CRAPWATCH. The stream of gibberish loosed by the Schiavo case has grown so torrential that to identify the single most stupid statement issued on the subject by a prominent columnist would seem prohibitively difficult. Nonetheless, I think we have a winner! Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Brendan Miniter:

It is said that tough cases make bad law, and that's why it was wise for Congress to legislate only on this specific case rather than "making law" for everyone.

Such a perfect storm of bad faith, outrageous assertion, and absurdly inapposite employment of cliche, made from so high a perch as the Wall Street Journal, rarely occurs, and should be noted. Bonus points for the maudlin references in the rest of the copy to the subject as "Terri," as if she were a personal acquaintance, or a Lakers basketball star.

Or have I missed a better example?

UPDATE. Commenter Steve has a good candidate in Andrew McCarthy, who thinks "someone" should be in handcuffs for countenancing the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube (but hasn't the balls to call for any specific individual's arrest -- or, for that matter, to make a citizen's arrest of his own). Bonus points to McCarthy, too, for figuring an Abu Ghraib angle. I think Miniter still wins for the celerity of his stupidity -- congratulating Congress for their restraint in this extraordinary case because they aren't "'making law' for everyone" packs a lot of foolishness in a single sentence.

UPDATE II. Another good candidate proposed: Meghan Cox Gurdon, who uses Lewis' Screwtape Letters as a point of departure -- and departs indeed, and promptly, from Lewis' art to the arid plains of Propagandaland. Here's a bit of Lewis' original; the writing is thoughtful and stylish (if a bit damp); above all Lewis details a specific, recognizable perspective and manner, and even seems to take pleasure in the masquerade, which makes Screwtape vivid and interesting. Gurdon is doing a parody, true; but then we ought to have jokes at least, and what she provides in their place ("The walls are hung with scarlet velvet; the temperature an agreeable Fahrenheit 911") wouldn't tickle a Bible camper. Her Screwtape acts less like a devil than the villain in a bad Bruce Willis movie, and before long we're getting the material Hell House gave a pass ("The Right to Die... devilishly clever"). If there is a hell, the hottest rooms should be reserved for perverters of art.

UPDATE III. In comments Jeremy asks if the statements of Tom DeLay qualify for our competition. As he also intuits, politicians are in a whole other league from pundits, though, as this weblog has shown, the pundits are fast gaining on them, and the Schiavo affair may yet prove to be their Super Bowl III.

Also cited is John Derbyshire's lonely stand at The Corner. I am less interested, though, in the yowling of his challengers than in Derb's steadfastness. I have had a lot of fun with Derbyshire over the years, so risible has been his reactionary posturing and dedication to the proposition that he is refreshingly "politically incorrect" when he is merely an asshole. But the stark madness that has overtaken Derbyshire's colleagues seems to have shaken him into awareness that he is a grown-up, and as such he is most required to keep his head when all about are losing theirs. Ditto Brookhiser, but I always knew he had it in him. (Perhaps I should have seen it in Derbyshire too; no one who loves Hank Williams can be all bad.)

As for Hugh Hewitt, Jesus Fucking Christ. Glenn is right: that patch of Hewitt weaving between anger that Schiavo could die, and anger that the teenage Minnesota shooter will not die (in part because he's already fucking dead), captures a certain type of moral philosophy at its worst.

But we have been at this a while; the matin draws nigh. I sense the barometric pressure dropping, and a soothing mist descending. Might we have seen the worst of this?