May she rest in peace

In her last few months, as Terri Schiavo lay in a state of suspended animation, that state of neither quite life nor death, she became a symbol of many things: of our nation's confusion about and rejection of death, of the heartlessness of liberalism, the phantasmagoria of radical authoritarianism, the opportunism of Congress and, not least of all, the unmeetable twain of the great national divide.

In death, one hopes, she becomes flesh again, a mere mortal. Godspeed.

For a clear-eyed, blow-by-blow look at the case as it coursed its way through the courts over the past few days, look at Tim Grieve's blogging for Salon's 'War Room.'