I know a lot of this has been covered already by Andy, Mark and others. But here’s an email in response to my post last night. I think he makes a good argument even if I still have reservations which I’ll spell out in a bit:

On the Corner, you complained that “I do think conservative Republicans are at a minimum inconsistent in their sudden love of the fourteenth amendment and an activist federal government.”
I spent last night explaining this same issue to my father. Here’s why you’re wrong. The Constitution very simply guarantees that no person “be deprived of life . . . without due process of law.” That’s the Fifth Amendment, not the Fourteenth (although Florida is bound by the Fifth Amendment because of the Fourteenth). Republicans complain about how expansive due process has become, but have never claimed that the due process of law should be eliminated. This isn’t a case of whether due process guarantees a right to sodomy or cushy conditions for prisoners.
Simply because Republicans dispute the outer limits of due process jurisprudence does not mean they are inconsistent when they demand that courts administer the absolute core of due process as the Founders envisioned it: arrest, charging, trial by jury and conviction (the ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ part was added later, but is not controversial). Due process, since the time of the Founders, has also included petitions for habeas corpus and the executive’s prerogative to commute a death sentence. All of these basics are missing in the Schiavo case. Of course, she’s never been accused of any crime and I think that’s what galls people the most: because she is completely innocent, the decision of whether she lives or dies is made by a judge on a civil standard of proof. No jury, no cross-examination, her husband – who admittedly has interests adverse to hers is acting as her representative, no pardon by the Governor, etc. There’s nothing inconsistent in claiming that Schiavo has been deprived of the most fundamental, uncontroversial Constitutional rights available to any serial killer.