The Weakly Standard in color

Sometimes Eric Cohen and William Kristol are easier to take with a bit of candy:

By not funding stem cell research the Bush administration has remained /White=A Clean Heart/. But along comes the House of Representatives, passing /Dark = Sin/-ful legislation during the /Green=Season after Pentecost/. Even worse, instead of allowing fetal /Green=Growth/, places like California already fund stem cell research. Now Senator Bill Frist, who once was assured a place in /Gold=Heaven/, has succumbed to the /Red=Temptation/ of scientific progress. We'd like to warn him and others like him in the Senate that their only hope for /White=God's Forgiveness/ is by accepting /Blue=The Power of God/ and partake of /Red=The Blood of Jesus/.


Here's the special SFWHOW exclusive next-day addition that you'll not find at ASZ Figueroa central. It seems that much is being made by conservatives about the fact that stem cell researchers are allowed to perform their research with private funds and that California also has such funds available. While it's true that private funds are thankfully available and could be used, the prime funding mechanism in the US is the NIH. According to the rules as I understand them, if a researcher has NIH grants and uses private funds to perform stem cell research, every part of the lab that was purchased using NIH funding (shakers, centrifuges, pipettes, etc.) would be off-limits to the privately funded stem cell work, even in California. Retooling a lab would amount to quite a chore, something only really large labs could afford to do. So, yes, the way it's set up now is certainly limiting.
And another thing. Powerliner Paul writes "The rhetoric that bothered me came from certain talking heads, mostly liberals, who claimed that Frist's position was based on political calculation....But, as Charles Krauthammer pointed out on the same program, Williams and Birnbaum couldn't really explain how Frist's positions advance his presidential prospects." Funny that, because Fox News just had ueber-conservative Rev. Lou Sheldon on saying exactly the same thing. OK, so one last time for the slow and hard of hearing: if he wants to run for Pres., he simply can't maintain an untenable position. It worked for Bush to say things like his favorite political philosopher was Jesus Christ because he saved mah lahf, but that was after 8 years of Clinton and the right-wing spin machine told otherwise rational voters that the one thing the country needed then was a simpleton President to restore this vague notion of integrity to the office. That stuff won't necessarily fly this time around. If a Democrat were to have pulled the same stunt the sound of sandals flapping in the wind would be deafening by now, but a Republican performing a Frist-flop is an honorable, conscientious, well-reasoned move.