When the courts failed Terri, and Congress and the Florida Legislature failed Terri, the governor of Florida, who took an oath to defend the constitutional rights of Florida's citizens, should have taken custody of Terri, ordered the tube reinserted and let the federal courts proceed with the de novo hearing of the evidence, while Terri was still alive.

When Gov. John Peter Altgeld of Illinois came to believe that those convicted of murder in the infamous Haymarket Massacre of 1886 were innocent, that a judicial outrage had been committed, he pardoned them. "I am a dead man politically," he told Clarence Darrow.

Jeb Bush should have done the same thing, the right thing. He should have rescued Terri from the death sentence unjustly imposed upon her. If the court held him in contempt, so what? Who does not hold that Florida court in contempt?

From abortion on demand in 1973, to a right to die in Oregon, to a right to suicide in Holland, to involuntary euthanasia in the old folks homes on the old and dying continent of Europe, to America's death sentence for Terri Schiavo, the West advances steadily toward its own death.

As we find more and more justifications for ending life, we also find that not one Western nation has a native-born population that is growing. All are dying. Before century's end, the West ends, as T.S. Eliot wrote, "Not with a bang, but a whimper."

SCHLAFLY: Jack Kevorkian is serving a long prison sentence for assisting the death of a patient. Yet Judge Greer has perverted the judicial function just as surely as Kevorkian perverted the medical function.

Michigan had the good sense to prosecute Kevorkian. Where is the Florida prosecutor? Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist is busy campaigning to become the next governor of Florida.

In California, the Democratic Attorney General personally intervened in the Laci Peterson case to ensure that her killer was brought to justice. But even Scott Peterson benefited from a full jury trial before being sentenced to death, and he will still enjoy numerous appeals and years of delay. Terri Schiavo was ordered to die by one man who served as judge, jury and executioner.

This is judicial arrogance at its ugliest. The public should reject the myth that supremacist judges can override the governor, the legislature, Congress, the president, common sense, and even the right to life, and use armed police to protect judicial supremacy.

Editor's note: