Libs defy court orders they dislike, but GOP does not

I don't know if this is a compliment to liberals or not. But John Fund has a brilliant piece in Opinion Journal about how the Clinton Justice Department (led by the arsonist/murderer known as Janet Reno) subverted court rulings in order to send a child back to the Communist gulag hellhole known as Cuba.

Fund points out the patent hypocrisy of both conservatives and liberals in the Schiavo case, and how their positions are polar opposite of what they were five years ago when the trigger-happy jackbooted thugmistress ordered Elian deported back to a land that his mother died to get him away from.

As to the ruling of a FL state court, Fund observes the following:

If a state court had been allowed to hear the custody case, INS officials would not have been able to testify as to what Mr. Gonzalez told them to support his claim because it would have been hearsay. He would have had to come to the U.S. to testify on his own, subject to cross-examination. Even if the state court had granted him custody, it would have had to decide whether it was in the child's best interest to be returned to Cuba.

That's what Judge Rosa Rodriguez of Florida Family Court, complying with the original INS ruling, tried to do when she ruled in early January 2000 that her court had jurisdiction over the boy and gave Elian's great-uncle legal authority to represent him. Her order contravened an INS ruling that only Elian's father could speak for the boy and that he should be immediately returned to Cuba. Attorney General Janet Reno than promptly declared that Judge Rodriguez's ruling had "no force or effect." At the same time, INS officials assured reporters that under no circumstances did they intend to seize Elian by force.

Fund closes with this observation:

Of course, there are differences between the Gonzalez and Schiavo cases. But clearly many of the people who approved of dramatic federal intervention to return Elian to Cuba took a completely different tack when it came to the argument over saving Terri Schiavo. Rep. Frank makes a compelling argument that Congress took an extraordinary step when it met in special session to create a procedure whereby the federal courts could decide whether Ms. Schiavo's rights were being violated. He may have a point when he accuses Republicans of "trying to command judicial activism and dictate outcomes when they don't like" rulings. But where were Mr. Frank and other liberals when the Clinton administration decided to sidestep a federal appeals court and order an armed raid against Elian Gonzalez? While Mr. Frank allowed that the use of assault rifles in the Elian raid was "excessive" and "frightening," he also defended the Justice Department's view that "of course [agents] had to use force."

According to some reports, Gov. Jeb Bush considered seizing Mrs. Schiavo, à la Elian, and taking her to a hospital so she could be fed. But he did not do so. "I've consistently said that I can't go beyond what my powers are, and I'm not going to do it," the governor says. Janet Reno and the Clinton administration showed no such restraint when it came to Elian Gonzalez.

So to send an orphan to a poverty-stricken tyrannical dictator's land required using the armed force of the Imperial Federal Government, because a state court in FL had no jurisdiction and its ruling had "no force or effect." Yet when a state court in FL orders the dehydration and starvation death of a woman, liberals think that now the state court ruling trumps federal intervention?

Man...these people are sick!