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the President's position IS the compromise, and one that manages to remain an ethically supportable one, no small feat. apparently, some think a position is not sufficiently compromised unless it abandons all morality to their morality (which is the only morality that can be legislated)

Give youself to better good of the cause or state?  How about for the good of science?  Wow, some of the things that are said here...  Seems to be a immoral stance to individuality.

Do what you need to.

We dislike shooting our own, but we make rare exceptions when someone shows a repeated and persistent tendency to throw firebombs into a discussion.

Either contribute substantively (and that does not mean "agree with us") or move along to a different thread.

politeness, but I think you ment politicalcorrrectness

Did I accuse anyone of hypocrisy or moral relativism? I believe I accused people of philosophical inconsistency, which I believe is fully justifiable since (as I pointed out) the only difference between an embryo and a fetus is location (implanted on the uterine wall or not); and to be pro-life necessarily involves the rejection of the same "location" distinction between the fetus and the infant (within the mother or not).

There are five major schools of thought on the very question,

"When does a person hood begin?"

It happens at conception

It happens when blood first appears

It happens later in pregnancy

It happens at 14 or 22 weeks gestation

It happens during childbirth

As a question of morality and religious belief, that is up to the individual to decide what is truth.

Now everyone with a family member suffering from diabetes, Parkinson's disease or heart failure wishes Bush had kept that veto pen in his pocket.

is your reply, Leon.

You've made two assertions in your original post. One, implied: the allegedly porkish nature of the bill was an important factor motivating the President's veto. Two, express: that the allegedly porkish nature of the bill ought to be, by itself, sufficient to justify the veto to fiscal conservatives.

Both of these assertions are so profoundly idiotic that I am actually dumber for having read your post. Leaving aside the validity of your assertion that the bill is in fact pork, and assuming for the sake of argument that it's a bona fide example of vote-buying or influence-peddling by Congressional appropriators, the President's own statement emphatically contradicts the notion that this might have had anything whatsoever to do with his decision to veto. Instead, the statement makes abundantly clear what everyone -- except, evidently, you -- understands perfectly: the veto is a pander to social conservatives.

As to the idea that fiscal conservatives ought to be satisfied with the veto because, hey, the President finally got around to vetoing some alleged pork, it's generally helpful if you actually stop and read these bills before holding forth on them. HR810 authorizes no new spending. It simply loosens eligibility requirements for already-available federal dollars; the veto, therefore, does not shrink the size of the pie. Most fiscal conservatives are therefore likely to be agnostic on the veto.

If, that is, they haven't had their intelligence insulted by social conservatives trying to tell them that this obvious pro-life pander is really all about fiscal responsibility.

...posts in defense of unborn Life, Leon.

As much as the command of facts and your ability to cohere them into an argument, what sticks with me from your posts is their elegiac and pessimistic tone.  The logical conclusion you draw, that humanity (or 'winterpop', at least) is always willing to "take the next logical step", seems chillingly inescapable.

Anyway, thanks and come back soon.

--furious

You guys want to act like the KOS kids, just because of a different view????

Well guys, go back to your KOS friends. They would just love you back.

These are cells.

He has infinitely more patience than I do.

These are just cells, waiting to be thrown away.

Its that simple.

Now if they happen to have a MOM and DAD willing to grow them into complete Kids, and then on to Adults, then let that happen.

Otherwise they are just cells going to the dump.

Their viability has nothing to do with their fate. They are going to be thrown away... Period.

Just get over it. That the downside of life.

But it doesn't change obvious scientific truth.

it happens when twinning is no longer a possibility? Thats' the most compelling scientific fact I've seen in the debate (and it gives no aid or comfort to anyone who espouses abortion).

do not accept your claim that there is no moral or philosophical difference between a fetus and an embryo. These people are being entirely consistent therefore. They may be wrong, but they are not inconsistent with their own premises.

but of course it's much easy to bash the modern world rather than see the deep cultural connections that tie us to the past. You're more influenced by the Left than you know! They too seem to think taht the world was born yesterday and can therefore be changed at the flick of a finger.

1. Scapegoating: the WORD involves goats, true.  And in somewhat more humane eras goats were used. Originally however human beings (generally ill-favored, unpopular human beings) were utilized for this purpose: such a person, though guiltless of any actual crime, would be stoned or otherwise put to death in order to requite for some ill suffered by the community as a whole.
   
2. The Inquisition very transparently was trying to improve the human race. Not of course its genes, but its moral character. In Protestant Europe witchcraft trials served much the same purpose, and were rather similar to the old scapegoating practice: find some ill-favored unplaeasnt person and hold him/her accountable for whatever grief (plague, famine etc.) was afflicting the community. Or indeed: the Jews too bore that burden often enough, whether the blame for the defeats of Crusaders, the Black Death or the failures of the Tsarist regime in Russia.
   
3. Human sacrifice simply rationalizes and sacralizes the above notions by dragging in offended, wrathful deities who make it expedient that some (innocent) person die for the good of the people.

All our fine and fanciful technology and scienbc has changed everything, everything except the darkness in outr own hearts. That endures, and seeks new and attractive rationales more in tune with the spirit of our age.

Pork....hardly.

This was Bush voting his view on morality, which you as a right to life person, through and through support. I disagree with this view on imposition of one view of morality over another in the face of an attempt at an honest comprmise, but I tend to understand the passion of those who's views I don't agree with.  

Please do not insult those of us who do not agree with your views of morality by trying to appear to be all concerned about Pork spending after all the Pork this President has bought off on in the name of holding together the Republican majority. It wasn't about spending, and never will be about spending.

This veto was purely and simply a veto from a President who agrees with moral point of view that all life starts at conception.  

(1) I submit to you that when you the first two paragraphs of your post -- most of the above-the-fold portion of it -- discussing fiscal considerations and claiming that they're sufficient justification for a veto, your readers can be forgiven for concluding that you think said fiscal considerations are of at least discussable importance, both in the abstract and in terms of the President's motives. Characterizing the fiscal dimension as the "easiest and most politically-expedient" does not reasonably constitute a disclaimer of that importance.

(2) That someone employs a zinger from Billy Madison does not imply that they consider the film to be "the pinnacle of wit".

(3) The definition of "pork" is not "spending that Leon H Wolf thinks is redundant and/or wasteful". The term derives from "pork-barrelling", the definition of which is vote-buying and influence-peddling. You're just wrong, here: your repeated incantations of "Pork!" at this bill have the character of the Kos Kidz incomprehensibly shrieking "Fascism!" every time Bush does something they don't like.

(4) Continuing to address your terminological confusion, hypocrisy is not a definitional component of pandering. A pander is any act of throwing red meat to a particular constituency -- which, as you yourself concede, is precisely what the President did with his veto. Your talismanic invocation of "representative democracy" is inane: that social conservatives make up a significant portion of this President's voting base doesn't magically render him incapable of pandering to them (by doing things like, for instance, vetoing federal subsidy for popular research out of alleged concern over the moral and ethical ramifications of said research).

(5) I take it by your schoolyard taunts that you have no substantive response to the observation that HR810 authorizes no new spending.

(6) I submit to you that there's a difference between, on the one hand, calling someone's post stupid, and, on the other, questioning another's intelligence; that the latter constitutes a personal attack within the definition of Redstate.com's posting rules; and that it is unwarranted, even given the level of heat in this particular thread. I expect an apology.

willing to adopt a million cells? Get real.

Put you dollars out now.

Can you show me where all the cells will go if given to you?

Are you willing to grow them all, take care of them all,,, etc. If so, then just do it. I would bet they will give them to you.

Let's take a look at silly facts, like the actual text of the HR810ER

One Hundred Ninth Congress

of the

United States of America

AT THE SECOND SESSION

Begun and held at the City of Washington on Tuesday,

the third day of January, two thousand and six

An Act

To amend the Public Health Service Act to provide for human embryonic stem cell research.

      Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

      This Act may be cited as the `Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005'.

SEC. 2. HUMAN EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH.

      Part H of title IV of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 289 et seq.) is amended by inserting after section 498C the following:

`SEC. 498D. HUMAN EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH.

      `(a) In General- Notwithstanding any other provision of law (including any regulation or guidance), the Secretary shall conduct and support research that utilizes human embryonic stem cells in accordance with this section (regardless of the date on which the stem cells were derived from a human embryo).

      `(b) Ethical Requirements- Human embryonic stem cells shall be eligible for use in any research conducted or supported by the Secretary if the cells meet each of the following:

            `(1) The stem cells were derived from human embryos that have been donated from in vitro fertilization clinics, were created for the purposes of fertility treatment, and were in excess of the clinical need of the individuals seeking such treatment.

            `(2) Prior to the consideration of embryo donation and through consultation with the individuals seeking fertility treatment, it was determined that the embryos would never be implanted in a woman and would otherwise be discarded.

            `(3) The individuals seeking fertility treatment donated the embryos with written informed consent and without receiving any financial or other inducements to make the donation.

      `(c) Guidelines- Not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this section, the Secretary, in consultation with the Director of NIH, shall issue final guidelines to carry out this section.

      `(d) Reporting Requirements- The Secretary shall annually prepare and submit to the appropriate committees of the Congress a report describing the activities carried out under this section during the preceding fiscal year, and including a description of whether and to what extent research under subsection (a) has been conducted in accordance with this section.'.

Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Vice President of the United States and

President of the Senate.

I see no actual amounts of money, which would be PORK in your parlance spelled out in this bill.

You are either being disingenuous in your assertion that this veto was about PORK, or chose to ignore that there is not a specific funding allocation to support this bill. In any event, this was a pure and simple veto, the first and only veto by the way, by this President based on his view of morality. His view that life begins at conception is the root issue of contention.

While identifying Rousseau with the enlightenment is common, it is probably wrong--Milton Babbitt convincingly makes the case that Rousseau should be considered part of a counter-enlightenment and more of a romantic figure. For that matter, Mill and his celebration of individualism is a pretty romantic notion as well. No one should consider Nietzche or Sartre as part of an enlightenment tradition.

The perfectionism objected to here is a real danger, but its source can just as easily be religious belief as faith in progress.

"One of the bills Congress has passed builds on the progress we have made over the last five years. So I signed it into law. (Applause.) Congress has also passed a second bill that attempts to overturn the balanced policy I set. This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others. It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect, so I vetoed it. (Applause.)"

Nothing about Pork here, instead a simple disagreement with the law on where moral boundary is. Fair enough, we know where the President stands,  his position is consistent and well articulated.  

However, the French Enlightenment codified and consolidated these Ideas under a universal philosophy. Just as the northern enlightenment did the same for the Ideas of tolerance, limited government, and the consent of the governed.

location is everything though. The embryo has to be in a uterus in order to develop (until we develop an artificial uterus...yikes!).

Exploring this a little further, I would assume that most people would not have a problem with aborting an embryo that implanted outside of the uterus because it is nonviable. (Of course, I suppose it could also be argued that the reason for the abortion is to save the mother's life....although I don't believe all ectopics are necessarily life-threating.)

Anyway, Leon, not trying to cause trouble (I almost always agree with your analysis)....but I'm torn on the issue myself and find myself sometimes justifying embryonic stem cell research precisely because of their location.

They could be adopted even if the biological parents no longer want the "spare" embryos. So, they are not necessarily doomed to the dump.

I'd say that at least half the underpinning for this comes from the Bentham/Mill strain of thought, which is decidedly English.

but he did not go beyond the bounds of the rules here..(sorry to say).  It's just that his opinions do not reflect a normal norality.  That, unfortunately is not reason enough for further action...but it is enough to ignore his reasoning.

We are reminded by our opponents that something approximating two-thirds of the American population favors the sacrifice of human embryos at the altar of "science,"

I don't believe that. That's just the media trying to tell people what they think.

I'll bet that if we grab the next 100 people through the turnstile, 99 of them cannot tell us the difference between embryonic stem cells and pluripotent stem cells; 98 of them didn't even know that there are different kinds of stem cells; 95 of them — even if they dilgently read news accounts of these bills in our illustrious "media" — do not know that there were multiple stem cell bills passed. I'll also bet that three-quarters of them think that Bush just banned all stem cell research.

The media peddles canal water on this subject. It's all that most people get to drink. I would not pay any attention to polls that reflect nothing but the lies that innocent people have been told by reporters with agendas.

You guys want to act like the KOS kids, just because of a different view????

As I rather explicitly stated, your view is not what got you in trouble during the course of this thread. Reread it again and strive to understand.

Well guys, go back to your KOS friends.

If anyone is "going" from this site, it's not us, my friend. This is not the first time you have responded to a gentle nudge in this fashion; it will, however, be the last.

They would just love you back.

As no one here came from there, this statement is just plain nonsensical.

This is just the kind of attitude that drives me crazy!  Just when does this clump of cells (as you describe) become a person or at least recognizable as a baby? 1 month, 2 months, 4 months, WHEN? Only when they are born?  Just when and where would you draw the line?  Assuming from your attitude, it would only be when they take their first breath...sucking brains out when they are 8 months would be just fine.  Such cruelty flows from your response...

About some things, I am quite optimistic. When it comes to the tendency to believe that we can make humans better in the same way that we make cars better, I am not really optimistic that it will ever be killed, but hopefully it can be repressed as best as possible.

the gentle nudge to feed back the company line?

Sorry, but on this subject I am totally 100% against Bush.

That does not mean I don't support him. Heck I kept my voting in Florida to help.

On this issue he get me fighting mad on the stupidy on the line..."for the kids".

the gentle nudge to feed back the company line?

No, the gentle nudge not to act like a schmuck. He's tried making the distinction clear. I'm not going to repeat his efforts. I suggest you reread.

On this issue he get me fighting mad on the stupidy on the line..."for the kids".

Hulk smash.

What exactly are you trying to achieve?

If you wish to put an argument that prior to a particular point in gestation a foetus does not deserve the protection of law - or the related but different point that prior to a certain point it is impossible in practical terms to provide that protection - please find an intelligent way of making the point.  Most here will disagree with you, but most people will do so intelligently.

You have to know this is a very emotive topic.  Believing that you can win people over to your point of view by yelling "who cares?" shows not just crass insensitivity, but a desire to disrupt the debate rather than participate.

>>Pork....hardly.

But it is still Pork.  Now you may be right that Bush vetoed it because of his right to life views.  I am sure you are.  It is not as if he has hidden these views, and it is certainly true that he has signed massive quantities of pork before.

I am a little uncomfortable with the fact that this stand as his one and only veto, but not because I didn't think it deserved vetoing, because he should have vetoed an awful lot more.

Now that he has found his veto pen, let's hope he uses it a lot more often.

Is that I keep replying to people who are showing me that either they can't understand English or are unwilling to read my post. Thus:

You've made two assertions in your original post. One, implied: the allegedly porkish nature of the bill was an important factor motivating the President's veto.

What I said was that the President vetoed a bill which was in fact pork. As the President himself made clear, he has moral objections to the destruction of embryos. However, he hasn't sought to outlaw the destruction of embryos; he's vetoed a bill that provides pork for the same. His motivations for doing so are accordingly irrelevant, and I made no implications one way or the other. I said that there were two justifications other people might have for this veto - one for fiscal conservatives, and one for me (in point of fact, I like both). Your insistence that I've suddenly anointed this President as an anti-pork champion is just another symptom of your magical ability to read print that isn't there, and your inability to read the print that is.

Two, express: that the allegedly porkish nature of the bill ought to be, by itself, sufficient to justify the veto to fiscal conservatives.

This will be surprising to everyone who doesn't know me, no doubt, but I'm a fiscal conservative, and it works just fine for me. As the bill in question doesn't deal with the legality of embryo destruction, but rather only pork for it, that is ipso facto the only justification it requires.

Both of these assertions are so profoundly idiotic that I am actually dumber for having read your post.

I am not surprised to find the apparent belief that Billy Madison represents the pinnacle of wit in the midst of this sublimely intellectual post. Moving on.

Leaving aside the validity of your assertion that the bill is in fact pork,

When a bill provides needless government funding for a speculative project for which no results have ever been shown, and which the private sector and state governments are both enthusiastically engaging in, that's pork.

and assuming for the sake of argument that it's a bona fide example of vote-buying or influence-peddling by Congressional appropriators,

Just because pork and influence-peddling often go hand in hand does not mean that they are synonymous concepts.

the President's own statement emphatically contradicts the notion that this might have had anything whatsoever to do with his decision to veto. Instead, the statement makes abundantly clear what everyone -- except, evidently, you -- understands perfectly.

And we're back to reading the invisible digital ink.

the veto is a pander to social conservatives.

Actually, a pander is by definition something that a politician does to satisfy voters that he does not personally believe in. Given that Bush's position on this issue has been consistent since before the day he took office, I think what you meant to say was, "the veto expressed Bush's long-held commitment to oppose the federal funding of embryo destruction, which coincided with what a significant part of what his voting base wanted." Ah, the wonders of representative democracy. But I don't mean to stand in the way of a good epithet fit, so carrying on:

As to the idea that fiscal conservatives ought to be satisfied with the veto because, hey, the President finally got around to vetoing some alleged pork, it's generally helpful if you actually stop and read these bills before holding forth on them. HR810 authorizes no new spending. It simply loosens eligibility requirements for already-available federal dollars; the veto, therefore, does not shrink the size of the pie.

I've got some real estate for sale, are you in the market?

If, that is, they haven't had their intelligence insulted by social conservatives trying to tell them that this obvious pro-life pander is really all about fiscal responsibility.

I'll grant that you've been "insulted" by something that I neither said nor implied (and in fact, if you read my entire piece, I expressly disclaim that the fiscal reasons are the more important ones; but hey, I understand: it's very long and uses lots of polysyllabic words, and who has the time?), but I'll leave it to others as to whether your "intelligence" has even entered this equation.

How about letting them become babies and then we can know...  Put them up for adoption...let us see just what will happen...who knows, might suprprise you.  Millions are waiting for aodption....

The rest I can not say....

Well, we might never know...yes, unless we try.  There are thousands (Millions) of couples all over the world looking to adopt...  I guess we can not know the outcome unless we try...hey..  Nah, let's just kill them - or use them for experimentation...what the heck, they are only clumps of cells...

You can NOT push for experimatation on humans, regardless of their development without consequeqences.  You seem to sense none of the moral consequences of that....  In that case, you do not deserve my or others consideration...  Enjoy your vision...just don't post that CRAP on a conservative site...

God help humanity if you ever become a doctor!  I can understand why you can't support your post but it really aggravated me..and I am itching for a fight!

Just put your money where your mouth is.

Why don't you open up LexisNexis there (I seem to recall that you're an attorney) and tell me what 42 U.S.C. 289 et seq. deals with. In case you have to pay for it, I'll save you the time - it's guidelines for monetary grants under the National Research Institutes. This is a modification of the ethical guidelines to allow government funding for research on stem cells created from embryos destroyed in the future. Previous NRI guidelines only provided funding (but they did provide funding!) for stem cell lines that were already extant.

fo the godo of the many is an old, old idea which did not originate in the Enlightenment. What aws scapegoating (the real kind),  human sacrifice, or an auto da fe of the Inquisition but an attempt to improve society by getting rid of misfits?

do not accept that embryos are human beings, while they do accept that fetuses are, hence they may well be pro-Life on the matter of abortion but have no more moral concerns about the destruction of embryos than they have about the destruction of other human tissues. The notion is an old one too: Aristotle held it, as did Aquinas. I'm not saying that I accept it, however if a person does believe that then they cannot be accused of hypocrisy or moral relativism.

1. Scapegoating involved goats, as the name implies.
   
   
2. Autos da fe did not seek to improve society by getting rid of the misfits - that was getting rid of misfits for the sake of getting rid of misfits. This is more closely analogous to the defensible arguments for the death penalty today - in a sense, society is better off not having these individuals around, but it is wrong to say that we are involuntarily sacrificing them for the scientific betterment of the human race in posterity. Please don't think that I'm defending autos da fe, I'm just pointing out that your analogy is inapposite.
   
   
3. I have no idea where you're going with human sacrifice.

that is not a democratic response...  Only federal government funding is allowed to perform miracles.

you are apparently unable to understand that one can oppose government funding of a particular program on moral grounds without also advocating that the program in itself be illegal. For instance, I'm opposed to government funding of Piss-Christ, but I think it should be perfectly legal for people to produce (almost) whatever tripe they want to. In this case, your argument is even more disingenuous, because what is at issue is not even the beginning of government funding, but the expansion thereof.

But Bentham was/is somewhat misunderstood. I would myself be a bit of a modern day Benthamite in the sense that I believe in pragmatic, practical solutions to problems over ideology.

  But like anything else you can take an idea too far.

From memory the current expenditures in this area is around 90 Million, on lines which were established before the President's 2001 speech. This bill may or may not have produced an increase in expenditures, with some lines being abandoned in favor of new lines created by embryos donated from IVF activities.

There is one inconsistency in the Presidents position that the discussion about funding brings to mind. Those lines that were available before his speech are permissible to be used for experimentation, but not after that date. The theory seems to be that the Federal government did not want to be in the position of encouraging destruction of embryos, something HR810ER recognized by a prohibition on compensation for donations and by seeking voluntary contribution of embryos which were in excess of need for IVF treatments. I would also note that Federal funding was limited to a very unique set of circumstances.

I also plead complete ignorance on what the potential pool of embryos under this proposal would have been, nor can I make a prediction on how many couples would have agreed to donate to this program based on their own moral views on the matter.  I am fairly certain that many Pro-Life groups, in the event this bill had been signed, would have engaged in a vigorous education campaign to convince many couples not to contribute their excess embryos.

 they want to get into human engineering?

 Please, a little modesty is in order.

Mr. Wolf, you have indeed put your finger on a quandry that actually goes much deeper than stem cell research - human nature being what it is (and economic incentives being what they are), the bounds of science are being continually pushed in ways that directly affect human society, and because science and industry respect no borders, there may be very little we can do about it in the US - even if we cut off federal and state funding and outlaw further research here.  

Besides stem cell research, there are advances in birth control (morning after pill, Norplant), reproductive technologies that waste embryos and leave others and unfertilized eggs in long-term storage, and that prolong life even as brains deteriorate, and now we're seeing further trends to rent-a-wombs, using transgenic pigs to grow replacement organs and global transplant markets that turn the poor and prisoners abroad into organ suppliers for the wealthy.

How do you propose that choices in this matters should be made, and by whom?  And if the US government should be trying to keep Pandora's box closed, how do we do so in ways that don't do damage to our competive capabilities in medical and other biological technologies that we desire?

As to the similarities between the abortion debate and the stem cell debate, I agree, but suppose that the differences in the polls indicate that the public sees a large practical difference between a baby inside a mother's womb (attached to a uterine wall) and an embryo that's in a petri dish.

Than the usual canard I have to put up with from you; in addition to your inability to understand basic concepts of representative democracy, I must now apparently tolerate your inability to read English, which has manifest itself in this comment in the form of your continued argument - despite the fact that it is explicitly refuted both in the original post and in the original source material to which it is linked - that the President has not now, or ever, forbidden the destruction of embryos for use in scientific research. For goodness' sake, he hasn't even forbidden government spending on this research. This bill is only about whether federal funding for this research will be expanded. In other words, pork.

As I made it clear in the OP, I would support a far greater restriction on the legality of embryo destruction altogether, but as that's not the bill the President vetoed today, I'd appreciate you not littering my posts with your nonsensical garbage until you've had the basic decency to read them and make a good faith effort at understanding them.

See all this guy's posts here and in the thread under the Directors' post.  He's in serious need of a torpedo.  He's vile (the "they're trash" thing specifically) and incapable of actual argument.  Perfect for Dailykos.  Not redstate.

That this idea comes from the Enlightenment, but not the same Enlightenment which led to the creation of our Republic. That was the English and Scottish philosophers. What I call the "northern enlightenment"

  This Ideas about the perfectibility of man, and the sacrifice of the individual for the "people", and the march of progress; Comes from the French/German Enlightenments, this lead from Rousseau, through Marx, and Neitsche, on to Sartre (and many others).

   It is a horrible inhumane group of philosophies, incompatible with conservative or libertarian values. Sadly, most people are ignorant of why they believe what they believe.

So... what President Bush needs to do in January 2007 is invite to his annual address some federally-funded umbilical cord stem-cell researchers!

That percentage would be lower than you think.  Many people just don't agree with expirimentation with human suhjects (human embros will be just a start).  After all, others in the past have had a grand time of that...  If that does not bother you, then so be it....(It will happen).

I agree with you that the beliefs of most people are founded on false premises and incomplete (or flat-out erroneous information), but that does not change the fact that they accurately reflect political reality. This in particular:

I'll also bet that three-quarters of them think that Bush just banned all stem cell research.

is relevant because it does define to a lot of people what happened here today. I think that the proper response is to counteract that, not dismiss it.

Wow, talk about sneaking in from the rear... Had to get winterpop in there as well... mercy, Oh well, maybe I should just give up and let science take over to do what they do best...  Ah what the heck, experimentation on humans has been done before, let's continue...right?  If taking the next logical step is Leons' inference, then I've missed his point entirely...and give up on humanity...  

You left out sufferers of paralysis, impotence, vapors, megrims, decapitation, disembowelment, and snoring.

And you apparently didn't get the hint about politeness. Magic 1-2-3 tells me that I should tell you, That's two.

Let's not get to three.