U.S. Supreme Court rejects Schiavo appeal

The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to consider Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s appeal over the so-called Terri’s Law, leaving the fate of the severely brain-damaged woman for whom the measure was enacted with state courts that have repeatedly ruled she should be allowed to die.

“Do you see this lantern?” cried Syme in a terrible voice. “Do you see the cross carved on it, and the flame inside? You did not make it. You did not light it. Better men than you, men who could believe and obey, twisted the entrails of iron and preserved the legend of fire. There is not a street you walk on, there is not a thread you wear, that was not made as this lantern was, by denying your philosophy of dirt and rats. You can make nothing. You can only destroy. You will destroy mankind; you will destroy the world. Let that suffice you. Yet this one old Christian lantern you shall not destroy. It shall go where your empire of apes will never have the wit to find it.”

He struck the Secretary once with the lantern so that he staggered; and then, whirling it twice round his head, sent it flying far out to sea, where it flared like a roaring rocket and fell.

–Syme to the (supposed) anarchists,
From The Man Who Was Thursday, G.K. Chesterton