Mourning is the order of the day now.   Finally she may rest in peace.   Something the rest of us will savor after the furior and emotion of the moment has passed.   How long the extreme right wing drag this out is uncertain, but milage from this they hope will help their quest to pad judiciary with extremist candidates.   In the last few days their advocacy of anarchy is very disconcerting to say the least.   Most people opposed the intervention by the Federal Legeslative and Executive Branchs of our government.   This is not just a talking point for 10 sec blurbs on the cable-tv news sites. The radical right has it's work out in the open once again.   The proud boasting of neocons when it came to waving their flag in the election turned into a white flag of surrender when push came to shove, letter of the law is more powerful than any of extremist movement.   The stability of our way of life has evolved over the last two centuries of freedom and personal rights and will eventually weather the storm of corruption present in our country today.   With the framing of key words around 'personal rights' - 'dignity' - 'respect' --- a statement concerning the ordeal that played itself out in florida was summed up by my friend Anna.

One of the things that's bothered me about this "circus" is that it was allowed to take place right in front of the hospice. Terri Schiavo wasn't the only patient there. There are some other 70 terminal patients there. The purpose of a hospice is that people come there to die with dignity in peace and quiet and with their families around them. Other patients have died while all this was going on and their families didn't have the freedom to come and go and concentrate solely on their family member and help them while helping themselves at the same time. Instead, they had a mob of people - according to this article, a lot of whom are mentally unstable - and ugly signs and a heavy police presence to navigate to get to them. (What kind of "Christian" would make a sign referring to Michael Schiavo's "bastard children" who are now in danger of being killed by wackos along with their parents and are probably very aware of what's going on?) The patients themselves - instead of peace and quiet - have had to listen to the screaming and wailing from outside and threats to blow up the entire hospice with them and their families inside. I imagine there were family members AFRAID to go to the hospice with the constant threats of violence over the past weeks. One woman wasn't able to get there in time when her grandfather died because she had to navigate the crowd and go through security checks in order to get inside. She missed his death by one minute.

One of the "priests" - Pavone - came out this morning to the cameras and railed about Michael Schiavo and how "malicious" and "vicious" he was and how "badly he'd treated Terri's family" because he was in the room when she actually died and wouldn't let them be there at the same time. As a result of his words, the hospice and the judge and the Schiavos will probably get anothr round of death threats. Why would Michael Schiavo want to have Terri surrounded by people who hated each other and policemen in the room to be sure nothing violent happened while she was dying? HE wasn't responsible for the crowds and the police and the zealots and the bomb threats - he and his extended family are the ones now in danger of being killed by the people the Schindlers brought into the situation.

I just heard a member of the Florida legislature making a speech on the floor and referring to Terri as a "martyr". IMPO, she's nothing more to them than a political tool. We'll be seeing those horrible pictures of her that HER FAMILY distributed to the public on TV for years to come and her name will be invoked in the fight against "judicial activists" (read "judges who follow the law and rule accordingly but in ways RWers disagree with"). Michael Schiavo has tried to preserve her privacy and her dignity - knowing how SHE would feel about everybody seeing those tapes - but her family has shown no such reservation.

IMO, this woman and her husband and her family have been savaged and disrespected and most of all - USED - by people pretending to care about Terri and what happened to her and it won't be over for a long, long time.