Harry Reid: Major-league *edited*

While the House yesterday quickly responded to the President’s veto of the embryonic stem cell research bill by attempting to override the veto (they failed), Senator Harry Reid took the time to send out a little fund-raising letter. The NYT reports:

Within hours of the veto, the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, sent out a fund-raising letter asserting that Mr. Bush had decided that curing diseases “was not as important as catering to his right-wing base.”

What a stupid, moronic, repugnant thing to say – considering a number of things, firstly that the “right-wing base” is divided about 50-50 on the issue (if what the NYT reports is accurate), and two, it totally ignores the many moral implications involved. Of course, I can see where Reid would have a little trouble understanding the moral implications of anything.

Expect more of this from Reid, and other demagoguing Democrats in the coming months as the election draws closer:

But Democrats are determined to make the veto a central theme of their fall election campaigns, hooking it in with another hugely divisive medical issue β€” the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case β€” to argue that Republicans are beholden to the religious right.

If that’s the case, maybe the Republicans should respond in turn by painting the Democratic party as the Party of Death. This book by Ramesh Ponnuru would provide all the information they needed to proceed.

It wouldn’t be a pretty campaign season, would it?

Wouldn’t it be nice if, for once in this country we could actually have a national debate on the issue of embryonic stem-cell research without politicians like Harry Reid acting, well, like politicians? The debate should be a moral one, not a political one, but sadly it’s turned more political than moral with an increasing number of Republicans in Congress joining up with Democrats on the issue because of the support stem-cell research in general has among the American people. Republicans are worried about how this veto will affect them in the fall elections. My response to those Republicans is that you have to go with your conscience on every issue – regardless of polls, especially on those issues related to the (potential) lives of the unborn.

Captain Ed and Anchoress have great posts up about the issue. First, Captain Ed:

Congress wanted to treat human life as a commodity instead of protecting it in all its forms. Bush made the right call in vetoing federal funding for these programs.

Undoubtedly, we will hear plenty from critics that Bush has endangered the health of Americans through his veto, a conclusion bordering on the absurd. Putting aside the fact that we shouldn’t grind up humans to save other humans, this veto doesn’t ban any kind of research at all. It just makes human embryonic stem-cell (hESC) research ineligible for federal funding. It’s not a ban, and in fact that research has never been banned within the US.

Anchoress:

It never fails that when the press discusses things like President Bush vetoing this bill, they leave out the word EMBRYONIC.

They want the world to think that Bush is a “Christian who is afraid of science” and so they always discreetly forget the EMBRYONIC part, leaving casual readers to think the president is against adult stem cell research, in generalÒ€¦which is not at all true.

It is an intellectual dishonesty the press is committed to. And they never tell you about the experiments on Parkinson’s disease patients which had such horrific results that the research was stopped. Not just postphoned, but stopped.

That research, which I wish I’d put into my hard drive, made me believe that Embryonic stem cells are like uncut heroinÒ€¦waaaay, way to powerful to use – they are part of begotten life in its purest form (perhaps still too near to God for our fooling with) – and they are so maleable as to be (so far in research) unpredictable and unusable. And that’s not even getting into the moral and ethical questions of whether or not a human embryo should be exploited in such a way, particularly when Adult Stem Cells are showing remarkable results in everything from helping sufferers of Sickle Cell Anemia and Thallassemias Major and Minor, to spinal injuries, skin regeneration and more.

Read it all.

Hat tip: Flopping Aces

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