Questions for the "Obamacare Death Panel" Prophets

A few questions come to mind for those ornery, silly conservatives in America who actually believe Sarah Palin's discredited, outlandish claim that Democratic health care proposals before Congress require that health-care dollars be saved by so-called "death panels" charged with enforcing mandatory, non-consensual euthanasia of the elderly and disabled by America's physicians

I truly wonder - do you really think your country is actually in that much trouble?

Do you really believe that doctors, nurses and other health care providers of your nation would actually cooperate in such a demented system, if it existed?

Do you really believe that the lawyers and judges and activists and law enforcement agencies of your entire country would simply roll over and pretend that such things weren't happening?

Do you really think America is so limp that is now actually capable of surrendering to such insidious fascism and totalitarianism?

Well...

If you do think fascism so imminent and worrisome, why didn't you think so only a few months ago when your country actually was:

• disavowing the Geneva Conventions?
• actively engaging in a documented regime of systematic torture that purported to be justified by widely-discredited legal memos written by executive branch lawyers appointed by your own President?
• destroying videotape evidence of actual torture sessions?
• invading other nations on demonstrably false grounds?
• detaining mass numbers of people - many who were wholly innocent - in Guantanamo and elsewhere without charges, trials or right of review?
• issuing rendition orders to send vast numbers of people to black hole prisons for brutal interrogations in undisclosed, foreign locations?
• Conducting sweeping domestic eavesdropping and warrantless wiretapping programmes that targeted ordinary citizens on a scale not yet disclosed?

If you fear totalitarianism so gravely, why do you now so vehemently object to prosecution of the lead actors behind those practices and policies? Wouldn't such prosecutions allow America's courts an opportunity to legally disavow such blatant offences against democracy and the rule of law?

Couldn't such criminal charges establish the very legal precedents that might well protect you against everything you so emphatically claim you fear from your government?

If any of it ever happened?

Again.

Just wondering.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net

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Neocon Nostalgia

Yearning for the 'good old days' at The Corner:

Where’s Dad? Not the “fathers” of these unfortunate pre-borns, but the fathers of these pregnant girls. Where, in other words, is the shotgun?

Back in the day when birth control and abortion weren’t readily available to high-school kids, fathers were pretty good deterrents to pregnancy. Boys knew they’d have kneecap problems if they got daddy’s little girl pregnant. If they were lucky, they’d be married by the morning after.

Girls, meanwhile, were less likely to risk pregnancy because alternatives to motherhood were few, adoption being the most likely.

It wasn’t a foolproof system, clearly, but the specter of lifelong consequences, combined with societal and parental disapproval, helped keep the illegitimate birthrate down.

Yup. Them sure was better times...

The scary question after District of Columbia v. Heller, however, is how many U.S. Supreme Court Justices might agree with that sentiment?

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net

EMPLOYMENT LAW • CIVIL LITIGATION • WILLS AND ESTATES • FAMILY LAW & DIVORCE

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT WISE LAW BLOG • SUBSCRIBE TO WISE LAW BLOG