I only do it for the money

California businessman Robert Herring has offered Michael Schiavo $1 million to turn care of his brain-damaged wife Terri over to her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler. Schiavo, who has often been accused by the Schindlers of being interested only in collecting the $1 million malpractice judgment awarded in Terri's case, turned him down.

According to Schiavo's lawyer, George Felos, this is not the first time he has received and rejected such offers; one, Felos said, was for $10 million.

Herring made his offer Thursday, hours after a judge refused to let the state's social services agency intervene - a move that would have delayed next week's scheduled removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube.

The attempt by the Department of Children and Families to intervene to investigate possible "abuse" was one of an ever-lengthening string of legal maneuvers and last-minute dodges that have kept this case going for seven years. The rejection of the move by Judge George Greer indicates he was serious when he indicated a couple of weeks ago that he was getting fed up with all the delaying tactics. However,

[t]he Schindlers still have two issues before the state's 2nd District Court of Appeal, which has said it will rule next week. They also are looking to the Legislature and perhaps Congress for help.

Congress? Yes, Congress. From the Miami Herald for Wednesday:

U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida introduced a bill that, if passed on time, would give Schiavo's parents another last-ditch legal recourse to stop her husband, Michael Schiavo, from having the tube removed on March 18. ...

U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon, a Florida Republican from Indialantic, is sponsoring a similar bill in the House, which would take up the legislation first. ...

The bill would provide Schiavo's parents with the right to file for the same due process "habeas corpus" rights before a federal court that Death Row inmates enjoy, according to Martinez, a former trial lawyer. Habeas corpus is designed to ensure that inmates get a proper hearing once all state court efforts have failed. The recourse has been used in cases that do not involve incarceration, such as child-custody cases.

Literally "have the body," habeas corpus is a process by which a court can, upon a request by a petitioner or someone acting on their behalf, hold hearings to examine if that person has been treated properly and confined according to law.

While I can accept that the Schindlers are sincere even as I am convinced they are wrong and are acting on the basis of an emotional refusal to face the loss of their daughter that has hardened into a delusional conviction that she is actually awake and aware, the rest of these wranglings strike me as hypocritical, manipulative, self-serving crap. "We're on a short fuse," Weldon says. Well, where the hell have you been the last seven years, sucker? You're on your sixth term, so it's not like you haven't had the chance to introduce this legislation before if it was as important as you now say.

Look for this sad, wrenching episode to be the target of more intrusions by publicity seekers and politicos looking to build a record for their next campaign on the backs of a husband's loss and two parents' pain. The vultures looking to pick at the body for their own gain are already circling and I have every confidence there will be more to come.

I've posted about Terri Schiavo twice before, on September 24 and February 25. I say now, as I did then, that the necessary thing for all concerned is to mourn her loss, a loss that actually occurred fifteen years ago, and to finally, finally, let her body, let the shell, go as well.