It is always disconcerting when everyone in the country seems to lose their minds.

Has no one in the country, from Laura Ingraham to George W. Bush to Hugh Hewitt, ever experienced a situation like this? Why do they think that the answer is simple?

Let me go on further record as saying that if I were in Terry Schivo's position, could you pull the feeding tube?

And I believe this for very personal reasons I won't get into here.

I understand that this problem is a very difficult one. In fact, the problem seems to be one of those that defies easy solutions, and especially solutions tailored for general principles. I am in favor of allowing families to work this tough, no upside problem out within the family. There is no answer that is going to please everyone. A family member crippled in this manner is in many ways worse then a family member passing on.

I mean, Michael Schiavo may not have covered himself in glory here, but can you imagine having to care for wife that is not exactly dead, and not exactly alive. I would do about anything not to have to put my wife through that. A type of interminable hell with one spouse forced to spend hour after hour, day after day, year after year, in hospital rooms with spouse that bears no resemblance to the person he loved. That person is gone. That spouse may as well be dead. But it's worse, because the spouse still around cannot grieve. The spouse cannot let go because the loved one is in some way station between life and death.

I wonder how many of the people passing judgment would have hung in there.

Update: Terri Schiavo passed away last night. Michael Schiavo lost any ounce of sympathy I had for him when it was reported that he would not allow the family to be there as she died. If this is true, that was a selfish and chickenshit move.

I'm not going to get too in depth on this, but I read in the Post this morning:

Schiavo has received two 50-milligram doses of morphine since her feeding tube was removed in response to undisclosed symptoms, which Felos did not describe in detail.

I'm no doctor, but it seems to me that morphine is a painkiller, and one of the things we have heard all along is that Mrs. Schiavo is unable to feel anything. So why the morphine?

Let us begin by taking stock of our new era. Four facts are salient. First, America's core concepts -- democracy and market economics -- are more broadly accepted than ever. Over the past ten years the number of democracies has nearly doubled. Since 1970, the number of significant command economies dropped from 10 to 3.

This victory of freedom is practical, not ideological: billions of people on every continent are simply concluding, based on decades of their own hard experience, that democracy and markets are the most productive and liberating ways to organize their lives.

Their conclusion resonates with America's core values. We see individuals as equally created with a God-given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So we trust in the equal wisdom of free individuals to protect those rights: through democracy, as the process for best meeting shared needs in the face of competing desires; and through markets as the process for best meeting private needs in a way that expands opportunity.

Both processes strengthen each other: democracy alone can produce justice, but not the material goods necessary for individuals to thrive; markets alone can expand wealth, but not that sense of justice without which civilized societies perish.

Democracy and market economics are ascendant in this new era, but they are not everywhere triumphant. There remain vast areas in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere where democracy and market economics are at best new arrivals -- most likely unfamiliar, sometimes vilified, often fragile.

But it is wrong to assume these ideas will be embraced only by the West and rejected by the rest. Culture does shape politics and economics. But the idea of freedom has universal appeal. Thus, we have arrived at neither the end of history nor a clash of civilizations, but a moment of immense democratic and entrepreneurial opportunity. We must not waste it.

Who, and when?

They bring you even more censorship (as seen on Drudge). Some guy makes a device to block Fox News on your cable TV. Wow. Just don't watch instead of sending this maroon $8.95. And the best part is this guy claims this isn't about censorship, but "awareness." Yes, we must become aware of Fox News by making it disappear. Maybe we could burn some books to make people more aware of the badness contained within.

All of the history making going on right now is still too slow for Michael Ledeen. His "Faster, please," has been a staple for a while.

But I think he has missed the President's strategery on this all along. Yes, Iran is important, but it isn't like we are ignoring it - we got it surrounded so far, sounds like a good place to be.

The fires of freedom are burning all over Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. Don't stand back and admire the flames. Push the dictators in, and then cheer as free societies emerge.

But we already did that with Saddam - we pushed him in, and the rest are getting dragged down. Its working, and we are winning. And Ledeen who has misunderestimated Bush on Iran before is doing it again.

Done.

Note: mojitos are not Irish, but they are green.

So when I have some spare time - I can see the way clear to that in the not so distant future - I was thinking about getting a new project car. I have this ratty old Subaru that has been my project for the past couple of years, and I've gone about as far with it as I am willing to go.

Now I am commuting a few miles a day, so I got this wild hair to build an electric car. Sure, I get cognitive dissonance enough driving a Volvo wagon, so why not go all the way? Plus, I'd get to go in the HOV lane by myself. But in keeping with principles, I was thinking, well, if its going to be electric, it could at least be a Porsche. Seems the Porsche 914 is a decent candidate for conversion, being small, and mostly Volkswagen at heart. And they are cheap enough, especially one with a blown motor. How much could it be? Well, a decently sorted kit to turn a 914 roller into an electric car is about $9000!!! For your money, you not only get a car that is less powerful, but significantly heavier, and while the lack of A/C is okay with the targa roof, the lack of heat is not. A range of hundred miles is okay for a commuter, the 8 hour recharge is more problematic.

Not to mention that since you can get a running 914 for about two grand or so, you could buy an awful lot of gas (especially for that car) for the difference.

I think the lesson here is that electric cars just aren't the answer. Rethinking the ratty Subaru project.

PS - as you surf the web for electric vehicle resources, you find a lot of dead and busted links. It is just not a good economic proposition.

Okay, the new job has nearly consumed me. I started at 3:30 on the first day - I got home 9:30 the next morning. Lame, I know, and it isn't like I am also writing books, additional blogs and columns, producing techno music, and indulging in my photography hobby. Being a law professor must either leave a lot of free time, or maybe there is more to Instapundit's support of cloning than he's telling.

A lot of folks have been looking at this topic, and the reaction has been strong - it shouldn't happen. Patrick Ruffini writes that the reaction should be enough, and that Commissioner Bradley Smith did what he meant to do, stirred things up to get that reaction. Seems like a reasonable analysis. However, I am not nearly so sanguine as Hugh Hewitt, who writes:

Answer: I have been teaching the First Amendment for a decade, and it isn't going to happen because it would be patently and obviously unconstitutional to classify the content of a political blog --which is essentially a cyber-newspaper-- as within the purview of the FEC.

Well, it seems that it should be cut and dried, but the good professor seems to have forgotten that despite the fact that the First Amendment expressly forbids Congress from making a law abridging freedom of speech, they did, the President (freedom man George W. Bush) signed it, and the Supreme Court weighed in and said it was A-Okay.

In short - don't take it for granted.

For Christmas I got a bottle of Williams-Sonoma Mojito Mix (would link it, but it isn't on their website). I decided to try it out tonight. One big thumb up!

Yeah, I know it is cheating, you should mash your own mint up, but honestly, who has time for that?

On a similar but mostly unrelated note, "Natural" Cheetos are quite tasty!

Last week, the ombudsman for the Washington Post wrote a column about reduced circulation and subscriptions, and in response got "more than 75 e-mails, letters and phone calls." And here is the surprising problem that the ombudsman discerns from those responses:

...the press generally, and The Post, have been timid in challenging the Bush administration....

Hmmm. Were I the ombudsman, and I wanted to figure out why people were dropping or not subscribing to my paper, I don't think I would base it on self selected responses from people who are obviously still reading the paper. I might look outside the universe of the faithful. Just a thought.

It might also be an interesting lesson to find out why people do subscribe. For example, I still subscribe, despite the way the news is reported and distorted, as well as the editorial policies. One reason is that the Washington Times doesn't have Dilbert (I suppose I could get that online) and when I subscribed, I also found myself on some, well, extreme mailing lists - which is worrisome. They weren't as extreme as when I susbscribed to The American Spectator, but still worrisome.

Still, I would bet money that despite the fact that not being tough enough on Bush was the recurring theme in his responses, that isn't why people aren't subscribing in droves.

So an article in The Washington Monthly comes out and suggests a draft. It gets a lot of attention. I should be on this, as the draft is one of my issues - I'm agin' it. But I just can't get worked up over this one. It's just filler. There won't be a draft. Next.

So in today's Bleat, Lileks says he is plotting revenge against a "certain radio host," meaning Hugh Hewitt. Later, he writes:

If someone registered, oh, HoundtheHewitt.com to correct the things he says in the Friday afternoon movie segment, it would be fun for a while, but six years from now Hugh will still merrily insist that there’s no discernible difference between the second and third “Alien” movies.

Wow. Good ol' moderate, Gnat and Jasper loving Lileks, dropping the hammer on Hugh Hewitt like that. Ouch.

Hope he's never mad at me.

This is the difference a blog makes in news reporting. It's about the murder of the of the mother and husband of a judge - what a horrible thing to come home to. But the news says noone is sure what happened. No backstory like what we get here, that the judge herself had been targeted by Neo-Nazis, and that Nazi is in jail for it. Unfounded speculation and rumor? Speculation, surely, but not unfounded.

And it again shows the power of Instapundit as a "linker." Now a lot of people will see this, and know something more than they did.

I saw this story yesterday. This is good news, actually. Because it isn't like Usama bin Laden just came up with the idea to attack the US. Zarqawi took Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's box on the org chart in Al Qaeda - KSM was the guy who really masterminded 9/11. Zarqawi has kept his focus on Iraq, and despite the fact he is killing Iraqis and American soldiers, he's failing - failed - at his mission. Being focused on Iraq, he i not focused here. And that's the upshot of bin Laden's message - you are in a quagmire in Iraq, you must withdraw. You are distracted from the "real war on terror."

Here's how the article puts it:

U.S. officials say Zarqawi has "his hands full" trying to stay out of U.S. or Iraqi custody in Iraq and they question whether Zarqawi's group would have the ability to pull off an attack inside America. Also, officials are wondering aloud what this means about Al Qaeda and whether if the group is reaching out to its central leader because they are under significant pressure.