Get out your hankies and read about poor Michael Schiavo here in the New York Times:

He is a nurse who works the graveyard shift, often pulling into his driveway as his neighbors walk their dogs in the moist Florida dawn. He has a meticulously kept yard, a screened-in pool where his friends sometimes gather, a golden retriever, a girlfriend and a year-old daughter.

‘My brother is a normal guy who this tragedy happened to,’ said Brian Schiavo, one of the four brothers with whom Mr. Schiavo shared an unremarkable childhood in Levittown, Pa., near Philadelphia.”

But because of the tragedy of Mr. Schiavo’s wife, Terri, 39, who suffered brain damage when she collapsed one night 13 years ago Mr. Schiavo is also at the center of one of the most debated court cases in the nation. He wants to remove her feeding tube, paving the way for her death against the wishes of her parents and supporters who have rallied to their cause.

For this, Mr. Schiavo, 40, has been depicted as a heartless fiend.

And it goes on like that.

The piece does have one revealing quote, from a friend of Mr. Schiavo’s named Russ Hyden: “He’s got ethics and values that most people don’t have, much less the strength to adhere to them.”

You said it, Russ. After all, how many people adhere to the ethics and values of (allegedly) trying to hasten their wife’s death so they can finally afford that trip to Europe?

BERNSTEIN AT LOYOLA: Volokh Conspirator David Bernstein will speak at Loyola Law School on November 4, 2003. Details are here.

WORD OF THE DAY: A fun word to say out loud is Babaganoush.

Okay, I’m working at getting something appropriate for the Bonfire of the Vanities. So sue me. (Invitation not applicable to Donald Luskin.)

It’s still a cool word to say out loud. Try it.

UPDATE: As it turns out, this entry was a dud. While it fulfills the requirement that the post be bad, it doesn’t have any references to sex — apparently a common theme of Bonfire posts this week.

For the sex-starved coming here from the Bonfire, may I recommend this post regarding porn star Mary Carey.

It is Accepted Wisdom™ that:

We should not enact divisive laws that burden illegal immigrants. These immigrants are necessary to our economy, because they do jobs nobody else wants to do for the same wage.

And at the same time:

The federal government needs to impose strong sanctions against corporate executives who employ illegal immigrants, to send a strong message that it is illegal to hire undocumented workers. (As argued in this editorial from the Dog Trainer.)

Accepted Wisdom™ is a semi-regular feature of this site.