Gerald Posner, on those destroyed CIA tapes.

Apollo posted this at 1:52 PM EST on Friday, December 7th, 2007 as George Bush Rules!, Journalism

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Dr. K on Bush and the embryonic stem cell debate:

“If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.”
— James A. Thomson
A decade ago, Thomson was the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells. Last week, he (and Japan’s Shinya Yamanaka) announced one of the great scientific breakthroughs since the discovery of DNA: an embryo-free way to produce genetically matched stem cells.
Even a scientist who cares not a whit about the morality of embryo destruction will adopt this technique because it is so simple and powerful. The embryonic stem cell debate is over.
Which allows a bit of reflection on the storm that has raged ever since the August 2001 announcement of President Bush’s stem cell policy. The verdict is clear: Rarely has a president — so vilified for a moral stance — been so thoroughly vindicated.
Why? Precisely because he took a moral stance. Precisely because, to borrow Thomson’s phrase, Bush was made “a little bit uncomfortable” by the implications of embryonic experimentation. Precisely because he therefore decided that some moral line had to be drawn.
In doing so, he invited unrelenting demagoguery by an unholy trinity of Democratic politicians, research scientists and patient advocates who insisted that anyone who would put any restriction on the destruction of human embryos could be acting only for reasons of cynical politics rooted in dogmatic religiosity — a “moral ayatollah,” as Sen. Tom Harkin so scornfully put it.
Bush got it right. Not because he necessarily drew the line in the right place. I have long argued that a better line might have been drawn — between using doomed and discarded fertility-clinic embryos created originally for reproduction (permitted) and using embryos created solely to be disassembled for their parts, as in research cloning (prohibited). But what Bush got right was to insist, in the face of enormous popular and scientific opposition, on drawing a line at all, on requiring that scientific imperative be balanced by moral considerations.

History will look at Bush’s 2001 speech and be surprised how balanced and measured it was, how much respect it gave to the other side. Read it. Here was a presidential policy pronouncement that so finely and fairly drew out the case for both sides that until the final few minutes of his speech, you had no idea where the policy would end up.

So here’s part of Bush’s speech from 2001:

As I thought through this issue, I kept returning to two fundamental questions:  First, are these frozen embryos human life, and therefore, something precious to be protected?  And second, if they’re going to be destroyed anyway, shouldn’t they be used for a greater good, for research that has the potential to save and improve other lives?

     I’ve asked those questions and others of scientists, scholars, bioethicists, religious leaders, doctors, researchers, members of Congress, my Cabinet, and my friends.  I have read heartfelt letters from many Americans.  I have given this issue a great deal of thought, prayer and considerable reflection.  And I have found widespread disagreement.

     On the first issue, are these embryos human life — well, one researcher told me he believes this five-day-old cluster of cells is not an embryo, not yet an individual, but a pre-embryo.  He argued that it has the potential for life, but it is not a life because it cannot develop on its own.

     An ethicist dismissed that as a callous attempt at rationalization. Make no mistake, he told me, that cluster of cells is the same way you and I, and all the rest of us, started our lives.  One goes with a heavy heart if we use these, he said, because we are dealing with the seeds of the next generation.

     And to the other crucial question, if these are going to be destroyed anyway, why not use them for good purpose — I also found different answers.  Many argue these embryos are byproducts of a process that helps create life, and we should allow couples to donate them to science so they can be used for good purpose instead of wasting their potential.  Others will argue there’s no such thing as excess life, and the fact that a living being is going to die does not justify experimenting on it or exploiting it as a natural resource.

     At its core, this issue forces us to confront fundamental questions about the beginnings of life and the ends of science.  It lies at a difficult moral intersection, juxtaposing the need to protect life in all its phases with the prospect of saving and improving life in all its stages.

Bush was right.  On this issue, three cheers for the president.

I wonder if John Edwards will admit that he was wrong (from Dr. Krauthammer again):

This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa: “If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.”

In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.

Where does one begin to deconstruct this outrage?

First, the inability of the human spinal cord to regenerate is one of the great mysteries of biology. The answer is not remotely around the corner. It could take a generation to unravel. To imply, as Edwards did, that it is imminent if only you elect the right politicians is scandalous.

Second, if the cure for spinal cord injury comes, we have no idea where it will come from. There are many lines of inquiry. Stem cell research is just one of many possibilities, and a very speculative one at that. For 30 years I have heard promises of miracle cures for paralysis (including my own, suffered as a medical student). The last fad, fetal tissue transplants, was thought to be a sure thing. Nothing came of it.

As a doctor by training, I’ve known better than to believe the hype — and have tried in my own counseling of people with new spinal cord injuries to place the possibility of cure in abeyance. I advise instead to concentrate on making a life (and a very good life it can be) with the hand one is dealt. The greatest enemies of this advice have been the snake-oil salesmen promising a miracle around the corner. I never expected a candidate for vice president to be one of them.

Third, the implication that Christopher Reeve was prevented from getting out of his wheelchair by the Bush stem cell policies is a travesty.

Hubbard posted this at 1:47 PM EST on Friday, November 30th, 2007 as George Bush Rules!, Science & Evolution, Kraut-hammered

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Since we all know everything is his fault.

Jamie posted this at 1:11 PM EST on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 as George Bush Rules!, It's Economics - Stupid!

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The president met with the Dalai Lama, provoking this comment from a communist hack:

Zhang Qingli, Tibet’s Communist Party boss, confirmed Mrs. Perino’s suspicions.

“We are furious,” Mr. Qingli told reporters in China. “If the Dalai Lama can receive such an award, there must be no justice or good people in the world.”

No, there’s just no justice or good people amongst the Chinese Communists. 

Bush has done something right, made a good start.  Maybe he’ll make a habit of it.

Hubbard posted this at 10:52 AM EDT on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 as George Bush Rules!, Commie Recrudescence

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Osama’s new tape is out. Apparently if we all convert to Islam the attacks will stop. Well, golly Mr. Bin Landen, sir, why didn’t we think of that before!

My favorite bits:

the reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgages; global warming and its woes…

I invite you to embrace Islam…There are no taxes in Islam, but rather there is a limited Zakaat [alms] totaling 2.5 percent.

Apparently Bin Laden is now attempting to appeal to Supply Siders - this strategy is not without merit since many Supply Siders are also very religiously conservative - I keed, I keed.

Also - what the hell do real estate mortgages and global warming have to do with Islam? I mean if we really want to get down to the basics global warming is allegedly fueled by oil usage, which comes from where? That’s right, the Islamic World. And the recent sub-prime mess? What Allah would have stepped in and given 30 pieces of silver to each borrower to stave off foreclosure? Give me a break.

He goes on to call Noam Chomsky “among one of the most capable of those from your own side,”

Not that anyone really questioned whether or not Chomsky was an America hating ignoramus - but being praised by the biggest America hating ignoramus of all time must give him more street cred no?

“It has now become clear to you and the entire world the impotence of the democratic system and how it plays with the interests of the peoples and their blood by sacrificing soldiers and populations to achieve the interests of the major corporations.”

There it is folks - the Bin Laden doctrine spelled out in black and white. What strikes me right off is - it is the exact opposite of the Bush Doctrine. Spread fascism and religion in order to destroy secular democracy. As much as I fault George Bush for his screw-ups, and there have been many, he did seem to understand the fundamental struggle of our time. If only he had the ability to execute his vision with any sort of competence.

It is further striking that the Jihadi’s are parroting the exact language of the America hating left - blame everything on corporations. I’m not saying that the left wants us to slouch into Islamo-Fascism - but the similarities are too striking to dismiss.

Jamie posted this at 6:13 PM EDT on Friday, September 7th, 2007 as George Bush Rules!, George Bush Sucks!, Another Great Victory For Jihad, Global War on Terror

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While many commentators see the roots of the Bush administration’s understanding of the powers of the President of the United States as something that has developed out of the theory of the Unitary Executive and the writings of such legal scholars as John Yoo, I believe that people have so far failed to identify the key thinker behind George W. Bush’s interpretation of the Constitution.

I, however, have not failed. Behold: the scholar whose philosophy has formed the backbone of this administration.

Geoff posted this at 2:19 PM EDT on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 as George Bush Rules!, Philosophy, Politics

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