Andrew McCarthy is completely correct -- what does it say about the American left that it agonizes over the alleged torture of terrorist fanatics, but is totally content to see a feeding tube removed from a woman who is alive, and periodically alert? The kind of death contemplated for Terri Schiavo is so inhumane that we wouldn't visit it on an animal.

To put it in terms that the left can understand, it's the equivalent of simply locking a convicted terrorist in a cell and permitting him to rot away from hunger and thirst. Trust me, lethal injection sounds like a much more appealing option. But that's apparently reserved for people like Scott Peterson -- who will also, most likely, enjoy a longer appeals process than Terri Schiavo has had.

The Schiavo case is not just an assault on humanity; it's an assault on the institution of marriage. When there is a "husband" who has gone off with another woman and produced two children, there is no "marriage" in any sense but the most technical -- and pretending that there's a primacy in that marital relationship that must be honored makes the entire concept of marriage a joke.

Better that the court issue a divorce decree and turn Terri's interests over to a guardian ad litem. There would be less chance that ignoble motives would interfere in the decisionmaking. In any case, it defies credulity that so many people would be such staunch advocates of an agonizing death for a living -- and quite possibly sentient -- human being.