Posted on 07/30/2005 12:14:34 AM PDT by Dane
Bush Holds Fast to Stem-Cell Veto Threat
By Associated Press
July 29, 2005, 3:47 PM EDT
WASHINGTON -- President Bush went out of his way Friday to show he had no hard feelings with Bill Frist after the Senate majority leader broke with him on human embryonic stem cell research. But Bush held fast to his veto threat.
Frist had called Bush Thursday evening and said he was going to deliver a speech saying the restrictions imposed by the president in 2001 should be eased.
"You need to vote your conscience," Bush told Frist, according to White House spokesman Scott McClellan. As for Bush's threat to veto any such legislation, McClellan said, "Nothing's changed in terms of his position."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
Not only that, but my major deviation from down-the-line conservatism is that I'm non-religious, which pretty much leaves me totally cold to the only thing most conservatives really have to be happy about with this administration.
But I am hopeful that Judge Roberts will turn into an excellent Supreme Court Justice - e.g., one with a properly circumscribed view of the powers granted by the Commerce Clause. We shall see.
PPS. And my personal view of the Middle East is that they should be left to do whatever the heck they wanna do so long as the oil gets delivered on time. If they wanna kill one another off, then fine. If they wanna live beneath the heel of a boot, then fine. We aren't their mommies. Just keep the pipelines in good working order and set the tankers to sail and otherwise do whatthe$#&%ever. The sad thing is that we are fighting the remnants of the Cold War more than anything else. Now one thing just follows another sort of on auto-pilot, but the only real reason we became entangled so deeply in the Middle East in the first place was the Cold War rivalry and nothing else whatsoever.
Right, but lets face facts: It's been a problem for 20 years, and I don't care if it's 2.7 million, or 12-15 million. 2.7 million may not be a problem for some, but for me it's 2.7 million too many. Terrorism and the border situation just didn't suddenly crop up on 9/11, illegal immigration has been going on for over 20 years, and terrorism itself dates back to the U.S. Marine barracks bombing in Beirut in the early 1980s. Despite the doom and gloom of "profligate spending", one cannot deny the fact that this country is in far better economic shape than it ever was in the 1980s, but that contingency will be taken care of once all these "free" or "fair" trade deals fall through the cracks. As for the "unfair trade", I don't care who's in power, they have no interest in the people who voted them there. I hate NAFTA and CAFTA. I've seen what NAFTA has done firsthand, and I damn sure know what CAFTA will do in the near future. Social entitlements have shown they can work. The problem lies within the abuse of said entitlements. Too many people not entitled to the government welfare system seem to think they are entitled to it in one form or another.
That's true. And folks don't like having their illusions shattered. That's why they prefer to look at pictures of GW in a cowboy hat and comfort themselves that everything is going fine.
***It would be interesting to see what Bush would do if the stem cell provision were attached to some big huge pork bill. It's hard to imagine Bush able to bring himself to veto a big, huge, fat pork bill..***
It's easy to sling suppositions around, isn't it?
Certainly easier than it would be if Bush had ever vetoed a big huge pork bill!
How do you ever accomplish anything, when you are continuously walking in a huge clockwise circle? ;-)
LLS
Satan says the same thing - how glorious to make the people pay for an obscenity to Mankind by turning their money over to enterprise of destroying God's children for the "good" that hasn't appeared yet, but might happen if we destroy enough innocent life. I think frist needs to spend a little more time bolstering his spiritual life before he becomes the tool of Evil.
Apparently you missed the part where I stated that I would prefer it if the the government got out of the research funding business altogether. The "grant mill" problem is endemic in every field of government funded research. One of the benefits of profit driven research is that it is results oriented, with private foundations picking up the slack.
We only differfew things, I think we should support Israel for instance. I also think Bush is right on stem-cells but that if it is attached to a pork bill, he might sign it.
As things stand now, we are deeply entangled in the Middle East whether we ever should've been or not. So, since we are mixed up in all that, we should definitely support free democratic societies versus authoritarian tyrannies. In other words, we should support Israel versus its enemies. And, since we are involved, we should oppose all forms of unjust violence (e.g., targeting civilians, etc) in other words, we should oppose terrorism. Moreover, since we were attacked ourselves, we must respond to that with devastating force.
But, in the grand scheme of things and for the long run, we should get out of the Middle East altogether. I feel the same way about Europe and about East Asia - once we tie up loose ends of course, and to the extent that our presence is no longer required for national security. Those are of course items for considerable debate, but obviously I have a very restrictive view of what deployments are truly necessary. To the extent that we are involved anywhere, though, we should support moral government - by our standards - over immoral government.
As for stem cell research, I am very conflicted. I regard myself as mostly pro-life. However, my inclination is to place the boundary at first heartbeat or brainwave (around the 40 day mark). Even if a more restrictive standard were preferable, I would never personally agree with a threshold set before implantation. Beyond that, however, I do think that it's quite problematic that anyone should have to fund endeavors that they regard as murder. Moreover, I do not support our current grant-mill funding system at all.
In other words, I don't have any problem with embryonic stem cell research limited only to leftover embryos from in vitro clinics (and obviously I've no problem with in vitro technology). However, I know that other people do. So, my first impulse would be to focus heavily on methods that do not require destroying embryos. I mean, why not? If we can do everything that way that we could do with embryonic stem cells, then why do we need to even bother with the morally controversial alternative?
So, in short, my inclination would be to go with the current rules at this time, even though I personally disagree with them very strongly. My true position though - what I think should be funded so long as the feds are in the funding business - is the same as Senator Frist's.
Government needs to get out of this medical funding stuff 100%, now would be a good time to start
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