Guardians and medical surrogates have the power to approve or deny medical treatments, provided that they do so in a reasonable way. A deeply comatose person who is unable to swallow because of irreversible brain damage may properly have fluids and food withheld. But guardians do not have the authority to starve a patient who is awake, alert, perhaps responsive, and able to swallow.

This probate judge apparently reasoned that (1) since guardians have the power to withhold fluids from persons in irreversible coma, and (2) since they have the power to withhold medical treatments in general, then (3) they therefore have the power to withhold fluids from patients who are awake, possibly responsive, and able to swallow. This is madness.

This strange conclusion requires that attempts at normal drinking be construed as a medical treatment. But the judge went even farther into the abyss. He . . . er . . . reasoned that to drink normally would be an experimental procedure, and thus he chose to forbid it. To rebut decisively the claim that dehydration is peaceful and painless, we merely need to ask its advocates to apply it to murderers on death row.

Terri Schiavo and the "I Love You But Please Die" Movement: In the uneven recent remake of "The Stepford Wives," Bette Midler plays the author of a bestselling memoir about her relationship with her mother entitled "I Love You, But Please Die."

That book would have sold very well indeed among Academy Award voters, who fell in love with the drab little euthanasia movie "Million Dollar Baby."

The Baby Boom Generation tends to get what it wants in terms of social attitudes and policies, and the first wave of Baby Boomers (the Bill Clinton cohort born in 1946) is now 59. Their surviving parents are mostly octogenarians and nonagenarians, who are getting past the decorative and cuddly part of old age. But a lot of these parents of Baby Boomers are quite asset-rich, especially if they are homeowners in Blue States, where housing prices have gone up much faster over the last 25 years than in Red States.

In Jane Austen novels, the characters hardly ever shut up about inheritances, but in modern America the whole topic is semi-taboo.

So, to summarize, millions of Blue State Baby Boomers, and a somewhat smaller fraction of Red State Baby Boomers, are in line to inherit a bundle ... but not if Mom or Dad lives forever or, especially, if his or her slowly declining health requires a fortune in expensive care. A nice quick fatal heart attack would do the trick, but with Lipitor and the like these days, oldsters are going slower.

So, when you wonder why a lot of people, especially Democrats, are okay with starving Terri Schiavo to death instead of having her kept expensively alive, follow the money.

It's hardly the only reason for the distribution of opinions on this case, but it's definitely one reason, and part of a big topic that almost nobody wants to talk about in 21st Century America.

The "I Love You But Please Die" Syndrome Embodied in Federal Law:

Under the current estate tax law pushed through by the Bush Administration in 2001, the inheritance tax drops from 45% to 0% on January 1, 2010, then rises to 55% on January 1, 2011.

That sounds less like a carefully-considered law than a high concept black comedy movie pitch:

Potential heirs spend 2009 desperately trying to keep their billionaire Granny alive, then spend 2010 desperately trying to kill her by New Year's Eve. It's "Kind Hearts and Coronets" meets "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" meets "Throw Momma From the Train." The script practically writes itself. (The climax is, of course, in Times Square -- hopefully, Dick Clark will be well enough to do a cameo. And we could write in a heroic IRS agent battling to keep Grannie alive in return for the IRS going easy on the film's financial backers' audits.)