Rick Santorum is reexamining his stance on the death penalty. This is good news.

Santorum seems to be moving pretty tentatively, saying only that he wants it limited and that he doesn’t think that it is fundamentally wrong. But he says that he agrees with Pope John Paul II. If he follows this line of thought, hopefully he’ll come to side with Avery Dulles and realize that in modern America should never be applied.

Peter Byrnes catches an interesting MSNBC headline: “85 Iraqi militants killed Worst death toll for rebels in months as U.S., Iraqi forces raid suspected training camp.”

A nice (guy? gal?) named Cal Lanier has been leaving comments this morning. Lanier seems pretty smart. Who is Cal? One of the three people who run the blog Football Fans for Truth. Surely you remember them.

Cal Lanier wants Terri Schiavo dead. Go read Lanier’s comprehensive Terri Schiavo FAQ. Oh sure, Lanier demurs at the end, saying that he’s not “on Michael Schiavo’s side.” No, no, he’s “on the side of the law.” Boy, is he.

Lanier’s lock-step support of the legal system is so great that he treats nearly every issuance of Judge George Greer as gospel truth. His entire case for killing Terri Schiavo–that is, being on the side of “the law”–is built around the assumption that Greer and legal system are infallible. Lanier writes:

I offer up a few hypotheticals:

1. Assume all facts are the same, but Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers agree that the feeding tube should be removed.

2. Assume all facts are the same, the Schindlers oppose the feeding tube removal, but Terri Schiavo left a detailed living will that specified she would want the feeding tube removed if she were in a persistent vegetative state.

3. Assume that Michael Schiavo has remained completely faithful to his wife all these years, but still testifies that she told him she would want to die in these circumstances, and the Schindlers still oppose him.

If your opinion switches from opposition to support in these hypotheticals, then your opposition is based on the circumstances in this case. So ask yourself: do you really think that you know more about the case from the media coverage and court documents than the judges who actually reviewed all the evidence?

This, of course, is the chicken-hawk argument. How dare a president who has not served in the military order our soldiers around. How dare a person who has never directed a movie write a film review. How dare a bunch of geeks in pajamas question 60 Minutes reporters who have been immersed in the intricacies of George W. Bush’s national guard service. Get it?

And upon close examination, this is the entire substance of Lanier’s argument for killing Schiavo.

Is Michael Schiavo denying his wife care? No, Lanier says: Ignore the facts of her neglect–the bed sores, the extracted teeth, the lack of physical therapy, the contorted body–because the court says Schiavo isn’t denying her care; so it must be true. Should an MRI be done on Terri? No, Lanier says: Ignore the calls from board-certified neurologists, because Judge Greer says an MRI is unnecessary; so it must be true. Is there a doubt about the PVS diagnosis? No, Lanier says: Ignore the doubts expressed by medical experts, because the court has found that she is in PVS; so it must be true.

Lanier’s devotion to the rule of law is admirable, if blinkered. As a friend recently said to me, “blind obedience to the law is just as enslaving as contempt for the rule of law.” We need laws. But our rule of law is an imperfect system implemented by imperfect men. When miscarriages of justice happen from time to time, we need to be willing to step in and correct them.

Cal Lanier’s siding with the law is simply tyranny by other means.

Update, 1:07 p.m.: A commenter tells me Cal Lanier is a gal, not a guy. If so, apologies to Cal for the mix up–but this is what you get for not having a picture posted with your site and having a name made famous by a Hall of Fame shortstop.

Jay Homnick has invented a new literary form, the Fessay. He takes news items and crafts little fictional stories. Interesting concept.

You’ll notice an ad up for Ezell Ware and Joel Engel’s new book, By Duty Bound. I just wanted to say, again, what a great book this is and what an amazing writer Engel is. Don’t miss it.

Thomas Joscelyn’s excellent blog, Venona Project, has just added another blogger, Omar Choudhry. Expect great things from these two, particularly if Omar’s first post, on foreign-policy earthquakes, is any indication.

The Bull Moose makes a courageous stand for life.

Patterico catches Judge Greer in small, but consequential, mistake. Greer’s “clear and convincing evidence” ruling on Terri Schiavo’s “wish to be dehydrated to death” was based in part on excluding the testimony of Diane Meyer, a witness who contradicted Michaelf Schiavo’s new-found realization that his wife wanted him to have her killed. (Remember, in 1992, when he was testifying in a medical malpractice suit on Terri’s behalf, he didn’t think Terri wanted to die–that came after the court awarded him $1.3 million dollars, $750,000 of which was tied up in a trust for Terri’s care, and therefore available to him only after her death.)

But back to Greer. The judge’s tortured reasoning for excluding Meyer’s testimony is that he thought she was making her story up since in her account, she and Terri were making a joke about Karen Ann Quinlan in 1982, but were using present tense verbs to describe Quinlan. Greer dismisses Meyer with a Perry Mason moment:

The court is mystified as to how those present tense verbs would have been used some six years after the death of Karen Ann Quinlin. [sic]

But, as Patterico notes, Quinlan died in 1985, not 1976 or 1977 (as Greer clearly thinks). The verb tenses in Meyer’s story are appropriate and her testimony should not have been excluded. This is simply one more instance of willful and capricious behavior on the part of Judge Greer.

For even more instances of Greer’s willful and capricious behavior, see this Wesley Smith article on “the rule of Terri’s case.” (Note to readers: If you’re interested in finding Wesley Smith’s affiliations, please follow the links I provide to his pieces and then look at his byline. Really, it’s not that hard.)

For instance: Florida law requires Terri’s guardian (Michael Schiavo) to “file mandatory annual guardianship plans to establish a ward’s approved plan of care for the coming year” (that’s Smith’s paraphrase, follow the link to get the actual letter of the law). Michael Schiavo refused to file these plans of care and was granted six extensions by Judge Greer–meaning that Schiavo went at least three years without filing plan for care of Terri, as is required by Florida law, and that Greer actively helped him skirt this law designed to protect his ward.

At nearly every step in the Schiavo case, Judge George Greer has acted with prejudice and disregard for the truth, the evidence, the rule of law, and the cause of justice. When this ordeal is over, the people of Florida should examine Judge Greer’s actions in detail and take whatever recourse is allowed them under state law.

Update, 10:56 a.m.: As commenter Cal notes, Patterico is not the first person on earth to note Judge Greer’s mistake, but he is the first person in the blogosphere (that I’ve seen, anyway), to call attention to it. The fact that Patterico says this himself in his post which I linked to–and then addresses Greer’s because-I-say-so response–would, I thought, have made this obvious to readers.