Every time. If it's not mentioned in the Old Testament it's not science.

What's ironic is that many of these solidiers coming back with spinal cord injuries could really benefit from stem cell research. Being able to regenerate those critical nerve cells might be the difference in some of them ever walking or even breathing again on their own.

As many times as it takes to get Republicans re-elected...

Anything to satisfy the "base"...fillers of the "trough"!

And once our soldiers use has passed, what benefit are they to the Republican party?

MUTE POINT...MUTE POINT...MUTE...

"How many times is this administration going to let their ideology trump evidence?"

mute point. faith, not science is them. when they use products that science "created," it's not science, but faith. are we really surprised?

"How many lives lost in Iraq because of his rush to go to war based on ideology instead of evidence?"

mute point. we're still stuck there with over 150,000 quagmired, so american casualties will happen while their no-bid contracters make a fortune. are we really surprised?

stem cell research? mute point. "The president is emphatic about this," Rove said in a meeting with the editorial board of The Denver Post." are we really surprised?

solution. november '06. then a mute point is not mute.

Even if the Democrats win back the majority in house and senate, which I doubt thanks to Deibold voting machines, they don't have the spine to push for impeachment of this scumbag in the Whitehouse. The GOP lied to Americans in order to start a senseless horric mess in Iraq. As of late. Sixteen US soldiers on trial for the murder of Iraqi citizens in the last three weeks. Four soldiers found guilty of raping a 14 year old Iraqi girl in her house after killing her six year old sister. When they were done raping the girl they shot her dead too. As King George would say, "Mission Accomplished." Yeah, the Democrats Kickin Ass. Riiiight. How dare they not have the balls to boot these Republican bastards back into the slime gutter where they belong.

The 11th Congressional District in Brooklyn, New York is a human mosaic of 654,000: 60 percent blacks, 20 percent whites, 12 percent Hispanics, 4 percent Asians and 4 percent other ethnicities. The minorities, mostly Caribbean Americans and other immigrants, comprise 80 percent of the district.

This district is historically significant because it was created pursuant to the Voting Rights Act. In 1968, the 11th elected the first black woman to Congress – Shirley Chisholm. Since then the predominantly black population has been represented in Washington by one of their own. The incumbent, Major R. Owens is retiring after serving in Congress since 1984. An African-American, Representative Owens is highly regarded among progressives for his commitment to strengthening public education.

Al Sharpton among others has advocated that two of the black candidates withdraw from the race to unify the black vote against Yassky. To this point none of the three black candidates are inclined to sacrifice their ambitions and each believes they have a viable chance of prevailing in the September 12th primary.

Chris Owens, the son of Representative Owens, is among the three black candidates competing in the Democratic primary. He’s promoted himself as “The Real Progressive” in the race. Owens supports our immediate withdrawal from Iraq, President Bush’s impeachment, single payer health care and opposes the Atlantic Yards development project to provide a Brooklyn home for the New Jersey Nets basketball team.

Listen to, Brooklyn's Progressive Conscious: A Podcast Interview With Congressional Candidate Chris Owens in the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

I am waiting for the day that the Bush Family announces that their Mother or Father or some relative has Parkinson or alzheimer or some other disease which might be cured by stem cells , and they then turn on Georgie boy for playing the Religious Right Card!

How can we allow such a small minority of Americans, these so called religious right fanatics, to dictate national policy in our supposed Democracy. Almost all politicians go around saying god bless.....everything. organized religion has no place in government. People think they are so smart but I don't see a lot of intelligent behavior in the world I live in. Relion doesn't seem to generate a lot of independent thinking and that's what we need our leaders to start doing.

Roy do the words DLC ring a bell.

The regressive republicans are FAILURES!

The Iraq War was based on ideology???
Whaddya know!
I just thought it was an OILigarchial money grab.

Do the math. Evangelicals, Pentecostals,Fundamentalists, and other "born again" Christians make up about 30% of the population, and they're opposed to abortion, stem cell research, etc. Catholics make up a somewhat smaller proportion of the US, and their Bishops are reminding them that no person of good conscience can vote for someone who supports abortion and stem cell research. (I think Catholics can support some very strictly limited kinds of stem cell research, but not the kind we usually hear about. You can get plenty of healthy stem cells from umbilical cord blood and bone marrow.)

I got out of having to vote for Mr. Bush in the 2004 election because the Catholic church also believes that no person can in good conscience vote for the aggressor in an unjust war such as Iraq. It was a matter of which is worse, war or abortion. (They're about equal in Catholic belief, I think.) I won't have an agressor in an unjust war to save me from having to vote Republican in the next election, unless the Republicans nominate one of the generals or cabinet members who planned the Iraq war. My point is that, if both born again Christians and Catholics vote the abortion issue, there is no way on earth Democrats can win enough votes to put a Democrat in the White House. Catholic belief is that human life is the most sacred issue of all and overrides other concerns. You may disagree with that, but the math is clear. Democrats will not take the White House as long as they support abortion and stem cell research. It's mathematically impossible. Do the computations, and then plan realistically for the next election.

Catholic Bishops, like other Americans, are not all of one mind on who to vote for.
There are some extremely conservative bishops who have fallen for the "pro-life" fallacy of the Bushie Republicans, and push "pro-life" single-issue voting, just as many right wing Evangelicals and Fundamentalists have.
In the last election, the news media jumped on the pronouncements of the extreme right-wing bishops for their own biased purposes (mainly making Catholics feel like they had to vote Republican) and ignored the rest of the discussion. This gave a very slanted view of the whole teaching of the Church.
However, there are also many bishops, who follow the late Cardinal Berhardin's philosophy of "life is a seamless garment" and advocate voting for people who are supporters of social responsibility, and those who will help the most people.
This is also the policy of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. If you look at www.usccb.org, you will be able to see exactly what the Catholic social teaching is.
The "seamless garment" teaching advocates health care, a living wage, help for the elderly, disabled, and and those in poverty. Those of us who believe in this teaching feel that the "right to life" does NOT end at birth, but continues throuoghout a person's life, and that society is an interdependent community.
After all, lying to start a war, and those who unconditionally support the liars are just as anti-life as people who advocate abortion. So is supporting the death penalty, denying medical care to poor people, and many other policies of the Bush administration.
Catholics are encouraged to vote their own conscience.
Like many right-wing Protestants, the hypocrisy of the Bush administration is becoming obvious and many former "pro-life" single-issue voters are turning against the "pro-life" hypocrisy of the Republican party. See www.sojo.net. BTW, the people whom Sojourner's speaks for are being seriously courted by moderate Republicans and Republi-lites. True Democrats need to make an effort to attract these voters.
If Democrats study the Catholic teachings, they will find many agree with Democrat values. Democrats must form a platform which will welcome people of many religions back to the party, based on social justice issues.
At this point in time, abortion and stem cell research, using fetal cells, are only going to be single-issue-voter issues just like gun control is.
The core issues need to be preserving our democracy, and returning to the American policy of social justice, which we have strayed so far from.
For far too long the Democrats have allowed manipulation of the media, and the party's own extremists to drive their core constituency away from the party. The Democrats need to ignore the anti-religion, "we know more than you do", limosine liberals, and get back to being the party of the People.
They also need to realize that the sell-out Republi-lites, who offer Republican lack of values and kissing up to big business will only turn off many of the core voters, who are repulsed by Republican hypocrisy and see those actions by Democrat politicians as only more of the same.
The Democrats need a realistic platform in which the majority of the American people can feel they are in tune with, and not allow phony hypocritical single-voter-issues to derail their campaigns.

Reply to Butte:
There is a lot of good stuff in your reply. It's very true that life is a seamless garment, sacred from cradle to grave, as the popes have said. And it's completely hypocritical to oppose abortion and then cut every program that promotes the health, wellbeing, and early education of newborn and young children. It is especially hypocritical when 21% of abortions are because the mother can't afford a child. Social justice requires that we don't discriminate about who is more valuable or less valuable at any time, whether born or unborn, so we need voting rights, health care protection, affordable education, the right to clean water, the reduction of poverty and well known treatable diseases, just wages based on a living wage, and all the other aspects of social justice. But my reading of the USCCB site and the quotations they display by the popes indicates a clear preference for the right to life, since without that right, the other rights are meaningless. The USCCB is insisting that Catholic legislators form their consciences in line with the Church if they wish to call themselves Catholic. While I voted for Mr. Kerry in the last election, it distressed me no end to see him receiving Communion and not supporting the right to life publically. He doesn't have two consciences, a private one that agrees with the Church and a public one that can support pro choice legislation. He has only one conscience, and he displays it openly as not being formed according to the teachings of the Church, regardless of his education at Boston College. The right to life is so utterly basic, that the bishops are right to remind us that we can't in good conscience vote for a person who won't support it. So the Democrats had better count the votes. Catholics are 25% of the population, and born again Christians are 30% of the population. Maybe the Democrats can create a sufficiently appealing basic social justice program to seduce some Catholics into voting against their Church's teaching, but a social justice program still won't have any effect on the born again 30%, so the Democrats better hope that the Republicans choose one of the people who planned the Iraq war, like Wolfowitz or Rumsfeld, so we can vote against him as the aggressor in an unjust war as we did with Bush. Maybe the Democrats could say the will not support abortion rights, but they will not oppose it either. Ditto for embryonic stem cell research, though somebody should be supporting research on good banking systems for umbilical cord blood stem cells and good uses for them. See what the US bishops say to that kind of proposal.

My one wish as a scientist is that the mass media and general public would become educated to actually understand the issues on which they harangue. First, someone above pointed out that stem cells can come from non-embryonic tissue, which is a great observation. However, most "embryonic stem-cells" are made from a pre-blastula stage embryo, which by the scientific definition is not yet a "human". Catholics and the religious right harp on stem cells because they destroy a human life, which isn't quite the truth. For those non-science types, in human development, a fertilized egg divides to form a ball of cells, and that ball of cells accumulates fluid in the center forming a blastula. The blastula implants into the uterine wall. Greater than 50% of pregnancies are lost prior to implantation, and around 20% are lost at some point after implantation after the woman is able to detect she is pregnant. So, if you do the math, likely more than 70% of "pregnancies" never lead to births. Now, it may just be me, but growing up I was always taught never to waste a life. Wouldn't it make sense not to waste these "embryos", these individuals as most religious and repulican folks would call them, that will never actually "live" and at least make stem cell lines that could potentially treat millions of individuals with spinal cord injuries or neurodegenerative diseases? I am Lutheran, I am a geneticist, and I support stem cell research and any candidate who supports science and stem cell research. I just wish the general public would learn a little science and listen to the experts instead of relying on their priests and politicians for their science knowledge.

How is is against Church teaching to oppose people who lie, and whose policies murder people and harm others?
The Republicans have proven themselves as hypocritical liars, and certainly have made few if any moves, other than electioneering rhetoric to end abortions.
Isn't it another approach to ending abortions to help the poor so they aren't up against the wall to the point that they feel they have no choice but to end the life of a child? Is is being "pro-life" to deny medical assistance to parents who can't afford medical bills or the basic medicines a sick, especially a chronically ill or disabled child needs to survive? Is it being "Pro-life" to change the bakruptcy laws to harshly punish people who got into debt because they became overwhelmed by medical expenses? Is it being "pro-life" to cut back on assistance for poor families for heat and food, especially when these poor families are locked into poverty and are having to work two and three jobs and still no making ends meet?
I repeat: "the right to life does NOT end at birth." Anyone who insists on putting children in jeopardy after birth is as anti-life as those who have abortions.

Scientists may not consider a newly fertilized egg to be human, but Catholic and born again Christian theologians do. It has human dna, and it will not develop into anything other than a human person. Catholics are 25% of the population, and born again Christians (Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and misc.) are 30% of the population. If you add in the number of mainline Protestants (Baptists,Methodists,Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopals, etc.) who are opposed to abortion and stem cell research and increase it by the number of Orthodox Jews who oppose abortion and the number of followers of Islam who oppose abortion, you get a very large majority of the population who will vote Republican on the stem cell and abortion issues as well as on the end of life issues and gay marriage issues. The Democrats are in a serious minority on these issues, and they cannot put a Democrat in the White House as long as these issues are on the table. That's why the Republican Party, which has never supported human rights in its history, except for a time when they supported some civil rights for African Americans, chose to support the right to life issues. Catholics and born again Christians believe that the right to life supercedes all the other rights, and that the weakest and most vulnerable human persons have the greatest call on our duty to support and protect human life. That means we have to protect unborn babies even from the first stage of fertilization, because they have human dna and they are utterly helpless. The Republicans made their decision to go pro Life knowing it would put most religious groups in an absolutely untenable position. They are forced to choose between their social justice beliefs and their pro life beliefs. It's a hideous situation to be in on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. But our churches are insisting that the right to life be given it's primacy and reminding us that no one can in good conscience vote for a candidate who supports abortion rights and stem cell research, etc. Only unjust war is a big enough issue to stand up against the right to life, and I'm not so sure it does, but I voted that way in 2004. Catholic radio commentators said it was acceptable.

The Catholic Church's teachings on social justice are a cauldron of flaming liberalism. That's why Catholics have always voted Democrat until the Republicans decided cynically to go pro life. They knew how many people would have to follow them, because they did the math. Most of my Catholic friends voted Republican when Reagan turned pro life, and they hated doing it. They wanted to vote the social justice issues the Democrats were offering, but they couldn't do it as long as abortion was on the table.

If the Democrats want to get back their social justice-human rights base, the absolutely must get abortion, stem cell research, assisted suicide, etc. completely out of the picture. Then they can appeal to the Catholics' cauldron of flaming liberalism social doctrines and pick up their fair share of that 25% of the population that would love to be fighting for social justice and stewardship over the earth again. They could also pick up all the born again Christians who are coming to understand the need for social justice and stewardship of the earth, and the mainline Protestants who like social justice and stewardship over the earth. Orthodox Judaism has wonderful teachings about social justice, and I suspect social justice could attract a number of followers of Islam if abortion were off the table. Get some polls and do the math and see if supporting abortion still makes political sense. I don't think it does.

PS Somebody is using my name on the open thread postings. I probably didn't sign out when I should have or something. I don't have any postings on the open threads.

In order to reclaim the Catholics to the Democratic Party, someone should read the new Compendium of the Church's Social Justice Teachings, or some similar title. Amazon has it. It was published in the past few months, so it's current. The Church's social justice teachings, including stewardship of the earth and aid to other nations,war, poverty, distribution of resources, etc. is probably too liberal for most Democrats to tolerate. It's not badly written, and it makes a good, if fairly long, read. If you think Catholics are conservative, read this. It will blow your mind.

After your mind recovers, give some serious thought to what must be done to get these social justice believers back into the Democratic fold.