DON'T COUNT ON CONGRESS FOR CONSISTENCY

It's not that Americans can't understand why members of Congress were
tempted earlier this year to intervene in the ugly legal mess that preceded
the long, slow death of Terri Schiavo.

It's not that Americans can't understand why members of Congress might feel
queasy about the prospect of pot plants getting into the wrong hands.

But for Republicans who control Congress at a time when public opinion of
Congress is sinking, last week presented an unfortunate juxtaposition:

On the same day that an autopsy report was released showing that Terri
Schiavo had severe brain damage, the same House of Representatives that had
gone to extraordinary lengths to save her life found itself killing a
measure aimed at helping all-too-conscious patients who use marijuana to
manage their pain.

The contrast was striking. And nobody should be surprised if the American
public, which disagrees heartily in polls with Republican leaders both on
the Schiavo case and the virtues of medical marijuana, ends up drawing
either of two unflattering conclusions: that GOP leaders are guilty of
hypocrisy, or that they're more concerned with saving the life of one
person who is severely brain-damaged than they are with helping numerous
victims of disabling diseases who are acutely aware of what is happening to
them.

In the Schiavo case, Republican congressional leaders proudly presented
themselves as the last bastion of compassion for a seriously ill woman who
arguably had been abandoned both by her husband and the Florida courts. In
an exceedingly rare move, members of Congress interrupted their Easter
recess to rush back to Washington for a weekend vote ordering federal
courts to review state court rulings allowing Schiavo's feeding tube to be
removed.

The action was unusual not only because Congress was interrupting a recess
to help one person whose medical condition had long seemed grim at best,
but also because it seemed to defy a longstanding GOP principle - that
federal authorities generally should keep out of areas of law traditionally
left to states.

Republicans who championed the Schiavo case, summoning powerful emotional
arguments about the value of each individual life, seemed at least to have
the moral high ground - if not the law - on their side.

But then comes the subject of medical marijuana, which by many accounts has
offered precious relief to people across the country suffering from painful
illnesses like cancer and multiple sclerosis.

For a Congress looking for ways to show its compassion for the ill, what
better way than to pass the modest amendment offered last week by a New
York Democrat and a California Republican that would have barred the
Justice Department from spending money to prosecute medical marijuana cases
in states that permit it?

The amendment would not have legalized the use of marijuana for medicinal
purposes. It simply would have prevented federal prosecutions, according to
its authors, in 10 states that have passed laws allowing medical marijuana
use: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon,
Vermont and Washington.

Yet the vote wasn't even close. It failed 264-161, with only 15 Republicans
supporting it.

Luckily for Republicans, the vote didn't get much media attention. But only
a week earlier, the subject of medical marijuana got plenty of attention
when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government can indeed
prosecute medical marijuana use even in states that have laws permitting it.

The justices, while siding as a matter of law with the federal government,
did show some sympathy for patients who could be prosecuted under the
ruling. Indeed, the majority opinion suggested that Congress might want to
revisit its treatment of the medical use of marijuana.

Congress, for the moment, seems to feel no urgency to do that. Which might
help to explain in part why so many Americans feel, according to recent
polls, that the people who represent them in Washington aren't quite in
tune with them.