This was who Terri Schiavo was 15 years ago or more: vibrant, pretty, bright. She was a real knockout, in fact. No wonder her husband fell in love witih her at first sight and fought so hard for her care in the first few years after her collapse, coma, and entry into a persistent vegetative state. He did everything he could to bring her back, but after several years he came to accept what the doctors told him as far back as 1994: her cerebral cortex was “all but gone.”

11 years ago. “All but gone.” Michael and the doctors have known this for more than a decade, but the news services dutifully reported the point of view promulgated by her too-hopeful parents and their slithering, cynical supporters from the right-to-life movement. Over and over again. And gullible people took up the cause, mostly on the basis of the repetitive “Terri is responsive” message that took over the airwaves for the last month.

And of course Slytherin, the forces of conservative righteousness, will continue to use her for their own purposes; apparently they think promulgating this “culture of life” at all costs and beyond all sense strengthens their hand in the coming judicial appointments battles this summer.

However, don’t be too sure. Not everyone is gullible, and not all on the right are in lock-step with that “vast right-wing conspiracy” (that cliche used to be a joke, and now it’s not so funny). There’s a hell of a lot of disapproval of the way Congress and the Resident juggled their schedules for a look-good resolution designed to please the extreme Right. It now seems there are two kinds of conservatives at last, or at least the news services have finally figured it out: there are “social conservatives” and “process conservatives,” and the latter are justifiably horrified at the precedent set by the almost certainly unconstitutional Congressional intervention.

It was, in fact, an appellate judge appointed by President George H.W. Bush who wrote an opinion Wednesday criticizing the president and Congress for acting “in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers’ blueprint for the governance of a free people — our Constitution.”

My sympathies and condolences to her family. I’m sorry she was so… cruelly used by people who didn’t have her best interests at heart.