It’s because they too would want his plans to fail.

From yesterday’s Washington Examiner (HT to excerpts read by Rush Limbaugh guest host Jason Lewis):

Why The Founding Fathers Would Want Obama’s Plans to Fail

James Madison was not specifically contemplating Barack Obama, or Nancy Pelosi, when he wrote Federalist No. 63. But reading the document — one of the seminal arguments in favor of adopting the U.S. Constitution — it’s clear Madison knew their type. And he knew they would come along again and again in American history, if Americans were lucky enough to have a long history.

Obama and Pelosi, along with their most ardent supporters, are the types to see a crisis, like our current economic mess, as a “great opportunity,” as the president put it last Saturday. They are the types, after a long period out of power, to attempt to use that “great opportunity” to push through far-reaching changes in national policy that had only a tangential connection, if at all, to the crisis at hand. And they are the types the Founding Fathers wanted to stop.

In the Federalist Papers, written 221 years ago, Madison addressed the need for a Senate to accompany the more populist House of Representatives. An upper body, he wrote, “may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions.”

For the times when a political leader would attempt to capitalize on those errors and delusions, the Founders prescribed the Senate, with its members elected to terms three times the length of those in the House, originally chosen not by the people but by the state legislatures.

….. Now is the time for the salutary interference of temperate and respectable citizens, otherwise known as the 41 Republicans in the United States Senate. It is their job to help the president in areas where there is widespread agreement that he should be helped, and hold the line on everything else.

Of course the economy is in crisis. But if Obama had his way, everything would be treated as if it were a crisis. Health care is a crisis. The environment is a crisis. Education is a crisis. In truth, those other areas are not crises, and the Senate’s job is to delay action on them until Obama’s power to stir popular passions fades.

There is a problem in all of this, in that the Senate is also beholden to special-interest groups to such an extent that their ability to act as a backstop against the passions of the moment has been at least partially, and I believe mostly, neutered.

I know that fellow SORer Repeal the 17th would agree with me that York’s write-up explains why the 17th amendment, the direct election of US senators, was such a big mistake. In fact, I see he posted on Wednesday morning about this ahead of me.

Sorry to seem undemocratic folks, but the Founders set it up so that Senators would be selected by the legislators exactly to be the kind of backstop York hopes for, and to give states their correct level of influence in national affairs. The 17th makes York’s hope remote at best.

Noteworthy Net-Worthies:

Best description of the Troubled Assets Relief Program yet — “an unaccountable secretive national hedge fund which buys lousy assets at inflated prices from banks mismanaged for personal profit by multi-millionaires, and makes non-consensual capital calls on uninformed, captive, financially unsophisticated families.” — i.e., taxpayers. I suppose rank and file taxpayers are seen by the elitists as “unsophisticated,” but at least most taxpayers know that income is supposed to be greater than or equal to outgo.

An anonymous columnist at Pajamas Media writes — “Get Ready for Obama’s Department of ‘Extreme’ Justice.” Money sentence: “Indeed, virtually every nominee to date is far to the left of the legal mainstream.” Also: “President Obama has nominated individuals who are extremists on issues such as abortion, pornography, and euthanasia.”

From House Republican Leader John Boehner — “President’s Embryonic Stem Cell Decision Runs Counter to His Promise to ‘Be a President for All Americans.’”

Michelle Malkin — “Tax-subsidized ACORN mob teams up with L.A. teachers.” As I noted in a post yesterday, only the news outlet that Michelle referred to mentioned ACORN’s presence.

James Morrow (HT Instapundit) — “The Calgon President.”

This small collection of posts about a legal billing matter is in reality an indicator that something is rotten in Michigan’s legal community. There is cause for believing that the extended family of Mitt Romney is intertwined with it.

Heh: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — “The Dodd Couple.”

From the Wall Street Journal — “Obama, Geithner Get Low Grades From Economists.” Money passage: “On average, they gave the president a grade of 59 out of 100. …. (Tim) Geithner received an average grade of 51. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke scored better, with an average 71.” But “In December, before Mr. Obama took office, three-quarters of respondents said the incoming administration’s economic team was better than the departing Bush team.” Reality bites.

Hope for earth, from Gallup — “Although a majority of Americans believe the seriousness of global warming is either correctly portrayed in the news or underestimated, a record-high 41% now say it is exaggerated. This represents the highest level of public skepticism about mainstream reporting on global warming seen in more than a decade of Gallup polling on the subject.”

Mark Tapscott nails the Team Obama mindset — “policy-making by perpetual crisis.”

From Chennai, India:

9 Mar 2009, 0542 hrs IST

It was ‘Eureka, we did it too’ for a core team of scientists at the well-equipped stem cell research centre, located in Bagayam in suburban Vellore in north Tamil Nadu. For the first time in India, the scientific team, which began work on generating iPS (induced Pluripotent Stem) cells from mice in October 2008, scored a success in February 2009.

Working in labs in the hexagonal building in the quiet mofussil town, scientists experimented with infection-free mice recently acquired from certified labs in the US. Cells extracted from mouse tail tips were grown in a tissue culture plate to obtain adult fibroblasts (cells of tissues that play a vital role in wound healing). The iPS cells appeared 12 to 14 days later and were tested for their embryonic stem cell-like characteristics. The results were more than satisfactory.

“The discovery that embryonic stem cells can be generated from adult cells, in other words, adult cells can be reprogrammed as embryonic stem cells, is considered to be the holy grail in stem cell biology,” pointed out Dr R V Shaji, heading the team researching iPS cells.

The iPS cells have two major applications. First, they can used to study mechanisms of disease or test drugs and secondly, they can be used to treat diseases without immunological rejection, which is a major problem with embryonic stem cells or adult stem cells taken from other human beings. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

It seems that so-called stimulus package funding is being spread around so widely that some of its beneficiaries can’t figure out how to spend it as intended.

When it became clear to a few small cities in California’s Los Angeles County that they didn’t have appropriate transportation projects for their promised stimulus funding, they decided to sell the rights to that funding to other nearby locales at a discount. The selling city’s resulting cash would then go into its unrestricted general fund and could be spent on anything the city wished.

Apparently these transactions aren’t that unusual in the topsy-turvy world of California state and municipal finance. But it was a, uh, bridge too far for LA County’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). After approving a few stimulus-related swaps (noted in stories here and here), the MTA reversed course and putting the kibosh on those and prohibiting any future deals (noted in stories here, here, and here).

Apparently it hasn’t occurred to anyone, including the local media, or the New York Times’s Jennifer Steinhauer, that if these municipalities really don’t need and can’t use the money, US taxpayers ought to be first in line to get it back.

Here’s a portion of the coverage from the Whittier Daily News:

Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials on Tuesday canceled deals that several area cities were poised to make to sell their shares of federal stimulus funds to the highest bidder.

MTA board members allocated a minimum of $500,000 in stimulus funds to every city in Los Angeles County, but had never intended to let cities sell their shares to other cities, board member Richard Katz said.

“That was a misunderstanding on somebody’s part,” Katz said. “It is our intention that all of the stimulus money be for transportation purposes and transportation only.”

In a statement, MTA CEO Roger Snoble said: “Metro is trying to allow some flexibility to the cities, but there is no provision to allow stimulus money to be swapped with general fund money. This is simply not the intent of the Metro board. We will reject anything that is inconsistent with the board’s intent.”

The MTA plans to allocate $215 million in federal stimulus funds to local cities – a number that could rise to $315 million, pending action in the state Legislature.

Board members acknowledged they authorized cities to swap stimulus funds, dollar for dollar, with other cities in exchange for Measure R funds – the county half-cent sales tax hike approved by voters in November to fund transportation projects.

….. “The cities felt the latitude to do this, and Metro frankly was allowing it within the last week,” MTA board member John Fasana said. “But based on the concerns that have been expressed, they decided it might be safer to go back to a strict interpretation. They didn’t want some investigation to put any of the money at risk.”

….. The cities involved in such deals must now come up with shovel-ready projects or swap their stimulus funds for Measure R funds. Sierra Madre officials already have done so, tentatively agreeing to swap their $500,000 share with La Canada Flintridge for an equal $500,000 in Measure R funding.

“Measure R funding” relates to amounts raised in a 0.5% sales tax increase passed last November. Apparently that money is not as restrictive in nature as the money coming from the stimulus package.

This is an early piece of evidence that stimulus money is being passed around like candy with little if any idea of whether it will, or even can, be appropriately spent. It’s likely not the last.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

The above headline isn’t even half of it.

After the attacks were known to all, James Carville told assembled Washington reporters at a hotel conference room breakfast where Carville and Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg spoke(photo is from the May 20, 2004 Christian Science Monitor) to “Disregard everything we just said! This changes everything!”

The assembled press apparently understood that as something each and every one of them should take to the grave.

Bill Sammon of Fox News has the story (HT Hot Air):

Flashback: Carville Wanted Bush to Fail

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, just minutes before learning of the terrorist attacks on America, Democratic strategist James Carville was hoping for President Bush to fail, telling a group of Washington reporters: “I certainly hope he doesn’t succeed.”

Carville was joined by Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, who seemed encouraged by a survey he had just completed that revealed public misgivings about the newly minted president.

“We rush into these focus groups with these doubts that people have about him, and I’m wanting them to turn against him,” Greenberg admitted.

The pollster added with a chuckle of disbelief: “They don’t want him to fail. I mean, they think it matters if the president of the United States fails.”

Minutes later, as news of the terrorist attacks reached the hotel conference room where the Democrats were having breakfast with the reporters, Carville announced: “Disregard everything we just said! This changes everything!”

The press followed Carville’s orders, never reporting his or Greenberg’s desire for Bush to fail. The omission was understandable at first, as reporters were consumed with chronicling the new war on terror. But months and even years later, the mainstream media chose to never resurrect those controversial sentiments, voiced by the Democratic Party’s top strategists, that Bush should fail.

That omission stands in stark contrast to the feeding frenzy that ensued when radio host Rush Limbaugh recently said he wanted President Obama to fail.

Limbaugh’s status as the nation’s top radio talker is hardly an explanation for the disparity between his antagonistic treatment at the hands of the media compared to Carville and Greenberg. In 2001, Carville was still an A-List star for his “It’s the Economy, Stupid!” management of Bill Clinton’s victorious 1992 presidential campaign. Greenberg had been the Democrats’ leading pollster for many years (though, “strangely enough,” at a human resources conference I attended in September 1996, where he told the assembled audience in essence that “Bill Clinton will be re-elected, get over it.” I don’t recall him disclosing his close ties even then to the party). A revelation that either one of these two wished failure on the president, especially after 9/11, might have been just as damaging to Carville and Greenberg’s reputations as those currently attacking Limbaugh hope theirs might be on his influence.

Sammon’s report demonstrates just how actively opposed George W. Bush the establishment press was, and clearly continued to be, during his entire term. In what you might expect to be the supposedly competitive environment of journalism (but it obviously isn’t), no one in the entire group thought this news worthy of reporting for all this time.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Los Angeles’s NBC television affiliate must not have gotten the memo telling them that they should not utter the name of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), lest anyone reach the “wrong” conclusions.

NBC Los Angeles is the only media outlet I have found thus far to identify ACORN’s presence in a story about a “disruptive display of disobedience” by members the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) at a school board meeting Tuesday (the story credit is to “Associated Press/NBC Los Angeles, but as you will see later, I found no AP story containing an ACORN reference).

Here is the story headline that the Google News crawler apparently originally found:

Readers can decide after reading the NBC-LA story (HT Michelle Malkin), and looking at the videos at the link, whether the “mob” headline or the one that currently appears at the site is accurate, but it has to make you wonder what caused it to change:

Chanting Teachers Take Over Building

A school board meeting turned into a display of civil disobedience Tuesday as about 50 educators refused to leave, creating a brief standoff with police, who refused to make any arrests in the presence of media.

The members of ACORN and United Teachers Los Angeles — all wearing bright red shirts — entered the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education meeting on Tuesday afternoon, sat down and began chanting.

Police said the protesters were staging an illegal occupation of a public building. The district said no arrests would occur as long as members of media were in building.

UTLA President A.J. Duffy approached the speakers’ lectern and told the board, “You know why we’re here. You know I’m not leaving this rostrum. You know I’m going to keep talking.”

As he spoke several teachers sat on the floor in front of the board and held up signs saying “Students lose when we lose teachers, No layoffs” as the crowd began chanting.

Board President Monica Garcia repeatedly asked Duffy to sit down, but he kept speaking. The microphone was turned off, but Duffy continued to speak and the chanting continued. Garcia then announced that the “disturbance has interrupted our meeting to the point where the orderly conduct of this meeting is not feasible.”

The board took a short recess, then reconvened in a smaller meeting room, with the proceedings broadcast on television sets in the district’s headquarters. Media and the public were allowed into the room on a rotating basis.

In the station’s defense the captions under two of the videos at the link characterize the protesters as a “mob.” I would suggest, first, that there was a lot more than “chanting” going on, and that ACORN’s presence makes it at least a bit likely that it wasn’t only “teachers” doing the chanting.

As for ACORN’s involvement in the protest, these media outlets didn’t note it in these linked stories:

• AFP — “Los Angeles considers sacking 9,000 teachers”
• The Associated Press, as carried at SFgate.com and in a pre-meeting story at Google News
• The Los Angeles Times — “L.A. Unified board OKs layoff notices to about 9,000 employees”
• LA Daily News — “L.A. teachers protest, but school board votes to send layoff warnings”

A Google News Search on [ACORN "Los Angeles" "school board"] (typed as indicated between brackets) returns only the NBC-LA story.

This document found at Google (search on ACORN once you get to it) would seem to indicate that ACORN’s support of UTLA goes back at least to 2005. Too bad the media in LA hasn’t bothered to try to determine the strength of those connections for its readers.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

It’s here.

It will go up here at BizzyBlog on Friday morning (link won’t work until then) when the blackout lifts.

_______________________________________________________

Selected Crisis of Competence Lookbacks and Updates:

• This is a must-must read — “Obama’s economic saviour savaged as Keating lets rip” — Peter Hartcher of the Sydney Morning Herald is referring to former Australian prime minister Paul Keating. Keating, who is a member of Australia’s Labor Party, i.e., left of center., was also Australia’s Treasurer during most of the 1980s. His criticism of Tim Geithner’s mishandling of the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998 should thus carry considerable weight. Bottom line (Hartcher’s words): “In sum, Tim Geithner is a gigantic fool, the IMF the gun that can’t shoot straight, Alan Greenspan a bungler. The big US banks were run by the greedy and the hopeless, the Australian banks by counterhopping clerks. It’s a world of many villains. And only one hero (Keating).”
• I detect a whiff of Lyndon Baines Johnson in the air — “U.S. Halted Some Raids in Afghanistan.”
• Fabius Maximus — “Our ruling elites scamper and play while our world burns.”
• The column’s assertion that “The administration’s nominee vetting record has become a national joke” gets further corroboration — “Charles W. Freeman Jr.’s abrupt withdrawal from his appointment as chairman of the National Intelligence Council came after he drew fire on a number of fronts – including questions about his financial ties to China and Saudi Arabia.” Zheesh.
• At The Politico on March 5 — “Obama’s Safety Net: The Teleprompter.”

Noteworthy Net-Worthies:

The head of the British civil service, Sir Gus O’Donnell, is frustrated (HT Legal Insurrection via Instapundit) that “no-one in the U.S. Treasury department was answering telephone calls.” Maybe Tax Cheat Tim Geithner’s folks are ignoring the ringing phones out of concern that their now-underlings at the IRS have found something else on Geithner’s prior-year returns.

Michelle Malkin, as would be expected, is on top of the “Going Galt” phenomenon.

Speaking of which, tea party protests will take place in Ohio on Saturday the 14th in Columbus and Sunday the 15th in Cincinnati. Established media alert: The crowd sizes promise to be noteworthy.

Camille Paglia at Salon — “President Obama’s clumsy, smirky staff is sinking him — and resurrecting a deflated GOP!”

Nancy Pelosi “treats the Air Force like her personal airline.” Judicial Watch has the details. Fox News reports JW saying that “Pelosi was notorious for making special demands for high-end aircraft, lodging last-minute cancellations and racking up additional expenses for the military.” If Gingrich or Hastert had done this stuff, it would have been the first item on the networks’ evening newscasts.

Roger Kimball at Pajamas Media — “The Idiot’s Guide to Destroying the Economy: a 12-Step Program.” Roger emphasizes that it’s not exhaustive, which is good because there are at least these two missing steps: “During a presidential campaign, nonchalantly threaten to starve the economy of energy in the name of the global-warming hoax,” and “During a presidential campaign, threaten to raise taxes to dizzying heights in a downturn.” Those were just two of the steps taken at the inception of The POR Economy last June.

Al Gore is confronted by Bjorn Lomborg (“would you be willing to have a debate with me on that point?”), and predictably stonewalls.

China is now the world’s largest automaker. It extended its lead in February “after the government cut taxes on some models.” Imagine that.

From the International Herald Tribune — ” U.S. banks may pay dearly for government aid.” Reportedly, “Some bankers say the conditions have become so onerous that they want to give the bailout money back.” I wouldn’t bet against the government preventing that from happening. The article claims that regulators haven’t “set up a process to accept the repayments.” Do you think they’re in any hurry?

In the Boston Globe (HT Hot Air), from the “How to Hand Obama a Second Term” Dept. — “Mitt Romney may be in a stronger position for a presidential run than many would have imagined just six months ago.” Ask yourself why an establishment media outlet is trying to position Romney as presumptive leader. It isn’t because the Globe wants a Republican president.

From Wiltshire, UK (stunning picture at link):

8:08am Sunday 8th March 2009

A police officer is being hailed a hero after he dived into a stream to rescue a woman trapped upside down in a submerged car yesterday.

The woman, who has not been identified, was just able to breathe and was trapped for around ten minutes before the officer managed to free her from the vehicle.

Four crews from Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service were called to the accident at 8.15am.

Her gold-coloured car had come off the A360 at Littleton Panell, near Devizes, Wiltshire, and was taken to Bath’s Royal United Hospital with injuries which are not considered life-threatening.

A spokesman for Great Western Ambulance Service said if it was not for the officer, the woman may have died.

She said: “We received a 999 call just before 8am reporting that a car had left the road, overturned and gone into a river.

“On arrival the car was upside down in the river with the woman trapped inside.

“Luckily she was just able to breathe but the car had been submerged for approximately ten minutes.

“The police officer entered the water and managed to free the woman and bring her to the bank. The ambulance crew then pulled them both back up the river bank.” …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

In a scathing editorial Monday, the folks at IBDeditorials.com ripped President Barack Obama’s misguided, life-destroying, science-denying Executive Order that allows federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR).

Later, Nicholas Wade at the New York Times, in two paragraphs of his March 10 report (“Rethink Stem Cells? Science Already Has”), in essence confirmed the validity of IBD’s claim about ESCR’s relative uselessness in treating diseases and other human maladies — something adult stem cells, a blanket term describing any stem cells obtained from other human sources without destroying human life, are already doing.

IBD’s editorial shows that one doesn’t even have to be religious to recognize the fundamental disregard for science and ethics in Obama’s EO (bolds are mine):

Bailing Out Bad Science

….. With Obama lifting the restrictions on Monday, we will now be federally funding research that has yet to produce a single therapy or a single treatment of an actual human being, at least one that works. It has generated a lot of hope but very little change. It is he who is putting ideology over science.

What has handcuffed our scientists is the difficulty of controlling embryonic stem cells and what they develop into. They’re called pluripotent because they can develop into any type of human tissue, sometimes all at once.

Embryonic stem cells have a tendency to develop into one of the most primitive and terrifying forms of cancer, a tumor called a teratoma. Adult stem cells don’t have that problem.

….. It’s in the area of adult stem cell research that new discoveries are being made every day. Fact is, there are now hundreds of conditions and diseases actually being treated using adult stem cells drawn from umbilical cord blood and other nonembryonic sources.

….. Bush’s executive order banned federal funding only of new stem cell lines. Neither federal funding of existing lines nor private funding was banned. In fact, Bush was the first president to spend any money on ESCR at all. Clinton spent zero.

The (Los Angeles) Times notes, as we have, that in 2006 researchers led by Dr. Shinya Yamanaka of Japan’s Kyoto University were first able to “reprogram” human skin cells to behave like embryonic stem cells. But it claims the potential of these induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS) “is still unclear.”

No, it’s not. They can do everything stem cells from destroyed embryos can do, except without the moral baggage or the destroyed embryos.

I would replace “can do” in the last sentence with “someday dream of doing,” but that’s a relative quibble.

Wade’s report at the New York Times buttressed IBD’s claims, especially in these two paragraphs:

Members of Congress and advocates for fighting diseases have long spoken of human embryonic stem cell research as if it were a sure avenue to quick cures for intractable afflictions. Scientists have not publicly objected to such high-flown hopes, which have helped fuel new sources of grant money like the $3 billion initiative in California for stem cell research.

In private, however, many researchers have projected much more modest goals for embryonic stem cells. Their chief interest is to derive embryonic stem cell lines from patients with specific diseases, and by tracking the cells in the test tube to develop basic knowledge about how the disease develops.

Two points:

• The second excerpted paragraph says nothing about using the results of ESCR for actual treatments or cures. This means, unlike with adult stem cells, that treatments or cures with ESCR aren’t even on the realistic scientific “chief interest” radar. Thus, Wade confirms that IBD is asserting the unvarnished truth.
• Apparently “many researchers,” as noted in the first excerpted paragraph, are speaking “in private” because of fear of intimidation and retribution by ESCR supporters if they speak in public. It appears that we are seeing a situation analogous to how those who don’t buy into the Armageddon-like assertions of the global warming/climate change crowd are afraid of speaking out.

A further point from another source — an Ohio Right to Life e-mail reproduced at this Topix forum notes that the final paragraph of Obama’s Executive Order (specifically saying that “Executive Order 13435 of June 20, 2007, which supplements the August 9, 2001, statement on human embryonic stem cell research, is revoked”) removes the Bush-driven EO mandate that the Secretary of Health and Human Services pursue funding for adult stem cell research (ASCR).

Thus, not only has Obama dictated that ESCR be funded, he has removed any corresponding mandate for ASCR. He did not have to do this to satisfy ESCR supporters. This is of a piece with Obama’s radically anti-life legislative history, where as an Illinois Senator would not support a Born Alive Infant Protection Act because he feared it might open the tiniest door to recognition that an unborn child is deserving of the same protections as humans living outside the womb.

Even beyond the life-destruction issues, Obama’s EO not only opens the federal funding door wide open to what hasn’t worked, it takes away any incentive to assist what has. This is as profoundly an anti-real science decision as I believe I has ever seen out of any White House.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

With today’s market rally, let’s hope this is the worst the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy can throw at us.

This enables me to completely run down where the POR Economy’s benchmarking, mostly as of June 1, 2008, stood as of yesterday’s close. Plus, as a free bonus, I compare where we are now to the respective market index highs:

(Sources: Dow, S&P 500, NASDAQ)

The remaining benchmarks since the beginning of the POR Economy are these:

• Unemployment — was 5.5% as of the May 2008 BLS report; now at 8.1%.
• GDP Growth/contraction — was 2.06% in the 12 months preceding July 1, 2008; has been an annualized -3.39% since (-0.5% in the third quarter of 2008, -6.2% preliminary estimate for the fourth, including negative compounding).
• Inflation — was 4.2% in the 12 months ended May 31, 2008; prices have dropped about 2.5% in the eight reported months since then (through January), and are up about 1.1% in those seven months excluding food and energy.
• Prime rate — was 5.0%, is now 3.25%.

You don’t even need to be prolife, or to bring religion into the argument, to understand just how scientifically weak Barack Obama’s Executive Order lifting former President Bush’s ban on federally funding embryonic stem-cell research is, as IBD explains (bolds are mine):

Bailing Out Bad Science

Bioethics: The president keeps a promise by lifting restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research — what he calls “the gold standard” of such research. Judging by results, fool’s gold is more like it.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, then-Sen. Barack Obama said: “I believe that the restrictions that President Bush has placed on funding of human embryonic stem cell research have handcuffed our scientists and hindered our ability to compete with other nations.”

With all due respect, that is nonsense. With Obama lifting the restrictions on Monday, we will now be federally funding research that has yet to produce a single therapy or a single treatment of an actual human being, at least one that works. It has generated a lot of hope but very little change. It is he who is putting ideology over science.

What has handcuffed our scientists is the difficulty of controlling embryonic stem cells and what they develop into. They’re called pluripotent because they can develop into any type of human tissue, sometimes all at once.

Embryonic stem cells have a tendency to develop into one of the most primitive and terrifying forms of cancer, a tumor called a teratoma. Adult stem cells don’t have that problem.

Recently the family of an Israeli boy suffering from a lethal genetic brain disease sought a solution in the form of injections of fetal stem cells. These injections apparently triggered tumors in the boy’s brain and spinal cord.

It’s in the area of adult stem cell research that new discoveries are being made every day. Fact is, there are now hundreds of conditions and diseases actually being treated using adult stem cells drawn from umbilical cord blood and other nonembryonic sources.

The typical reaction to Obama’s move was represented in a Los Angeles Times sub-headline in its Saturday piece describing Obama’s decision. It read, “Lifting Bush’s limits on research will reopen a door for science.” But no door had been closed.

….. But (the Los Angeles Times) claims the potential of these induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS) “is still unclear.”

No, it’s not. They can do everything stem cells from destroyed embryos can do, except without the moral baggage or the destroyed embryos.

Read the whole thing.

I’ll restate IBD’s bottom line, with just a little emphasis:

Adult stem cells can do everything
stem cells from destroyed embryos can do,
without the moral baggage
or the destroyed embryos.

The culture of death’s determined, dogmatic devotion to anything anti-life is the only explanation for Obama’s ghoulish decision.

Obama campaigned as an uncompromising death cult advocate. That advocacy was downplayed greatly by the establishment media, so, sadly, many relatively disengaged prolife voters supported Obama on other grounds without knowing his anti-life positions. Obama’s EO is surely a rude awakening to many.

But Obama’s radical antilife views and history were not unknown to his fellow Democratic candidates for national office. Thus, the silence thus far from alleged prolife Democrats like Ohio’s Steve Driehaus and John Boccieri is deafening, and disgraceful.

____________________________________________________

UPDATE: When I called Driehaus’s congressional office in Washington today, I was told in essence that the congressman hasn’t responded to President Obama’s Executive Order issuance, that he was working up a response, and that there is no timetable for when he will respond due to many other pressing matters.

Driehaus, absent sincere public repentance, is in an unsolvable Catch-22: If he opposes the Order, he admits that his vote for candidate Obama came despite Obama’s promise, surely known to him, to violate a core doctrine of the Catholic faith Driehaus alleges to profess. As such, he can no longer claim to a legitimate practicing Catholic. He also has on his conscience the misinformed votes of hundreds and maybe thousands of others who relied in part on his alleged prolife stance in voting for Obama.

If Driehaus supports the Order, he admits that he has irrevocably crossed over to the anti-life side, no longer believes in fundamental tenet of that faith, and, again, is no longer a legitimate practicing Catholic.

Absent sincere public repentance, Driehaus has no quarter, and no wiggle room.

How could winning a congressional seat possibly be worth all of that?