Once again, I love Maureen Dowd

(And I love her more than John does....)

Her column today captures all the creepy and craven elements of the Schiavo situation. You know it's good when the first line is: Oh my God, we really are in a theocracy.

Deservedly, no one is left unscathed in this column: W. Bush, Frist, Jeb Bush, DeLay and the Democrats. It's worth a read to put this whole sad tale in to context.

On W:

The president, who couldn't be dragged outdoors to talk about the more than a hundred thousand people who died in the horrific tsunami, was willing to be dragged out of bed to sign a bill about one woman his base had fixated on.

She notes how Frist and Bush have used this in their campaign for President in 2008:

Dr. Frist thinks he can ace out Jeb Bush to be 44, even though he has become a laughingstock by trying to rediagnose Ms. Schiavo's condition by video.

As one disgusted Times reader suggested in an e-mail: "Americans ought to send Bill Frist their requests: 'Dear Dr. Frist: Please watch the enclosed video and tell us if that mole on my mother's cheek is cancer. Does she need surgery?'"

Jeb, keeping up with the '08 competition, vainly tried to get Florida to declare Ms. Schiavo a ward of the state.

And then, she skewers DeLay:

Mr. DeLay moved yesterday to file a friend of the court brief with the Supreme Court asking that Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube be restored while the federal court is deciding what to do. But as he exploits this one sad case, Mr. DeLay has voted to slash Medicaid by $15 billion, denying money to care for poor people in nursing homes, some on feeding tubes.

Mr. DeLay made his personal stake clear at a conference last Friday organized by the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group. He said that God had brought Terri Schiavo's struggle to the forefront "to help elevate the visibility of what's going on in America." He defined that as "attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others."

So it's not about her crisis at all. It's about his crisis.

Ms. Dowd also notes the total lack of spine from Democrats who let this whole thing play out with barely a peep.