Hey, Dan Rather may have messed it up during the election, but if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

The thing is, the memo's just not that damaging. What, you mean politicians care if something's a political issue? But it's still a legit story if the WaPo got hoaxed.

The point of the story appears to be that the GOP is using the Schiavo story for political gain and to curry favor with the Religious Right. Personally, I think this is at least partially true. Cases like this happen all the time, but they don't become the media hell-storm that this one has --- and the main reason that has happened is because of political activists who've exploited it.

I think the memo is legit. Given the time frame involved, it's no surprise that it contains typos. That it isn't signed and doesn't have letterhead is called plausible deniability. Welcome to the real world of hard ball politics. (And, frankly, Power Line is beginning to sound like conspiracy theorist nutcases.)

Rathergate will live as long as we have the MSM/DNC.

This is a little out on a limb here, but most of us have two different ways a speaking about our business. One way is for general consumption. The language and wording used is generic and meant to be understood by anyone. The other is jargon devised to communicate quickly and accurately with our peers in the same business or industry. This is used when talking "shop". I assume politics is the same way. This memo appears "dumbed down" so that the general public can understand it.

Doug wrote:
Cases like this happen all the time,

Really? Name one.

Regardless of where you stand on Schiavo, it became the issue that it became partly because there AREN'T other cases quite like this one.

Matt Bruce wrote

>>Really? Name one

Thats precisely my point. Life and death decisions like the one in the Schiavo case take place every day in hospitals, nursing homes, and between family members who sometimes disagree.

This is the only case that I know of that has gotten this degree of media attention, and I think its fair to say that there are very few "right to die" cases that have been litigated as much(and for as long) as this one.

Why ? Perhaps the fact that Terri Schiavo has became a cause celebe for the Religious Right has something to do with it.

Matt Bruce wrote

>>Really? Name one

I can name three; my son, the son of a friend and the brother of a workmate. All three of us made the decision to terminate life support (my son was born prematurely, my friend's son was born with only a brain stem and my workmate's brother had a massive stroke which left him in an almost identical state as Terry Shiavo--in the last case, the only difference was his brother had a pacemaker keeping his heart beating, so they literally just turned off a machine.

While writing this, I came up with two more cases. My grandmother and the grandmother of my former business partner. My grandmother had a living will (which she wrote after watching her husband, my grandfather, be ressucitated against his previous verbal stated will and live as a vegetable for two weeks.) Before slipping into a coma, my former business partner's grandmother asked the doctor to give her an overdose of whatever would kill her the fastest. Which he did.