Imagine my surprise as I was reluctantly browsing the World's Premier Fish Wrapper (The Racine Journal Times).  When what to my wondrous eyes appeared - This Headline.  "Judge Throws Out Plea Agreement in Voter Registration Fraud Case, Sentences Man To Jail."

The "Project Vote" thug was smiling as he enter the courtroom.  A plea bargain virtually assured him and his buddy (Jury Trial in July) would have access to another E. Micheal McCann (Milwaukee Democrat DA) like DA.  Please don't make the DA's office actually soil their hands with a tough approach to the law.

Judge Dennis Barry fooled them all.  Plea bargain agreement - Out.  Jail time - In.  DA's Office egg on face.  DA Nieskes (Who we once had great hope for and worked for his election) turned traitor to his supporters.  I guess it's true that a rose is a rose, a lawyer is lawyer.  But, then we have to consider Judge Dennis Barry.  He is right on in his opinion and a lawyer too.

"The problem that the court has with this case is that it is not situation where Jones is a supervisor in a factory where people had to make air fresheners ( a not so veiled reference to Racine's largest employer, Johnson Wax)....this job was related to the very fundamental right of America's society, the right to vote," Barry said.

The sentence:  Two year's probation

Conditions:  * Serve 90 days in the Racine County Jail

                      * Pay $500 to Crime Stoppers of Racine within 6 months

                      * Maintain full-time employment outside the political arena

                      * Not engage in any job with election activity, not even a place

                        that prints campaign signs

The judge closed with these comments,"Kids in high school can't wait to turn 18 to have the right to vote.  It's a big deal to exercise that right.  If we allow people to treat the voting system like some game they can cheat at, then we are in real trouble.  You had the responsibility, and were paid for it, to make sure the registration forms were accurate and complete.  When people are found not doing their duty then the rule of law has to step in."

Thank you Judge Barry for a job well done.  DA Nieskes - It's time for you to grow a few appendages that all REAL MEN possess.  Your actions in this case are a disgrace.

And may I never hear the Dumocrat saying again, "Just one case of Fraud, Just one", when they complain about voter ID legislation.

The inimitable Chrenkoff documents the Coalition of the Willing in pictures. It's clear who takes the main burden in combat, but I am thankful for all those who invest in Iraq's future on the ground - doing everything it takes to ring out freedom.

Kozo Haraguchi is 95 years old and lives in southern Japan. He broke the 100 meter world record on Sunday - for his age group.

He started running track events only 30 years ago! Guess he decided it was time to get in shape.

And I complain about having to loosen my belt after too much dinner.

Neurosurgeon Dr. William Hammesfahr has reviewed Terri's autopsy report and says that "the record must be set straight".

In a report by World Net Daily last night, Dr. Hammesfahr says:

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. In fact, large areas were 'relatively preserved.'"

He said the autopsy results confirmed his opinion that the frontal areas of the brain, the areas that deal with awareness and cognition, were relatively intact.

And:

Hammesfahr concluded: "Ultimately, based on the clinical evidence and the autopsy results, an aware woman was killed." (Ed: Emphasis mine)

Should the LSM report this, it will certainly be coupled with vilification and criticism of this neurosurgeon. (And before the wingnuts trot it out, I've seen the 'quackwatch' link. We know how members of the open 'science' community treat those that have dissenting opinion.)

The World Net Daily story also quotes Jerri Lynn Ward who linked to my post last week and who is asking some very good questions about the autopsy report. Jerri, in real life, is an attorney who represents health providers--mainly long term care providers--and she encounter end-of-life and medical ethics issues in the course of representing those providers. She has a post about Hammesfahr's statements today as well.

Where's your apology E. J.?

UPDATE: I altered Jerri's (Uh, Sue Bob's :) ) 'bio' that I pulled from the World Net Daily story with her clarification in a comment to this post.

There are a variety of reports about what CIA director Porter Goss said in an interview with Time magazine.

The AP says "that the United States' respect for sovereign nations makes it more difficult to capture the al-Qaeda chief."

Asked about the hunt for al-Qaeda-in-chief, Goss is quoted in the June 27 Time interview:

When you go to the question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states, you're dealing with a problem of our sense of international obligation, fair play," Goss said. "We have to find a way to work in a conventional world in unconventional ways.

Huh? I'm sorry, but this sounds like someone infected with 'Department of State'-ism. It is, of course, entirely possible that Goss' statement was taken out of context (it is Time after all), but on its face this plays to the sentiments of the State of old - and hopefully not to the State department envisioned by President Bush and implemented by Condi Rice.

Shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush famously said that the United States "will make no distinction between terrorists and those that harbor them."

Any state that provides a sanctuary for terrorists - is not qualified to be a sovereign state in this post 9/11 age - period.

If we know where this author of evil is we must take him out, 'sovereign states' be damned. It is this sort of misguided 'recognition' by State that allowed a Taliban Afghanistan to exist in the first place. Have we allowed laxity on our policy position on this matter? If so, it is time to renew our vow not to forget those that were incinerated and indiscriminately killed on that fateful day.

Take him out. Do it now.

Especially to mine. I understand I wouldn't be here without him :)

Happy Father's Day Dad!

but when your beer gets stuck to your nethers - you'll wish you had danced.

Washington Post blow hard E. J. Dionne opines about 'fact bending' by conservatives opposing the murder of Terri Schiavo and asks for apologies in the light of the 'facts' of her autopsy.

Of course, Dionne hasn't read the autopsy report himself - he's just repeating the spin - and he's taking Bill Frist to task for 'fact bending' by bending the facts himself.

In typical double standard speak, Dionne decries innuendo, and then proceeds to innuendo up a storm:

"As I understand it," Frist said on the Senate floor, "Terri's husband will not divorce Terri and will not allow her parents to take care of her. Terri's husband, who I have not met, does have a girlfriend he lives with and they have children of their own." No accusation here, just a brisk walk through innuendo city.

Hey EJ - He wouldn't divorce Terri. Fact. He wouldn't allow Terri's parents to care for her. Fact. He does have a girlfriend. Fact. They do have children together. Fact.

But, despite the official finding by the Neuropathologist: "Neuropathologic examination alone of the decedent's brain - or any brain, for that matter - cannot prove or disprove a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state or minimally conscious state." (Page 9, Neuropathoogist Stephen J. Nelson, In re: Theresa Marie ("Terri") SCHIAVO, deceased Your Medical Examiner Case No. 5050439), Dionne attacks Frist for questioning, prior to an autopsy, whether Terri was in a persistent vegetative state - and calls him a quack for good measure. Facts? No, innuendo city. Despite the findings, Dionne derides opinions by Frist and DeLay that Terri demonstrated evidence of minimal consciousness (which is on equal footing with PVS in the autopsy finding) by calling them dishonest ignoramuses. Fact? No, just more innuendo.

Of course, if Dionne had actually read the autopsy, he might be asking why the architecture of Terri's brain was remarkably intact - that specifically the cortex and thalamas were, though damaged, extant - instead of the 'mush' the PVS proponents had been hoping for. He might have asked, why with all the references to the literature on PVS in the autopsy report, there was almost no discussion of correlating evidence in the examination of Terri's brain.

He might have asked why the centerpiece of the neuropathological analysis was the weight of a severely dehydrated brain.

He might have asked why a defense against conducting an MRI while Terri was still alive was presented in an autopsy report. (Uh, EJ, to explain this clearly to you - Isn't it strange that in an autopsy report there is an editorial paragraph that basically says: "It was correct not to conduct an MRI on Terri while she was still alive because of the therapeutic implant she had in her thalamus. We were out to kill her - not to hurt her." For what purpose was this paragraph produced? Is it, in effect, an apology? An apology to radiologists and neuropathologists that will look at the autopsy evidence and exclaim "Oh, my God, we just purposefully killed a woman who had a remarkably intact cerebral cortex and thalamus" - the "centers of consciousness".)

Now, those are some innuenda worth examining. Don't you think EJ?

EJ?

He's not answering. After his expectorant explication, he must be enjoying some time on the respirator.

Michelle Malkin has a great round up of responses and calls to action.

I was thinking last night about whether engaging with him is really wise - mainly because you might get some on you - know what I mean?

Then I noticed a receipt on the table describing the treatments the dogs received at their check up yesterday.

So my solution is: send him to the vet. It gives a whole new meaning to the term 'expression'. And if that doesn't help - there's always surgery.

Jeff Goldstein is the master of irony and dishes it out brilliantly, twice.

Terri's autopsy report was issued yesterday and aspects of it were discussed at a press conference by the medical examiner.

The LSM dutifully reported the findings.

The St. Peterburg Times in Tampa Bay Florida today laud the 'voice of science' that brings the unhappy matter to an end. Referring to Pinellas-Pasco ME Thogmartin, the Times writes :

His words, and the way he delivered them, stood in stark contrast to the insistent, even shrill voices heard during Schiavo's last days. Where Schiavo's advocates on both sides had appealed to emotion, Thogmartin called for reason. Where they cried and prayed, he explained.

Please, his words implored, listen. There are things that science can reveal and things that are unknowable. There is nothing left to uncover, no tissue left to dissect, nothing more to fight over.

One of the centerpieces of the autopsy report is from the part that was produced by Dr. Stephen Nelson - in his capacity as Neuropathologist:

Around the world, this 'half brain weight' story is repeated over and over again like some mantra that proves a point.

It really doesn't seem that anyone wants to subject this particular lynchpin to any critical thinking. Shall we?

What is the brain composed of?

That's 77-78% water. Other references say up to 85% of the brain is composed of water.

The same autopsy that concluded that Terri died from dehydration (and specifically not from starvation) noted her weight in preparation for the autopsy:

Terri Schiavo had experienced massive weight loss during the 13 days that she was deprived of her feeding tube.

I can't find a reference to her weight prior to the tube being removed - but from pictures I would venture that she weighed somewhere between 155 and 175 pounds.

There are, fortunately, limited scientific studies on the weight loss effects of forced dehydration. But we have a contemporary example that demonstrates the massive weight loss involved.

You may remember the story of uber-hiker Aron Ralston, who in a 2003 freak hiking accident, had an 800-1,000 pound boulder pin his arm to a canyon wall inside of a crevice. To survive, Ralston eventually amputated his own arm. In his book Between A Rock And A Hard Place, Ralston says this in the epilogue:

Ralston lost 40 of his 165 lean, conditioned pounds in six days - during which time he consumed a little water and resorted to drinking his own urine to survive.

How much weight did Terri Schiavo lose in 13 days?

It's certainly difficult to make an exact determination, but she clearly would have lost at least, and probably more than one-third of her body weight. It is not unreasonable to conclude that her brain tissue lost the same or even more percentage of weight as well.

Which brings us to the 'atrophied brain'. Here we are in the middle of a detailed autopsy report addendum and the Neuropathologist determines to make a comment that amounts to advocacy rather than reporting medical findings. He focuses on Terri's brain weight as the significant pathology and then makes a comparison to Karen Ann Quinlan's brain.

I'm old enough to remember the controversy over Ms. Quinlan when her parents were allowed to unplug her respirator - and she shocked everyone by breathing on her own. No one in the 1970s could conceive of the barbarism of pulling Ms. Quinlan's feeding tube so she lived on it until she died of pneumonia nine years later. When Ms. Quinlan died she was at least reasonably hydrated.

We can be certain that doctor Nelson is aware of these facts.

What am I saying? Am I saying that Terri Schiavo didn't have brain damage? No, not saying that. It was obvious. Am I saying that there's no medical truth in the autopsy? Nope. Not saying that either.

What I am saying is that the discussion of pathology of Terri's brain due to brain weight is medical fraud - prior to the removal of the feeding tube Terri's brain weight would have been at least 922 grams and could have easily been over 1,000 grams. These doctors know this. Her significantly reduced brain weight was due to the dehydration and starvation that was imposed on her.

It is telling that there is such an effort at the ME's office that performed this autopsy. Why the need by those pledged to 'first do no harm' to introduce advocacy in a scientific document which should be free of ideology? Why tell such a significant lie?

UPDATE: A reader wants to know if all brains aren't dried out in an autopsy so there's a standard of moisture content. Nope. It is quite rare to autopsy a dehydrated subject so there's been no need to establish some water content protocol (I would think that it's safe to say that any other autopsy that has ever been performed on someone as dehydrated as Terri Schiavo was would result in a criminal investigation). Here's a good (safe to look - just cartoons) description of the process of autopsy.

UPDATE 2: At Sue Bob's Diary, Jerri Lynn has a great series of posts - asking great questions about the details of the autopsy report - and asking the 'dehydration' question before I did. The first post is here. In the post that is tracked to this one she asks:

What is more important, brain weight or brain architecture?

That's a great question.

Jerri Lynn also references an article in the medical literature: Dehydration confounds the assessment of brain atrophy. (Full article requires a paid subscription).

Taking that lead, I've also found: Fluid intake affects brain volume: a possible confounder in the assessment of brain atrophy, Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain in Diabetes (look for 'dehydration' in the article - a reason for brain atrophy), and Biomarkers and Surrogate Outcomes in Neurodegenerative Disease: Lessons from Multiple Sclerosis (look for 'dehydration' again in the article - impact on brain volume).

Thanks for the link Michelle!