Get yer federal hands off my body

Choice quotes recently about Terri Schiavo's body...

USA Today editorializes that just because doctors can get elected to office doesn't mean they're good at either job: "An estimated 14,000 to 35,000 Americans are in persistent vegetative states. Does Congress plan to meddle in the medical and legal judgments on each one? ... When the Founders wrote the Constitution, they devoted the largest section to spelling out the powers of Congress. Nowhere did they include the right to play doctor."

Mark Kleiman contrasts then and now: "If disconnecting Terri Schiavo's feeding tube is "murder," then the law Gov. Bush signed, and which is still on the books, permits murder. No one has yet explained how he could have been sincere in first signing the Texas law and then signing the Schiavo bill." (Bonus points for alerting us to the phrase "negative wallet biopsies".)

Digby lays down the with-us-or-against-us that every American is facing: "It's just this simple: The Republican party wants to tell you how to live your personal life while they systematically remove all government cooperation in ameliorating the risks this fast paced world creates. The Democrats want the government to leave you to make your own personal decisions while having it help you mitigate the social and economic risk our fast paced world creates. It is a stark choice."

(Speaking of quotes, notice that although President Bush spoke on the Schiavo case, he's treating the Red Lake shooting just like the Indonesian tsunami: "It didn't happen to anyone who might vote, so I don't care.")