Judicial Watch Offers Jeb Bush Legal Basis to Save Terri

The Washington, D.C.-based legal watchdog group Judicial Watch has filed a motion of protection with the Florida Department of Children and Families that could give Gov. Jeb Bush a legal basis to order doctors to re-attach Terri Schiavo's feeding tube.

In a letter faxed to Bush's office Friday afternoon, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton wrote:

"Based on our formal complaint via the faxed report referenced above, you have the authority and sufficient cause to immediately order the Florida Department of Children and Family Services to intervene on behalf of Ms. Schiavo; to restore her nutrition; and to initiate a full investigation of the circumstances surrounding Ms. Schiavo’s disability."

The 39-year-old Schiavo has been brain-damaged since 1990, when she suffered what doctors say was a heart attack caused by an undetermined medical condition.

But lawyers for her parents maintain that Schiavo's medical records indicate she suffered broken bones and neck injuries consistent with strangulation.

Judicial Watch said that Gov. Bush had an obligation to intervene based on protections afforded Ms. Schiavo "under the U.S. Constitution, the Florida Constitution (Art. 2, ' 5), as well as Fla. Stat. ' 825.102 and Fla. Stat. '' 782.04(2)(i), 77.04."

Schiavo's father, Robert Schindler, told Fox News on Thursday that if doctors administer morphine to ease her pain as she starves to death, Mrs. Schiavo could be dead by Sunday.

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