The Meaning of the Madness
The Supreme Court once again declined to hear the Schiavo case, so we're coming to the end of this circus. Ed Kilgore of New Donkey provides his view of the underlying meaning of this "case" (i.e., it's not just about a person's right to die peacefully):

But as the legal case for the Schindlers fades with each adverse judicial ruling, and absent any real evidence of medical error (unless you believe the diagnosis made by Bill Frist, M.D. from a videotape of Terri Schiavo has any real standing), what remains is essentially a religious case. And that case has merged with the extra-constitutional claims of the more militant elements of the Right to Life movement, which have become conspicuously involved with the Schindlers. In the hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Whittemore that was forced by Congress, the Schindlers' attorney relied heavily on the argument that Terri Schindler could not have conscienctiously given consent to the withdrawal of her feeding tube because it was contrary to Catholic teaching; indeed, it would have put her immmortal soul in peril of damnation, he suggested! In other words, since the act itself is abhorrent, she couldn't consent to "suicide" any more than she could give her husband the right to "murder" her. [...] So for the Schindlers' backers, including Tom DeLay, the object here is not about law or fact, or for that matter, about Terri Schiavo--it's about finding some way to fundamentally change the laws of Florida and the United States to accord with a particular religious view of the ethics of the end of life. Best I can tell, the Catholic teaching that withdrawal of nutrition from a brain-dead person represents "euthanasia" is relatively new, laid out in 1995 in the papal encyclical "Evangelium Vitae." As explained by Father Thomas Williams, dean of theology at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University in Rome, the encyclical draws a very sharp distinction between "an action or omission which of itself and by intention causes death, with the purpose of eliminating all suffering," which is murder, and the "decision to forgo so-called 'aggressive medical treatment,' in other words, medical procedures which no longer correspond to the real situation of the patient, either because they are by now disproportionate to any expected results or because they impose an excessive burden on the patient and his family." The latter decision is morally fine, even upright. "That distinction is subtle but extremely important from a moral perspective," said Fr. Williams. [...] We all need to understand this this is what the case is really about, and (a) ignore the legal and factual arguments being thrown out as tactical maneuvers by the anti-abortion activists and Republican politicians pursuing this issue, because they don't mean them for a moment, and (b) recognize that for most of the protestors marching in support of the Schindlers, the photos of poor Terri Schiavo (may she someday rest in peace) they wave are just this week's version of the fetus posters they brandish every day of the year.