I never claimed to have all the facts. Guess what? Neither do the courts. Do the courts know what her wishes would be in such a circumstance? No, they do not. Court records, incidentally, are public information.

As far as trusting the the media and trusting the courts go, I'm not big on trusting either. For one thing, in their coverage of the case, the media only rarely mentions the conflict of interest (despite your assertion that the media is on the parents' side). As for the court system, they're mired in matters of what is and what is not legally admissable.

You want a judge who sided with the parents? Go here and see pages 11-21. Note: he is dealing with appeals procedures here as opposed to the complete merits of the case (as I said was how the court system worked).

Another opinion from someone rather knowledgeable about the case? How about Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who a) has read the legal documents in the case (as I said, they're public record); b) is a former heart surgeon, who has dealt with such issues on many occasions; c) has the standing such that he's been able to pull strings and talk to various people involved in the case (doctors here, not the parents or lawyers or whatever). A rough transcription of his remarks is here. (Warning: this is both a rough transcript (spelling errors have not been remvoed) and written in all caps, which makes it irritating to read.)

Plus, you have the courts ignoring the plain intent of Congress when it passed its law last weekend. Congress intended for there to be a new trial at the federal level which would disregard the findings of fact at the state level. As I said in a previous post, appeals courts are bound by findings of fact determined at the trial level. In this instance, the testimony of one Dr. Ronald Cranford determined many of the findings of fact. Cranford is an extreme so-called "right-to-die" advocate, who even believes that feeding tubes should be removed from patients suffering Alzheimer's dementia (far from a vegetative state, and not at all a mainstream opinion).

Any laws you don't like? Speed limits you think are inappropriate? Well, the people who made them had much more information than you, so who are you to question them? Dismiss that as being merely Congressional matters and still support the infalliblity of the judicial system? Slavery and segregation were long supported by it. More modern? How about the way it maintains a display of the ten commandments somehow constitutes an establishment of religion (which religion might that be?), Roe v. Wade (which even a number of abortion supporters have said was a bad legal decision), the striking down of partial-birth abortion bans (I forgot the name of the main case), or the way certain justices seem to think the decisions of foreign courts affect our Constitution? Even aside from any specific examples, a healthy republic requires a check on all parts of government, including the judicial branch. Mistakes made there need to be corrected just as surely as mistakes made by Congress or in the Oval Office must be corrected.

As for "allowing someone to die of natural causes," since when is starving to death in a hospital dying of "natural causes"? That is a most unnatural death. Pulling a feeding tube is just as bad as euthanasia.

As for the conflict of interest, there isn't much more to know. He is living with another woman with whom he's had a couple of children. That supplies a very obvious conflict of interest when it comes to his decisions regarding the care (or lack thereof) for his wife.