THE SCHIAVO CASE Resisting politics disguised as faith BY MARY ANN SORRENTINO

The most important aspect of the endless Terri Schiavo debacle got the least attention from the media. The big news is how, in the end, the system worked.

Left-wing cynics like myself, weaned on a rage born in Vietnam and conditioned to believe our government generally prefers politics to justice, have new reason to be hopeful.

Not even President George W. Bush, joined by his brother, Florida governor Jeb, and supported by a misguided US Congress and powerful religious icons, plus legions of fanatics, could force assorted jurists to set fire to the Constitution.

And did they ever try!

One can only imagine the kind of pressure that was brought to bear on the political appointees who are now state and federal judges, as well as on elected lawmakers in Florida and in the US Congress.

But in the end, no number of threats, no chorus of innuendo about debts owed and favors done, no tally of chits thrown out and pulled in, made legal sense to those on the bench. They apparently understood that Terri Schiavo’s case threatened not only the integrity of the Constitution, but also the sanctity of every personal and family decision that could ever be made in America.

For a few brief, glaring moments it appeared that the president, the governor of the Sunshine State, and more members of Congress than we care to count had lost their minds. W flew in from his vacation to sign special legislation that would have subjected every American family to the will and whims of Congress. Jeb Bush rounded up a few "experts" who decided that Terri Schiavo, after 15 years on life support, was really not as vegetative as we thought. Even the Supreme Court must have been weary by the time it had to repeat — for the third time in a week — that it would not, repeat NOT, hear the Schiavo case.

Conservatives ostensibly committed to preserving states’ rights suddenly became cheerleaders for the paramount power of Washington. The godless got religion, and the political whores swore they were having a mystical moral moment.

The media, meanwhile, had a picnic giving the Schiavo story 24/7 coverage (inventing at least five different ways of mispronouncing her last name, which, in Italian, is correctly "Skee-AHH-vo," which means "slave")

Her husband, commendably, kept a low profile while her parents and her brother took pot shots at him for his alleged sin of wanting to get on with his life after his wife’s 15 years in a vegetative state.

Demonstrators, meanwhile, taped over their mouths to symbolize their feeling that the laws of the land had silenced them. Many carried signs asking for "Death with Dignity" for Terri Schiavo.

In the end, it appears the courts were trying to give her, and them, just that. The rest of us can only be grateful for their wisdom and for their ability to resist politics disguised as faith.