well, there you go.

This item went over the AP wires yesterday:

For more than a century, the study of dinosaurs has been limited to fossilized bones. Now, researchers have recovered 70-million-year-old soft tissue, including what may be blood vessels and cells, from a Tyrannosaurus rex.

Know what that means? It means that the fossil isn't 70 million years old. Soft tissue can't survive for 70 million years. How could that be? The brahmans of science don't want you to ask that question.

Wonder what will happen when a dinosaur is found in ice or in a peat bog.

Dr. Alan Keyes, among other things, a terrific constitutional scholar also is of the opinion that Governor Bush has the duty to intervene in the Schiavo case. In this World Net Daily opinion piece he concludes:

Terri Schiavo's survival depends on Gov. Bush's faithful execution of this responsibility, and the survival of American self-government on the willingness of all those in a like position to faithfully execute the duties of their high office.

In times like these, calculating politicians are not good enough. Enlightened statesmen are needed at the helm. God help us if we do not soon choose to find them there.

This piece is worth a complete read. Our way of life is dependent on correct thinking on issues like this.