Reads the apparently unironic headline here.

Wannabe Limbaugh radio pseudo-celebrity demagogue Glenn Beck is trying to raise money to pay for a "divorce settlement" from Michael Schiavo:

With time running out we're directly asking you, how much is one life worth? Literally, how much are you willing to pay out of pocket in an attempt to keep Terri alive? We will collect pledges via this website and make an offer to Michael Schiavo this week for him to turn over custody of Terri to her parents.

Because nothing says "human dignity" like buying a human being. Nothing says "culture of life" like the meat trade. We should seriously consider renaming the site "American Necrophagia".

via Mike Malloy

The Fixin's Bar alerts us to the following:

Two-time Emmy winner and New York Times best-selling author Patricia Heaton pled for the life of Terri Schiavo today as Terri's life-sustaining feeding tube was removed. Heaton serves as Honorary Chair of Feminists for Life of America.

"We must not let Terri Schiavo be starved to death," said Heaton. "This deliberate and painful destruction of a woman's life cannot be justified or tolerated. Terri deserves better."

Visit Patricia Heaton's fan site board to check out some enjoyable entries!

"This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy," Mr. Shays said. "There are going to be repercussions from this vote. There are a number of people who feel that the government is getting involved in their personal lives in a way that scares them."

"A number of people" feel that way? Really? Jeez, thanks for the newsflash, Mr. Shays!

I know I shouldn't say this--because I'm supposed to really care whenever a Republican gets a pang of conscience and speaks out on the side of the truth--but I hope whoever runs against Shays in 'o6 plays that line repeatedly in a commercial.

Later this morning, Mr. Mahoney and Brother Paul O'Donnell, a Franciscan monk who says he is a spiritual adviser to Ms. Schiavo's parents, talked to reporters outside of the hospice in Pinellas Park, where Ms. Schiavo has been living.

Mr. Mahoney and Brother O'Donnell said they had talked by telephone to her parents, who had visited with her in the last few hours but who were now resting.

"Terri is showing signs of being starved to death," Mr. O'Donnell said they told him. "She is getting very tired. She is still alert, she still laughs. Her skin is beginning to dry.

She is not getting very tired. She is not alert. She does not laugh.

"Her own mother cannot offer her daughter an ice chip in her mouth to make her comfortable," he said. "Her own mother cannot be at her side without being watched by an armed police officer."

"She" cannot be made comfortable, since she does not exist. Her body can be made most comfortable by being allowed to expire.

"Brother" O'Donnell has told lies, and defied the will of God. One presumes he will be punished accordingly.

The Vatican drops its latest turd into the American echo chamber:

The Vatican newspaper on Monday criticized the removal of a feeding tube from a brain-damaged Florida woman, saying nobody can claim the right to decide whether a human being lives or dies.

Nothing new here of course, but the beyond-laughable outrageousness of the hypocrisy of these dress-wearing palace dwellers never ceases to astonish. Has the business of the Church ever been anything other than claiming the right to decide whether human beings live or die? What else have they ever concerned themselves with? A thousand years ago, five hundred years ago, now?

In fact, can you point to any major sphere of the administration of modern life that doesn't concern itself, directly or indirectly, with deciding who gets to live and who not? Where does food get distributed? Will condoms be disbursed? Will the prosecutor seek the death penalty, or life without parole? Which insurance plan does the hospital accept? Will the new homeless shelter get funded? Will the reserves get sent off to war?

For fuck's sake, Bush himself signed a law in 1999 which gives not only doctors but faceless number-crunching "health-care providers" the right to decide whether a patient lives or dies even over the objections of the patient's family, and even over the objections of the patient himself.

I mean come on!!! Is modern life anything but a vast bureaucratic mechanism for the management of human life and death? Bush's Right-to-Death law is certainly not the exception--I mean, it's expensive to keep folks alive, and somebody's gotta pay!

It's kind of funny, too: a hundred years ago (and even fifty years ago) it was the right-wingers in America crying about Popish conspiracies, Rome trying sully American liberty with its filthy WOP hands. Now the right-wingers can't wait to gobble up whatever juicy turd the Vatican decides to grace us with next. As long as they can be counted on to be reliable fag-bashing buddies, even (especially) the "evangelicals" are cool with the Catholics.

Except, wait, look out "evangelicals"--now that the U.S. election is over, and a Holy Ring-kissing murderer safely ensconced in the White House, look what kind of traitorous stunt these white-robed cowards are trying to pull:

In the week before Easter, as Christians reflect on the execution of Jesus, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is launching a campaign to end the use of the death penalty in the United States.

Q: Why does the Catholic church hate America? Where would Christians be without the death penalty? Jesus would have gone on galavanting around, spouting off his incendiary nonsense, and we never would have had the satisfaction of killing him, and then of worshipping his murder! The death penalty is the best thing a Christian can hope for!

Look for Joe Lieberman to shortly announce himself co-sponsor of a new constitutional amendment banning issue activism by anyone suspected of having consorted with a pedophile.