Michael Schiavo has announced that he will order an autopsy and publicize the results to prove the extent of Terri’s brain damage to all those who perceive that she’s conscious and aware. This demonstrates his confidence that the medical evidence is extremely strong that Terri is in a persistent/permanent vegetative state, as an autopsy would reveal if she were capable of awareness or rehabilitation. If, as the RTL’ers are charging, Terri is in good shape, then an autopsy would be incredibly damning for him. It is also to fight against recent rumors that his plans for cremation are to cover up malfeasance.

Of course, at this point, the RTL’ers will jump on anything. For example, a web search brought to light a page–if authentic (there are misspellings)–which seems to show that Schiavo and his new family were involved in an insurance agency. Although it was simply a page stating that such a business existed, all the “pro-life” rumor-mongers instantly concluded that Schiavo is into massive insurance fraud, without any evidence whatsoever. This page, for instance, goes on about the conspiracy at length, but what it amounts to is that because (a) Schiavo nominally signed on to a business run by his new life partner’s family–and with no other information at all–that (b) he has secretly bought a massive insurance policy on Terri’s life and stands to rake in truckloads of money when she dies. They even take the typo on the web page (“insurnace” instead of “insurance”) to mean that he was trying to hide the nature of the company from anyone searching for it.

This is stupid on many levels. First of all, a search would bring out his name and the name of his partner’s family, so an intentional typo in the name would be idiotic. Second, what insurance company in its right mind would approve and pay out on a life insurance policy for someone in a PVS on a feeding tube when legal proceedings were underway to have the tube removed? (The agency seems to have been founded in 2001, three years after the Schiavo case went to trial.) The very idea is moronic to the extreme. This person rants on for pages about all the ways one can break insurance laws, all the many evils Schiavo was/is/will be planning (with one small disclaimer that the writer is not actually “accusing” Schiavo of anything!), peppered with biblical references and mini-rants… without even the merest shred of evidence that anything at all about the whole theory is in any way true.

It’s as if I noted that you traveled out of town a year and a half ago, and not knowing anything about where you went or what you did, I concluded that you left town to have a torrid love affair after which you went on a killing spree–not that I’m accusing you of anything, of course! That’s the cognitive leap going on here. And it puts into light all the accusations being made about Schiavo–so much fabrication and lies, based on little more than imagination. If you do a Google search for “Jerger & Centonze,” the name of the company, you’ll find more conspiracy theories, each one more vacuous than the next.

In the meantime, members of the “culture of life” continue to make death threats. So what’s new? Also, Billmon at Whiskey Bar finds out that one of the “pro-life” crowd outside Terri’s hospice is someone who not only participated in “interrogation” in Iraq, but also stated publicly that for an interrogator, “sadism is always right over the hill. You have to admit it. Don’t fool yourself – there is a part of you that will say, ‘This is fun.’ ” Ah, splendid.

And then we return to the political dimension of the affair. As Bush’s poll ratings plummet in the wake of his emergency trip to sign the law for Terri, there is movement in the party to distance Bush from the whole affair. Now excuses are being made that Bush had to be pressed and lobbied, and that he “didn’t want to get directly involved.” The claim is that this coercion which Bush apparently struggled valiantly against but in the end succumbed to took place on his flight to Washington to sign the bill. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but if Bush wasn’t convinced yet, then why had he committed untold wads of taxpayer money to take Air Force One to Washington for no other reason than to sign the bill into law? Bush’s plain eagerness to do everything in his power to not only sign the bill but to make the outrageously clear physical statement that this was his #1 priority clashes starkly with current claims that Bush was somehow reluctant but had to be bullied into it somehow.

This after an insane attempt by state police, likely ordered by Jeb Bush, to raid the hospice, grab Terri and take her to a hospital where a feeding tube would be reinserted.

What a farce this whole affair is….