thursday

“what the heck is this?”

At first I thought Harry had called them “Rethugs” at 0:51 and I was about to send him roses. 😳

tea party shows its strength!

Louie Gohmert addresses an, um, crowd (TwitPic)

Thanks Doris 😉

court sides with wh on stem cell suit

President speaks with former first lady Nancy Reagan after signing the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission Act, June 2, 2009. Nancy Reagan, an outspoken advocate of stem cell research, praised and thanked President Obama for lifting restrictions on research.

AP: A lawsuit that had threatened to end the Obama administration’s funding of embryonic stem cell research was dismissed Wednesday, allowing the U.S. to continue supporting a search for cures to deadly diseases over protests that the work relies on destroyed human embryos.

The lawsuit claimed that research funded by the National Institutes of Health violated the 1996 Dickey-Wicker law that prohibits taxpayer financing for work that harms an embryo. But the administration policy allows research on embryos that were culled long ago through private funding.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, chief of the federal court in Washington, last year said the lawsuit was likely to succeed and ordered a stop to the research while the case continued. But under swift protest from the Obama administration, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals here quickly overturned Lamberth’s injunction and said the case was likely to fail…..

More here

WH: Today, patients suffering from diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and heart disease and their families got good news when a federal judge ruled in favor of the government in a lawsuit challenging the Obama Administration’s work to support stem cell research.

While we don’t know exactly what stem cell research will yield, scientists believe this research could treat or cure diseases that affect millions of Americans every year. That’s why President Obama has long fought to support responsible stem cell research.

More here

‘get over it: this is who obama is’

James Warren (The Atlantic): From his community organizing days to the Illinois State Senate, Barack Obama has always put pragmatic deal-making above ideology, even when it angered allies

As President Obama is pilloried by the left, including by bloggers and editorial writers, for supposedly selling them out during debt ceiling negotiations, a reality check is desperately needed.

Get over it, guys and gals, and remember whom you’re fuming over: a deal-making community organizer.

Recognize this man? In a showdown with ideological enemies, he fashioned compromises which made some Democratic allies apoplectic. Republicans weren’t happy, either, with what he wrought but grudgingly realized there were few alternatives.

Throughout he exhibited a preternatural calm, always seeking some common ground among disparate interests as if compromise was a goal in and of itself, not any diminution of principle as some Democrats thought.

Yes, that’s our president, the man at the center of the improbable Debt Debate of 2011. But it was also State Senator Barack Obama a decade ago. The equally rancorous issue back then was the death penalty and the setting was the Illinois legislature. Not much about him has changed.

“His ideological inclinations are liberal but, as far as being a politician, he’s about getting things done. He was always pragmatic and about getting things done,” said Peter Baroni, a Republican attorney-law professor-lobbyist in Chicago who had a bird’s eye view of Obama while serving as legal counsel to Republicans in the Illinois Senate and to its Judiciary Committee.

Full article here

Thanks Loriah