The shroud has lifted.

Obviously my life is currently consumed with that that really does not matter much in the grand scheme of things: the NBA. Yesterday hurt.

Will somebody please clue in the veep and his friends. Again today he made his claim that Saddam and UBL are tight:
"He was a patron of terrorism; he had long established ties with al Qaida."
Why can’t they just admit that they made a mistake and work towards resolving it? Read the AP story here.

The other thing that is on my mind is the whole stem-cell debate. I don’t know volumes about it by any means, but I read a couple of things today that kept my mind thinking—thinking that it really isn’t the end of the world to allow it to happen. I want to start researching what attitudes were about in vitro fertilization when it was being researched. My hunch is that a parallel can be drawn to this current debate. I’ll save that argument for another day when I have more knowledge. Any help is appreciated.

I read Patti Davis’ understandably emotional thoughts on the issue and then the President’s. (caveat: the Bush remarks are from 2001, I couldn’t find anything more recent) The blanket detachment that he conveys in his statement while feigning to appear as if this is something that torments him is appalling. He says that he has spoken with almost everybody who is anybody on the issue. The illustration for his understanding is classic Bush rhetoric:

On the first issue, are these embryos human life -- well, one researcher told me he believes this five-day-old cluster of cells is not an embryo, not yet an individual, but a pre-embryo. He argued that it has the potential for life, but it is not a life because it cannot develop on its own.
An ethicist dismissed that as a callous attempt at rationalization. Make no mistake, he told me, that cluster of cells is the same way you and I, and all the rest of us, started our lives. One goes with a heavy heart if we use these, he said, because we are dealing with the seeds of the next generation.

Is he really thinking clearly and carefully about this or for that matter anybody that makes these arguments? People created the embryos for sure—somebody’s egg and somebody’s sperm, after they hopefully get pregnant and have the kid are they really that willing to send the “leftovers” out to whomever wants them? It is not all that remotely different than some of the anti-cloning arguments. Further, who wants their progeny running around without their knowledge?

It is a completely different argument than the adoption argument too. People adopt primarily because they want a young goat and can’t have one. They are able to adopt because someone didn’t want the kid in the first place. I’m pretty sure people don’t go around making embryos because they don’t want to have children—isn’t the whole point of in vitro to get pregnant?

In the counterfactual, what if I have a living breathing child or parent or even myself who could be helped by this research and my wife and I decide to undergo the process for the express purpose of donating embryos (as many have done already apparently) for research. Why won’t the Feds release research dollars for new lines of stem-cell research on those embryos that are donated? This seems to be a more happy medium, than the blanket denial currently in place.

It is musing how the Court ruled today on the pledge issue by completely avoiding the Constitutional issue—I can’t wait to see the spin on that.

Lakers in 7.