Investigators Say Terri Schiavo Was Not Abused
Joe Gandelman
Yet more info has come out in the Terri Schiavo case, which aroused emotions and political ire that has yet to abate — and the new information undermines claims that she was abused:
State investigators in Florida have found no clear evidence that Terri Schiavo was denied rehabilitation, neglected or otherwise abused, according to documents released yesterday by the state's Department of Children and Families.
The agency completed nine reports of abuse accusations made from 2001 to 2004, including neglect of hygiene, denial of dental care, poisoning and physical harm. The accusations, which have been widely reported, focus on Michael Schiavo, the husband of Terri. Ms. Schiavo died on March 31, nearly two weeks after her feeding tube was removed.
A footnote...but it erases one line that was repeated by some.
UPDATE: There is one striking trend about our politics as we move into the 21st Century. Each side uses every rhetorical tool they can when they fight a battle — throwing out assumptions or allegations. But if these are proven factually false you will never hear a word about the facts that defuse the allegation later. In fact, most of the time they'll keep repeating it, even if they know has been proven false — because it seemingly helps score points in a heated moment.
On Monday note whether you hear any reference to this report on any of the radio and cable talk shows that raised it. You probably won't hear a thing. If you don't hear a follow up fact about an allegation that was earlier trumpeted, it usually means that source was not interested in truth but in scoring points for "their" side — and there is a difference. Here's an item from John Cole that documents how a popular talk show host who viewers thought was asking questions LITERALLY was trying to get a guest to score talking points. Truly a new low...even for a talk show.
Is all of this just posturing on our part? Not at all. At several times in my newspaper career (not too many) an editor would give me a phone number and say: "Call him and try to get them to say...." And I would look the editor in the eye and said: "I'll call and I'll ask questions but I don't try to get anyone to say anything."
UPDATE II: Since I've now been informed that the report doesn't say what it says it says and it has been implied that I need to hire a lawyer (I take it from the comments that means a Republican lawyer, preferably one who is connected to a certain side of the Schiavo case) to parse the words and understand what it REALLY means, I looked around to see if there were any other dumb reporters and readers who also read this all wrong. I'll spare you the blogs and websites, but here are some quotes from the Orlando Sentinel story on this investigation:In the four years after Michael Schiavo won the right to remove his wife's feeding tube, the state's social-welfare agency methodically investigated 89 complaints of abuse, but never found that he or anybody else harmed Terri Schiavo, records released late Friday show.That's a lie. They can't prove it.Instead, the state Department of Children & Families repeatedly concluded that Michael Schiavo ensured his wife's physical and medical needs were met, provided proper therapy for her and had no control over her money.
The agency also found no evidence that he beat or strangled her, as his detractors have repeatedly charged.That's a lie. It doesn't say here that it found "no evidence on the face of this earth or in the universe or in heaven or in hell." So there still could have been abuse.
The conclusions reached in the 45 pages of confidential abuse reports made public Friday raised what Michael Schiavo's attorney said is a key question: Why, during her last weeks of life, did DCF twice try to intervene in the seven-year dispute pitting Terri Schiavo's husband against her parents?Ahh, what does this paper know? The first report Gandelman cited was by the New York Times which had employed Jayson Blair. The second was by the Sentinel, which is owned by the Chicago Tribune Company which probably believes the Cubs will win the World Series this year and likes that super-fattening Chicago style pizza. There WAS abuse: I know it and no doctored up reports or liberal newspapers reporting on the reports can disprove otherwise."The answer is obvious," attorney Hamden Baskin III said. "From the get-go, this was nothing but a political intervention. There was, and continues to be, no reason for them to have been involved."
DCF spokeswoman Zoraya Suarez would not address the charges of political interference directly, saying only, "The reports speaks for itself. . . . We have a duty to protect the vulnerable and investigate allegations of abuse."
Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, could not be reached for comment Friday night. They were attending a memorial service for their daughter in Pennsylvania.
UPDATE III: Another misguided, ignorant, untrustworthy report comes from the AP:
TAMPA, Fla. - The Department of Children and Families said it found no evidence that Terri Schiavo had been abused or exploited by either side of her family after the legal battle surrounding her right-to-die case intensified, according to documents released under a court order Friday.The agency investigated 89 complaints logged on its hotline dating back to 2001, when Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed for the first time. The calls alleged that the brain-damaged woman was being mistreated by both her husband and her parents for financial gain.
One complaint alleged her parents were selling videos of her through a Web site, while another caller complained that her husband wasn’t spending money intended for her rehabilitation.
However, investigators said they found no evidence that either her husband or parents were exploiting her, and often noted in their records that they found Schiavo well cared for on their visits to her Pinellas Park hospice.
UPDATE IV: Hey: waddayaknow! I just got emails from two readers of this site and a friend who's a conservative blogger saying I was personally lambasted by name on another blog for this post and my answers to someone in comments. I thought I had been on that other blog's blogroll but can't find The Moderate Voice anymore. I have great relations with bloggers on the far left and far right (and middle left and middle right) because we debate ideas, but I never ever critically mention other bloggers by name in my posts. Oh well, I was going to prune my blogroll and I know where to start as SOON as this update is posted. PS: Some bloggers like to get into personal pissing matches; I don't - and won't. So, very honestly, have a good life.
Nice try. No one said the report does or doesn't say anything. What I did say is that apart from a misleading headline, the NY Times article does not say what you said it said.
Nice strategic use of the passive voice. I guess it sounds a lot more damning to say generically that "it has been implied" that it would to admit that only the person who implied it was YOU.
Whether the more detailed account of the Orlando Sentinel is or is not an accurate account of what the report found is a wholly separate issue. I'm reserving judgment on that until I've had a chance to read the report myself. Assuming the account is accurate, it still does not justify your original entry, which was based entirely on your (willful?) misreading of the NY Times account. "Fake but accurate" may work for CBS but it doesn't work in the blogosphere.
Don't trust - verify. And for the record, the closest I came to the issue of abuse in the Schiavo case was "if this is true".
Maybe they're right. But considering the source, I'm afraid I can't consider it proof of anything - even that they actually looked at the records.
Am I biased? Yes: not so much against Mr. Schiavo as against the DCF.
I wouldn't trust the DCF either, other than the sheer number of alligations investigated BECAUSE of a political agenda in this case. They wanted to ensure every I was triple dotted and every T triple crossed.
We're not talking the case of a little black girl that appears to have been killed by her grandmother for not wanting to wear an angel costume on Halloween. We're talking US Federal politics and the state don't stop when the job is proved. They continue until they find the dirt needed to get their man...
Joe, it's a very good post. No one in their right mind would be unable to see that as much as Florida wanted to say she was harmed by her husband that their own PROOF says those are all lies.
Oh, and it's your blog dear. Deroll anyone you want, no matter what a commenter on Dean's World may say. Unless that is she's going to pay your hosting costs and name filing fees...
I think it was overstating things a bit to say that anything was "erased" or "proven factually false" by what you cited.
And you can lump me among those who take reports from the mainstream media about the Schiavo case with a grain of salt. I've documented numerous examples of the media's not giving both sides in this case, and I'd prefer to see the actual report myself before I believe that anything has been "proven factually false."
So? There is nothing wrong with identifying people by name. If I hadn't mentioned you by name, half (or more) of my readers would have just glanced at the link and assumed Dean was the culprit. Would that have been better? For you, perhaps.
For one who supposedly likes to debate ideas, you've got a long way to go, at least on this issue. Between the strawmen and the dripping sarcasm of the current entry, the God-I'm-so-clever gotchaism of this one and the convenient revisionism of this, you've betrayed no interest at all in debating ideas, only in mindlessly bashing anyone who doesn't share yours.
Don't come on here complaining Joe mentioning or not mentioning people's names, "Xrlq."
As for the snark: I think maybe Joe got a bit too sarcastic with his first response to Xrlq. A a better response would have thrown the ball back into X's court by asking him to specify what parts of the text invalidated Joe's statements.
antimedia put up the first rational comment. I, too, tend to take agency reports with a large grain of salt. But, if you're going to make that part of a position or an argument, then you should also allow that such skeptiscm neither invalidates the report, nor indicates that the report should be dismissed.
Alas, {g} just after that anti lowered his score with a "pot &kettle" crack. Please note that Joe mentions no one by name in the main post.
On the other hand, one has to wonder what de-linkings have to do with the Schiavo case, the evidence provided, or arguments about said evidence.
This is why I don't approve of cowardly anono-blogging: these people "Patterico" and "Xrlq" have libelled the hell out of Michael Schiavo, and when the evidence builds up against them, they refuse to back down.
There's no reason to hide your identity if you're not doing something dodgy; these cowards are a blight on the blogosphere.
Find me a specific example where I have libeled Michael Schiavo, Richard Bennett, and explain how it is libel under the law -- or shut the hell up and stop making false accusations.
Fact is, people know a lot more about me than they do about Richard Bennett, who (on my blog) wouldn't answer my question about what he does for a living after he made a snarky comment about what I do.
As for "I don't know any Blackfive," you should get your head out of your buttocks, and find out. He's only one of the more influential milbloggers, and has been cited in more than one mainstream media publication.
...As I look at my list of potential other examples, I see that most of them are milbloggers, at least some of whom can be knowable, if not known. Smash is one, and Baldilocks is another. On the other hand, we have the (former) blogger SGT. Hook, who quit blogging for entirely comprehensible ethical reasons.
One non-military example is occasional Dean's World contributor Dowingba, AKA Chris. I still don't know his last name, though. :)
"This is why I don't approve of cowardly anono-blogging" That is to say, this is why I don't like these people, because they disagree with me...
Why do I get the feeling that -no matter how many honorable anonymous bloggers I cite- you'll still manage to condemn them?
I believe the accurate term here is "bigot."
Now. If you can make the case that anonymous bloggers, as a class, are untrustworthy, then you might have something to say. Otherwise you are just another sad case of poor-reasoning ad hominem attack masquerading as an argument.
Thanks, and good night! :)
P.S. A word of advice, Ritche; attack the argument, and not the man.
If you're not embarrassed, your name should be on the first page of your blog. My resume is on-line at bennett.com and the facts of my employment are there for all to see. I'm not going to share my compensation with you - as you demanded - because it's none of your business (and would only make you jealous.) As I've told you before, I'm well known to people in the very office where you claim to work because I've served on commissions and lobbied with and against them in the capitol at Sacramento. Don't be so tedious and dim, especially if you want people to believe you're an attorney.
Tompkins astutely points out that I'm biased against cowardly anono-bloggers. I think that bias was my point.
Bennett, that's a lie. I never claimed that. If you think otherwise, prove it with a link. You can't, because I didn't.
I haven't indexed your site, but I'm sure anybody who cares can go through your postings and find this and many other slurs against Michael Schiavo, including nasty remarks about his alleged adultery.
"Anybody who cares" isn't the one who claimed that I libeled Michael Schiavo. You are, and you can't back it up with a link and a legal argument, because it's not true. I haven't claimed that Schiavo beat his wife, put her in the condition she was in, etc.
I did say he had an extramarital affair, which the world knows is true.
No libel, Bennett.
This is actually good, for people to see how full of it you are.
I've explained my reasons for making it just a wee bit difficult for the casual reader to find out my name by just looking at my front page. But it wouldn't take a subpoena to learn it. Anyone who reads the Sunday Opinion section of the L.A. Times could have seen the piece I published there -- complete with my real name and the address of my site. And my name is all over my site.
Now back up your claims, or admit that you made a false accusation. My guess: you'll do neither, which in effect is doing the latter.
I'm largely off the Internet for the next five days, so my silence is not acquiescence in your future B.S. All readers can assume that anything you say about me in the future is as false and baseless as what you have said in the past.
Links to your posts slandering Schiavo are hard to come by since your search function doesn't really work. But unfortunately for you, Google has one that works just fine. Try this post for starters, and then take a look at any of these. Your general line is to relentlessly repeat the allegations that Michael Schiavo abused Teri, and then disparage all the evidence that undercuts these claims. It's obvious what your game is, little fella.
You may have shielded yourself from technical libel by using other people's words, but this isn't a court of law so the operative standard is intent.
I'm on the Internet this morning, so I am able to respond to your cheap potshots. After this morning, it will be harder to get Internet access.
You say:
Patrick, you libeled Schiavo in your comment above, but you did it artfully. The DCF report exonerates him of the abuse allegations you've peddled on your blog, but you say it's not credible.
See? You found my name! Not too hard, was it?
I didn't say the DCF report wasn't credible. I said I'd like to see it myself, because I don't trust the media to report it properly.
You said in this very thread:
I called you on it, because I haven't claimed that, and challenged you to provide a link. In the only link you provide to a specific post of mine, here's what I say about the abuse allegations:
And that's true. I never have.
Your "proof" is the exact opposite of what you claim.
You have had to retract your claim that I "libelled the hell out of Michael Schiavo" and that I don't make my identity known on my site. Now retract your false claim that I "claimed that Michael Schiavo abused his wife and actually put her in her coma in the first place by beating her." You have provided no proof of this patently false assertion.
I'll be honest: I'm unlikely to sue you if you don't clearly retract it -- but if you don't, it will be plain for all to see that you make reckless accusations and won't correct them even when the proof is shoved right in your face.
You really need to be more careful about your accusations. I'm not the litigious type, but if you continue this behavior, sooner or later you're going to run into someone who is.
Nobody who's head isn't up his butt doubts that he is an attorney. In fact, I don't even believe you are sincere in doubting that. If you ever had any credibility in that department, you gave it up when you accused him of being "the only lawyer in the country" (including the ones hired by the Schindlers?!) to disagree with your take on this matter. Then you recycled your lame schick by pretending to doubt that I was an attorney, either, and went as far as to smear a perfectly good law school (or perhaps an entire university, law school and all - you weren't really clear on that point) just to get at me. And to top it all off, the school you randomly smeared wasn't one I had attended anyway.
Then there's this gem, where you smeared the non-anonymous Dean Esmay as supposedly being a fake federalist for supporting a law you oppose and a fake atheist for not hating Christians enough to suit your taste. Presumably, if Moderate Joe had written anything on this topic that actually was moderate, you wouldn't have praised him over it, you'd be arguing that he must not be a "real" moderate.
Well, two can play that game. If real names are so important, how are we to know what your real name is? For all we know, maybe your real name is Dick Cabeza, you dropped out of high school at 15, you work as a trash collector, and every word of this resume is pure, unadulterated bullshit. The main reason I'm inclined to believe it myself is because (1) it's five friggin' pages long, (2) you admit to being a grad school drop out and holding only a bachelors degree rather than awarding yourself a Ph.D. or at least an M.S. in something cool, and (3) if I were going to create a fake persona, I'd probably come up with a more colorful name than "Richard Bennett" (unless, of course, the purpose of my persona was to go after a real person with a similar name, e.g., William Bennett). Assuming your resume is legit - and being an order of magnitude less of a jerk than you are, I will assume that - I have to say I'm amazed that anyone with your technical background can be so technically non-savvy as to be unable to figure out how to determine whether or not Patterico and I are actually lawyers. It's not that hard to do, but if you don't know how, I'm not going to tell you.
I retract nothing. You're a cowardly anono-blogger who hides his identity inartfully, and an equally inartful smear artist. In fact, the degree of caution with which you protect your identity is roughly equal to that with which you couch your slanders in deniable terms. And threatening to sue me for exposing your game is the height of absurdity. Any respect that any reader may have had for you went down the drain when they read your words in the preceding comment. You have a self-inflicted loss of credibility.
Saying "I've never accused Schiavo of abuse" and then linking sources who have repeatedly done so doesn't cut the mustard with me.
To your sidekick Xrlq: your comment on my resume is one of the funniest things I've ever read. The issue isn't whether I want to find out who you are, it's that you're not forthcoming about your identity yourself. Anonymous writers tend to make irresponsible remarks, and that sort of thing is bad for the blogosphere. To be more blunt about it, you're bad for the blogosphere.
He simply doesn't know how to argue without misrepresenting the other side.
Beware anything this man says.
Never attribute to ignorance that which can just as easily be explained by indifference.
You seem to be an attack dog here. Can you do me a favor?
Please visit my site at http:\\www.info-theory.blogspot.com and see if I have been fair and correct on this issue.
For each good ding you can get on me, I'll PayPal you a buck (in honor of Knuth) and make amends.
(just comment on the post--I'll get an email when you do to bring it to my notice).
--Paul
You have yet to identify a single flaw in my reasoning, ever. Hint: that you dislike my conclusions does not mean I committed a logical error.
Not exactly.
Your legal reasoning isn't even wrong.
Who's more credible, all these courts or one angry little anono-blogger (two if you count Xlrx)?
If four separate jackasses had made each of the above statements, I'd be wondering how so many people can really be that dumb. But when one single, solitary über-jackass makes all four statements, it all makes sense.
But I am pretty dim for not realizing that an in-house lawyer at an Orange County insurance company fresh out of a liberal/feminist law school is a better judge than Antonin Scalia. Sadly, I'll make this mistake again.
I never learn, you see.
Scalia said nothing about this, of course. But if he had, I certainly would have read his opinion carefully -- and if past history is any indication, I bet I'd find it convincing.
Once again, you lose.
Okay, forget for a moment that the Supreme Court has repeatedly said that denial of cert. is not an expression of a view on the merits. Never mind that.
Let's try this: let's see your link for the proposition that Scalia himself voted not to hear the case. If all you can show is that the Court as a whole refused to hear the case, then you have shown only that the Court did not amass four votes to grant cert. Since it is rare that a Justice who votes to hear a case dissents from the denial of certiorari, we have no way of knowing which way Scalia would have voted.
Unless you have that link.
Or is this yet another another another case of you making assertions that you can't back up?
I just want to be clear what you're claiming, John.
BTW, Clarence Thomas once wrote an admirable dissent when the court denied certiori in a case that he wanted to hear, invoving abuse of power by government officials (like you, actually.)
According to you, that's impossible, I know.
Am I still leaving anyone out?
Hilarious unintentional irony, Jeff.
At this rate you'll soon be playing God with other people's lives. Oops, that's how this all got started.
Nevermind.
Nope. Even if you could produce one story by a clueless news organization as ignorant about cert.as you are, that wouldn't mean anything. Even a link to the actual 9-0 denial of cert. (which I doubt you can provide) wouldn't prove your point. Because, you see, you have pledged to show that Justice Antonin Scalia sees this case differently from me. Why did you make such a foolish promise? Because you have no idea what denial of cert. means, because you're out of your depth.
Richard Bennett, once again making promises that his links can't cash. Once again.
The Supreme Court has a web site with all sorts of stuff on it, including the Thomas dissent I mentioned in a denial of cert. They show the vote count.
Your bluster fools no one.
A cursory check of for the word "schiavo" on the Supreme Court web site yielded three (not four) hits from this year. Those were March 17, 2005 order, March 18, 2005 order, and a March 30, 2005 order, each denying cert without commenting on the merits. Not one of those orderes includes the name "Scalia," a vote count, or any other hints as to which of the Justices wanted to hear the case, if any, let alone what any of them think about the underlying issues, which they didn't rule on at all. The only connect Antonin Scalia has to any of this is the mere fact that he's a Supreme Court Justice, from which we can therefore infer in any given case that he either (1) voted to deny cert, (2) voted to grant cert or (3) didn't participate in the vote at all. To anyone who has made it through at least one year of an accredited law school without flunking out, that the non-news of the century. To you, however, it's a smoking gun. Thanks for reminding us all why it's unlawful to practice law without a license.
Further, your repeated references to one rare dissenting opinion written by a different Justice in an unrelated case make me wonder if you ought to need a license to practice logic, too. Do you really think that every time the Supreme Court grants or denies cert and no one writes a dissenting opinion, that this means the decision to take or reject the case was unanimous (let alone, as you seem to think, a unanimous endorsement of the lower court's ruling)?
Now run along and play, John Patrick can sink himself without your fawning.
If you are serious about "sinking" anything other than what tiny shreds of semi-credibility you may have left with anybody, here's what you need to do: find a public statement, made or signed by Antonin Scalia, which expresses an opinion as to whether or not the lower courts handled the Schiavo matter correctly. Otherwise, the only thing left for you to do is to admit you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, as any minimally competent attorney of any political persuasion could have told you a long time ago.
Playing lawyer isn't as easy as it looks, is it?
Where did I do that?
If you must lie, at least try to keep your lies believable.
This linguistic constuct: "So if I present you with a link to a story reporting a 9-0 Supreme Court vote on denial of cert in any of the Schiavo matters you'll shut the fuck up?" is what we call a "Question", not what you called a "Promise."
The clue is that curly mark where the words stop. I know, this is confusing to you because there is another curly mark upside down at the beginning of the words in your language, but if you're going to stay in our country it's best if you can learn these things. A "Question" seeks information, while a "Promise" makes a claim. For example, if John Patrick says to your mother: "Are you a whore?" that would be a question. If she says to him "love you long time big boy" that's a promise.
Understand?
So you've learned two words today, "Question" and "Promise". Now see if you can use each one in a sentence.
Or is there no such link? Have you just been teasing us with irrelevancies?
If it's so easy to find that Supreme Court link and prove his point, I wonder why Senor Cabeza hasn't done so. That's rhetorical "wondering" of course.
This guy is bi-zarre.
Has he been drinking?
BTW, you might tell your assistant to try and put on some self-control. Even though you're both loyal followers of Tom DeLay, there's still an expectation of decorum on this blog.
Note the absence of any words like "suppose," "what if," or any other clues that the above untrue statement is, well, untrue. Here's another example of a bad hypo:
Again, that "hypo" sounds a lot like a representation that you know what Justice Scalia thinks about the issue (you don't) and that all of the courts of the US agree as well (99.999% of them have not weighed in at all).
Time to put up or shut up. If you really (non-hypothetically) think you have evidence of what Justice Scalia thinks about this issue, then provide it already.
Now there is a possibility that he mildly disagrees with the courts, just enough to be unhappy with their rulings but not enough to say anything. But that's a straw in the wind because Scalia isn't a pussy. I happen to know a dude who goes hunting with Scalia on a regular basis, so I'll ask him to put the question when he next sees him.
So while we're waiting, don't you have an abortion clinic to picket or a gay marriage to protest?
That sounds an awful lot like bluster to try to cover up the fact that you said something you can't back up -- again.
You continue to suggest that a denial of cert. provides some suggestion as to a particular Justice's opinion of the merits, even though 1) we don't know how that Justice voted, and 2) even if we did know, a vote to deny cert. is not an opinion on the merits.
That suggestion is as baseless as everything else emanating from your keyboard.
The time for you to put up or shut up was long ago. Unfortunately, it's clear that you will do neither.
Or perhaps fortunately, as this thread will remain as a testament to your unwillingness to do the most basic thing required of people who want to be considered credible: admit when they're wrong.
In other circumstances, I'd be curious to hear Scalia's answer to the question -- if he gave one, which is unlikely. But why in the world would anyone trust you to accurately report Scalia's answer?
And you don't know what that means.
Now don't you have a father to disenfranchise or a drunk driver to prosecute?
That's just another way of saying that "as far as any of us know, we don't know anything." Which, of course, is true, as everyone in this discussion except you has acknowledged all along. Could Justice Scalia have written a dissenting opinion in any of those three cases you insist on calling four? Sure. He also could have written concurring opinions, had he been so inclined. He didn't, which is hardly surprising given that Justices rarely write opinions either way on decisions to grant or deny cert.
In the end, Justice Scalia passed up exactly the same number of opportunities to express agreement with you as he passed up to express agreement with us. The only difference is that Patterico and I aren't dumb enough to try to make anything out of it. We could, if we wanted to. For all any of us know, maybe Justice Scalia did vote to deny cert, not because he disagreed with the Schindlers, but because be agreed with them and knew five of his colleagues didn't.
Second, see my last note to Pat.
Third, thanks for the plug on your blog. I know nobody reads it, but what the fuck, this might be your lucky day.
Now you can go back to abusing yourself.
Bennett claims Scalia voted to deny cert. He implies it would be easy to prove if only I'd look, but he can't prove it himself. The best he can do is imply that some news story, written by a journalist as ignorant about the law as he is, says it was 9-0.
Bennett loses that argument. Strike one.
He loses again because he won't admit it. Strike two.
Also, he repeatedly asserts that a vote to deny cert. indicates agreement with the lower court's decision. He thereby shows that he has no idea what the function of the Supreme Court is.
Strike three.
He won't admit that either. Strike four. And you only get three.
That's the only number we need to worry about today.
If you want to finally "man up" and acknowledge all the things you said on this thread that you can't back up, then we can move on to your next argument. But I'm not going to let you throw out assertions, get challenged, fail to back them up, and then shift your ground while you pretend that you're saying the same thing.
Just show some balls and admit that all the things you said about Scalia disagreeing with my position, or the Supreme Court disagreeing with my position, were wrong. You were wrong. You, Richard Bennett.
Come on. I've admitted errors before. Xrlq has admitted errors before. And we were nowhere near as arrogant in our assertions, and snidely and cluelessly dismissive of others who knew better.
Come on, say it. "I, Richard Bennett, was wrong. 100% completely wrong."
Now would your position be any stronger if this were true than it is in reality? Would any of the unanimous judgments of the Florida and US courts be any different? Of course they wouldn't.
No, I have no secret letter from Scalia saying he secretly supports your position. All I have is the public record, and as we all know that record is spotlessly clean of support from any Supreme Court justice for the position taken by you, Jeffrey (Xrlqpbj) Bishop, Tom DeLay, and Randall Terry. There's nothing in it to back you up, not even a little bit. Every court that's heard the case has slapped you upside the head, repeatedly and consistently.
The evidence is clear that Michael Schiavo is right, and those of you who've smeared him are wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. You couldn't be more wrong.
And that's the argument from authority, the one that you're not entitled to make because you're but one insignificant junior assistant DA in the Los Angeles County drunk driving unit who's railing against all the judges in all the courts in America who've shoved your nose in the mud, all the way to the Supreme Court.
So what are you going to do, keep on embarassing yourself or apologize for being such a cheap thug and try to rehabilitate what little bit of reputation you might hope to achieve some day? Because you're just digging a deeper hole for yourself here, and your clone is helping.
It's up to you, Pat.
Now once again, how many courts agree with you?
I said I would take my leave of you before, but I couldn't resist coming back just to complete the record on your penchant for throwing out assertions that you can't back up. It has been amusing, though I feel a little cruel, like a cat playing with a mouse. Well, the mouse is clearly dead now, and though exposing you as a fraud has been fun, it's getting a little repetitive and boring.
I know, I know. "Thus Patterico slinks off with his tail between his legs." In your simplistic world, whoever has the last word is the one who wins the argument. And I have no doubt that you would stay on this thread for the next year, if only to have the last word, toss out one more lie about your opponent (as you did in the last thread), and declare victory in an argument where your pathetic loss is all too apparent.
So, though I will make this my last comment, I will offer you this one last chance to back up or retract your false assertions. Let me remind you of a few of them.
Another false statement by Richard Bennett. You have been embarrassed beyond belief on this one. As this link explains, review in the Supreme Court is a matter of judicial discretion. The Supreme Court exists, "not to correct errors in lower court decisions, but to decide cases presenting issues of importance beyond the particular facts and parties involved. The Court grants and hears argument in only about 1% of the cases that are filed each Term. The vast majority of petitions are simply denied by the Court without comment or explanation. The denial of a petition for a writ of certiorari signifies only that the Court has chosen not to accept the case for review and does not express the Court's view of the merits of the case."
And you have compounded the error by attributing the supposed view of the Supreme Court to Justice Scalia specifically:
Another false statement by Richard Bennett. We have challenged you to prove this, and you have repeatedly failed. The best you can do is allude to the possibility that some equally ignorant journalist may have written a story that got it equally wrong.
Another false statement by Richard Bennett. You have made no attempt to identify any libelous statement and show how it is libel.
Another false statement by Richard Bennett. You provided one link where I said I am not arguing that, and alluded to others where I linked evidence of that, without saying I agreed. I have also linked evidence to the contrary, without saying I agreed. Your ridiculous argument is that I agree with everything I link, though the source I link most frequently is the LA Times, which I consider totally untrustworthy. That is a pathetic argument does not even come close to backing up your false claim. You should prove this false claim, or retract it.
So, as I "slink off with my tail between my legs," let me throw out this challenge to you: if you would like to finally provide support for each of these statements -- or, since you can't, retract them -- I will happily return to the thread.
When (not if) you fail to provide proof or a retraction, your failure will scream loud and clear. No matter what new lies you tell, what new insults you lob, and what new bluster and chest-beating you engage in, the intelligent reader will notice your failure to back up or retract these statements. To them, your comment will read like this: "blah blah blah blah. My name is Richard Bennett, and I can't admit that I'm wrong."
Anticipating your failure to put up or shut up, I now take my leave of you. This time, I expect, it will be for good.