House Hacks Say "Feed Me Feed Me Feed Me!"

When chefs like ethically challenged redistricter Tom Delay, bumbling-but-still-not-lovable Speaker Denny Hastert, and roid-raging Virginian Tom Davis (didn't he used to be Al Franken's partner?) are doing the cooking, you can be sure federal separation of powers won't be on the menu. The three House Republicans are now asserting their constitutional authority to keep Terri Schiavo eating.

"Later this morning," says a statement from Davis, Delay, and Hastert, "we will issue a subpoena, which will require hospice administrators and attending physicians to preserve nutrition and hydration for Terri Schiavo to allow Congress to fully understand the procedures and practices that are currently keeping her alive."

That could take weeks!

I should speak a little Reason heresy here and admit that I am not as convinced as my colleague Ron Bailey that the case for turning off Schiavo's feeding tube is beyond dispute; I also think "turning off her feeding tube" is a euphemism (and not a very inventive one) for "starving her to death." (For my money, the scandal isn't that the system would allow Schiavo to die, but that it requires her to starve rather than just getting a thump on the head or a dose of cyanide.)

Schiavo's shameless parents have clouded the issue beyond recognition and tried to make her husband, who has gone broke keeping her alive this long, look like a monster. But all legitimate grounds of appeal have run out. Now we're stuck with only the illegitimate grounds.

But I guess it will be sort of funny, in a Farrelly brothers kind of way, to watch Hastert interrogating the vegetative Schiavo on March 28.