CULTURE WAR UPDATE….The Carpetbagger reports that a bipartisan bill to undo some of President Bush’s restrictions on embryonic stem cell research has enough votes to pass. I’m not really surprised, since stem cells have always been the soft underbelly of the “life begins at conception” crowd. It’s one thing to stretch logic enough to conclude that a fertilized piece of DNA in the womb is a human life that deserves the full protection of the law, but it’s quite another to conclude that a fertilized piece of DNA in a petri dish is a human life that deserves the full protection of the law. Especially when the petri dish version might hold the key to curing grandpa’s Parkinson’s.
So that’s progress. Elsewhere, though, he reports that Rep. Marty Meehan’s common sense bill to enhance military readiness by allowing gays to serve in the military is not doing so well: it only has three Republican cosponsors. Still, that’s two more than it had a month ago. Not enough to bring it to the floor for a vote, mind you, but better than nothing. Give it another few months and there might be as many as a dozen Republicans willing to buck the culture warriors in favor of the real warriors.
