Stem cell vote set for Congress this week

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Stem cells will be at the top of the agenda for the U.S. Senate when it returns on Tuesday with supporters of the research hoping they can change the president’s mind on the issue and opponents hoping to have a say about their stand.

The Senate will consider two bills, one virtually identical to a bill vetoed by President George W. Bush last year that would have expanded and encouraged federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research.

The other is a compromise measure worked out by Republicans Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia and Norm Coleman of Minnesota. It would encourage stem cell research on embryos that have naturally lost the ability to develop into fetuses, such as those that have died “naturally” during fertility treatments.

The compromise bill also would support the creation of a bank of stem cells taken from amniotic fluid and placentas — two recently discovered potential sources.

This bill replaces last year’s alternative sponsored by Kansas Republican Sam Brownback, which would ban human embryonic stem cell research and encourage research using other types of stem cells.

The House of Representatives passed a bill in January that would expand federal funding of stem cell research, which is now restricted by Bush to batches available as of August 2001. But the bill does not have enough supporters to override a second presidential veto.

Even when the Democrates are in power and some of this stuff has a chance to pass we still are doomed to fail thanks to Bush having the power to veto congress. I never liked that factor of our government, why one man should have the power to overrule the decision of a hundred.

But with every step we get closer, and maybe someday soon we will be able to  research and get the full benefit from the use of Stem Cells. Until then… we just have to hope that the next president will have a basic understanding of science that doesn’t come from the bible.

Source: Reuters

Religious right launches rival to ‘un-American’ Wikipedia

DINOSAURS. They may not exist, but they’re just launched their own online encyclopaedia. Conservapedia claims to be ‘a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American.’ Rather than having anything as mundane as posting rules, Conservapedia has Commandments. The first Commandment is ‘ Everything you post must be true and verifiable.’ Strange that, I always thought it was ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me.’ But Conservapedia is ‘the encyclopedia you can trust’ – apart from knowing how to spell ‘encyclopaedia’, obviously – so I must be mistaken. Oooh, hang on, Commandment Five says that American spelling of words must be used. And as everyone knows, both Jesus and his dad were born in the USA.

Coming back to Conservapedia’s First Commandment, it will be interesting to see exactly how any reference to the Bible will be verified as fact. Obviously, as a new site, many subjects have yet to appear, or are in need of expansion. This is the full article on Iraq, for example:

A Middle-Eastern country, currently occupied by U.S. Troops.

We feel sure that all God-fearing INQUIRER readers will step up to the plate and fill in a few of these gaps for them. If you don’t, the turrists will have won.

Somehow, “we all expected it” just doesn’t make this sit well in my mind. The Conservatives have declared that, if they find it offensive they will counter it with something that their children can look at and gather unbiased, truth.

Let’s take a look at some of Conservapedia’s unbiased and honest encyclopedia , as we compare it to Wikipedia.

From Wikipedia on abortion, we’ll review the first paragraph of each article:

“An abortion is the removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus from the uterus, resulting in or caused by its death. This can occur spontaneously as a miscarriage, or be artificially induced by chemical, surgical or other means. Commonly, “abortion” refers to an induced procedure at any point during pregnancy; medically, it is defined as miscarriage or induced termination before twenty weeks’ gestation, which is considered nonviable.”

And from Conservapedia:

“Abortion is the induced termination of a pregnancy. The father of medicine, Hippocrates, expressly prohibited abortion in his ethical Oath long before Christianity. Today abortion is a billion-dollar industry in the United States and Western Europe except for Ireland, Malta, Poland and Portugal, where it is generally illegal.”

As you can see, Conservapedia offers a much “safer” view on conservative principals. You notice, right away, that the first thing that Conservapedia does is go head right to Opinion, not facts.

Hippocrates says! Conservapedia points out, where the Wikipedia article states complete truth as to what Abortion is.

We have entered a brand new era! Wikiignorence!

Source: The inquirer 

Atheists under attack in America

CNN runs a story on how Atheists are under attack in America, but during the discussion at the end of the show prove their point on a different level by having the panelists ruthlessly and hatefully attack people who lack faith in any higher power.

It is a sickening display and far worse than I’ve seen of any atheist, including myself who and I am admittedly a ruthless bastard, attack Christians or any religious group.

In the aftermath, Debbie Schlussel posts her response to the anger the segment generated on her blog.

It’s a sick look at the mind of a paranoid, heartless person consumed by the ignorance of her faith.

I’m surprised these atheists would be so obedient to a higher power that told them to e-mail me since, after all, the one thing they’re supposed to have in common is a lack of belief in a higher power. Well, no-one ever said atheists are consistent or immune from hypocrisy.

I don’t mind receiving the atheist hate mail, since I know that in a few years, many of these same people will either be Muslim extremists (redundant) or helping the country fall further in its fight against the creep of Islamic imposition on America . . . or both.

Look at famous atheists and what happened to them. Adam Gadahn a/k/a Azzam Al-Amriki–now a top Al-Qaeda video “personality”–was raised by his hippie Jewish father and equally bizarre gentile mother as an atheist. And look how he turned out. Ditto for hippie-spawn John Walker Lindh.

Those two people are enemies of America, and many of those who think like them are of equally weak mind. If you don’t believe in anything, you’ll fall for virtually nothing. That’s why Europe is so quickly turning Islamist–because atheism dominates and Christianity is rapidly dying there. Over there, the number one cause for which atheists are suddenly finding “god” is Islam.

Over here, as I pointed out on CNN, atheists are on the attack against religion and G-d only when Christians and Jews are involved, not when Muslims and Islam are. A Christian prayer at a public school graduation or football game? Send in the ACLU lawyers. A Muslim prayer at a high school football game in Dearbornistan? Suddenly, when the “Religion of Peace” is involved, atheists boast extreme tolerance and display ultimate deference. No lawsuits. Ever. And the Muslim prayers continue.

So to you hate-filled atheists a/k/a future Muslim extremists (redundant), your e-mails have no effect on me. Ditto for your creative obscenities which don’t impress upon me the civility of the atheo-fascisti set

It’s a sad day for this county.

In dorms, men and women now room together

Janet Dewar and Matt Danzig met as college freshmen and hit it off so well they now are roommates. They share two on-campus rooms with only one doorway into the hall. That they don’t share a gender doesn’t give them a second thought.

“At first when I told [my parents] they said, ‘We’re going to have to talk to you about this,’ ” says Ms. Dewar, a sophomore at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. “I told them that there were two rooms, that there’s nothing sexual going on between us, and that it wasn’t really a big deal.”

Some 20 universities and colleges have decided to allow undergraduates of the opposite sex to share an on-campus room. Most quietly made the move in the past five years, with Clark University in Worcester, Mass., deciding this month. It’s the final frontier in the decades-long march away from gender separation in college dorms, hallways, and even bathrooms.

While sharing a room comes unnervingly close in the minds of many parents to sharing a bed, advocates for the new arrangements say sexual intimacy rarely plays a role with those who sign up. Instead, for a younger generation it is increasingly common for men and women to just be friends. And some gay and transgendered students welcome the chance to avoid same-sex roommates whom they may not be comfortable around, or who may not accept them.

“Men and women are becoming just as good friends as if they were with their same-sex friends. The dynamics have changed. I think the opposite sex is no longer really such a mystery as it was before,” says Jeffrey Chang, a sophomore at Clark University, a school of about 2,800 students.

Mr. Chang led the effort to lift Clark’s ban on opposite gender roommates for upperclassmen housing after he and his close friend Allison were barred from living together. As freshmen, the two did their homework together and ate together. So when it came time to choose sophomore housing, why shouldn’t they live together?

 

This seems to be a big step toward gender equality and a move against former cultural taboos that serve no purpose.

Source: CSMonitor 

 

 

The mistakes of history repeat themselves.

Keith Olbermann, who’s show I’ve never seen but he seems like a very strong; patriotic American in the truest sense, says some really great things about the situation of our nation as the Bush administration continues to slowly erode away our freedoms in place for an order in which he finds it acceptable to fight this “war on terror”. The words are powerful, and they speak for themselves:

[Video Removed due to violation] 

If that doesn’t overwhelm you and make you understand how wrong this war has been. How wrong the actions of the Bush administration have been, and how many of our freedoms have been slowly stolen from us….

I see no hope for our nation. We might as well start anew.