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Necessary politics

"Democrats, and others, have accused Republicans and President Bush of playing politics with the Schiavo case. Let's hope so. Unlike most, this is a necessary politics that ought to draw the whole country into the argument," the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger wrote on Friday.

"For a long time, abortion has constricted the life-and-choice debate. It's bigger now. Just weeks before Terri Schiavo became a household name, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review Oregon's Death With Dignity Act.

"To put the partisanship of the issue as crudely (and clearly) as possible: Republicans are said to have a pro-'life' litmus test for judicial nominees. Does this mean that President Hillary Clinton's litmus test would require her judicial nominees to be: pro-abortion, pro-partial-birth abortion, pro-right-to-suicide and pro-pull-the-plug on medical cases deemed hopeless?" Mr. Henninger asked.

"I don't think the Democrats want to be the right-to-die party, though they have somehow accumulated all these lethal affiliations involving matters of individual choice. In fact, there is a constituency, even a bipartisan constituency, for this general ethic. For 20 years, ethicists such as Daniel Callahan of the Hastings Center have been arguing that a lack of resources may oblige society to withhold extraordinary care from, say, people over 85. Former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm famously popularized a 'duty to die' for the very ill elderly.

"In 25 years, the baby boomers will be on the cusp of 85, becoming what a physician friend has called 'history's healthiest generation of Alzheimer's patients.' As the tsunami of red ink collapses the struts beneath the tar-paper shacks of Medicare and Social Security (which the congressional elders say isn't broken) the 'scarce resource' argument will re-emerge, with soothing persuasiveness, for triaging the most ill among us, very old or very young.

"The outpouring of support to give Terri Schiavo back to her parents may prove quixotic, but it ensures that these future questions of who lives and who dies won't be decided by the professional class alone in conferences and courtrooms. It will be done in full view, where it belongs."

Dump Joe?

Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman is "a pretty orthodox Democrat" when judged on his voting record, Matthew Yglesias writes in the liberal magazine the American Prospect.