You may be right about constitutionality, but I agree with Professor Tribe that it still amounts to a significant trashing of state sovereignty. Even those who agree that Terri should be kept alive may come to resent Congressional intrustion, particularly in light of the crass Republican circulation of a campaign memo that Republicans can use this to bolster their position in the 2006 Congressional races.

Here are my thoughts on the case at my blog. http://www.narnia3.com/index.html

It would seem that someone or something ought to clean up the Florida court system.

If there was a mess in Florida, it was created by the legislature and not the courts. It was the legislature that enacted the very court procedure that Michael Schiavo followed. The legislature could have required that medical directives be in writing, but it didn't.

DemocRATS = Death.

Why, after so many years of neglect, is care for state sovereignty and fiscal prudence is so readily and conveniently adopted by liberals? Similar pet causes are readily taken up by members of the conservative movement. Is a little philosophical consistency so hard for partisans to manage?

Why, after so many years of neglect, is care for state sovereignty and fiscal prudence is so readily and conveniently adopted by liberals?

Why, after so many years of respect, is hostility toward state sovereignty so readily and conveniently adopted by liberals?

Note how I do not grant that conservatives have ever been particularly good at fiscal prudence. I still remember how Reagan ran up the deficit--and so should all those who tout the GOP as the party of fiscal conservatism.

Er... um... by conservatives? Sorry... got to watch it with that cut-and-paste rhetoric though.

But the underlying point stands: Either liberals OR conservatives accusing the other side of being inconsistent is just the pot and the kettle... all over again.

Congressional intervention may actually result in more people who are in medical situations similar to Terri Schiavo's being removed from feeding tubes than would otherwise be the case.

My reasoning is that Congressional intervention may be pushing thousands upon thousands of people to write living wills that provide for feeding tube removal and people may insist that there living wills be written in more forceful and ironclad language than ever. That will answer many of the legal questions but may result in more deaths. Or is this primarily a political crusade for power?

So is the moral catastophe the wrongness of removing feeding tubes when some family objects or is it when some family object plus when there is no written instruction? Or plus when some neurologists disagree?

The religious right seems to be downplaying the lack of living will in comparison to its insistence that Terri isn't in pvs. However, from a legal standpoint, the tipping point is more likley the lack of a living will.

I know that I have been motivated to try to look for a living will re-wite to strengthen my own position and preferences on the matter.

Or is this primarily a political crusade for power?

Ya think? Heh...

And when you write your living will, here's a phrase that you should use often: "By way of example and not limitation..." This will allow you to be specific about examples (e.g., PVS caused by head trauma in a car wreck) while not keeping you limitied to such examples. Courts have been quite hesitant in the past to go from the specific to the general in such cases, and you'll be a lot more likely to see your wishes carried out.

I'll openly admit I havent studied this case into great detail (because the topic makes me bang my head against the wall in its general absurdity), but how much does Michael still stand to make if he gets his way? Is there any of the $700k left?

Do the parents contend that her wishes were to be kept alive by machine?

There's very little of that money left, as stated even on the pro-parents site terrisfight.org.

Btw, one of the things I don't understand is how so many commentators are willing to fling around the harshest of moralizing language, like Tom DeLay's saying that it would be illegal to even treat a dog the way that Schaivo is being treated; yet they seem to think that the willingness of her parents to pay for her continued feeding is of relevance. If allowing this shell of a woman to die is really in the realm of moral disaster, I would think that it would be a moral disaster whether or not her family was willing to pay for her care. The extreme (and, frankly, silly) rhetoric being thrown around all over the place just doesn't seem consistent with it's being fine to let her die if no one happened to want to pay for it.

This is not to say that everyone is throwing around such rhetoric: the folks taking the 'it's too hard to tell, so let's err on the side of life' line aren't necessarily making this mistake, though it does seem to me that some of them slide around between the 'moral disaster' and 'gray area' stances.)

Philosopher, if we were to look at the law Mr. Bush signed while he was the governor of Texas, we might see a reason why the ability of the family to keep paying the bills may in fact be an important argument.

If I'm reading that bill correctly (text here, I assume Josh will correct me if I'm wrong), in the event that the patient cannot pay the bills, and a judicial/medical process has said that the patient will not be able to recover (as in this case), then the doctor is allowed to remove the patient from life support after 10 days, even if the patient's family wishes that the patient be kept on life support.

In other words, in Texas, a patient's inability to pay the bills is reason enough to override the decision of the family. So, given that the same governor is now the President and had to sign the bill passed by the Congress over the weekend, it does seem that the decision whether or not it is a moral disaster may in fact have to include some thought about the ability of the family to pay.

Yeah, but we already knew that W.'s ethics were all effed-up & hypocritical. It just hadn't sunk in to me before how large a swath of the right-wing of the blogosphere this was true of, too.

I think there are at least some comparisons to Dred Scott here. The Supreme Court held that not only was Scott nothing more than property, but also the state of Illinois could not violate the sovereignty of the state of Missouri in this matter. It was, they deemed in the opinion, a states' rights issue.

One of the outcomes of the Civil War was that a strong federal government was re-established and that the federal government had an interest in ensuring that all citizens' rights were protected.

The irony. Republicans argue for state rights and federalism but they decide to stick their noses into this issue.

I see now that Mark Kleiman has beat me to the punch on wondering just what's up with moral disasters and who's paying for the health care:
http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/03/hudsonnikolouzos_update_and_correction.php

Balta and philosopher, you guys are way off base in supposing an "ability to pay" aspect to the Schiavo case. Terri's parents have simply offered to take care of her on their own...to let Michael Schiavo divorce her and walk away. Instead, he has insisted that she must die. No one is arguing that Terri deserves to live simply because her parents can afford to pay for her treatment.

BTW--Foltz--Terri is not being "kept alive by machine" in the usual sense in which that phrase is used. Her heart and lungs are operating on their own, the feeding tube only administers nutrition.