J$P Instant Transcript! Reactions to Terri Schiavo's passing from Fred Barnes, Jay Carney, Martin Frost, Judge Napolitano, John Kasich, Tom Downey, Willie Brown, and more.

From Fox News Live, March 31 2005:

FRED BARNES [FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR]: Republicans who were the ones really pushing this legislation, but I think both Democrats and Republicans, when this case is reviewed, and it's brought up whether legislation is needed to see whether the husband alone should decide in cases like this, what is the role of the parents, and who really should decide a case like this, whether to pull a feeding tube, I think both Democrats and Republicans will be involved in that....I think this whole Schiavo case and this episode of nearly two weeks is going to be with us for a long time....I think there's a huge issue of judicial imperialism or judicial arrogance, particularly in Judge Greer's case, where the Florida law said...there had to be clear and convincing evidence that she wanted to die in a case like this. Now I don't think the husband citing a comment years later, some casual comment in front of the television set, qualifies as that.

JOSEPH CURL [WASHINGTON TIMES]: I think this will have some ramifications long-term for the President. I think he put himself on the spot by endorsing a kind of culture of life and returning from Crawford to sign that legislation. And I think it's going to have some long-term effects for the Republican Party all the way through the midterms and into the next election.

JAY CARNEY [TIME MAGAZINE]: The Republican Party is in fact a big tent, and there are divisions within it between cultural conservatives, and sort of traditional fiscal conservatives, between libertarians and the cultural conservatives who are not driven by a desire to see government in activism, but in cases where they think it matters like this one they wanted to see more government activism. Now I don't think, as maybe the Democrats might hope, that this will somehow split the party. Because I think most of the passion on this issue has been with the minority--the minority being those who wanted to see Terry Schiavo kept alive.

BARNES: I don't think the question that lingers from the Terry Schiavo will be one of a political science question about federalism and states rights and whether Congress should have acted and moved in on the state courts and so on. I think that's a pretty dry argument that will be secondary to the moral issue in this case. And I think this is the question that will linger: whether a young woman who was actually in pretty good health, but she was brain damaged and she needed a feeding tube. Whether a woman like that, whether she should have been forced to die.

LESLIE MARSHALL [KLAC-LOS ANGELES]: The people that I talk to...do feel that Congress and the President have no right to be involved in personal affairs, personal matters of life and death, which many feel was Terry Schiavo's case. Myself included in this, along with a majority of the population. There's quite a perplexing question mark constantly over why Terri's husband wouldn't just allow her to be given to her parents, especially in light of the fact, although Miss Schiavo has now passed--this is a woman who, if you asked a doctor, to live 12-13 days without food and water, I know my body would have shut down. She was fighting to live. I'm sorry, she was fighting to live. There's just something about this that has bothered me. How do you say you love your wife, sleep with another, and have two kids?...People are still upset about that but certainly feeling the government shouldn't intervene.

MARK WILLIAMS [KFBK-SACRAMENTO]: What I'm hearing from my listeners too...is that Michael remained a loathsome, despicable human being right up to the end by denying her parents the right to be in the room...the shocking similarity between what we saw happen today and the beginnings of Nazi Germany, when Hitler based his entire Holocaust philosophy on a book called Permissions to Destroy Life Unworthy of Living, which began with the starvation execution of the severely retarded, the crippled, people in comatose, and the elderly. And by the time you got around to the Jews, he had starved to death nearly a half-million people. We turned a horrible corner today.

MARTIN FROST [FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR]: This is a personal family tragedy, and we all feel for the family. This also really tested our system of government. We are a nation of laws, and the most conservative courts in the country...said that this matter was handled appropriately according to the laws of the United States....You don't make special exceptions for just one person. This was a family matter, and it needed to be decided in accordance with the laws of the state where she lived. My heart goes out to the family, but I agree with the vast majority of the people of the United States, that the Congress and the President should not have intervened.

JOHN KASICH [FOX NEWS]: For the life of me I can't figure out why they didn't let the mother and father be able to be in a position to take care of their daughter....We passed the law that established this guardianship, so the same law that we passed can always be changed. And what's so curious here is why the legislature in Florida never saw fit to say that, in a very disputed case, particularly in a case where the husband had--and I'm not going to condemn him for this--but had moved on in a number of ways, and had some conflicts, it's amazing to me why the legislature did not make an exception. I've seen lawmakers make exceptions for everything from A to Z, but maybe they'll go back and look at this.

FROST: It was the legislature's choice. And a lot of people criticize activist judges, and what happened here is the judges refused to be activist. The federal judges, conservative federal judges, said we're not going to take the place of the Florida legislature...I think the judges did exactly the right thing, both on the federal level and on the state level, trying to enforce the law as it currently existed.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO [FOX NEWS SENIOR JUDICIAL ANALYST]: One of the reasons, I think, that Congress and the President were criticized--and I as you may know joined that criticism--is that this has never been deemed a federal issue. That the constitution does not give to the Congress or the President authority to legislate in this area....One of the areas that state legislatures may look at, could help address the emotional gut-wrenching problems that we just saw in the Terry Schiavo case, and that is this. Where it is not crystal-clear what the patient would have wanted, or where there is great dispute what the patient would have wanted, or where the patient--never being able to predict what would happen to her--inartfully or imprecisely expressed her wishes, then the courts should err on the side of life, on the side of keeping her alive. The theory being that most people, if they could have predicted their demise or their suffering, would want to stay alive. The legislatures can look at things like that and give the courts laws, tools, that will make it easier for the court to resolve these disputes....We assume in a normal marital relationship that the person closest to the adult, if married, in the spouse. But in this case, where the conscious spouse, the one that's not ill, has another "wife' and another family, and where the parents and siblings appear to the outside world to be significantly closer to the patient than the husband, perhaps it should have been they who were the guardians. These are the types of things that I think Jeb Bush--whose behavior in this case in my opinion was absolutely heroic--will cause the legislature to address.

NAPOLITANO: Michael Schiavo can rest with some confidence that because the decisions he made were authorized and ordered by a court, that he cannot be held personally or legally liable should it turn out that her brain was in much better shape than everybody thought. But if that is the case, it will cause tremendous emotional reaction in the country, and I think it will cause legislatures quite properly to set down guidelines with specific tests that must be performed, and specific information that must be gleaned by medical professionals and given to judges before they make these decisions. Let me also tell you that I have tried cases about who's going to control the funeral, and who's going to control the autopsy, and who's going to control where the body is to be buried. These are the most emotional cases on the planet, and it's very difficult to resolve them under the pressure of the moment. Right now Michael Schiavo is still the guardian. Whatever people may think of his personal behavior and the way he's handled this, he's still in charge, and he will still make all the decisions, even though many of those decisions will obviously displease Mr and Mrs Schindler and their children....I myself, when handling these cases, insisted on going to the bedside. I just wanted to see this human being, and touch the human being, and look at the person with my eyes and listen to any sounds that were coming out before I was forced to make these dreadful decisions. But there was no rule of law compelling me to do so, just as there is none compelling Judge Greer to do so. However, had Judge Greer done that, I think there would have been a little more acceptability, if you will, of his ultimate rulings. I think you'll find legislatures in the future requiring judges to physically visit the patient before making these life and death decisions.

WILLIE BROWN [FORMER SAN FRANCISCO MAYOR]: I don't think [Jesse] Jackson, frankly, should have been involved, just as I don't think any of the political people should have been involved...I think there's a moral question, a legal question, but there's no political question in this matter at all, and it never should have been elevated to that....There was plenty of time, if there were interests in addressing this issue from a political standpoint and from a rule-making standpoint. But not until the issue surfaced in Tom Delay's hands did you get focused attention from outside of Florida. Before that Gov Jeb Bush had been involved at the same level. The intensity of all of that was sparked by the incredible media attention, and that's what politicians live by.

FRANK FAHRENKOPF [FORMER RNC CHAIRMAN]: Her mother and father should have been able to care for her in any way they wanted to until she died. So you had that conflict between the law and common sense. Politics probably should not have been involved, but a lot of judges looked at this over the years. I think the decision as far as the law was concerned was the correct decision.

TOM DOWNEY [FORMER CONGRESSMAN]: We have a tradition in this country that on family matters...the state courts have much more of a role because they have had a traditional role and the law gives them the rights and responsibilities to make the very difficult decisions about life and death and about guardianship questions. So I think it was completely inappropriate for the House and for the Senate and for the President to be involved in this issue at all.

DICK ARMEY [FORMER CONGRESSMAN]: In the case of Gov Bush he is the Governor of the state, and if you talk about the states rights dimension of the problem, certainly you give Jeb Bush a different level of standing than what the Federal Government has in the matter. I really honestly think you have to give everybody credit for acting in their best faith given their judgments regarding constitutional directives and constitutional restrictions....The good news is that, very quickly now, the questions of politics will fade away, and the enduring legacy that will have a humane impact on people will be a legacy of family thoughtfulness and medical practice that I think will probably enable other families in the future to have learned from this event, how they might better spare themselves the heartbreak that this family found themselves falling into.