Congress passes Schiavo bill

For anyone who respects the law and the U.S. Constitution, the happenings over the last 24 hours, involving Terri Schiavo, the U.S. Congress and the President of the United States, have been nothing short of tragic for this nation. The unwarranted intrusion into a personal matter by a group more intent on scoring political points than upholding their collective oaths to the Constitution makes me want to cry.
It also makes me afraid, frankly, to live in a nation where anyone displaying crocodile tears and getting extremist religious followers as ardent supporters can directly petition the federal government to enact legislation on their behalf. Apparently, certain parts of the U.S. Constitution (Article 3, Section 9, Part 3), which forbids bills of attainder and ex post facto laws doesn’t mean much anymore. That part of the Constitution forbids from passing laws directed at one person, but that’s no problem when you have a political agenda to follow.
Don’t like a court’s ruling? Call your Congressman and hold a news conference, notably on Fox News Channel, from which all viewpoints for the Republicans seem to emanate.
And this is what REALLY enrages me … our society now believes the best way to win public opinion is to demonize the opposition on an extremely personal basis. Listening to late night talk shows across the country, callers in support of the Congressional action took it upon themselves to ignore the facts as presented to 19 Florida judges (why is Florida the epicenter of judicial insanity?) and spread unsubstantiated and biased rumors (“Well, that’s what I heard!”) as if they were part of the Ten Commandments Charlton Heston brought down from Mount Sinai.
Add to that the personalization of the attacks by referring to people solely on a firsts-name basis. “Well, Michael, did this” and “Mike did that;” talking about Michael Schiavo, the husband.
These people don’t KNOW him; they never MET him. Yet they speak as if they were personal friends and had complete knowledge of the man’s history and motives. They did that with the Peterson case (just say “Scott and Laci” and we all knew what it meant) and with scores of other news stories.
People now tend to throw themselves into cases on SUCH a personal basis. Is it to feel something? Is the need to relate on such an intimate level THAT important?
It drives me up a wall.