I’m no expert on the Terri Schiavo case, and I don’t want to be one.

My semi-informed take on this is that Congress is out of line interfering in this case. It seems to come down to a factual dispute about whether her husband is accurately portraying her wishes to not live as a vegetable. I don’t think Congress has more insight into this than the several courts that have already ruled; and the role of fact-finder is supposed to reside with the courts.

It seems to me that many are trying to force the result they emotionally prefer, rather than to respect her previously expressed wishes. The terrible comments I’ve seen about Mr. Schiavo remind me of the people who wanted Martha Stewart to go to jail, mostly because they didn’t like her rather than any knowledge of facts of the case.

On the bright side, the more time Congress spends debating whether baseball players used steroids and whether individual court cases have been rightly decided the less time they’ll have to pass stupid laws that will harm the rest of us. So they can get invoved in every traffic stop for all I care. I’d prefer that they appease the religious extremists by intervening in one woman’s treatment than work to pass anti-abortion or anti-gay constitutional amendments.

It may be stupid, but it will probably be less damaging than what they’d otherwise be doing.