Feinstein, Inhofe Bring Number Of Senators Who Dumped Stock To Four

After the news broke last night that Senators Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.) sold large amounts of stock after receiving an intelligence briefing on the growing Coronavirus outbreak last January, armchair investigators and journalists have been poring over congressional disclosures to see who else may have benefitted financially from their inside knowledge. Now, Senators James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) have also been found to have engaged in trading after the briefing.

A Twitter user, NYCSouthpaw, posted Inhofe’s disclosures online. The forms show that the Oklahoma Republican sold as much as $500,000 in stocks in the period. Many of the six transactions were within days of the January 24 briefing.

southpaw@nycsouthpaw

So uhhh... that all-senators Senate Health Committee briefing was on 1/24, right?

8,375

9:23 PM - Mar 19, 2020

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Sen. Feinstein and her husband sold between $1.5 and $6 million in shares of a California biotech company between January 31 and February 18 per reports from MSN. The company, Allogene Therapeutics, which makes cancer treatments, has weathered the stock market crash better than many stocks. At present, it is trading at $20.18 per share, only $1.81 below its one-year high.

The reports come on the heels of reports that Kelly Loeffler and Richard Burr engaged in multiple stock sales worth millions of dollars. Loeffler and her husband made 29 transactions, per the Daily Beast. Only two of the trades were purchases, including buying between $100,000 and $250,000 in Citrix stock. Citrix makes teleworking software.

Sen. Burr engaged in 33 trades valued between $628,000 and $1.72 million per Pro Publica. Burr’s biggest sales included shares of hotel chains Wyndham Hotels and Extended Stay America.

A fifth senator, Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), also sold a large share of stock, but this transaction appears unrelated to the outbreak. Raw Story notes that Johnson’s sale on March 2 was comprised of interest in a family business. Pacur LLC is a privately traded plastics manufacturing company in Wisconsin.

Another Georgia senator, David Perdue, also reported a large number of stock trades. Many of Perdue’s trades occurred before the briefing, however. Perdue also continued buying into February, purchasing companies that have been damaged by the stock market crash such as Delta Air Lines and Urban Outfitters.

Lachlan Markay

✔@lachlan

 · 5h

Replying to @lachlan

Inhofe was also selling stock in the days *before* that coronavirus briefing. And though all the ones he purchased in its wake did indeed fall, there was reason to believe that, say, PYPL would do well in an economy where people fear cash and are making lots of online purchases

Lachlan Markay

✔@lachlan

Then there's David Perdue. Yes, he sold a bunch of stock in Jan/Feb (57 transactions), but he also purchased a bunch (50 transactions). And many of those occurred before that Jan 24 briefing and after the market tanked. So it's tough to see anything suspect there.

923

9:24 AM - Mar 20, 2020

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Loeffler, Feinstein, and Inhofe all claim that their trades were made by portfolio managers without their knowledge. Burr released a statement that said that he “relied solely on public news reports” regarding his financial transactions. Burr denied wrongdoing and requested a Senate ethics investigation of his trades.

While there may be a reasonable explanation for the timing of the transactions, the trades smell very fishy. This is especially true since some of the senators who benefitted from trades that seem tailormade to plan for the current pandemic were among those who publicly called concerns about preparations for Coronavirus to be “dangerously and intentionally” misleading.

Kelly Loeffler

✔@KLoeffler

Democrats have dangerously and intentionally misled the American people on #Coronavirus readiness.

Here’s the truth: @realDonaldTrump & his administration are doing a great job working to keep Americans healthy & safe. https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104 …

AP FACT CHECK: Democrats distort coronavirus readiness

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic presidential contenders are describing the federal infectious-disease bureaucracy as rudderless and ill-prepared for the coronavirus threat because of budget cuts and...

apnews.com

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3:20 PM - Feb 28, 2020

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Loeffler and Burr’s trades seem the most suspicious. This is due to the timing, the number, and the specific stocks involved in the trades.

An ethics investigation seems like a really good idea.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Government By National Emergency Is Unethical

Over the past week, much has been written about the legalities of President Trump’s national emergency. The debate has focused on whether the president has the right to divert money that has already been appropriated by Congress and use it for his pet projects when legislators refuse to fund his requests. As the debate rages, much of the country seems so blinded by the legal forest that they don’t see the trees right in front of them.

There are two questions regarding the diversion of funds to subvert congressional intent with regard to the wall. The first question, the obvious one, is whether it is legal for President Trump to move money authorized by Congress from one account to another. A question that is perhaps more important is whether the president should divert the money, even if it is legal.

The question of legality is far from settled, but the letter of the law seems to contradict Trump’s purposes, at least with regard to the military construction funds where much of the $8 billion for the wall is slated to be taken. There is also the constitutionalist view that Congress is not permitted under the Constitution to delegate its legislative duties to the president. Nevertheless, right now, I’d like to look past the question of legality, which is unlikely to be settled before Trump leaves office in 2020, and focus on the ethical question at hand.

When President Trump announced his declaration of emergency last week, he said, “I didn’t need to do this.” That’s a true statement.

As I’ve pointed out before, there is no national security crisis from illegal immigration. Illegal border crossings are near a 50-year low and, despite a few high-profile cases, the evidence is that on average immigrants, both legal and illegal, commit fewer violent crimes than native-born Americans. The government’s own data show that the 90 percent of drug shipments come through ports of entry rather than across the unfenced borderlands. The Trump Administration has not produced any firm evidence of terrorists crossing the border illegally and the statistics that the Administration has cited show that more suspected terrorists were apprehended crossing from Canada than Mexico.

Isn’t it unethical to declare a national emergency when there isn’t one just because you believe it would provide you with a loophole to achieve your policy goal? Republicans would certainly answer in the affirmative if Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton had used the tactic.

So why did he do it?

There seem to be two answers to that question. The first is that Trump’s own base was beginning to fracture after the president’s miscalculation on the government shutdown. Trump lost leverage and was handed an ignominious defeat with the compromise funding bill. The president had no choice but to sign the bill, but his base was still angry at the fact that he caved. Trump needed a gesture to show the base that he was still a fighter.

The second reason was simply to “own the libs.” In the absence of great legislative successes, the Republican raison d’etre has become triggering the left for the sake of making Democrat heads explode. Never mind that owning the libs makes it more difficult to bridge the partisan divide and less likely that Republicans can entice Democrats to cross the aisle to pass good legislation for the betterment of the country, these days it’s all about feeding red meat to the base and retweeting the latest Twitter takedown.

While President Trump’s emergency declaration was a move that was destined to be popular with the base, it does lasting damage to what is left of Mr. Trump’s credibility. By signing a spending bill that he had no intention of abiding by, the president failed to act in good faith. In addition to ensuring that no congressional Democrats will ever trust President Trump again, the president’s actions undercut the efforts of serious Republicans to achieve workable compromises as well. Whether Republican negotiators were aware of the White House’s subterfuge or not, Democrats will assume that they were complicit and the incident will have a chilling effect on future negotiations. It is likely that no more significant legislation will come through Congress until after the 2020 elections, almost two years away.

Further, it was clearly not the intent of the Framers that the president should abuse his emergency authority to subvert the will of the people and their elected representatives in Congress. Trump supporters will answer that Donald Trump won the election. That’s true, but he did so while losing the popular vote. That hardly represents a clear mandate from the people to build the wall or do anything else except not be Hillary. At any rate, winning an election does not entitle a new president to a blank check.

This argument also conveniently forgets that Republicans lost the most recent election. The drubbing that the party received in the House during the 2018 midterms was due in large part to the Trump Administration’s heavy-handed immigration policies. Mr. Trump’s final argument prior to the 2018 elections was fearmongering about migrant caravans. Voters rejected this line of appeal. Notably, many of the seats lost by Republicans last year were in states on or near the southern border.

Since the 2010 Tea Party wave, Republicans have preached the line that the House of Representatives holds the purse strings of government. It took just over a month of Democratic control of the House to have President Trump’s GOP decide that House appropriations were superfluous to the business of spending money on something that they wanted. The Republican attempt to free themselves from constitutional restrictions when they held Democrats to those same limitations is unethical on its face. Another word that applies is “hypocritical.”

The precedent that Trump is trying to set here is arguably much more damaging to the country than anything that the Democrats are proposing. Seventy percent tax rates can be lowered and the Green New Deal could be repealed, but presidential power grabs are forever.

A final defense offered by some Republicans is that the Democrats would do the same thing if they had the chance. This is a perverted version of the Golden Rule that could be summed as, “Do unto others before they get the chance to do unto you.” This argument has nothing to do with the Constitution or the rule of law or ethics. This is the law of the jungle where it’s kill or be killed. The problem with this logic is that Democrats didn’t take the chance when they had it.

The strategy of fomenting a national emergency to advance a policy goal is closer to the philosophy of Rahm Emanuel, who never let a crisis go to waste but who also never faked one, than to the Founding Fathers. If the best that Republicans can offer is an unconstitutional and unethical course of action, then the Grand Old Party can no longer call itself a party of law and order or respect for the Constitution. If Republicans insist on attempting to push through funding for the wall based on President Trump’s emergency order then they are just as lawless and lacking in character as the Democrats.

In a case of destroying the village to save it, the GOP has become what it hates, a party that is willing to twist the meaning of the law and push the boundaries of propriety to further its aims. As Walt Kelly wrote in the classic comic strip, Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Originally published on The Resurgent

Rise Of The Machines: Sex Robots Are Coming

It sounds like the plot of a bad science fiction movie, but sex robots are real and they are coming to a bedroom near you. A San Diego company that introduced a female sexbot in 2017 now says it plans to market a male version this year.

Female versions of the $15,000 android, which gives new meaning to the phrase “cyber-sex,” are available for preorder from Realbotix according to the Daily Star. The bots, called “Harmony,” will come with an artificial intelligence app and a robotic head on a mannequin-like body.

Realbotix plans to unveil a male version of the bot this year that will be “better than a vibrator” per Matt McMullen, the company’s CEO. McMullen said that the male sexbot will be customizable and that “the sky is the limit” regarding shapes and sizes of at least certain body parts. Users can plug in the male bot, which would allow it to go “as long as you want,” which some women may consider an improvement over flesh and blood males.

Nevertheless, the prospect of more sexual hardware raises important questions about sexual ethics and the effect of mechanical surrogates on relationships. Would sex with a robot be considered cheating? Would people give up the drama and emotion of relationships with other humans for the quick fix from a piece of hardware that can be easily turned off – and on? How many divorces will be caused by a spouse spending $15,000 on a sexbot?

The closest comparison may be to pornography. As pornography has become almost ubiquitous on the internet and in pop culture, porn addiction has spiraled out of control. Substituting porn for healthy relationships causes sexual dysfunction and can make satisfying, real relationships more difficult.

While many view pornography and sexual liberation as harmless, they have contributed to the breakdown of marriage and the skyrocketing number of out-of-wedlock births, which in turn contribute to the growing entitlement state. It is likely that the introduction of sex robots will also have negative consequences for our society that we can only begin to imagine.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Refilling the Swamp: Trump Issues 5 Times As Many Ethics Waivers As Obama

“Draining the swamp” was a major theme of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign last year. The phrase became a rallying cry for ethics reform and for stopping the “revolving door” that allowed government officials to go to work as lobbyists and vice versa. To much fanfare, Trump signed an Executive Order that modified the Obama Administration policy on lobbying by former government officials as one of his first acts.

Now it seems that the Trump ethics policy is not as stringent as it first seemed. On Wednesday, the White House finally issued a list of “ethics pledge waivers” for the White House staff. The White House had fought the Office of Government Ethics on whether to make the waivers public after initially granting them in secret.

The list, which includes only members of the presidential and vice-presidential staffs, includes a number of former lobbyists and members of the media. The New York Times notes that the 16 known waivers issued by the Trump Administration is “more than five times the number granted in the first four months of the Obama administration.”

Some of the waivers were granted because the White House employees had to have contact with their former employers to do their current jobs. For example, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus had to be able to communicate with the Republican National Committee, the organization that he once ran. Likewise, Kellyanne Conway, a senior advisor to President Trump and a former Republican pollster, “may participate in communications and meetings involving former clients which are political, advocacy, trade, or non-profit organizations” per her waiver.

Other waivers are more problematic for Mr. Trump’s “drain the swamp” pledge. Politico points out that Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, who previously headed the right-wing website, Breitbart.com, is covered under a waiver that allows White House aides to interact with news outlets in spite of previous ties to those organizations. According to Politico, Bannon can legally engage with Breitbart even when other organizations are excluded. Before the waiver was made public, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington had filed a complaint against Bannon for repeated contacts with Breitbart employees in apparent violation of the ethics pledge.

It is uncertain how many lobbyists have been granted approval to work in other departments within the Trump Administration, but at least four former lobbyists are known to have been granted waivers to work within the Trump White House on policy areas that could present a conflict of interests:

• ·         Michael Catanzaro, a former oil and gas lobbyist, was granted approval to work on energy policy.
• ·         Shahira Knight, a former Fidelity executive who had lobbied on tax, retirement and financial issues, was approved to work on those policy areas.
• ·         Andrew Olmem, a bank and insurance lobbyist, is allowed to work with former clients on financial policy.
• ·         Joshua Pitcock, a former lobbyist for the State of Indiana, is allowed to work with Indiana officials on issues on which he previously lobbied.

Additionally, six former attorneys for the Jones Day law firm were granted a waiver to “participate in communications and meetings where Jones Day represents the President, his campaign, the transition, or political entities supporting the President.” Donald Trump was a client of Jones Day before he became president and White Counsel Don McGahn, along with 11 other Trump Administration lawyers, are alumni of the firm. Jones Day, which is not a lobbying firm, ran ads touting its “insights on the new Administration” in April.

Watchdog groups were critical of the extent of the waivers. “The ethics waivers the White House finally released reveal what we already suspected: that this administration is chock full of senior officials working on issues on which they lobbied, meeting with companies in which they have a financial interest, or working closely with former employers,” said a spokesman for the nonpartisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The Obama Administration issued about 16 waivers in eight years. The Trump Administration has issued 16 waivers after four months. At this point in the Obama Administration, three waivers had been issued per the Times.

A White House spokesman told the New York Times that the Trump Administration tried to avoid conflicts of interest when possible. The administration also asked its employees not to work on policy areas in which they had worked in the private sector. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

Why I voted for Evan McMullin and not Donald Trump

I’m a lifelong conservative who has voted Republican as long as I can remember. Growing up, I watched President Reagan swing Georgia from a state where a Republican couldn’t get elected dogcatcher to a state that was almost totally red. A defining moment of my political life was when I saw President Reagan live at a campaign rally in Atlanta. I started listening to Rush Limbaugh on talk radio in the 1990s and have been writing my conservative Christian blog since 2007.

This makes it all the more surprising for people when they find out that I’m not voting for Donald Trump. In fact, I voted early last week and cast my ballot for Evan McMullin, the independent conservative.

Why I voted for McMullin and why I didn’t vote for Trump are closely intertwined. The bottom line for me is that I don’t believe that either Trump or Hillary should be president. In fact, I don’t believe that either Trump or Hillary should be allowed anywhere near the White House. Not even on a tour group.

People say that if I don’t want Hillary to be president, I should support Donald Trump. The truth is that I oppose Trump for many of the same reasons that I oppose Hillary Clinton. The two candidates are evenly matched in many areas. Trump and Hillary both have deep character flaws. Both are chronic liars. Both are dishonest. Both are corrupt.

I had always said that I would vote Republican as long as the party supported my beliefs and values. Under Donald Trump, it no longer does.

Hillary’s corruption is well known, but when I looked into Trump’s background, I found a seemingly endless list of scandals even before the revelation of his sexual harassment problem. Not paying workers, using eminent domain to take the homes of less wealthy and connected Americans, and openly bragging about bribing elected officials are only the icing on the cake. His unsatisfied clients say Trump was literally a con man who stole tens of thousands of dollars from hardworking real estate investors through Trump University and then allegedly paid off state attorneys general like Pam Bondi in Florida to cover his tracks.

I’ve been told that Trump’s corruption is less damning because he was in the private sector or that the amounts of money involved were less than the Clinton Foundation payoffs. In truth, corruption is a matter of the heart. If Trump would steal from a guy who has to max out his credit card to pay Trump University tuition, why would he not steal from the taxpayers of the United States or use his position to line his own pockets?

If Christian conservatives like me put aside our ethical problems with Trump to defeat Hillary, what have we won? Trump is a New York liberal who, until he started planning to run for president, held traditional liberal views. Even while running as a Republican he has advocated universal government healthcare and raising the minimum wage, supported federal money for Planned Parenthood, and has even adopted Democrat positions on gun control. You would be hard pressed to find any of Donald Trump’s positions which involve shrinking government or making it less powerful. If we elect Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, we will only have succeeded in electing a different liberal.

Trump is even worse than Hillary on some issues. Trump bragged that his trade policy was “very similar” to that of Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders. An analysis of Trump’s tariffs and rejection of trade deals found that they would probably cause a recession that might cost as many as 5 million American jobs.

He is no less of an isolationist when it comes to military alliances. He has threatened not to defend NATO allies and called NATO itself “obsolete,” even as Vladimir Putin’s forces carve off pieces of the Ukraine. Trump has said that he is open to proliferation of nuclear weapons and threatened to withdraw American troops from South Korea and Japan where they have stabilized East Asia for the past 60 years.

It was not being too strong that caused the last world war, it was being too deferential to expansionist dictatorships. This is a problem for Trump as well. Trump seems to have a fascination with dictators, but his admiration for Vladimir Putin is particularly troubling, from their bromance last fall to the growing body of evidence that Russia is interfering with the election in a way that benefits Trump. Russia’s investment in Trump may have already paid off. This year’s Republican Party platform dropped a proposal to arm Ukraine against the Russian invaders. The change reportedly came from the Trump campaign. Trump also seems ready to yield America’s role in the Middle East to Russia.

I can find no evidence that Trump is the America-loving conservative that he claims to be. There seems to be no Emmaus road moment that he can point to that led him to change his mind on so many issues. I can find no evidence that he is anything other than an actor playing a role. He is a liberal playing a conservative and occasionally he lapses into his true beliefs or cynically changes positions where he sees a potential benefit.

The character problems, liberal ideology and erratic behavior are red flags that warn about Trump’s lack of judgment. Just as Hillary Clinton’s use of an unapproved private email server and solicitation of donations in exchange for access while Secretary of State are disqualifying, Trump’s many scandals are a warning to voters that he is not to be trusted either.

In fact, almost everything about both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton seems to resonate as a warning against making them president. I cannot think of two people that I believe are less equipped to handle presidential authority and responsibility than the Terrible Two.

Some argue that Trump would surround himself with good people who would keep him in line. I think the reverse is true. One need only watch Mike Pence’s debate performance to see the corrupting influence of Trump on the Republican Party. Pence made excuses for Donald Trump and transparently denied that Trump said things that everyone has seen him say on video. What would four years with Trump as leader of the GOP do to the America’s conservative party?

Just when I was considering voting for Gary Johnson as protest or even not voting at all since Johnson showed himself to be a nut, Evan McMullin announced his candidacy.

After watching several interviews of McMullin, I boarded the “Evan Express.” McMullin is essentially a traditional Republican. He is a pro-life, free trade, strong defense, small government conservative. After working for the Republicans in the House of Representatives as a policy advisor, McMullin knows his stuff. He seems to be more knowledgeable than any other candidate, including Hillary Clinton. It is unfortunate that he was not included in the debates.

What really sold me on McMullin was not his policy chops though. What sold me on McMullin was simply the fact that, in a race dominated by two people who are, to use Hillary’s word, deplorable, he was an honest, decent man. He is the sort of person who tries to bring people together, rather than drive wedges between demographics to glom onto a few more votes.

I know that McMullin is a long shot. On the other hand, McMullin’s odds of becoming president are far greater than the odds of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton becoming a president that I can be proud of. Given the choice between sacrificing my beliefs to elect an untrustworthy, liberal Republican who I believe would be a disaster for the country or supporting a candidate that who shares my beliefs, I decided to vote my conscience.

David Thornton is a contributor to The Resurgent

This mom went to court to kill her 12-year-old daughter

http://youtu.be/N_Pr-nbrc-w

In August, a court in the United Kingdom granted Charlotte Fitzmaurice the right to have her 12-year-old daughter, Nancy, killed. The landmark decision was the first time that a child that was not on life support or suffering a terminal illness has been euthanized in the UK according to the Mirror.

Nancy was born with hydrocephalus, meningitis and septicaemia. Also blind, she could not walk, talk, eat or drink and required constant hospital care. Nancy’s condition was painful and disabling, but not life-threatening. As Nancy’s health deteriorated and pain medications ceased to be effective, Charlotte Fitzmaurice appealed to a British court to allow Nancy to be euthanized.

In a letter to the court, quoted in the Mirror, Charlotte said, “My daughter is no longer my daughter; she is now merely just a shell.” She continued, “The light from her eyes is now gone and is replaced with fear and a longing to be at peace.”

Nancy was unable to communicate any desire to die, but Charlotte’s statement to the court said, “Today I am appealing to you for Nancy as I truly believe she has endured enough. For me to say that breaks my heart. But I have to say it.” Nancy’s father, David Wise, also supported the appeal to the court.

After a ruling in which Justice Eleanor King decided that it “is not the case now” that Nancy has any quality of life, doctors at London’s Great Ormond St. Hospital began to withhold food and water from Nancy. She died 14 days later. Both euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal under British law according to the National Health Service.

While Nancy’s life was filled with pain, so was her death. Charlotte told the Mirror, “Watching my daughter suffer for days while they cut off her fluids was unbearable. She went in pain. It will stay with me forever.”

Nancy’s father, David Wise, agreed. “It was heartbreaking to see my daughter like that,” he said. “It was the hardest decision we ever made.”

Advocates for life argue that such cases are a slippery slope and note that Nancy’s death was chosen by her parents and doctors, not by Nancy herself, and that Nancy was not terminally ill. “The judge's statement sets a precedent that quality of life now becomes a measuring rod as to whether or not a child with a disability should live or die. That's horrific. That's terrifying," Joni Eareckson Tada told The Christian Post. Eareckson Tada, a Christian activist for the disabled who is a quadriplegic, continued, “In the future, I wonder how many other subjective issues may sway another judge's opinion in the life of somebody like Nancy, or perhaps even less disabled physically and mentally than Nancy. This swings open a door to similar actions against other people with disabilities simply based on the fact of distress, the inconvenience, the cost, the discomfort, all of which are subjective issues."

The Autism Self Advocacy Network agreed. The group issued a statement, which read in part:

Euthanasia of people with disabilities is an extremely dangerous and wholly inappropriate solution to inadequate pain management. In cases where painkillers are insufficient, a number of alternatives for pain management exist. A policy of euthanasia targets vulnerable people, particularly when it is applied to children. People with disabilities who experience chronic pain should have same access as others to life-sustaining medical treatment.

There have been other cases of euthanasia in the UK. In 2009, in a case that pitted the mother against the father, a judge ruled that baby Ronnie Bickell’s “quality of life would not be good enough to justify the medical care needed to prolong it” according to the Daily Mail. In another case, Hannah Jones, then 13, refused a heart transplant that could have saved her life. Hannah’s heart had been damaged by treatment for leukemia that she had suffered as a child. A court upheld her right to refuse treatment, but, a year later, she changed her mind and had the surgery.

In Holland, euthanasia is legal. Officially, about three percent of Dutch deaths are attributed to euthanasia, a rate that would be equivalent to 75,000 people each year in the US according to National Review. Unofficially, the euthanasia rate in Holland may be as high as 10 percent acknowledges the Daily Caller. While euthanasia of children is technically illegal in Holland, Belgium removed all age restrictions from its euthanasia law earlier this year according to Time.

Last year, at 18, Hannah Jones told the Mirror that she was glad that she had undergone the operation rather than ending her life. “I’m so grateful for my transplant, and glad I decided to have it. It’s given me a life I didn’t expect, a chance to grow up, to follow ambitions, maybe even get married and have a family.” An actress and dancer at her college, Hannah said, “I never thought I’d be dancing on stage, I love it.”

In August, a court in the United Kingdom granted Charlotte Fitzmaurice the right to have her 12-year-old daughter, Nancy, killed. The landmark decision was the first time that a child that was not on life support or suffering a terminal illness has been euthanized in the UK according to the Mirror.

Nancy was born with hydrocephalus, meningitis and septicaemia. Also blind, she could not walk, talk, eat or drink and required constant hospital care. Nancy’s condition was painful and disabling, but not life-threatening. As Nancy’s health deteriorated and pain medications ceased to be effective, Charlotte Fitzmaurice appealed to a British court to allow Nancy to be euthanized.

In a letter to the court, quoted in the Mirror, Charlotte said, “My daughter is no longer my daughter; she is now merely just a shell.” She continued, “The light from her eyes is now gone and is replaced with fear and a longing to be at peace.”

Nancy was unable to communicate any desire to die, but Charlotte’s statement to the court said, “Today I am appealing to you for Nancy as I truly believe she has endured enough. For me to say that breaks my heart. But I have to say it.” Nancy’s father, David Wise, also supported the appeal to the court.

After a ruling in which Justice Eleanor King decided that it “is not the case now” that Nancy has any quality of life, doctors at London’s Great Ormond St. Hospital began to withhold food and water from Nancy. She died 14 days later. Both euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal under British law according to the National Health Service.

While Nancy’s life was filled with pain, so was her death. Charlotte told the Mirror, “Watching my daughter suffer for days while they cut off her fluids was unbearable. She went in pain. It will stay with me forever.”

Nancy’s father, David Wise, agreed. “It was heartbreaking to see my daughter like that,” he said. “It was the hardest decision we ever made.”

Advocates for life argue that such cases are a slippery slope and note that Nancy’s death was chosen by her parents and doctors, not by Nancy herself, and that Nancy was not terminally ill. “The judge's statement sets a precedent that quality of life now becomes a measuring rod as to whether or not a child with a disability should live or die. That's horrific. That's terrifying," Joni Eareckson Tada told The Christian Post. Eareckson Tada, a Christian activist for the disabled who is a quadriplegic, continued, “In the future, I wonder how many other subjective issues may sway another judge's opinion in the life of somebody like Nancy, or perhaps even less disabled physically and mentally than Nancy. This swings open a door to similar actions against other people with disabilities simply based on the fact of distress, the inconvenience, the cost, the discomfort, all of which are subjective issues."

The Autism Self Advocacy Network agreed. The group issued a statement, which read in part:

Euthanasia of people with disabilities is an extremely dangerous and wholly inappropriate solution to inadequate pain management. In cases where painkillers are insufficient, a number of alternatives for pain management exist. A policy of euthanasia targets vulnerable people, particularly when it is applied to children. People with disabilities who experience chronic pain should have same access as others to life-sustaining medical treatment.

There have been other cases of euthanasia in the UK. In 2009, in a case that pitted the mother against the father, a judge ruled that baby Ronnie Bickell’s “quality of life would not be good enough to justify the medical care needed to prolong it” according to the Daily Mail. In another case, Hannah Jones, then 13, refused a heart transplant that could have saved her life. Hannah’s heart had been damaged by treatment for leukemia that she had suffered as a child. A court upheld her right to refuse treatment, but, a year later, she changed her mind and had the surgery.

In Holland, euthanasia is legal. Officially, about three percent of Dutch deaths are attributed to euthanasia, a rate that would be equivalent to 75,000 people each year in the US according to National Review. Unofficially, the euthanasia rate in Holland may be as high as 10 percent acknowledges the Daily Caller. While euthanasia of children is technically illegal in Holland, Belgium removed all age restrictions from its euthanasia law earlier this year according to Time.

Last year, at 18, Hannah Jones told the Mirror that she was glad that she had undergone the operation rather than ending her life. “I’m so grateful for my transplant, and glad I decided to have it. It’s given me a life I didn’t expect, a chance to grow up, to follow ambitions, maybe even get married and have a family.” An actress and dancer at her college, “I never thought I’d be dancing on stage,” Hannah said, “ I love it.”

Read the full article on Examiner.com