But enough about all that life stuff, let's get back to bashing Republicans!

How has Terri Schiavo's care been financed? The available information suggests that some of the money came from one of those much-derided medical malpractice lawsuits and that the drugs she needs have been paid for by Medicaid.

The irony has not been lost on Democrats. Just a few days after most Republicans in both houses of Congress had supported cuts in federal funding of Medicaid, here they were erring "on the side of life" in a single case. The same issue has come up here in Florida, where Gov. Jeb Bush, a strong supporter of keeping Schiavo alive, has been proposing cuts in Medicaid spending.

So allowing a woman to starve to death is analogous to trying to curb the rate of growth for a government program? Well, DUH. If it annoys the Republicans, it must be true. What bearing does this have on the Schiavo case and the definition of pro-life? Well, just wait...

Republicans cry foul when any link is made between the Schiavo question and the Medicaid question. "The fact that they're tying a life issue to the budget process shows just how disconnected Democrats are to reality," harrumphed Dan Allen, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

Note that Democrats "say" while Republicans "harrumph." I guess it's because we're evil. Evil, harrumphing monsters.

Forgive me, Mr. Allen, I know you're just doing your job, but what's disconnected from reality is refusing to accept the idea that health care is about life issues and money issues.

People who lack access to health care because they can't afford insurance often die earlier than they have to -- with absolutely no national publicity and with no members of Congress rising up at midnight to pass bills on their behalf. What is the point of standing up for life in an individual case but not confronting the cost of choosing life for all who are threatened within the health care system or by their lack of access to it?

Dionne is onto us, I guess. Our dastardly plan of standing in the doorways to hospitals, letting poor people die while we laugh and twirl our mustaches is exposed for all the world to see.

Why is Medicare in trouble? Becuase it was allowed to grow faster than in should have grown and promised more than it could deliver. Democrats tried to make Medicare a system that paid for health care rather than helped people pay for it. There's a difference. Rather than have people pay a percentage of their health care costs, Democrats said they didn't have to pay anything and then put into place a system that pays only a small percentage of the actual costs of care.

You want to talk about decreasing access to health care? How about talking about the hospitals that have to cut budgets or increase the cost of services because the government imposes artificial price controls on the cost of health care? What about the millions of dollars that have to come out of other programs like medical research to pay for the program that takes up the largest percentage of the federal budget? Lucky us, thanks to the government, we all get to pay for health care three times. Once from our checks to pay medicare costs, once when we make our insurance payments and again when we pay deductibles or copays. But silly me, Dionne doesn't care about health care. When it comes to bashing Republicans, any old club will do:

What does it mean to be pro-life? As far as I can tell, most of those who would keep Schiavo alive favor the death penalty. Most favored allowing the assault weapons ban to expire and oppose other forms of gun control. The president makes an excellent point when he says we "ought to err on the side of life." It's a shame how rarely that principle is put into practice.

How does Dionne know these things? Does he have a super-secret dossier on the beliefs of those who want to keep Terri Schiavo alive? Or is he just making broad generalizations that fit his narrow-minded views and allow the choir to whom he's preaching continue to feel no guilt for their own inconsistencies on life? Namely, that they oppose the death penalty for criminals but support it for those who have done nothing - such as the unborn and infirm?

You be the judge.