On Thursday morning, the Florida state police had the legal authority to take custody of Terri Schiavo. They made plans to go and get her, but changed their minds when the local police told them they were planning to shoot at them; Schiavo must die, and the law be damned.

Fla. officials attempt, fail to seize Schiavo

By Carol Marbin Miller, Knight Ridder Newspapers

Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told police in Pinellas Park, the small town where Schiavo lies at Hospice Woodside, that they were on the way to take her to a hospital to resume her feeding.
…
“The FDLE called to say they were en route to the scene,” said an official with the city police who requested anonymity. “When the Sheriff’s Department, and our department, told them they could not enforce their order, they backed off.”
…
The incident, known only to a few, underscores the intense emotion and murky legal terrain that the Schiavo case has created. It also shows that agencies answering directly to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush had planned to use a wrinkle in state law that would have allowed them to legally get around the judge’s order. The exception in the law allows public agencies to freeze a judge’s order whenever an agency appeals it.

The Knight Ridder reporter is bending over backwards to portray the insurrectionist local police as the good guys. That’s why she uses such sneering phrases as “a wrinkle in state law” and “the exception in the law,” when what she truly means is “the law.” It’s the goddamm law that freezes a judge’s order whenever a state agency appeals it. The state was trying to enforce this law, when the local thugs threatened armed resistance.

I am disappointed that the state backed down so easily. Governor Bush is a nice guy, nice to a fault. I see why his kid brother is president instead of him. Hey, remember when Ronald Reagan fired all of the air traffic controllers who were illegally striking? That’s the courage demanded of a chief executive, sworn to enforce the laws of the republic. Ah, those were heady days.

Ahem; but I digress. If any good can come of this shameful rebellion, it is that the people who want to kill Terri Schiavo have now been stripped of their last fig leaf, the rule of law. Torturing this woman to death was always wrong; but until Thursday morning it was technically legal. “It’s sad and regrettable,” they would simper, “but it would be wrong to intervene. The law is the law, you know…” (”Silver lining may be that rule of law was upheld,” says Knight Ridder.)

Yes, the law is the law. Unless it’s a “wrinkle in the law,” apparently, in which case it should be disobeyed? So which laws are the laws, and which laws are the “wrinkles”? I’m sure Knight Ridder will tell us.

(This story is being covered over at Blogs for Terri, and at Drudge, but not at Wizbang.)

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds, he of Instapundit, was one of those “rule of law” guys.

If I were in charge of making the decision, I might well put the tube back and turn Terri Schiavo over to her family. But I’m not, and the Florida courts are,… But respecting their role in the system, and not rushing to overturn all the rules because we don’t like the outcome, seems to me to be part of being a member of civilized society rather than a mob. As I say, I thought conservatives knew this.

[emphasis added]

Point taken, Dr. R. But then, then, in an update to that very same sermonette, after learning of the standoff with the Pinellas Park cops, Reynolds decides that enforcing the law would have been most unseemly.

It’s good that things didn’t escalate as they might have. Shooting matches between different law-enforcement agencies are real banana-republic stuff, and that’s what you get when you ignore the rules.

Yeah, that’s what you get when you ignore the rules, or “break the law,” as I might call it. But Reynolds neglected to mention who was — and still is — ignoring the rules. When the Kill Terri side “overturns the rules because they don’t like the outcome,” where do the “members of civilized society” stand?

Or if that “respecting their role in the system” stuff was just a smokescreen, maybe he should just admit it. He obviously doesn’t respect everyone’s roles in the system.