Finally, the Schindlers argue that the testimony, which was conflicting, was insufficient to support the trial court's decision by clear and convincing evidence. We have reviewed that testimony and conclude that the trial court had sufficient evidence to make this decision. The clear and convincing standard of proof, while very high, permits a decision in the face of inconsistent or conflicting evidence. See In re Guardianship of Browning, 543 So.2d at 273. In Browning, we stated: In making this difficult decision, a surrogate decisionmaker should err on the side of life.... In cases of doubt, we must assume that a patient would choose to defend life in exercising his or her right of privacy. In re Guardianship of Browning, 543 So.2d at 273. We reconfirm today that a court's default position must favor life. The testimony in this case establishes that Theresa was very young and very healthy when this tragedy struck. Like many young people without children, she had not prepared a will, much less a living will. She had been raised in the Catholic faith, but did not regularly attend mass or have a religious advisor who could assist the court in weighing her religious attitudes about life-support methods. Her statements to her friends and family about the dying process were few and they were oral. Nevertheless, those statements, along with other evidence about Theresa, gave the trial court a sufficient basis to make this decision for her. In the final analysis, the difficult question that faced the trial court was whether Theresa Marie Schindler Schiavo, not after a few weeks in a coma, but after ten years in a persistent vegetative state that has robbed her of most of her cerebrum and all but the most instinctive of neurological functions, with no hope of a medical cure but with sufficient money and strength of body to live indefinitely, would choose to continue the constant nursing care and the supporting tubes in hopes that a miracle would somehow recreate her missing brain tissue, or whether she would wish to permit a natural death process to take its course and for her family members and loved ones to be free to continue their lives. After due consideration, we conclude that the trial judge had clear and convincing evidence to answer this question as he did.

et al - Again. Get the politics out of this and just apply some logic.

The state is taking a life with evidence that would be laughed out of any court room.

...as long he POPJ doesn't get the answer he thinks is right we must keep investigating.

A call to put PPJ on your manual IGNORE.

Schiavo means "slave" in Italian

A call to put PPJ/Horse "whose name is well known" on your manual IGNORE.

Sounds to me like there are a lot of vile, unchallenged, and unsupported statements lying around these days. Sounds to me like the right's been lying for quite some time.

Volokh, as you may not know, famously opined that he would support the death by torture of capital offenders just like they do in Iran.

Those who led the American Revolution and wrote the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution had risen up in revolt precisely against rulers supposedly deriving their authority from God. They declared that governments derive their legitimacy, not from religious sanction, but from the consent of the governed, expressed through popular votes. Scalia, DeLay and Bush would repudiate more than 200 years of US constitutional and democratic tradition, in favor of a theocratic dictatorship of the most backward and reactionary Christian fundamentalist elements.

The Democratic Party has once again demonstrated its complicity in the assault on democratic rights in the United States and its prostration before the Republican right. Congressional Democrats were instrumental in ensuring passage Monday morning of legislation overriding the rulings of the Florida courts in the case of Terri Schiavo, bringing the family dispute over the severely brain-damaged woman into the federal courts.

What politics have I put into it.

Affirmative action was supposed to be solely for blacks,...