Another New Medical Treatment Thanks to "Adult" Stem Cells
The Guardian (U.K.) has a revealing report about yet another dramatic medical breakthrough using so-called "adult" stem cells; that is, human stem cells that are obtained without resorting to killing developing human beings. In this case, the treatment involved is for kids with Type 1 diabetes and the helpful stem cells are acquired from blood saved from their umbilical cords.
Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology, considers global warming a bunch of hooey.
Religious minorities face increasing threats of physical violence in Turkey. Indeed, violent assaults against religious minority leaders (including murder) have been increasing dramatically...and with no end in sight.
...If things continue to go as they began this week on Operation Arrowhead Ripper, there will be major successes against Al Qaeda and their affiliates in Baqubah and Diyala province. In Al Anbar, the Marines and their Sunni allies will continue the process of building new police stations and bringing security to neighborhoods once dominated by Al Qaeda. And in Maysan province, Iranian-supported Shiite militias will continue to get rolled up by U.S. and British Special Operations units. But little of that -- other than the inevitable casualty figures -- will be worthy of being called "news" by the potentates of the press.
Here is a very good, very penetrating analysis of this week's Supreme Court decision scaling back the McCain-Feingold's prohibitions of free speech. It comes, by way of a Newt Gingrich suggestion, from the Political Law Advisory group at McKenna, Long & Aldridge.
The crimes of which the Democrat Attorney General is charging George Tiller (shown at right) are only misdemeanors and none, of course, connect to the butchery of abortion itself. And we may well see nothing more than a slap on the wrist from the courts. Nevertheless, given Tiller's national notoriety and the political history involved, this is a surprising (and welcome) development.
Feminist Follies Come to Wimbledon
...We have it on the authority of Hillary Clinton that women playing at the Wimbledon tournament will finally receive their due this year: “Wimbledon agreed to pay their women tennis champions the same amount of prize money as their male champions. It only took 123 years for them to do the right thing,” Mrs. Clinton recently exulted.
Even this news report refers to the abortionist as a "quack" but only because he doesn't have a medical license. Truth be told, all abortionists should be considered "quacks" for engaging in such heinous crimes against their patients.
Glenn Penner, the Chief Executive Officer of Voice of the Martyrs and one of the contributors to its superb web site, writes the following about George Jonas' book, Reflections on Islam:
There's always humor in the essays of Don Feder, but the humor is used in the service of very serious exhortations. His latest is no exception. It is a compelling satire of the Democrats' new interest in religion -- an interest quite pragmatic, laughably shallow, and anything but the old time religion they hope to pry American voters away from.
Less than a month before the Democrats rode their tsunami-like wave into power, the leftwing radio company, Air America, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This should tell you something about the market for liberal talk radio. Rather than compete for audience share, liberals have screamed for government enforced equality.
Comments from Bob Novak's always valuable Evans-Novak Political Report:
Not everyone buys into the prevailing entertainment philosophy among American Christians that approves of...say, books, TV shows or feature films only because they are somewhat "better" than other offerings. This argument suggests, for instance, that we applaud Hollywood whenever it makes a movie that is kinda' decent, that doesn't offend as much as the normal stuff the industry produces.
Jon Sanders announces the Republican nominees for the increasingly infamous Nagin/Nifong Award for Inconceivable Incompetence in the Line of Duty.
Bill Dedman, investigative reporter for MSNBC.com, published a story today that documents, through Federal Election Commission records, the political contributions of 144 journalists from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign. The facts show: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes while only 17 journalists gave to Republicans; another 2 gave to both parties.
Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning talks with Patrick Ruffini about the decision to run against Senator Chuck Hagel:
The World Congress of Families passes along a few insightful tidbits about Western culture's new fascination for tattoos. The first two come from a Natasha Singer story in the June 17 New York Times and the third from a 2002 article in Pediatrics Magazine by Sean T. Carroll et al.
Episcopal Church leaders meeting in Parsippany, N.J. this past week tightened the noose around orthodox dioceses necks saying that any attempt by them to leave The Episcopal Church with their properties will be met with lawsuits from the national church.
Vice President Dick Cheney, a former Wyoming congressman, administered the oath of office to incoming Senator Dr. John Barrasso earlier today. Barrasso fills the vacancy left in the Senate when Craig Thomas died June 4th.
Global Warming Hysteria Creating a Major Threat to Freedom
Vaclav Klaus, the former professor of economics who is now the President of the Czech Republic, wrote a bold, enlightening piece last week for the Financial Times about the extreme perils to democracy, the prosperity of a market economy, and even individual liberty posed by...the scare-mongers in the global warming scam.
...America's elderly are facing a "perfect storm" of societal pressures that will compound these problems. First, our culture has adopted a "disposable-man" ethic that rates people on a sliding "quality of life" scale to determine whether they are worthy of life. Those who rate poorly on this scale, including the unborn, the handicapped, and the aged, frequently find themselves at significant risk of attacks on their dignity.
While touring the Incan city of Machu Picchu in Peru's Andes on Friday, actress Cameron Diaz touted an olive green bag emblazoned with a red star and the words "Serve the People" printed in Chinese, one of the most famous (and tragically ironic) political slogans of Chinese Communist thug Mao Zedong.
...According to Richard Milton, who wrote Shattering The Myths of Darwinism, the chances of forming protein and self-replicating DNA randomly are as likely as 'winning the state lottery by finding the winning ticket in the street, and then continuing to win the lottery every week for a thousand years by finding the winning ticket in the street each time' (in other terms, one chance in 10 to the 65th power).
In recent years, Confucianism has been making a steady comeback in China. After decades of effort to destroy the ideology and its institutions, even the Communist party-state has "endorsed" Confucian ideas and drawn on them in its political slogans. Chinese people also seem to have a growing interest in applying Confucius' teachings to resolve social problems.
Southern Baptists approved a resolution on global warming that questions the prevailing scientific belief that humans are largely to blame for the phenomenon and also warns that increased regulation of greenhouse gases will hurt the poor.
The next edition of the new Caption Game is up over on The Book Den and it's a bit more serious than the first. That's because the subject of the quotations is "hero" and the accompanying photos illustrate just a few of mine: Neil Armstrong, Edith Cavell, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Thor Heyerdahl, Audie Murphy, Harriet Tubman, and missionary William Carey.
Reuben F. Johnson, writing for The Weekly Standard, describes yet another Russian murder mystery that is going not only unsolved...but tragically unreported as well.
From Radio Free Europe comes this disappointing news:
The decision came as a compromise necessary for setting out new rules and procedures for the UN body, which was formed a year ago to replace the UN Human Rights Commission. The compromise allows the council to censure human-rights abusers with a simple majority of member states.
Each night, in the United States, more than 50 million children eat dinner without their fathers. Given this grim statistic, it seems appropriate to wonder what difference a father makes anyway. Or, put differently, does dining with Dad matter, or is a father at the dinner table like a kidney or a lung - nice to have but not essential for living?
An Episcopal priest in Washington state recently announced that she is both a Christian and a Muslim. The Rev. Ann Holmes Redding of Seattle made her profession of faith in Islam in March 2006. Episcopal Church Center employees told the Seattle Times that a person of dual faiths can serve as Episcopal clergy at the diocesan bishop’s discretion. The Rt. Rev. Vincent Warner, bishop of the Diocese of Olympia, reportedly accepts Redding’s dual faiths; consequently, she remains a priest in good standing within the diocese.
He introduced more hit songs in movies than any singer. He has been rated in the Top Five Hollywood Actors of All Time. Balanchine and Nureyev argued that he was the greatest dancer of the twentieth century.
This past Sunday, a bit over a 6th of the Southern Baptist congregation showing up for the vote elected Julie Pennington-Russell, a married mother of two, to become the senior pastor of their Atlanta-area megachurch.
This Michelle Malkin column reports the clear and ever-increasing dangers of Muslim intolerance, dangers that continue to go unreported by the MSM and unchallenged by the political powers of Western civilization. Here is just part of her compelling piece:
"This man not only provoked violence around the world because of his writings, but there were many people who were killed around the world. . . . Forgiving and forgetting is one thing, but honouring the man who has blood on his hands, sort of, because of what he did, I think is going a bit too far."
A bill on Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt’s desk would prohibit public school districts from working with groups that provide abortion services or referrals.
Senator Tom Coburn, the ranking member of the Minority Office of the Federal Financial Management Subcommittee, has a report he'd love to see publicized, a 115-page oversight report that details how the Centers for Disease Control has flipped out...with your money!
* $5.1 million on “audio visual integration” in the new Thomas R. Harkin communications and visitor center, including a giant 70-foot-wide by 25-foot-tall video wall of plasma screen TVs showcasing agency vignettes;