Dean's World

The Miami Herald reports that state officials were indeed poised to swoop down and take custody of Terri Schiavo — but were stopped by local police — an account denied by Governor Jeb Bush's office:

MIAMI - Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Schiavo wasn't to be removed from her hospice, a team of Florida law enforcement agents were en route to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted - but they stopped short when local police told them they would enforce the judge's order, The Miami Herald has learned.

Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told police in Pinellas Park, the small town where Schiavo lies at Hospice Woodside, that they were on the way to take her to a hospital to resume her feeding.

For a brief period, local police, who have officers around the hospice to keep protesters out, prepared for what sources called a showdown.

In the end, the state agents and the Department of Children and Families backed down, apparently concerned about confronting local police outside the hospice.

"We told them that unless they had the judge with them when they came, they were not going to get in," said a source with the local police.

"The FDLE called to say they were en route to the scene," said an official with the city police who requested anonymity. "When the Sheriff's Department, and our department, told them they could not enforce their order, they backed off."

The incident, known only to a few, underscores the intense emotion and murky legal terrain that the Schiavo case has created. It also shows that agencies answering directly to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush had planned to use a wrinkle in state law that would have allowed them to legally get around the judge's order. The exception in the law allows public agencies to freeze a judge's order whenever an agency appeals it.

Participants in the high-stakes test of wills, who spoke with The Miami Herald on the condition of anonymity, said they believed the standoff could ultimately have led to a constitutional crisis - and a confrontation between dueling lawmen.

"There were two sets of law enforcement officers facing off, waiting for the other to blink," said one official with knowledge of Thursday morning's activities. In jest, one official said local police discussed "whether we had enough officers to hold off the National Guard."

"It was kind of a showdown on the part of the locals and the state police," the official said. "It was not too long after that Jeb Bush was on TV saying that, evidently, he doesn't have as much authority as people think."

State officials on Friday vigorously denied the notion that any "showdown" occurred.

The Department of Children and Families "directed no such action," said agency spokeswoman Zoraya Suarez.

Said Bush spokesman Jacob DiPietre: "There was no showdown. We were ready to go. We didn't want to break the law. There was a process in place and we were following the process. The judge had an order and we were following the order."

I used to work for the Wichita Eagle-Beacon, which is Knight-Ridder paper. Knight-Ridder editors would NOT simply make up this story. In fact, it's such a serious allegation that they would have required several confirmations (for blind sources they would usually require at least two additional confirmations) with the names and phone numbers of the unnamed sources revealed to editors. Why? Because if you notice this story has been syndicated. Knight-Ridder syndicates its own stories on its own syndication wire plus, as with other news outlets, the contents of particularly compelling stories on their papers are picked up by AP, Reuters etc.

Knight-Ridder also prides itself on the Miami Herald as being one of its flagship papers. It's not quite what it used to be, but it's a career destination paper for many in the chain. KRN also has very tough job reviews, working off corporate checklists. Top and middle-level editors as well as reporters undergo periodic job reviews. If an editor (or reporter) put fake stuff out there they'd be gone or demoted.

All of this is to underscore to you that this report most definitely wasn't written by a fiction writer. They would not have made up the quotes and not have gone with it unless there was some truth to it that satisfied the "gatekeepers" set up by the corporation to make sure it's product is what readers think it is.

It is possible that some state officials were ready to go and none of the preps had been on the orders of the governor.

The one "given" is this: if they had taken her out of her hospital bed new issues would have been in play here and Jeb Bush — and by process of association — his brother would lose a huge chunk of support from the 80 percent or so of Americans who felt Congress and the President should not have gotten involved with this issue in the first place.

No matter what the reason or circumstances, Jeb Bush seems to have dodged a political silver bullet (for now..?).

UPDATE: An ominous warning from Bull Moose: are we forgetting again about the lingering threat?