There may be reasonable criticisms of the Republicans’ course of action in the Schiavo case–I haven’t watched or thought about it in enough detail. But it seems to me that the Times’s criticism of the Republicans for flouting “federal constitutional precedents” is at odds with the widespread criticism of them for getting involved in a state matter. To the extent that the Supreme Court’s policymaking on euthanasia is in play here, the federal government is already involved, and any “federalist principle” militating against federal involvement in these matters–which I’m not sure exists in the first place–has already been breached.