It is profoundly unnerving to watch both House and Senate Republicans attempt to stick their political noses into the heart of what should be a private and personal family matter:

House panel seeks to keep Schiavo alive

Terri Schiavo has been in a persistent vegetative state for almost 15 years. Brain scans show she has no cerebral cortex. She has no mind, no memory, no thoughts. She will never recover. After almost endless judicial reviews and legislative intervention, today her body may finally rejoin her long lost spirit and she may find peace and dignity.

And now, congressional Repulicans want to misuse the congressional subpoena process in order to interfere with what the U.S. Supreme Court has found on three distinct occasions should be done. Does anyone here appreciate the ominous implications of a House Sub-Committee attempting to use its subpoena power in order to pander to the religious right and interfere in what are essentially private family medical matters? They have turned this terible tragedy into a public circus.

This is a matter properly left to the courts and the courts have repeatedly decided, based dispassionately upon the actual facts, that Ms. Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state and would have not wanted to have been kept alive artificially. In the meantime, our political "leaders" attempt to inject themselves into the middle of this without knowing the facts and subscribing to the propaganda of the religious fundamentalists they court for votes. 1984 has arrived...somewhat later thatn expected, but it is now here.