[jQuery] Stumped on Tables

[jQuery] Stumped on Tables

I've tracked down my issue with using $.append() for table rows.
First, jQuery is converting any string into a document node by
creating a div and setting it's HTML. This has a side-effect of
striping the first TR within the string in IE, and of striping ALL
table tags in Firefox.
I have a work around in mind, but am having trouble coming up with
the code. My idea was to first convert my string into a document
fragment, traverse it, and append the row correctly to the table when
a TBODY was found in the parent chain.
Something like:
$(el).parents().each(function(){
        if ($(this).is('tbody')) {
            // do magic
        }
});
I was attempting to convert the string into parsed XML, but am having
troubles traversing the parsed XML. My first attempt:
function xmlnode_to_html(node) {    
    var el = document.createElement(node.tagName);
    if (node.attributes) el.id = node.getAttribute('id');
    if(node.childNodes.length > 0) {
        for(i=0;i<node.childNodes.length;i++) {
            if (node.tagName) el.appendChild(node_to_table(node.childNodes
[i]));                
        }
    }
    return el;
}
results in a varying degree of errors depending on browser.
Is my approach completely off? Does anyone have a better idea?

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