Wonkette

When President Bush played Solomon on embryonic stem cell research and declared that NIH funding would only go to research into established lines or new ones developed from techniques that didn’t result in embryo destruction, it set off a race to see if you could, you know, actually create new stem cells lines because God forbid Bush issue a mandate like that without making sure it was possible! Well, it turns out it was possible: scientists announced today that they had found a way to create new embryonic stem cell lines without destroying embryos. Are the fundies cheering? Well, if by “cheering” you mean “denouncing it for various reasons,” then, yes, they’re cheering.

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It’s hard to understand Bush’s stubbornness on embryonic stem cell research. I guess he just likes it when people get cancer! I know I do. But maybe there’s a deeper issue at stake for Bush, one that us peons can’t understand. In fact, there… isn’t. It’s because his early stem cell policy shaper, Jay Lefkowitz — who has written a tell-all account in the new issue of Commentary — read Bush passages from Aldous Huxley’s dystopian sci-fi novel Brave New World. And Bush got scared. MORE »

Scientific researchers in Japan and Wisconsin yesterday announced the results of some very complex stem cell research that could eventually have a significant impact on disease once a variety of other research in conducted and results are peer-reviewed and the like. But, who cares about that crap when you can claim a political victory?

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Surgeon General. Seems like an awesome job, right? You get to be a “Vice Admiral” in something calld the “Public Health Service Commissioned Corps,” which means wearing an awesome uniform, you get to boss people around about smoking and shit, and we’re pretty sure you get to decide which little orphan boys on organ donor waiting lists live and which ones die. So leave it the the Bush administration to take that awesome job and turn it into a messy partisan freakshow. MORE »

* If any Walnuts is gonna run for President, Arizona wants it to be Private Citizen Walnuts. [The Real McCain]
* Nancy Pelosi accused of copyright infringement for posting C-SPAN videos of herself talking, on her blog. Meta. [Instapundit]
* Terrorist Congressman calls police on fellow member trying to hot-box his office. [Think Progress]
* Tehran’s fashionistas wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a Persian or Jewish nose. [Political Pit Bull]
* Wall Streeters pressed into raising money for Giuliani consider a bikini car wash. [Political Insider]
* Air Force Officer with a porno-sounding name discharged for appearing in porno. [Outside the Beltway]
* Iraq veteran amputees reject déclassé prosthetics in favor of regrowing limbs with … wait for it … stem cells. [Blue Marble]

* Lawmakers follow through: everyone who said they intended to be against President Bush’s “new” Iraq plan seemingly still is. [WP, NYT]
* Weekend news shows to resemble shopping channel, if you’re in the market for a half-assed war plan. [USAT]
* US Embassy in Athens hit by bubble and squeak terrorists. [WP, NYT]
* Democrats get a mile high, chose Denver for 2008 convention. [WP, NYT]
* New stem cell bill gets House members ready to “booze up and riot.” [NYT]
* Christopher Dodd announces his last place Presidential run on last place radio show. [WP]
* Jews take over congress! [WP]
* White House gets around to thinking about maybe having trials for terror detainees. [NYT]

* President Bush admits old mistakes in Iraq, then makes a new one. [WP, NYT, LAT, USAT]
* WP says Bush needs to “make the case that those new assumptions are more valid than the last.” NYT thinks “that the new policy will be a tough sell.” [WP, NYT]
* Kid that makes your morning latte to become even more arrogant as House passes minimum wage increase. [WP]
* “Electability” is the only thing Democrats care about for 2008. Well, that and gambling. [WSJ]
* Nancy Pelosi shuts down House-side smoking. Members now required to cower in their offices with the lights off if they want a drag. [WP, NYT, WSJ]
* White House at odds with The House over new stem cell legislation, Dr. House thinks they’re all idiots. [WP, NYT]

The fine citizens of Tennessee have been warned that a secret Mad Scientist Lair (possibly deep below Lookout Mountain) is dedicated to: MORE »

It’s like Different Strokes Family Ties all over again, but this time the witty Republican son is, uhm, a retired Democrat actor with a terrible disease that can only be cured by harvesting white Christian babies. MORE »

We always knew Michael J. Fox was basically in league with the Devil — Mojo Nixon described Fox as “the evil opposite of Elvis, the Anti-Elvis” — but who knew Jesus Christ himself would be coming down to help Rush Limbaugh save the innocent stem cells. MORE »

Dear YouTube user ding1999, MORE »

• Biologists can now harvest stem-cells without destroying an embryo; White House and members of Congress trying to think up new objections. [NYT, W$J]

• Bush no longer touting “unseen-progress” in Iraq; new slogan is “Hey, it could be worse.” [WP]
• Some Republicans angry over lack of CIA fear mongering regarding the Iranian threat. [NYT]
• George Allen calls to personally apologize for “macaca” remark, “from his heart.” [NYT, WP]
• Elizabeth Dole, however, sticking by Conrad Burns and his slurs. [AP]
• Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski losses badly in republican primary, blames “anti-incumbent mood.” [NYT, WP]
• Freed of his Democratic cloak, Lieberman wants everyone to know how much he loves the Iraq war. [NYT]

• Ed Peck, chief of the U.S. mission to Iraq under Jimmy Carter, defends Hezbollah. [Hot Air]
• Talking Points Memo launches new sub-site called Election Central. [TPM's Election Central]
• CNN this AM: “In keeping with her mood and to reflect the world crises she tackles daily, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to play a somber piece of music to her Asian colleagues in Malaysia this week. ‘It is not a time that is frivolous. It is a serious time. I will play something that is in accordance with my serious mood,’ said Rice, who had just attended a conference in Rome aimed at helping resolve the Lebanon crisis.” [Crooks and Liars]
• “‘Malice’ has several definitions, but the legal definition that applies to homicide is ‘the intention or desire to cause harm to another through an unlawful or wrongful act without justification or excuse.’ It’s intent that’s at issue here, not evil motives. And there’s no question that doctors who perform abortions or harvest stem cells have intent aplenty.” [Political Animal]