RANDOM SCHIAVO TIDBITS

If you're new to the story and need an overview, you'll need to go elsewhere. Any old AP story will do. Basically, think Citizen Ruth, minus one functioning brain.

--We're in a protracted struggle, war, what-have-you, with anti-American religious extremists of the kind who carried out the attacks of September 11th, 2001. In one sense, the conflict is ideological, but in another it is an ideology contest, as we are competing with Islamists for the (yeah, I know) hearts and minds of the large moderate populations of a great many countries. We could have announced a worldwide effort to curb global AIDS, end millions of needless deaths in poorer countries from wholly curable and treatable diseases like TB, malaria and influenza, and blunt the scourge of global poverty and hunger. We also could have launched a concerted effort to convert our society to non-oil-based sources of energy, to un-dirty our hands in our Mideast policy and to force the diversification of economies there. Soooo...

--Wouldn't that have been a lovely time for George W Bush to "err on the side of life"? And of course,

--Whom would you rather the conservatarians funneled millions of dollars into an effort to feed?

--I promise, no jokes about President Bush taking the side of a brain-dead person. Oops, I hope that wasn't one.

--Given the concerted effort in some circles (Limbaugh, DeLay, etc) to smear Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband and legal guardian during her 15 years of being in a PVS, one wonders what these people really think of the sanctity of marriage. It would appear that when these people say "sanctity of marriage", they mean only one thing by it. Then again, we knew that already.

--Given Bill Frist's clear hypocracy between his comments on Schiavo and his harsh words for John Edwards last fall (about Edwards' comments on Christopher Reeve and stem cell research), I'd like to ask a hypothetical person, tangentially related: If embryonic stem cell research could lead to a reversal of Terri Schiavo's state, what would Frist and his conservatarian buddies do? (UPDATE: John from AmericaBlog makes the point that Frist seems a lot more optimistic about Terri Schiavo's chances for recover than those of Christopher Reeve when he was alive)

--Billmon's post on Jeb's increasingly desperate measure to virtually kidnap Terri is quite amusing.

--Your one-stop shop for tracking the crass hyping of the culture-war right is . . . John Cole? Well, with posts like this, this, this, this, this, this, this and a whole host of other posts since, Cole displays the sanity on the right that has earned him a blogroll link here for a while now.

--Instapundit: "WHAT HE SAID: "I know nothing about the Schiavo matter, and despite that have no opinion." Wellllll, you didn't know anything about Iraq's WMD, did you? Did that stop you from having an opinion? Also, there's plenty for the average follower of American politics to have an opinion on in this story, including but not limited to a long line of usual suspects on the right who are happy to put up millions of dollars to advance their opinions. What is their not to know about anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-stemcell, anti-tax groups pour huge resources into the case?