7/25 - Bill Donohue

• Commentary on Better Know a District. Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Florida) appeared on the show on July 20 and is on-line here. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Georgia) appeared on the June 14 show and is on-line here.
  The morning talk shows are not the first to ask why politicians appear on the show. A New York Times article from February 2006 is on-line here.
  By the way, the Ten Commandments, otherwise known as the Decalogue, are drawn from God's speech to Moses on Mount Sinai in the Book of Exodus, Chapter 20. As generally understood, the first four commandments deal with the beliefs and practices of Christians and Jews. The last six are moral and ethical rules dealing with general behavior and are thus applicable to non-believers.
  1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
  2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.
  3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
  4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant.
  5. Honour thy father and thy mother.
  6. Thou shalt not kill.
  7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
  8. Thou shalt not steal.
  9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
  10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant.

• The Word: Opposite Day. President George W. Bush vetoed a bill (H.R. 810) that would have changed Bush’s federal policy and would have allowed for federal funding of research on embryonic stem cells that are taken from embryos that would otherwise be destroyed. The Senate passed the bill by a 63-37 vote on July 18, Bush vetoed the bill on July 19 (veto message on-line here and press conference on-line here), and the House, which had passed the bill in 2005, failed to get the 2/3 majority necessary to override the veto.
  While federal funding has been limited, California has been working to fund stem cell research. On July 20, the day after Bush’s veto, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger directed the California Department of Finance to move forward on a $150 million loan to the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (release on-line here). The institute was established in 2004 after California voters passed a referendum that will provide $3 billion in funding for stem cell research and is on-line here.
  Embryonic stem cells have been controversial in recent years, first because of their derivation from aborted fetuses, and then because of their connection with a particular kind of human, non-reproductive cloning. Stem cells in general are unspecialized cells that can self-renew indefinitely and that can develop into more mature cells with specialized functions, and embryonic stem (ES) cells are derived from an early-stage embryo. Whether the federal government should fund the development of such cells grew into a major policy question in recent years, culminating with Bush's decision on August 9, 2001 to allow federal funding for research on then-existing stem cell lines as long as the lines were derived from embryos that were already destroyed and that had not been created specifically for research (on-line here).

posted by Stephen Lee @ 7/26/2006 07:46:00 AM