<The Shuttle doesn't have enough consumables to last long enough to launch another one to rescue them. The Russians might be persuaded to launch a couple Soyuz's

First of all, this Shuttle mission was in a 39 degree inclination orbit. The minimum inclination you can directly launch a spacecraft into is equal to the latitude of the launch pad. Tyuratam (Balkinour sp?) is about 49 degrees north latitude. Due to border considerations with China, the Russians normally launch into a roughly 51 degree inclination. That's why the ISS is in that inclination - so the Russians can launch to it.

Attempting to change the inclination from 49 (or 51) degrees inclination takes a hell of a lot of propellant, more than the Soyuz can carry. Even if the Russians had a Soyuz or two handy, they couldn't have launched into an orbit compatible with Columbia. For the same reason, Columbia couldn't have changed orbit to dock with the ISS. Remember, to dock, you need not only the same inclination, you need to be in the same orbital plane.

Even streching the scenario to the breaking point, suppose they found out that the tiles were damaged very early in the mission. Suppose they decided to launch that Progress resupply mission (the one that launched on Sunday) with a maximum amount of propellant and a tile resupply kit. Even with all of the Progress's normal on board propellant and all of the propellant you can stuff into the cargo bay, I doubt that you'd have enough energy for the Progress to change orbit enough to dock with the Columbia. This is just a gut feeling without running any numbers, but I'm pretty sure it's accurate.