The new found “spirit of cooperation” in the US Senate announced by the “band of 14″ just this last Monday didn’t last long. Yesterday the Democrats were up to their old tricks, filibustering a Presidential nominee, John Bolton. Admit idly, it’s not a judicial nominee, but come on, it’s not legislation either. Guess no one would ever find a US Senator that has chewed out someone on his or her staff? Nah, not any of these kind, thoughtful and tolerant Senators on the Left. Only us hair-triggered, half-witted, right-wing nut jobs ever show our displeasure via higher-decibel communications!

On this note, Hugh Hewitt is in fine, combative form this AM. On the Bolton filibuster he comments:

Why didn’t any of the major morning papers’ accounts of the Democrats’ decision to filibuster the John Bolton nomination reach for comment any of the seven Democrats who pledged a new era of cooperation on Monday night?

Good question. As leaky as Capitol Hill is on everything else, why couldn’t an ace reporter dig out this information? Especially after several days of reporting focused on how wonderful the “deal” is for our country, and how brave and noble the “band of 14″ Senators were in putting this can of tripe together. Can you smell the MSM bias? Hugh can.

At least the LA Times addressed the fact that this blocking of the vote on Bolton might upset the new Senate apple cart.

The first casualty of Thursday’s vote, however, may have been the spirit of compromise achieved Monday when a group of 14 moderate and maverick Democratic and Republican senators signed an agreement on judicial nominees.

In that compromise — which pulled the Senate back from what could have become a paralyzing partisan confrontation — seven Democrats promised to filibuster judicial nominees only in “extraordinary circumstances” in return for Republicans promising not to vote to change the filibuster rules that allow the minority party to hold up nominations.

“Well, John Bolton is in extraordinary-circumstance purgatory right now,” said an angry Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), when asked whether the Democrats’ actions Thursday undermined the spirit of the agreement.

Ya think? Not to worry, it was just quick confirmation that Monday’s agreement really doesn’t carry any weight with the Dems, and was most likely hammered out by John McCain to save his backside for being such a dummy on Chris Matthews’ Hardball last month. Lowell at Hedgehog Central expands on this idea.

So McCain engineers the “extraordinary circumstances” fuzz-over, and his little group gets to claim they resolved the impasse and still cry “foul” if the Democrats resort to filibustering any nominee who’s not a certifiable wing-nut.

On to more media bias. Front page LA Times story this AM, Improper Handling of Koran Confirmed. Wow! That sounds like a confirmation of Newsweek’s Koran flushing indictment, doesn’t it. As they say, you have to read past the headline cause the story writer didn’t write that part. Hmm, don’t have to go past the first paragraph for the real story:

A military investigation has found that U.S. troops mishandled Korans of Muslim prisoners five times at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but found “no credible evidence” to support a detainee’s claim that a holy book was flushed down a toilet, the prison’s commander said Thursday.

Love the way the writer, or the editor, puts no credible evidence in quotes. Like non-credible evidence should carry as much weight in the minds of the media, and its slathering readership? But wait, as they say in the Ginsu ads, “There’s more!”

In addition to finding the five incidents in which the Koran was mishandled, he said, the investigation found in six incidents that guards touched the holy book by accident or within the scope of their duties — instances that were not considered abuse — or did not touch it at all. In a 12th incident, an interrogator placed two Korans on a television set, which the Pentagon considered acceptable, and in a 13th, an interrogator stood over a Koran while questioning a detainee, which the investigators said was an accident.

Investigators found no pattern in the mishandling of the Korans, Hood said.

Of the five substantiated incidents of mishandling the book, four occurred before the military established guidelines for handling the Koran. Those rules were set out by Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller in January 2003 after the Red Cross alleged that soldiers were abusing the Koran. Miller was then commander of the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

In essence, those written guidelines say the books are generally to be handled only by Muslim chaplains working for the military, and guards are instructed not to touch the Koran unless absolutely necessary.

Kinda makes the headline a lie, doesn’t it? At least, a real stretch of whatever “truth” is being found out. Hugh has similar comments on the Washington Post’s handling of this same story.

I am not surprised that Dionne tries to shift the focus from the first false report, the riots and the retraction to the new report, but I am surprised that he does so so nakedly and unpersuasively, revealing a whole bunch of projection as he goes about his lame counter-attack.

It isn’t difficult to agree on a standard: Report facts, in their appropriate context, without attempting to push a story line or an anti-Administration narrative or anti-military bias of the sort Terry Moran admitted last week is deep within the MSM.

Guess accuracy and bias-free reporting is way too much to ask from such august enterprises as the Washington Post and the Tribune Companies. Speaking of the Tribune group, the LA Times once again heavily promotes embryonic stem cell research in it Op-ed section. In yesterday’s unsigned editorial Stem Cell Hypocrisy, they try to create a moral high ground from which to present their position.

Photographs in Wednesday’s papers of President Bush with cuddly little babies, all of whom were produced from surplus fertilized eggs at fertility clinics, represent a White House attempt to deal with the biggest flaw in logic regarding its stem cell policy — and its moral weak point. This is the fact that fertility clinics routinely create many test-tube embryos for every human baby that is wanted or is produced.

Here is what happens to those embryos: Some are destroyed because a microscopic examination indicates that they are defective or abnormal. Some of the rest are implanted. But generally, there are some left over. These may be discarded, or frozen for future attempts, or frozen indefinitely; it’s up to the customers.

Maybe the moral weak point is that in-vitro fertilization is now common practice, creating all these “excess” human embryos that now have to be “stored” or “destroyed”. Maybe another moral weak point is in thinking that theses “balls of cells” aren’t really human, or aren’t really alive.

According to a 2003 study, there are almost half a million frozen human embryos in storage in the United States. The vast majority of them — 87% — were frozen in case the parents might need them, but the vast majority of that vast majority will never be needed or used.
(…)
If you really believe that embryos are full human beings, this doesn’t matter. But if you think the issue is uncertain or ambiguous at all, it’s a powerful argument to say: It’s not a choice between a human life and an embryo’s life. It’s a choice between real human lives and a symbolic statement about the value of an embryo. And it’s a statement belied by the reality of in vitro fertilization and how it works.

So, just because we can fertilize human eggs outside of a female human body, then these fertilized eggs are not “alive” and not “human”? Can that rationalization really make sense to anyone? Does anyone besides me detect the overpowering smell of narcissism in this belief?

Well, there is certainly a lot of narcissism going on in From Us to Science — Three Embryos, an editorial in today’s Op-ed section by Maine author, Elizabeth Edwardsen.

Just about nine years ago, I nervously picked up the phone and called a fertility clinic in Boston to see if my husband and I had made embryos. We had! After trying — and failing — to have a baby any other way, we were on our way to making one via IVF, in vitro fertilization. After weeks of shots that slowed down and then jump-started my ovaries, I had produced a slew of eggs that were extracted while I was under general anesthesia. These were introduced in a petri dish to my husband’s sperm.

Fertilization took place. I was the proud mother of six embryos. We headed from Maine to Boston, where three embryos were transferred into my uterus.

OK, so far, so good. Notice that phrase, “I was the proud mother of six embryos”? Keep that in mind as we read on.

I remember a doctor asking us about the other three embryos, which didn’t appear robust enough to freeze for future attempts at IVF. We had a choice: discard them or donate them to scientific research.

We gave them to science. And I didn’t give them another thought.(…)

A mother of three “somethings” didn’t give them another thought!

Now, however, those embryos, and others like them, are back on my mind. In fact, I’m hanging my dreams on them.

Those little clumps of cells that held a promise of future parenthood for my husband and me could also hold the potential of good health for people with an array of devastating conditions. That’s because they are the source of stem cells with the remarkable potential of developing into different cell types to repair or replace body systems that aren’t working right.

I have multiple sclerosis, one of the diseases that researchers think they might be able to treat or even cure with stem cells.

What she is saying is that she is proud to create human life that can be destroyed to save her own. Wonder is she would be willing to have her “living” child killed for body parts to save herself from all of ours natural fates? Probably not, but just checking.

Doug TenNapel has a link to a great sound-bite that puts it all in perspective:

If the embryo is growing, it must be alive.
If the embryo has human parents, it must be human.
And living humans like you and I are valuable, aren’t they?

Not according to the LA Times. (db)

This entry was posted on Friday, May 27th, 2005 at 9:24 am and is filed under Focus On Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

Recently Posted:

• Two More Pro-Global-Warming Scientists Become Sceptics — Is Hell Freezing Over Yet?
• Merry Christmas Y’All — 2011!
• Pearl Harbor Day — the USS Oklahoma — a Post Redux “x” Five
• More Climategate 2.0 Shenanigans . . . What Else Would We Expect?
• Concrete, Sustainability & The EPA — A Nasty, Expensive Mix — Oh, Ya Betcha!
• Climategate 2.0 Emails – Real & Spectacular?
• Chemtrail Of The Day
• Giving Thanks to Our Veterans On This Special Day
• Victor Davis Hanson On The Upcoming Presidential Election
• SEIU Siphons ‘Dues’ From Michigan Medicaid Payments