At commercial breaks during the ballgame last night, I flipped around to some of the talk shows on the news networks. Most of them were discussing the Terri Schiavo case.

The liberals were all lined up to gasp in horror that the state would dare involve itself in something like this. "It's very dangerous," they were all saying, "for the state to involve itself in personal decisions like this."

Hmmm. It's odd that I didn't hear them screaming about the "dangers" posed by the state when a state judge ordered Terri Schiavo to be killed. A cynic might even say that state involvement seemed just fine with them up until that point. What they really mean is that they don't want the democratic arm of the state to be able to overrule the appointed, unaccountable, judicial monarchist arm of the state.

Incidentally, I've discovered (to my shock) that the circumstances surrounding Mrs. Schiavo's husband are not widely known. Just to get everyone caught up, are you aware that Michael Schiavo, Terri's "court-appointed guardian" (who is desparately attempting to get the state to execute his wife) has a live-in girlfriend who's given birth to one of his children and is pregnant with another? Did you know that if Terri dies, he will receive the remainder of the $750,000 malpractice award that was ordered into a trust to pay for Terri's care? Were you aware that a nurse says in a sworn affidavit that she's heard Michael Schiavo saying things like "When is that bitch going to die?"

He is the "family" that folks like Jocelyn Elders are talking about when they say such decisions "need to be made by the family." Terri's parents, who have nothing to gain by her death and want to keep their daughter alive, are apparently not "family" enough for them.

If you didn't know these things about Michael Schiavo, you need to read Wesley Smith's article on the case which originally appeared in National Review Online. I've spent a little bit of time with Wesley, and in my mind he's the best writer in the country today on issues of bioethics. And he's co-written books with Ralph Nader, so it's not as if he's some sort of right-wing ideologue like me.