Reply #5: Fascinating excerpts......... [View All]

Republican concerns grew, the senior House GOP lawmaker said, as a succession of federal judges, some of them conservative appointees, rejected Congress's entreaty. "A lot of members are saying, 'Why did you put us through this?' " said the lawmaker, who agreed to recount the events on the condition that he not be named.

There has been similar grumbling in the Senate, where the Schiavo effort was led by Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.), a former transplant surgeon who is retiring in 2006, presumably to run for president; Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), a conservative Catholic who also may harbor presidential ambitions; and freshman Sen. Mel Martinez (Fla.).

Aides to other Republican senators said there was little discussion of the matter outside that group. "It definitely would have gone down differently had it actually been considered," a senior aide to a moderate Republican senator said.....

Aggravating Republican frustrations are disturbing new polls, including a CBS survey that found that 82 percent of Americans — including a whopping 68 percent of people who identify themselves as evangelical Christians — think Congress's intervention was wrong.