On another front, Reid again shot himself in the foot. This week at the National Press Club Reid said that the war in Iraq is lost.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So Reid believes that the war is lost and the the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State know this to be true. At the same time, Reid does not support withdrawing funding for the war. This is the height of hypocrisy and Harry Reid is on the verge of committing treason. Democrats in general have constantly engaged in activity that encourages our enemies for the purpose of consolidating political power. Now Reid has given considerable aid and comfort to our enemies by declaring that we have lost this war.

Harry Reid is either a moron or he is so consumed with political power that he will do and say anything to gain it. Either way he has no business being in the Senate. His constituents should do whatever it takes to replace him. Tom Daschle discovered that there was a price to pay for demagoguery and it is high time his replacement made the same discovery.

The court found that the law was not unconstitutional “on its face.” Opponents of the law charged that it was clearly and blatantly unconstitutional and that was the basis of the various court rulings to date. This does not preclude a particular woman from filing suit based on her particular circumstances, claiming that in her case the procedure is the best option.

This case illustrates the importance of judicial nominees. The deciding factor was Justice Alito who replaced retiring Justice O’Connor. O’Connor had been the deciding vote in favor of the pro abortion side to date. With Alito going the other direction the door seems open to further erosion of Roe v Wade.

For those who believe there is no appreciable difference between Republicans and Democrats I refer you to this decision. President Bush may well have one more Supreme Court appointment and the next President will certainly have one or two. Who is appointed is of monumental importance. There is no better or more important legacy of a president. Justices Roberts and Alito will be on the Supreme Court long after President Bush has gone back to Texas. Many of President Bush’s actions will be forgotten or overturned by subsequent Congresses. But his Supreme Court appointments will still be deciding cases.

The ’08 elections are approaching. As you consider who to support or which party you think should lead this country, do not forget the importance of judicial nominees. Hundreds of judges are appointed in a typical presidential term. Seriously consider what kind of justices you want on federal district courts and the Supreme Court. That really matters.

For anyone who isn’t aware, Michael J. Fox has made several commercials for Democrat candidates in the last days of the campaign. The gist of these commercials is that, while Democrat candidates want to expand stem cell research and find cures for people like Fox, Republicans don’t care about him or others with horrible diseases so they oppose stem cell research. Like other’s in the stem cell debate, Fox lets viewers believe that all stem cell research is the same. He doesn’t differentiate between adult stem cell research and fetal stem cell research. He implies that Republicans oppose all stem cell research. He also never mentions that there is absolutely no evidence, not one shred, to indicate that fetal stem cell research holds out any hope for people with debilitating diseases. That in contrast to adult stem cell research that is already producing therapies.

I’ve written here and here about the problems with fetal stem cell research. But liberals believe that their pet projects deserve unlimited federal funding when the private sector has determined that there is little reason to invest in them. And Democrats have no problem exploiting people like Fox in order to destroy their opposition. It’s a combination of the “politics of personal destruction” that Bill Clinton perfected and the Jersey Girls phenomenon that Democrats so effectively exploited for so long. That is, until Ann Coulter blew the whistle on them.

If not for Coulter, Fox’s charges would have gone unanswered. No one would have dared to question Fox’s charges or his motivation because he has suffered a tragedy in his life. All that has now changed.

I, like most of you, have a lot of sympathy for Fox. He is a wonderful actor and we’ve all loved him in movies like the Back to the Future series as well as his TV rolls. Falling to Parkinson’s Disease is indeed tragic. But that does not give Fox any special insight into the merits of fetal stem cell research or politics. He is, like the rest of us, free to believe as he likes and free to say so and make commercials promoting his point of view. And like the rest of us, he is not immune to consequences of doing so.

On a morning news program Fox made two contradictory statements. First, he said he had no partisan political agenda. Then he said he wanted his side to have a veto proof majority, clearly a partisan political position. Again, Fox is free to have his agenda and he is free to promote it. But none of us should be fooled into thinking he has no political agenda.

We also should not be fooled by his misleading statements. Michael Steele has aired a very effective ad to counter Fox’s ad. Steele’s ad features his sister, a doctor, who suffers from MS. It’s pretty difficult for Fox’s characterization of Steele to be taken seriously in light of this little revelation.

The fact is, Michael J. Fox intentionally mislead the public for partisan political reasons. As Rush Limbaugh has rightly pointed out, Fox has admitted to going off his meds when testifying before Congress in order to make his symptoms appear worse. He wants to make a point and that is one way to do so. He now claims he took too much of his meds before making the current round of commercials. So Fox is intentionally making his condition look as bad as possible in order to sway voters to his political position. He is exploiting his condition for partisan political gain!

It appears that the Fox commercials may have backfired. They seem to have been removed from the rotation. Whether the commercial featured here a couple of days ago with Patricia Heaton, Jim Caviezel, Kurt Warner and others setting the record straight or the Michael Steele commercial or Rush’s rebuttals or all of the above were responsible, the ads are off the air. Ann Coulter opened the door and she deserves a lot of credit for the response. No longer can those with personal tragedy exploit that tragedy with impunity. All of us should be accountable for what we say and do and personal tragedy doesn’t negate that. Thanks to Ann Coulter, it no longer does. Thanks Ann!

“We now know that none of this was true. In actuality, scientist at ACT destroyed 16 embryos that they had developed to the 8-10 cell stage–just as occurs in conventional ESCR. They then removed most of the cells and placed them in culture. Out of 91 early embryo cells, known as “blastomeres,” ACT scientists derived two embryonic stem cell lines.”

This according to the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network.  It seems that ACT wasn’t satisfied with the modest advance they’d made and needed more publicity that it would have generated.  So they fudged a little in their press release.

“Such a modest advance in science isn’t worthy of breathless headlines and ubiquitous front page coverage. So, ACT, perhaps hoping to improve its finances by generating bounteous free publicity, issued a profoundly misleading press release strongly implying that no embryos were destroyed in the experiment. And with that, the media were off and running.”

Predictably the MSM wasn’t particularly interested in making corrections once the truth was known.  In most cases they let it lay and in the case of the Washington Post, they continued to perpetrate the lie!

“But now that the truth is known, surely journalists are tripping over each other to correct the record. Not a chance. Other than a few quiet stories, such as in Newsweek and The Economist, the media have either just stopped reporting the story leaving the misimpression they created laying on the table, or as with the Washington Post editorial of August 28, actually continued the charade.”

I’ve noted in multiple posts how the left is less interested in the truth than they are in their prefered outcomes.  The truth takes a backseat to their perception of “right”.  The MSM ise notorious for this sort of action and it should surprise no one.

The CBC articles closes with this statement:

“So this is the unfortunate bottom line: When it comes to stem cell science, the media is not a reliable source of credible information. And that is bad for America because without a reliable Fourth Estate, democracy founders.”

How true!  The full story from the CBC can be found here.

Much like the debate over funding of AIDS research during the Reagan era, fetal stem cell research has degenerated into an almost purely political issue.  AIDS research ended up taking far more federal dollars that any other disease even though a number of other diseases, including heart disease, took far more lives each year that did AIDS.  The debate and the funding were never driven by science.  They were driven by politics and the same is now true for fetal stem cell research.

There are legitimate debates to be engaged in regarding the moral and ethical considerations of fetal stem cell research. Unfortunately, these debates are bypassed in favor of demagoguery and disinformation. So let me take this opportunity to point out some of the misconceptions, disinformation and myths surrounding this issue.

Myth #1

Without government funding there will be no fetal stem cell research.

This little myth is happily propagated by those who would use such research as a political tool, The reality is that fetal stem cell research is going on today without government funding. And government restrictions on fetal stem cell research only apply to government funded research, not private research. Indeed, where the promise of a return is greatest, there you will find the bulk of private investment.

So where do we find most private investment in stem cell research? Here’s a hint, it isn’t fetal stem cell research. Rather, it is in adult stem cell research. For those who believe in capitalism, this is as it should be. When fetal stem cell research genuinely shows promise, private investments will pour in like rain.

Myth #2

Fetal stem cell research promises fantastic cures for everything from Alzheimer’s to spinal cord injuries.

Fetal stem cell research may or may not ultimately produce cure or therapies for these and other diseases. The promises made, however, have little scientific support. There is no evidence that spinal cord injuries like Christopher Reeve’s could be cured through this research. Again, it is possible but not likely. Adult stem cell research, on the other hand, is already producing usable therapies by the dozens.

For example, in Portugal adult nasal stem cells have been used to successfully treat spinal cord injuries.  “Six out of seven patients regained certain muscle functions and feeling after treatment.”

In another example “islet cells from the pancreases of deceased human donors” was used to treat diabetes in 250 patients.  In over 80% of those patients insulin treatments were no longer needed for at least a year.

Parkinson’s Disease has been successfully treated using “brain injections of a natural body chemical known as glial cell-line derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF).”  61% of those treated experienced improvement in their ability to deal with daily tasks more than a year later.

Adult stem cell research isn’t just promising, it is delivering results.  Fetal stem cell research, on the other hand, still makes great promises with no results after years of private research.  Indeed, private money is shrinking for fetal stem cell research precisely because it is not producing results.

As I said before, there are debates to have about the moral and ethical implications of fetal stem cell research.  But the debate today should be about what is the best use of federal dollars, dollars that come out of your pocket and mine.  Based on the facts I can’t see how spending my tax dollars on fetal stem cell research is a good investment.