Some newspapers, like the Washington Post, had editorialized against Congressional intervention in a state judicial matter long before Palm Sunday. Others joined the chorus after the fat lady sang. The rhetoric -- from red states, not just blue states -- is pointed: the intervention is described as "scor[ing] political points" ..."unconscionable" ... "politically suspect" ... a "circus" ... "set[ting] a terrible precedent" ... "outrageous" ... acting "omniscient" ... "precipitous" ... "unprincipled" ... "unreasonable" ... and an intrusion.

From the Denver Post:

In recent days the intense media attention on the 15-year-old case has collided with politics - and some political grandstanding - to transform a family tragedy into a national debatethe contentious right-to-die issue.

We're skeptical of Congress's 11th-hour action because it's tainted by politics - the GOP is catering to conservative supporters. The legislation was created solely for Schiavo. Thousands of other Americans are in similar situations; they just don't get all the media attention.

From the Austin (TX) American-Statesman:

Her persistent vegetative state is no longer just an agonizing dilemma for her feuding husband and parents, but a political event that has led Congress into dangerous territory...

But rather than let the courts, which have studied this case closely, decide Schiavo's fate, congressional Republicans saw a chance to score political points by intervening and making the case a cause celebre...

For members of Congress to interfere now is unreasonable. For them to do so for political gain, to write a bill for one person, is unconscionable. Whether you agree with the parents or the husband, Schiavo's fate should not be a matter for politicians to decide.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

What makes the congressional action so politically suspect is that its most ardent proponents were the same conservative Republicans who normally would be ideologically inclined to respect the rights of state courts to decide such matters without federal interference. And we can't help but wonder what those Republicans would have done had the federal judge decided Monday that Schiavo's feeding tube should have been removed. Passed another law, requiring the feeding tube to be put back?

It has been argued that the federal government's intervention during the civil rights struggle in the South decades ago set a precedent for federal involvement in the Schiavo case. But the rights of blacks in the Jim Crow South were being systematically and flagrantly abridged by state judges and legislators in the 1960s while there is not a shred of evidence that the courts in Florida have done the same to Schiavo. Quite the contrary, the courts there have gone to great lengths to hear both sides.

From the Jacksonville (TX) Daily Progress:

It should also be a crime to parade a woman who's been in a vegetative state for 15 years and her grieving husband in front of Congress for a hearing on C-SPAN.

This case has already been appealed once to the Florida and U.S. supreme courts - and dismissed in both places.

It's a sad day when the government won't allow you to make a decision about your own family. The biggest lesson to come out of this half of the Schiavo fiasco is to make sure you make your final wishes clear.

From the Houston Chronicle:

Over the weekend, Congress and the White House decided to usurp Florida's right to set its own standard for the treatment of patients with severe brain damage...

In the process, Washington officials lent an unsuitable circus air to a case that should inspire calm reflection on the human condition and deep soul-searching to take the measure of life, vitality, impairment and death. The same officials who want states to have a free hand in executing healthy convicts now decree that the federal government can decide to prolong the medical treatment of individuals who live lives no one would wish to lead.

White House officials say the bill addresses only Schiavo's case. That is why it is improper in a federal system. It sets no national policy and offers no guidance in hundreds of other cases that similarly pose the question of how long medical science should sustain comatose or brain-dead patients. Contrary to White House statements, the bill does set a terrible precedent. President Bush and Congress now reserve the right to swoop down on any state at any time, even in the middle of the night, to assert federal power in an area previously reserved to the states.

From the San Antonio Express:

Now, as such life-and-death decisions are made daily across the nation, this case has become a cause celebre for right-to-life groups and the politicians who court them.

While national political leaders may indeed be concerned about Schiavo's right to live, they have no business intervening.

This is a family matter, and her husband, if marriage is sacred, has the right to decide. Beyond that, it is a state, not federal, matter. How ironic that the party of states' rights would have the federal government intrude in this decision.

From Newsday:

Our problem is not with lawmakers' discomfort over the state court's order, which would lead inexorably to Schiavo's death, but with Congress' outrageous leap over the boundaries that separate state powers from federal ones. It's especially troubling that its motive appears to be political - a desire to please the religious right...

Families involved in such excruciating choices need to know that the final court ruling, whatever it may be, is the end. For Congress to intervene is bad legal precedent and troubling news for families who must make such devastating choices every day.

From the Boston Globe:

Using what is left of Schiavo's life to try to win votes is unconscionable, for it prolongs what medical experts have deemed hopeless. Turning her plight into an ideological circus with right-to-life protesters facing off against the right-to-die faction outside a hospice facility robs her of dignity and privacy -- which all human beings deserve, whether they are aware of what is happening or not.

Deciding to remove life support from someone in Schiavo's condition is an agonizing choice best made in consultation with doctors and clergy and one's own conscience. It is a decision that demands quiet thought, not the roar of demagogues framing sound bites.

Those who insist, as Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee has, that keeping Schiavo alive is maintaining ''the sanctity of human life" make their pronouncements geographically and emotionally far removed from this particular ground zero, and have no basis on which to judge it clearly.

They say they are doing God's work, but should consider that it is man's machinery that has prolonged this sad shell of a human being. All religions teach that there is a time to let go.

From the Detroit Free Press:

"The 15 years of hard work and immensely difficult determinations made by those in Florida, who took their legal and medical responsibilities seriously, are denigrated by those who would use the case as political fodder," said Bryan Liang, executive director of the Institute of Health Law Studies at California Western School of Law in San Diego.

By enacting a very specific federal law, Congress is saying, in effect, that either the Florida system is flawed or that the doctors and judges who were involved in the Schiavo case did not act in good faith. During the House debate, some lawmakers even had the nerve to impugn Michael Schiavo's motives for pursuing this 15-year battle and to declare, based on video clips, that they didn't think Terri Schiavo was beyond hope of recovery. Is there something about holding federal office that makes one omniscient?

"By taking this sensitive decision away from a spouse and giving it to a federal court," U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit, said during the House debate, "we will make it abundantly clear that all the talk last year about marriage being a 'sacred trust between a man and a woman' was just that -- talk."

Congress is mostly talk -- until, it seems, there's an opportunity for political gain. Then some people in Washington just can't act fast enough.

From the Washington Post:

But Congress has an obligation to rise above sympathy and intuition. Its precipitous action this weekend, supported by President Bush, was damaging and unprincipled...

But the proceedings of a state court in a matter of its traditional competence are not to be treated as just so many words on a piece of paper. They are entitled to respect and deference. Yet Congress has instructed the federal courts to consider this matter "de novo" -- that is, with no deference to the facts the previous adjudication found -- and a federal district court in Florida began hearings yesterday on how to proceed.

The U.S. legal system is not supposed to be one of legislative "do-overs" in which Congress, if it doesn't like the outcome in a high-profile case, changes the rules on behalf of politically favored parties. It is supposed to be a system where litigants know the rules in advance and understand the jurisdictional boundaries of the courts that decide their cases. Lawmakers may believe that they acted this weekend to save a life, but they also took a step that diminishes the rule of law.