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I wonder exactly what it would take for some to think the federal government should care that its citizens are being killed - not allowed to die - but killed. Allowed to die means withholding medical treatment to prolong life.

With Terri they are denying food and water, the same thing that they send others to prison for doing. They are initiating death by their actions. A death that would not now be naturally occurring.

I wonder when some would think the federal government should care when a person's constitutional rights are being denied because that person cannot defend themselves?

Are we just to move out of the state when we don't agree with the state laws? What if we are being prevented from moving out of that state? Should the federal government not care?

Allowed to die means withholding medical treatment to prolong life.

With Terri they are denying food and water, the same thing that they send others to prison for doing.

Food and water administered via a medical device. Who has gone to prison for removing a feeding tube?

No, you need to change the state laws is what you need to do. You do not pass legislation protecting the civil rights of one person, who may or may not want that protection.

You get the constitution amended to state that absent a living will, the plugs stay in. There are many legal things that can be done to change the law if you feel it needs to be done.

My big hangup in all this is the proportionality of the response. Tens of thousands of souls will be saved if they expedite an early tsunami response system in the Indian Ocean. Thousands upon thousands of lives will be saved if we win the war on terror.

The over the top rhetoric over the tragedy of this poor unfortunate woman has not one iota of perspective. If the people on this board screaming about storming the hospice put 1 hour each into being crossing guards on dangerous intersections, they would save more lives than one. This has turned into full blown hysteria.

I personally believe that Terri Schiavo is irrefutably, irreversably brain damaged. Yet, even if I did not, it would still be hard to justify the amount of anger, time, energy, hate, threats, anger that have been unleashed here. We had a massacre at a school and a courthouse this past week with multiple fatalities, we had a horrific accident at a refinery plant, we have beheadings, kidnappings, and assasinations going on in Iraq, against a people crying for freedom, and yet a woman in a 15 year coma trumps it all.

It's nuts.

I have an Elm tree on a designated wetland.

It thrived for a while but now it has Dutch Elm Disease.

Many experts have told me there's not much chance for survival. (This disease has all but wiped out this tree in the US)

If I cut down the tree I can be fined by the Federal EPA for killing something in a designated wetlands.

I think I'll just hold the watering that kept it alive for these past 15 years.

By doing so did I kill it or allow it to die?

Sure, Terri isn't a tree but I think you can see there comes a time when reality has to set in and let nature take its course. IMHO