Is there no responsibility here? Could there not be some new Tim McVeigh out there, watching, weeping, plotting his revenge "for Terri"?

Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Schiavo was not to be removed from her hospice, a team of state agents were en route to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted -- but they stopped short when local police told them they would enforce the judge's order, The Herald has learned.

Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told police in Pinellas Park, the small town where Schiavo lies at Hospice Woodside, on Thursday that they were on the way to take her to a hospital to resume her feeding.

For a brief period, local police, who have officers at the hospice to keep protesters out, prepared for what sources called ``a showdown.''

In the end, the squad from the FDLE and the Department of Children & Families backed down, apparently concerned about confronting local police outside the hospice.

''We told them that unless they had the judge with them when they came, they were not going to get in,'' said a source with the local police.

''The FDLE called to say they were en route to the scene,'' said an official with the city police who requested anonymity. ``When the sheriff's department and our department told them they could not enforce their order, they backed off.''

The incident,known only to a few and related to The Herald by three different sources involved in Thursday's events, underscores the intense emotion and murky legal terrain that the Schiavo case has created. It also shows that agencies answering directly to Gov. Jeb Bush had planned to use a wrinkle in Florida law that would have allowed them to legally get around the judge's order. The exception in the law allows public agencies to freeze a judge's order whenever an agency appeals it.

That line from Red October is running through my head again:"This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we will be lucky to live through it."

Why? Because the Republicans are still counting fundie votes. They think they can control this, that nothing will happen and the base will be excited. But most of the base is revolted. They are horrifed at the sanctimony and the increasing rhetoric from people who should know better. Ignore judges? Kidnap a dying woman? Are they kidding?

Why is this happening? Because they thought it would be a gimmie. That the only people who would care is the radical right and their foot soldiers. They could get their way and trap the Dems in the process. But now, the Dems stepped out of the way and let the GOP take every bit of heat for this. You have the spectacle of Randall Terry, has-been, making demands on Jeb Bush, who meekly says "I can't go beyond my powers."

Bush and Bush seem to be puppets of the fringe elements, a group who would let their kids get arrested, which horrifies most people. All that political capital has been squandered, as Jim Wolcott said, on a Sunday flight from Crawford.

But Bush has never spread political risk. He has always heaped it on and expected to be rewarded in the end. There has never been a downside for this. But there is now. If Judge Greer or Michael Schiavo is harmed in any way, that turd is going to land right on the doors of the White House and Congress. They unleashed this madness and the idea that they could escape it is unlikely.

Some pro-life activists are making ugly threats, making up "Wanted" posters for lawmakers and handing out the home addresses of judges who rejected legal appeals to keep Schiavo alive.

"I am afraid," said state Sen. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami, who has received numerous death threats by phone and mail because she voted against a measure to reinsert Schiavo's feeding tube. "We're talking about the sanctity of life, and (they're) threatening my life."

The nine Republican lawmakers who voted against the measure showed up on anonymous "Wanted" posters that appeared in the state capitol in Tallahassee. State Sen. Nancy Argenziano said one of the "un-Christian" voice mails she's received wished stomach cancer on her.

Guards have been posted outside the politicians' offices.

Police won't discuss their security measures, but Michael Schiavo and Judge George Greer, who has consistently upheld Schiavo's requests to end his wife's life, are under around-the-clock protection and staying out of sight. Both have been the targets of a flood of fury, branding them corrupt and abusive murderers who are flouting God.

"Various law enforcement agencies are aware of the emotions in this case and have taken appropriate actions," said Wayne Shelor, spokesman for the police in Clearwater, Fla., where Michael Schiavo lives.

Popular right-wing Web sites have had to post prominent warnings against threats of violence on their discussion boards after calls for the armed "liberation" of Terri Schiavo from her hospice and comments suggesting that if her husband were taken out of the picture, guardianship would revert to her parents, who want to keep her alive.

People on Schiavo's street in Clearwater have received anonymous postcards saying: "Your neighbor Michael Schiavo is trying to murder his wife."

• I hate to link to Jeff Jarvis; his ego is quite large enough already, thank you very much (not that links from little ol' me mean a heck of a lot), but he has a decent compilation of excerpts from conservative bloggers about a possible "GOP Meltdown" over the Schiavo case.


• Lost in the screeching that is Terrimania is the fact that C-Plus Caligula has been utterly silent on the deaths of ten Native Americans, one of them the shooter, in the Minnesota school shooting earlier this week:
  

  "The fact that Bush preempted his vacation to say something about Ms. Schiavo and here you have 10 native people gunned down and he can't take time to speak is very telling," said David Wilkins, interim chairman of the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and a member of the North Carolina-based Lumbee tribe.

  
  Why people continue to be surprised that Bush's "culture of life" only applies to white Christians is beyond me.


• Media Matters reminds us of the background of Schindler family spokesnut Randall Terry. Perhaps it's unfair, but the Schindlers lost much of the sympathy I had for them when they made the Faustian bargain to have this domestic terrorist speak for them.


• John Gorenfeld, best known for bringing us the news of the coronation of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon as the Messiah in the halls of Congress last year, now tells us of the child abuser who is now the U.S. Ambassador to Italy.


• Bob Herbert has a nice rundown of some of the consequences of the Bush Budget -- child-care assistance for over 300,000 of the poor ended by 2009, cuts in food assistance for pregnant women, infants and children, cuts in funding for H.I.V. and AIDS treatment of over half a billion dollars over five years (whatever happened to that $15 billion, anyway?). And over a half-billion in tax cuts for the wealthy. More proof that that the Fundie right cares about life before birth, and preventing white Christians from going home to Jesus (maybe it's to ensure a good, mediagenic turnout for the Rapture?).


• I can't seem to stop looking at articles about Vespas....which is pretty strange because I am scared to death of motorcycles. But I work 10 miles from work, it's all roads of 40mph or less, and well, a Vespa gets 65mpg. We may all be riding Vespas soon, if Kenneth Deffeyes is correct.


• The Schiavo case is resulting in some pretty interesting behavior on the part of talking heads. I don't usually watch the Abrams Report, which comes on MSNBC after Olbermann's show, but it's been fascinating to watch this week, as Dan Abrams' head has come very close to exploding several times this week as he's interviewed some of the delusional wingnuts who insist that Terri Schiavo is just days away from full cognition. Today, even the usually subdued David Shuster pulls the curtain away from the Congressional grandstanding to show the law that Bill Frist and Tom DeLay have been touting for the toothless exercise in political cynicism that it is:
  

  Based on what Schiavo's parents have been saying this week, it appears the legislation's fine print was never shared with them by Bill Frist or anybody else for that matter. Early Monday morning, after President Bush signed the Schiavo bill, Bob Schindler was positively beaming in front of the television cameras. He said he walked into his daughter's hospice room and told her, "We had to wake the President up to save your life."
  
  Did Bill Frist and Tom Delay ever call the Schindler family and say, "not so fast?" Apparently not. In their latest court filing, the Schinder family still clings to the misleading notion offered by lawmakers last weekend that their bill required Schiavo's feeding tube to be immediately reinserted. Quote, "If Congress meant to give the federal courts the power to let her die..." says the Schindler's filing, then passing the law "would be little more than a cruel hoax." Read it again... The Schindlers argue: "If Congress meant to give the federal courts the power..." The fact is, that's exactly what Congress did. And a "cruel hoax" on Terry Schiavo's family is exactly the right description.
  

"Remember, Terri is alive. She is not in a coma," Frist said Sunday. "Although there are a range of opinions, neurologists who have examined her insist today that she is not in a persistent vegetative state. She breathes on her own - like you and me. She is not on a respirator. She is not on life support of any type. She does not have a terminal condition." [The Tennessean, 3/22/05]

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist attacked Sen. John Edwards for saying that stem cell research would enable people like Christopher Reeve to “get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.”

Frist responded on a conference call with reporters arranged by the Bush-Cheney campaign: "I find it opportunistic to use the death of someone like Christopher Reeve -- I think it is shameful -- in order to mislead the American people… We should be offering people hope, but neither physicians, scientists, public servants or trial lawyers like John Edwards should be offering hype.

"It is cruel to people who have disabilities and chronic diseases, and, on top of that, it's dishonest. It's giving false hope to people, and I can tell you as a physician who's treated scores of thousands of patients that you don't give them false hope." [CNN.com, 10/12/04]

I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, one thing God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo to elevate the visibility of what's going on in America. That Americans would be so barbaric as to pull a feeding tube out of a person that is lucid and starve them to death for two weeks. I mean, in America that's going to happen if we don't win this fight.

And so it's bigger than any one of us, and we have to do everything that is in our power to save Terri Schiavo and anybody else that may be in this kind of position, and let me just finish with this:

This is exactly the kind of issue that's going on in America, that attacks against the conservative moment, against me and against many others. -- Tom DeLay, March 18, 2005

Narcissistic Personality Disorder: an all-pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration or adulation and lack of empathy, usually beginning by early adulthood and present in various contexts. -- Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR), 2000

The president, who couldn't be dragged outdoors to talk about the more than a hundred thousand people who died in the horrific tsunami, was willing to be dragged out of bed to sign a bill about one woman his base had fixated on.

You have to stop and think about this: We killed 26 of our prisoners of war. In 18 cases, people have been recommended for prosecution or action by their supervising agencies, and eight other cases are still under investigation. That is simply appalling. Only one of the deaths occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, reported Jehl and Schmitt - "showing how broadly the most violent abuses extended beyond those prison walls and contradicting early impressions that the wrongdoing was confined to a handful of members of the military police on the prison's night shift."

Yes, I know war is hell and ugliness abounds in every corner. I also understand that in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, we are up against a vicious enemy, which, if it had the power, would do great harm to our country. You do not deal with such people with kid gloves. But killing prisoners of war, presumably in the act of torture, is an inexcusable outrage. The fact that Congress has just shrugged this off, and no senior official or officer has been fired, is a travesty. This administration is for "ownership" of everything except responsibility.

Most Americans say they feel sympathy for family members on both sides of the dispute over the 41-year-old Schiavo, according to a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll.

More than eight in 10 in that poll said they feel sympathy for Bob and Mary Schindler, parents of Schiavo, who want to keep her alive. And seven in 10 said they're sympathetic for Michael Schiavo, the husband of Schiavo who says she should be allowed to die.

If only these guys demanded such certainty in death penalty cases, I might almost believe them.

While I agree with the Court's analysis today, and therefore join in its opinion, I would have preferred that we announce, clearly and promptly, that the federal courts have no business in this field; that American law has always accorded the State the power to prevent, by force if necessary, suicide -- including suicide by refusing to take appropriate measures necessary to preserve one's life; that the point at which life becomes "worthless," and the point at which the means necessary to preserve it become "extraordinary" or "inappropriate," are neither set forth in the Constitution nor known to the nine Justices of this Court any better than they are known to nine people picked at random from the Kansas City telephone directory; and hence, that even when it is demonstrated by clear and convincing evidence that a patient no longer wishes certain measures to be taken to preserve her life, it is up to the citizens of Missouri to decide, through their elected representatives, whether that wish will be honored. It is quite impossible (because the Constitution says nothing about the matter) that those citizens will decide upon a line less lawful than the one we would choose; and it is unlikely (because we know no more about "life-and-death" than they do) that they will decide upon a line less reasonable.

Terri Schiavo can continue to live even though her feeding tube has been removed. Yes! She Can! Believe it! We can all participate in sustaining her physical life.

On Friday, March 18, 2005, at 1:00 pm. Michael Schiavo orders the removal of his wife Terri’s feeding tube in compliance of the court order of Judge Greer. The feeding tube is removed.

During the course of Holy Week the secular world watches as starvation takes its toll on Terri Schiavo. Few, if any, will make any connection between John Paul II’s breathing tube and Terri’s feeding tube.

Religious people of all persuasions fast and pray, and do all manner of penance and sacrifice pleading with Almighty God for Terri and for the world.

At 3:00 pm on March 25, Good Friday, the entire world falls victim to absolute, total, complete darkness.

Panic and fear grip the masses the world over.

Only John Paul II and Terri know what’s going on.

The pope made a curious comment recently about the “days of darkness” very soon to be upon us which he did not go on to explain.

Mary explained it to Terri in a vision when the International Pilgrim Virgin Statue of Our Lady of Fatima visited Clearwater.

As Easter arrives and Jesus rises from the tomb, Terri Schiavo rises from her hospice bed completely restored to health. The world witnesses a miracle.

Introspection become the order of the day.

A new Springtime in the Church begins.

...A Jewish author says it isn't anti-Semitic to note that Jesus was handed over to the Romans for crucifixion by Jewish leaders. In his new book -- Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History -- David Klinghoffer quotes the Talmud, which says that "on the eve of Passover they hung Yeshu (Jesus)" on charges that he "performed magic, enticed and led astray Israel." The Talmud also claims that Mary conceived Jesus in adultery and that Jesus suffers eternal punishment. But Klinghoffer says fear of Christian persecution caused Jews centuries ago to relegate such materials to footnotes in tiny type or delete them altogether. Anyway, he says, the real dispute between Jews and Christians concerns whether Jesus was Israel's messiah and the Son of God who properly exercised authority to reinterpret divine law.

The reason [the president] supports the death penalty is because it helps -- he believes that it helps save lives, and he's stated that view clearly and consistently over a number of years."

A federal judge here today refused to order the reinsertion of a feeding tube for the brain-damaged Terri Schiavo, despite the intervention of Congress and President Bush in the case, The Associated Press reported.

Judge Dames D. Whittemore of Federal District Court said the 41-year-old woman's parents had not established a "substantial likelihood of success" at trial on the merits of their arguments, the agency said.

The tube was disconnected on Friday on the orders of a state judge.

After two hours of tense and often emotional arguments on Monday, Judge Whittemore refused to rule immediately on whether to restore nutrition to Ms. Schiavo, whose husband won a state court's permission to remove her feeding tube. Judge Whittemore also expressed doubts about whether a federal review could change the ultimate outcome and seemed skeptical of the parents' contention that the state courts had violated Ms. Schiavo's right to due process.

This is Holy Week, this is when the Catholic community is saying, "We understand that life is not an absolute good and death is not an absolute defeat." The whole story of Easter is about the triumph of eternal life over death. Catholics have never believed that biological life is an end in and of itself. We've been created as a gift from God and are ultimately destined to go back to God. And we've been destined in this life to be involved in relationships. And when the capacity for that life is exhausted, there is no obligation to make officious efforts to sustain it. -- Rev. John Paris, Catholic theologian and Walsh Professor of Bioethics at Boston College, in an interview with Salon, 3/22/2005

The head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego apologized Monday to the family of gay nightclub owner John McCusker, less than a week after decreeing that McCusker couldn't have a Catholic burial because of his "business activities," according to a statement released by McCusker's family.

In a stunning twist to a controversy that has created an uproar in the San Diego gay and Catholic communities, Bishop Robert Brom also promised to preside at a mass in memory of McCusker at The Immaculata Catholic church on the campus of the University of San Diego.

[snip]

In a statement released by McCusker's family Monday night, the bishop was quoted as saying: "I deeply regret that denying a Catholic funeral for John McCusker at the Immaculata has resulted in his unjust condemnation, and I apologize to the family for the anguish this has caused them."

Where were all these people when Lauren Rainey was in dire straits not so long ago?

At least 108 people have died in U.S. custody in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and at least 26 have been investigated as criminal homicides involving possible abuse.

The figure, far higher than any previously disclosed, includes cases investigated by the Army, Navy, CIA and Justice Department.

About 65,000 prisoners have been taken during the U.S.-led wars; most have been freed.

The Pentagon has never provided comprehensive information on how many prisoners taken during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have died.

"What a shame that religion is being used to abuse Terri and her parents instead of comforting all of them and helping them to move forward." -- Scott at Poetic Leanings, 3/21/05

Hi my name is M. D. formaly of A TRP 1-10 CAV 4ID and while in Iraq we had a sport of killing dogs whenever the Iraqis werent shooting us. So when I shot this one at about 50 yards with my M4 and it ran yelping to lower ground, we had to finish it so my friends and I went to it and started shooting it. I ve never seen a dog take as many shots to the head at least 4 as this one did and then after we thought it was dead we dug a hole and when I picked it up with the shovel it came back to life, so we shot it a couple more times....its pretty funny."

By now most people who read liberal blogs are aware that George W. Bush signed a law in Texas that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient's family's wishes. It is called the Texas Futile Care Law. Under this law, a baby was removed from life support against his mother's wishes in Texas just this week. A 68 year old man was given a temporary reprieve by the Texas courts just yesterday.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are also aware that Republicans have voted en masse to pull the plug (no pun intended) on medicaid funding that pays for the kind of care that someone like Terry Schiavo and many others who are not so severely brain damaged need all across this country.

Those of us who read liberal blogs also understand that that the tort reform that is being contemplated by the Republican congress would preclude malpractice claims like that which has paid for Terry Schiavo's care thus far.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are aware that the bankruptcy bill will make it even more difficult for families who suffer a catastrophic illness like Terry Schiavo's because they will not be able to declare chapter 7 bankruptcy and get a fresh start when the gargantuan medical bills become overwhelming.

And those of us who read liberal blogs also know that this grandstanding by the congress is a purely political move designed to appease the religious right and that the legal maneuverings being employed would be anathema to any true small government conservative.

Those who don't read liberal blogs, on the other hand, are seeing a spectacle on television in which the news anchors repeatedly say that the congress is "stepping in to save Terry Schiavo" mimicking the unctuous words of Tom Delay as they grovel and leer at the family and nod sympathetically at the sanctimonious phonies who are using this issue for their political gain.

Former Green Beret Commander Bo Gritz is trying to conduct a citizen's arrest of Terri Schiavo's husband and the judge who ordered the brain-damaged Florida woman's feeding tube removed so she can be legally starved.

The 66-year-old retired Army Lt. Colonel with his wife, Judy, arrived in Florida from their home in Nevada yesterday with the intent of arresting anyone involved in removing the life-sustaining tube.

Gritz came bearing a notarized "citizen's arrest warrant" addressed to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Attorney General Charlie Crist.

His intent is to "paper" state and federal law enforcement offices with his warrant today – one day before Pinellas Circuit Court Judge George Greer's deadline to begin denial of food and water to Terri Schiavo.

Gritz says the "arrest" is designed to allow officials additional options as the Florida governor and legislature maneuver to save the woman from starvation.

The governor of Pennsylvania on Saturday said the federal government must do a better job helping America's war veterans and criticized proposed budget cuts affecting them.

[snip]

He maintained that budget cuts include "a $350 million reduction in veterans home funding, which wipes out at least 5,000 veterans' nursing home beds."

"If the president's proposed budget cuts are enacted, nearly 60 percent of the 1,600 veterans will lose their daily stipend that allows them to stay in our state's nursing homes, literally forcing them out into the cold."

Vet co-payments for prescription drugs were tripled two years ago, Rendell said, and "now the president is proposing to again double those increased co-pays."

"In the midst of a war, when many new men and women will join the legion of veterans, does it really make sense for the president to increase the cost of vets' prescriptions by 100 percent?"

Rendell criticized a proposal calling for a $250 fee "to be paid by every vet wishing to participate in the Veterans Administration health care program. "

"There may well be some veterans who can afford to do so, but can all vets come up with an extra $250 a year to pay for health care? I doubt it."

He urged "every patriotic American" to contact their legislators and protest budget cuts for veteran services.

Although many bank insiders and observers predict that the odds strongly favor Wolfowitz eventually getting the job, the furor yesterday indicated that at the very least a fight will rage for several weeks before the board approves him.

Adding fuel to the controversy is concern within the bank staff over Wolfowitz's reported romantic relationship with Shaha Riza, an Arab feminist who works as a communications adviser in the bank's Middle East and North Africa department.

Both divorced, Wolfowitz and Riza have steadfastly declined to talk publicly about their relationship, but they have been regularly spotted at private functions and one source said the two have been dating for about two years. Riza, an Oxford-educated British citizen who was born in Tunisia and grew up in Saudi Arabia, shares Wolfowitz's passion for democratizing the Middle East, according to people who know her.

Bank policy allows spouses and partners to work on the staff as long as neither reports directly to the other, so the Wolfowitz-Riza relationship may not run afoul of those rules. But some staffers, speaking anonymously for fear of offending their prospective boss, said sentiment is running high that the ethics requirements should be stricter in cases involving the chief executive. Through a spokesman, Wolfowitz said in response to a query from The Post: "Needless to say, if a personal relationship presents a potential conflict of interest, I will comply with bank policies to resolve the issue."

• Forty-five percent of all Americans approve of the way he is doing his job, a five-point dip from early February; 48 percent disapprove, up six points.


• Only one-third of all Americans (33 percent) approve of his proposal to create investment accounts under Social Security, the poll found, while 59 percent disapprove


• His approval ratings are negative on the federal budget deficit (29 percent approve, 60 percent disapprove), health care (34 percent to 56 percent), the economy (42 percent to 51 percent) and the situation in Iraq (41 percent versus 54 percent). And on the heels of a Senate vote to pave the way for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the president’s rating on the environment is also at a low point (41 percent approve, 45 percent disapprove).