Left Turn Ahead

That last post was a real bummer. Smart, articulate and right on the money, even if it's author does dip into new age sappiness. But a resonant piece nonetheless.

I forwarded this on to my family and a few other people. The response I got back from my sister was "Happy Easter to you, too."

Fair enough.

That really got me thinking. Like a lot of people I've talked with lately, I have been feeling really angry and depressed by the direction things have taken in this country. The whole Schiavo debacle is the most shameful example of political grandstanding I've seen by the Bushites to date, with the possible exception of the 9/11 widow they were using to shill for Bush in the last few weeks prior to November's election.

If this attempt to distract the media from Tom DeLay's Ethics Committee misconduct and the Social Security privatization fiasco backfires on them (not that it hasn't been a total success so far), I'll give you 5 to 1 odds that Dubya will be mentioning the name "Bin Laden" in a press conference within the next few weeks.

As sad and obscene as this little circus is, it may actually represent a turning point, in that additional elements of the political right are beginning to openly question whether the Bush administration has overstepped its bounds. (Ya THINK, guys???)

And it's not just dissent about this current push for the intrusion of the Federal government into the 'right to die' arena. It's also vocal criticism over the erosion of personal privacy and the circumvention of checks and balances in our political system in general. And with that said, let me point you to the...

Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances

And just for the record, here's a rhetorical question: If the Federal government is given jurisdiction to define the circumstances in which a terminally or critically ill patient may be removed from life support, doesn't that create a legal precedent by which a federal involuntary euthanasia program could eventually be instituted?

I'm not making the slippery-slope argument that such a thing would happen, I'm only saying that passing such legislation creates the legal framework by which it could happen. That would be a textbook definition of irony, now wouldn't it?