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The Blogging of the President: 2004

Glenn Smith at BOPnews.com:

Ethically, is there any difference between refusing to insert a feeding tube into a person who will die without it (a decision insurance companies make all the time for economic reasons) and withdrawing a feeding tube from a person in a persistent vegitative state?

The right wing shouts that the latter is murder, but it's purchased its political power and voice with huge campaign contributions from insurance companies, for whom 'defending life' is a value only when there's money in it.

The denial of health care for economic reasons is morally depraved, and it's done all the time without troubling our vacationing president, who cut short his Crawford nap so he could get to D.C. and sign the Schiavo bill. 'This is about defending life,' his spokesman said.

But how can a congressionally mandated coma be moral?

The moral midgets in the White House and Congress would suffer political death if we withdrew the Big Insurance feeding tube from their throats. We should, because it's us who are gagging on it.

He speaks the truth.