Michael Schiavo supporter wades into crowd of Terri supporters, gets offered water and civil conversation, thinks that's surprising.

Bill Sjostrom is indulging in dark humor. Jay Rosen doesn't think it's funny. Okay, says Bill, try Tom Smith:

Michael Schiavo surprised the international community today with his claim that John Paul II, Pontifex Maximus and Vicar of Christ on Earth, told him at an Everglades cook-out and beer party that he would not want to be kept alive by artificial means. "He's a regular guy," claimed Schiavo. "He told me feeding tubes and all that [stuff] was not for him. Just give him a shot of vodka and hold a silk pillow over his face--that's what he wanted."

Asked if anyone else had heard his conversation with the Pontiff, Schiavo claimed his sister in law and his great aunt Sally "Bubba" Ridiculio had also heard the conversation.

And here's one more anecdote from the uncertain and surprising world of PVS diagnosis, a must read.

A fisking of Hitchen's pontificating on this topic was way overdue, and the best man for the job took care of it:

Mr. Hitchens weighs in on the Schiavo case in his usual energetic fashion. (He's one of my favorite reads, regardless of whether I agree with him; one of the finest practitioners of the hot-knife-through-cant school.) He is welcome to his opinion, but I believe it is not wise to call people dead before they are actually, well, dead. You can be "as good as dead" or "brain dead" or "close to death," but if the heart beats and the chest rises, I think we should balk at saying this constitutes dead, period. What does he call the person who's taking so damnably long to die?

"A non-human entity."

Not a term I'd ascribe to someone who is, well, human, but I lack his brusque and exasperated certainties.

A non-human entity.

Well, what's the harm. It's not as though the term will ever be applied to anyone who doesn't fit the exact dimensions of the Schiavo case. Right?

The debate about Schiavo argument is, as Hitchens says, "stupid and degrading" - and I suppose it would seem so if you confine your exposure to people pulling long faces on cable TV. In the last few weeks I've listened to Dennis Prager, Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt discuss the issue from different perspectives - moral, legal, and religious (the last point alone offered an education on the differences between various faiths and splits of opinion within the faiths.) People have called the shows to castigate the hosts for not supporting the armed intervention by Jeb Bush and his super-powerful Transformer state troopers who will turn into a helicopter and take Mrs. Schiavo away; in every instance the hosts of the shows have spurned, repudiated and castigated the extremists. I hear Michael Savage is encouraging something different, but I would rather listen to someone play a large flatulent bullfrog like a bagpipe than listen to him rant on the matter. In any case, what I've heard hasn't been stupid or degrading, and has been fairly thoughtful.

UPDATE: Euthanasia in Europe.

UPDATE: From disability rights group Not Dead Yet:

We love our tubes! Disability activists are returning to Florida to tell the simple truths about tubes: feeding tubes, breathing tubes, peeing tubes and other tubes we need and love. Disabled people in wheelchairs will demonstrate and explain the realities of everyday life with tubes, confronting society's obvious horror and revulsion with our dignity and disability pride.

Terri's feeding tube is the central issue. This is the reason she is being killed. Disability activists must express our ridicule for the pathetic response of the nondisabled majority to these simple pieces of latex rubber. This case hinges on the fact that Terri uses a feeding tube, which to disabled people is no big deal -- it's just another piece of adaptive equipment.

Disabled Queers in Action point out that Terri "has never been judged by a jury of her peers -- which would be people with disabilities."