Just so we all remember where Glenn Reynolds stood:

Yes, I think Hugh’s argument boils down to saying that the State of Florida has a bad law, and Terri Schiavo made a bad marriage, and that therefore somehow it’s Congress’ business to step in and override the Florida law, and make up for the fact that Terri Schiavo apparently married the wrong guy, at least in Hugh’s opinion. I don’t think we know that. If these caregivers want to take care of Terri Schiavo, what’s left out of it is Terri Schiavo’s desires. That’s what the State of Florida has tried to determine. If Terri Schiavo’s desire is to die, then in fact, you’re making her into a non-person by not following it. You may not know whether the procedures are adequate. They may not be, but we normally say it’s up to state law to decide what procedures are adequate. And I really don’t see a federal role in this.

Yes, it would have been nice to see the Georgetown men’s basketball team in the midst of March Madness, fighting through the brackets to make it to St. Louis. Unfortunately they didn’t get a bid but accepted one for the National Invitational Tournament, aka Not In Tournament. The Hoyas faced the South Carolina Gamecocks tonight and lost, at Columbia, 69-66.

This brings the Hoyas’ season finally to an end. (And for many of our readers, I’m sure this couldn’t come sooner.) But looking back on last year’s horrendous performance, in which Georgetown dropped 13 of 15 games, lost some 9 in a row, and failed to make any postseason for the first time in 30 years, this current season was a miracle. The team got a new coach, learned an entirely new offense, and grounded out 19 wins. Not bad for a team the rest of the Big East picked to finish second to last.

The St. Petersburg Times is reporting that Judge George Greer’s pastor, William Rice, has asked Greer to leave his church. In a letter, Rice tells Greer, “it might be easier for all of us” if he were to leave the Calvalry Baptist Church in Clearwater.

It’s a good start.

We have already seen that officers of the court in general, and Judge Greer in particular, can be wrong in their assessments of fact. Still, some persist in arguing that it is the findings of a court–not evidence or truth–which constitute fact.

Galley Friend C.L. sens in this quote from Lincoln, during his first debate with Stephen Douglas, on the subject of Douglas’s easy acceptance of Dredd Scott:

This man [Douglas] sticks to a decision which forbids the people of a Territory from excluding slavery, and he does so not because he says it is right in itself,–he does not give any opinion on that,–but because it has been decided by the court; and being decided by the court, he is, and you are, bound to take it in your political action as law, not that he judges at all of its merits, but because a decision of the court is to him a “Thus saith the Lord.” He places it on that ground alone; and you will bear in mind that thus committing himself unreservedly to this decision, commits him to the next one just as firmly as to this. He did not commit himself on account of the merit or demerit of the decision, but it is a “Thus saith the Lord.” The next decision, as much as this, will be a “Thus saith the Lord.” There is nothing that can divert or turn him away from this decision.

When a judge perverts facts, evidence, and the cause of justice as Judge George Greer has done–time and again–it is our duty to challenge him.

Ed Morrissey has yet another example of Judge Greer’s willful and capricious behavior in his dismissal of testimony simply because he lables it “incredible”–despite the fact that witnesses corroborate each other’s accounts.

Hugh Hewitt has a good piece on our runaway judiciary. And Dr. William Anderson makes a compelling case for orally administering liquids to Terri Schiavo.

A commenter points to this Ann Coulter column from 2003:

“Judge Greer’s finding on Terri’s wishes may be immune from legal review, but it’s not immune from criticism. He’s a finder of fact; he’s not God. A few years ago, Judge Greer found that Helene Ball McGee did not have reasonable cause to believe domestic violence was imminent and denied her an order of protection. Two weeks later, Mrs. McGee was stabbed to death by her husband. So judges can make mistakes.”

No doubt Judy Woodruff was unhappy to be at the CNN news desk last Sunday night. Congress decided to return for a midnight session to deal with the Terri Schiavo ruling and Woodruff was determined to get to the bottom of it. Below is an edited (for length) transcript of her interview with Dr. Sanjay Gupta:

WOODRUFF: I want to bring you back in, Sanjay, because I keep coming back to the dispute between the doctors, who the courts have depended on to make these decisions over the years, who have said Terri Schiavo’s in a persistent vegetative state, and then the comments by her father and her brother that she is not. Why is it so difficult to make a determination once and for all of what her medical condition is?

GUPTA: For the most part, this is a clinical diagnosis. That’s what makes it difficult. There’s no single blood test, there’s no signel scan of the brain that’s going to tell you for sure that she is in a persistent vegetative state versus a coma versus something else…. What also makes it difficult, I think, is just the emotions that are sort of attached to someone who can be in a persistent vegetative state. And what I mean by that, a lot of people describe this as a state of wakeful unawareness…. It means someone might open their eyes, they might even look at you, they may close their eyes when it’s time to sleep. They have the state of sleep/wake sort of cycle. They have some responsiveness to touch, perhaps, they can grimace, they can make noise. All of the stuff suggestive that the lower part of the brain, the brain stem if you will, Judy, does appear to be functioning.
The problem is that … any of the higher brain functions … are all gone. This is a difficult concept even for doctors to get their arms around….

WOODRUFF: But, but Sanjay, as we understand it, the doctors who have examined Terri Schiavo–and we just heard the professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School saying it’s her understanding that the CAT scans have shown no higher brain activity. That the part of the brain that thinks, that senses being, is not there.

GUPTA: I heard that as well…. Again, there is no specific scan that’s going to tell you for sure that someone is in a persistent vegetative state…. None of her brain was getting enough blood flow for awhile. So parts of her brain did die. And that is something that would be evident on a CAT scan. But exactly how profound an impact that’s going to have on somebody is something that can only be told clinically, meaning you actually have to examine the patient. I should point out I’ve never examined Terri Schiavo nor have I looked at her scans. But everything that I’m hearing from the doctors that have say that she fits the clinical diagnosis of a persistant vegetative state….

WOODRUFF: And Sanjay, do you know of any instance where someone with that clinical diagnosis returned to normal, or reversed that condition?

GUPTA: No…. To be even more clear on this, once it passes beyond one year in terms of someone without any recovery from a persistent vegetative state, the appropriate term at that point is permanent vegetative state…. It is called permanent vegetative state because there have been no known cases for someone to return to having any function.

WOODRUFF: If it’s that clear then, again, Sanjay, I’m sorry to be repeating the question, why is there such a dispute here?

GUPTA: Well, I think, again, because there is no absolute blood test or brain scan that’s going to gell you for sure, it sounds to me–and I’ve been following this case along–that a few of the doctors have disagreed, at least a little bit…. It is a difficult problem even for doctors to try and get their arms around. You see someone opening their eyes, you see someone maybe even looking at you, responding like if you were to clap your hands really loud on their right of their head they might turn their head toward you. All of those things to the lay person mean, hey, that person is awake and aware. But as we probe deeper, as we look to see what is reflex and what is real, we find that in fact these are all just reflexes, that there is nothing there above just the basic human reflexes.

WOODRUFF: Dr. Sanjay Gupta telling us that in fact after one year of a condition like what it is believed Terri Schiavo has been in, it is a permanent vegetative state.
Sanjay, thank you very much.

And yet here is Dr. Sanjay Gupta this morning on CNN:

GUPTA: As part of this review, Senator Frist in this bill talks about actually getting a new panel of doctors, independently chosen, to come in and try and settle this in a more definitive manner, to really give her a diagnosis and to give a more objective sense, is she in a persistent vegetative state or not? I mean it’s amazing, we still don’t know that answer for sure and, more importantly, how would she do with or without a feeding tube.