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Researchers are inching ever closer to bringing the latest stem-cell technologies from bench to bedside — and are, in the process, learning more about some diseases that long have remained medical black boxes. This week, scientists at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) reported the first success in generating new populations of insulin-producing cells using skin cells of Type 1 diabetes patients. The achievement involved the newer embryo-free technique for generating stem cells, and marked the first step toward building a treatment that could one day replace a patient's faulty insulin-making cells with healthy, functioning ones. (See the top 10...

Controversial legislation that would make it easier to organize unions will pass this year, Vice President Joe Biden said today. Appearing at a Labor Day rally in Pittsburgh, Biden praised the role of unions in building the middle class and said the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) will make it through Congress before the end of the year, the Associated Press reports. That's a very optimistic timeline, considering that Democrats are already putting all their legislative muscle behind healthcare reform.

William Ayers will appear at Purdue University on September 24th as a panelist about urban schools as part of the first annual Cummings-Perrucci Annual Lecture on Race, Class, and Gender Equality. Ayers will hit the campus in West Lafayette, Indiana, according to a story in today’s Lafayette Journal & Courier under the curious headline “Ex-radical to attend forum at Purdue.” Ex-radical? According to the story, some groups are already organizing protests against Ayers and the university. Political Science professor Harry Targ – who was singled out in David Horowitz’s book as one of America’s most dangerous academics – takes his...

On the day of his high school graduation in 1979, Zhu Zhuanghong saw a bright future for himself. People’s Bank of China had just picked the 19-year-old from among hundreds at his school to start work as a prestigious “cadre” candidate – an employee, in the Leninist language of Chinese institutions, set for a career as a professional. “My teacher told me that as a cadre at the bank, the wind cannot blow you over and the rain cannot hit you,” Mr Zhu recalls. He was wrong. Now 50, Mr Zhu has been buffeted by the wind and rain for...

Imagine power companies spending millions of dollars on ads in the run-up to the 2010 midterm elections accusing congressmen who supported climate change legislation of trying to increase electric rates and urging votes against them, or unions buying airtime to support primary challenges to conservative Democratic senators who opposed the labor-backed Employee Free Choice Act. Or even healthcare companies saturating the airwaves with messages urging voters to deny President Obama a second term. All those ads would be illegal under current election law. But the Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in a case that challenges decades of restrictions on...

In a speech to the AFL-CIO, the president accuses critics and special interests of using scare tactics and spreading 'lies' in healthcare debate. Reporting from Cincinnati - In a combative Labor Day speech, President Obama said that the healthcare debate had gone on too long and accused opponents of spreading "lies" meant to persuade Americans that his proposed overhaul would cruelly deny care to the elderly. The president, speaking at an AFL-CIO picnic, said that "special interests" were determined to "scare the heck out of people.

President Barack Obama plans to get much more assertive when he addresses a joint session of Congress Wednesday night at a critical stage in the health-care debate. Top aides say his fiery Labor Day speech to an organized-labor crowd in Ohio was a preview of a more passionate case for reform that's coming later this week. The top aides say the president is putting his own strong imprint on the speech to Congress. After advisers last week submitted various thoughts on what the speech should say, Obama spent much of the weekend at Camp David crafting the actual address, which...

That's what Rep. Baron Hill (D-IN), the policy leader of the conservative/moderate Blue Dog coalition, explained to a journalism student at a town-hall meeting Wednesday night who asked why she wasn't allowed to videotape the event for a school project. "This is my town hall meeting, and I set the rules, and I've had these rules," Hill responded, in an authoritative tone. "Let me repeat that one more time. This is my town hall meeting for you. And you're not going to tell me how to run my congressional office. Now, the reason why I don't allow filming is that...

PORTLAND, Ore. - Until this summer, salesman Jorge Ocampo had always been what he calls a W-2 man. Proof was the Mercedes he bought with cash. But he had always longed to be his own boss. "Almost every day I thought of it," the 54-year-old said. The opportunity came June 2 when he was laid off from a high-tech company. Unlike the millions of people drawing an unemployment check, he enrolled in a little-known program approved by Congress that gives the jobless the weekly cash benefit but also trains them to run their own business. And the newly minted small-business...

Via Greg L. at BVBL, it looks as if the "For Lease" signs are already up in what is/was the Deeds campaign offices in Prince William County: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIl9Gia6er8&feature=player_embeddedUPDATE: The WashPo's Monday Labor Day edition does little to dispel the notion that Deeds is pulling out of PWC, citing his struggle "against anonymity in Northern Virginia" which has led him to a strategy of shoring up what should be his natural constituency in small towns. The amount of time Deeds spends in rural Virginia has also worried some Northern Virginia supporters, who say it would be a mistake to assume that...

SIX cups of coffee - that's the State Government antidote to sleep-deprived doctors killing and harming their patients in a haze of exhaustion. The astonishing remedy forms part of Queensland Health's new doctor fatigue policy, currently being rolled out in public hospitals. The Courier-Mail yesterday reported the confessions of junior surgeons and medics whose exhaustion-induced errors had killed or hurt patients during "on-call" shifts of 30 to 80 hours. But a guidelines document underpinning QH's Fatigue Risk Management System claims "solutions such as 'we need more staff' might not be achievable or effective in managing a fatigue risk."

Michael Steele, J. C. Watts, Jr., Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Herman Cain all have one thing in common: They've all been savaged by liberals at some point in their careers. Why is this? Perhaps if you had a "Liberal Virtual Reality Helmet" that gave you their perspective, you'd be able to see just how they perceive black conservatives... NOTE: The author of this comic requests that you please visit his web site and refrain from copying the cartoon within this thread. Thank you very much!

I don’t believe them. Or rather, I don’t believe that this is some innocent blind spot in the vetting process. An administration official said special advisers to the president, or czars, are not required to fill out the questionnaire that runs 7 pages and contains 63 questions. The entire questionnaire, the official said, is reserved for appointees who must win Senate confirmation… Question 61 reads as follows: “Have you had any association with any person, group or business venture that could be used - even unfairly - to impugn or attack your character and qualifications for government service?”… An administration...

Jones says he has become a distraction to the administration's healthcare agenda because of his videotaped insult of Republicans and his signature on a petition suggesting a 9/11 conspiracy.Reporting from Washington - Responding to a firestorm that raged on conservative talk shows and websites, the White House on Sunday announced the resignation of a top environmental advisor who had made fiery remarks about Republicans and signed a petition questioning whether the U.S. government had any role in planning the Sept. 11 attacks. Van Jones, a prominent Oakland community activist, issued a statement decrying "lies and distortions" and a "smear campaign"...

WASHINGTON, Pa. (AP) - They've heard it all before—the tanking economy, the bleeding of jobs, the creeping hardship that never seems to ebb. And the desperate hope that hangs over everything and whispers that maybe, just maybe, tomorrow might be a tiny bit better. In the river valley where Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia meet, the anticipation of change never really goes away. Because of that, it seems, people still are willing to give Barack Obama a chance as he maneuvers through the murkiness of a nation in transformation. "No one is feeling satisfied with the state of the country,"...

Just a little talking point when the moral relativists come at you with, "Well, Bush did it too!"

Obama’s Kenyan BC, request for depositions of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates scheduled for September 8th, 8am. 08/21/2009 44 MINUTES OF IN CHAMBERS ORDER by Judge David O. Carter: ORDER SETTING SEPTEMBER 8, 2009 HEARING ON MOTIONS: (See document for details.) In summary, the Court sets for hearing at 8:00 a.m. on September 8, 2009, (1) the Discovery Motion, (2) the Service Notice, and (3) the Ex Parte Application. All parties are ordered to be present. The Clerk shall serve this minute order on all parties to the action. (rla) (Entered: 08/21/2009) CENTRAL DISTRICT...

The Israeli government has launched a television and internet advertising campaign urging Israelis to inform on Jewish friends and relatives abroad who may be in danger of marrying non-Jews. The advertisements, employing what the Israeli media described as “scare tactics”, are designed to stop assimilation through intermarriage among young diaspora Jews by encouraging them to move to Israel. The campaign, which cost US$800,000 (Dh2.9 million), was created in response to reports that half of all Jews outside Israel marry non-Jews. It is just one of several initiatives by the

Apolytikion in the Fourth Tone Your birth, O Theotokos, brought joy to the whole world, for from you dawned the sun of righteousness, Christ our God. Freeing us from the curse, He gave us His blessings. Abolishing death, He granted us eternal life. Kontakion in the Fourth Tone In your holy birth, Immaculate One, Joachim and Anna were rid of the shame of childlessness; Adam and Eve of the corruption of death. And so your people, free of the guilt of their sins, celebrate crying: "The barren one gives birth to the Theotokos, who nourishes our life." Synaxarion According...

A May 2009 video of California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman praising Van Jones, which was posted by TWI yesterday, has inspired a parody video from the campaign of California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner. It touches all the bases, portraying Whitman as an out-of-touch elitist who hobnobs not just with a man who called Republicans “assholes,” but with Jimmy Carter. Michael Goldfarb has Whitman responding by saying she “did not do a background check of his past over dinner” and “it’s clear that he holds views that I entirely reject.” But that doesn’t even cover her comments in the original video....