Mark Kleiman reminds us just how rank the hypocrisy of the Bush Republicans' grandstanding on Terri Schiavo is:

Sun Hudson, a six-month-old boy with a fatal congenital disease, died Thursday after a Texas hospital, over his mother's objections, withdrew his feeding tube. The child was apparently certain to die, but was conscious. The hospital simply decided that it had better things to do than keeping the child alive, and the Texas courts upheld that decision after the penniless mother failed, during the 10-day window provided for by Texas law, to find another institution willing to take the child.

Who signed that law, the Texas Futile Care Law, which authorizes pulling the plug when families can't pay up? Texas Governor George W. Bush. The same George W. Bush who is now apparently up in arms over the refusal of some in his party to vote for deeper cuts in healthcare for the poor. This is the man, and the party, now justifying unprecedented congressional intervention to override the judgment of a woman's doctors, the choice of her legal guardian based on her stated wishes, and a dozen state court decisions which the US Supreme Court expressly declined to review. Somehow, the Republicans' private claim that they've fond "a great political issue" is more persuasive than Bush's claim he believes in a "presumption in favor of life" (looks like even their political calculations here are wrong). What's differentiates the left and the right in this country on wrenching issues like the one facing the Schiavos? The left wants these choices made based on the informed consideration of the patient's chosen guardian. The right wants these choices based on the patient's income bracket.