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]

We were somewhere around Barstow when the stem cells began to take hold… MORE »

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• Michelle Malkin’s “Hezbollah is not my problem” syndicated column begins today. [Michelle Malkin]

• Red State honors Bush, tsks Frist: “Mr. Frist has shown us exactly the kind of leader he is–one absolutely willing to throw the leader of his party and his pro-life supporters under the bus for the support of the pharmaceutical lobby.” [Red State]
• The Angry Fag: “But if these sex offenders are so dangerous to require registries, notifications, electronic monitoring and other such things why are they being let out of prison at all? [The Angry Fag]
• “Without any kind of court verdict in regards to legality on the NSA surveillance program, the ACLU continue to stomp their feet, consistently labelling it as ‘illegal’ when there has been no official ruling of any kind.” [Stop The ACLU]

Surrounded by a dozen-and-a-half families with “snowflake babies“–kids born of frozen embryos–President Bush has done did the first veto of his presidency: killing legislation for increased federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research. Note the increased there–back in 2001, the prez allowed some of the same sort of research to continue, which sort of undercuts the murder equivalency argument his spokesman is wont to use in explaining Bush’s position. MORE »

You tolerated her as the teary-eyed wife of Rob Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show and the straight gal on her “breakthrough” eponymous show (you know the one where she threw her hat up into the air during the opening credits and played straight gal to Capt. Stubing of the Love Boat)–and you absolutely loved her like a tortured Harvey Keitel-tormented-Catholic-type in her 1969 (!) Elvis-nun flick, Change of Habit (it was her personal Mean Streets and Bad Lieutenant rolled into one, with a touch of The Piano thrown in for good measure!).

But for all of us who revel in the federally funded wanton murder of leftover frozen embryos in the hopes of curing everything from spinal cord injuries to simple chronic halitosis, public diabetic Mary Tyler Moore shone like a beacon yesterday as the U.S. Senate approved a stem-cell research bill. There she was, reports the Chicago Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet in Mickey Spillanesque prose, confabbing with admitted cat killer and stem cell backer, Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.):

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• Israel will continue to bomb Lebanon for another week or two; then the US will send in Condoleezza Rice. Meanwhile, as a debate continues over Israel’s use of possibly “disproportionate” force, hundreds of Americans were evacuated from Beirut. [NYT, NYT, WP]

• Bush’s seeming inability or unwillingness to handle North Korea and Iran with the same swagger that met foreign threats of his first term has angered conservative intellectuals and pundits. [WP]
• The USDA somehow ended up in a crooked powdered-milk racket. [WP]
• Stem cell research has slowed over the last few years, and the bill passed by the Senate yesterday would help reverse that trend — if not for Bush’s expected veto, which congress is not expected to overturn. [NYT, WP]
• In what some critics call “a politically motivated interference in Justice Department affairs,” President Bush blocked the DoJ’s own internal affairs office from investigating the NSA wiretapping program. [WP]
• The Senate unanimously passed a resolution endorsing Israel’s bombing campaign against Lebanon yesterday. [WP]
• President Bush will address the NAACP at its national convention. [WP]
• A House hearing on immigration reform devolved into sniping at the Senate and the president. [NYT]

We found Kerry’s aforementioned intern. She’s in a wheelchair. More importantly: MORE »