Hate "Hate Crimes" Legislation

Americans have observed with horror how hate crimes legislation overseas has been used as a license to persecute Christians. Here at home, the U.S. House is poised to make those fears a reality by expanding the current "hate crimes" law. This--more than any other issue--could destroy the freedom of speech as we know it. Hate crime laws trample free speech, lead to baseless arrests, and censor speech. More and more, liberals are trying to make it so that Christians have a harder time impacting America. When it all comes down to where the "rubber meats the road", "We ought to obey God rather than men." (Acts 5:29b)

Another Win for HUMAN LIFE

We applaud our friends on the Hill for catching and turning back a deceptive bill by Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo). Wednesday night DeGette attempted to sneak a bill through the process which she promoted as a human cloning ban. She put the bill into the legislative schedule at a time when no amendments (and relatively no debate) could be offered. Then, she and other liberals lobbied their colleagues by claiming that the bill would outlaw human cloning, when in fact, it would have given scientists carte blanch to clone embryos as long as the clones were destroyed. In other words, the legislation would have not only allowed cloning but required killing. The bill was so unpopular that Democrats couldn't even convince a majority to vote for their measure, let alone find the two-thirds votes necessary to move the bill forward. And it is no wonder, since 86% of the American people oppose the very cloning this bill pushed. Today, the House is poised to vote on S. 5, another bill that would require the destruction of human embryos for research. Considering yesterday's announcement that scientists had successfully transformed skin cells into stem cells that could eventually treat disease, expanding funds for unethical research seems seriously misguided. Money should be directed to pro-life alternatives that are treating people now. Rather than siphon money away from adult stem cell treatments which are actually benefiting patients, we should focus our resources on results.

Popular Science? Congress Revisits Stem Cells

Congress hopes to cast another vote on the bill to expand taxpayer funds for research that destroys human embryos. In the House, leaders will decide whether or not to sign on to the Senate version of the bill, S. 5, which includes slight changes to the initial legislation. Since the House already approved an earlier bill, the vote is simply political theater. In an effort to preemptively rebuke the President's veto, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is using the vote as a public relations stunt to showcase Congress's approval for the research. Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), which owns the patents to human embryonic stem cells as well as to the process of destroying embryos to get the cells, is fighting to maintain its grisly monopoly after the Patent & Trade Office has indicated it could revoke the patents. The patents provide significant royalties, allowing WARF to profit, with government sanction, from their original embryo destructive research--even if it never yields useful treatments. Is it just me or is something wrong with that picture? While Congress fritters away its time on science that has yielded little in the way of real treatments, the journal Cell Proliferation has published a study on adult stem cells extracted from the umbilical cords of newborns. According to the article, those "adult" cells have been successfully engineered to produce insulin and could soon be used to treat diabetes patients. If Congress is going to spend our hard-earned money, I suggest they put it to better use and fund true progress like this!