Just got back from a hearing down in Spottsylvania Courthouse so haven't been kept up to speed on the Schiavo case.
With respect to the federalism issue -- well, the Constitution does guarantee that we should not be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, so it seems to me that the Founders believed that due process issues concerning ending a person's life are federal issues.
Federalism, as I see it, is about the states acting as "laboratories for democracy" but the right to life isn't something I care to see subjected to the will of the majority. Scalia said something recently that I liked, with respect to the way he sees his role as a justice on the SCOTUS, it's his job to tell the majority to "take a hike." (Parenthetically, this shreds the argument about this being a Christian nation, since that argument plays to the majority, but I don't expect even Scalia to be perfect.)
The first time I heard George Allen speak, I said to myself that he had a very good shot at being president some day, and I still think so. He's got that undefinable thing that they have, both the good ones and the bad ones. Charisma I guess it is, although that's not exactly the word. Close enough.
With respect to the pre-packaged news, it just boggles the mind. I worked in the printing industry for years, most of the time working in shops that printed newspapers (weeklies and monthlies), and I could tell pre-fab news stories from house-generated news stories by things like typefaces, and whether the photos were pre-press ready from an outside source, but the only times I saw pre-fab news was in soft news, like movie reviews. I guess print outlets are not as big media whores as TV? |
