Ugh...Idiots...

Here's yet another case of loony idiot bloggers taking a news story and twisting it to suit their bizarre personal agenda.

The news story: a young girl previously thought to be in a persistent, irreversible coma is starting to show signs of improvement (like moving her hands). Though doctors were considering removing the girl's feeding tube and allowing her to die with dignity, now it seems, despite the overwhelming odds against it, that their plan might have been a bit hasty.

So, you can probably see how bloggers, still burning from all that negative Terri Schiavo blowback, might try to present this story. "See! We were right! Sometimes coma people get better! You killed Terri Schiavo!"

Here's Mickey Kaus on his often-unintentionally-hilarious blog on Slate:

Where's the fabled Republican message machine when it comes to publicizing this story in the MSM? It tends to put GOP activism over Terri Schiavo in a favorable light, no?

Here's (though I hate doing this...) the odious Michelle Malkin, who, with her trademark tact and subtlety, titled her post on the subject "Haleigh wants to live"

Everyone had given up on Haleigh--except Haleigh.

This is a huge story, a wake-up call to "right-to-die" ideologues who recklessly put such unlimited trust in the medical profession and Nanny State. The same government bureaucrats and doctors who had conclusively deemed the 11-year-old girl "hopeless" and her vegetative state "irreversible" now tell us she is responding to stimuli and breathing on her own.

They were wrong.

Okay, so aside from her embellishing the facts and attempting to make political capital out of a young girl's struggle to life (following a harsh beating by her adopted parents), Michelle is missing the point entirely.

If the opposition to government intervention in the Terri Schiavo case had argued that people in comas should be killed always, then Michelle would have a point. Sometimes, coma people wake up, so killing off anyone in a coma is wrong. But, of course, that wasn't the argument. The argument was that Terri Schiavo's spouse should be allowed to decide the fate of his wife, without fear of the U.S. Congress butting in and telling him what to do.

And, if Michelle had actually read the facts of the case, she would see that, in the case of young Haleigh, the system worked!

Allison Avrett, Haleigh's biological mother, said yesterday that she saw improvements in a hospital visit last week, but was convinced by doctors and DSS workers that hand movements that she had seen were involuntary.

When Avrett visited Haleigh yesterday morning, Avrett said she again observed movement that caused her to reconsider her previous view that Haleigh was better off if allowed to die.

The girl's biological mother, her family member legally entrusted to make decisions on her behalf, believed that there was a sincere chance for improvement, and dwanted to prolong Haleigh's life. Terri Schiavo's husband was allowed to make this same decision, and chose to let his wife die (after more than a decade in a coma!) The two cases are only somewhat similar, and they both, to my mind, confirm the obvious fact: the government should not be entrusted to make decisions about whether individuals get to live or die. That sort of decision should be left to a person's family.

Duh.