First Veto

After five years of his reign.......er, presidency, Bush is about to veto his very first piece of legislation. And what piece of legislation can be so egregiously horrible that even Bush can't stand it? Allowing polluters to pollute more? Allowing more arsenic in our water and more mercury in our children? Some huge wasteful spending package?

No.

President Bush will likely cast the first veto of his presidency if the Senate, as expected, passes legislation to expand federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research, White House aide Karl Rove said today.

"The president is emphatic about this," Rove - Bush's top political advisor and architect of his 2000 and 2004 campaigns...

The U.S. House of Representatives has already passed the legislation, co-sponsored by Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Denver, and Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del. If the Senate approves the bill it would go to the president's desk.

Stem cell research? Well, who could possibly profit from such a nefarious practice?

"I'm appalled that Bush would use the first veto of his presidency to veto a bill that could help 110 million people and their families," DeGette said today after being informed of Rove's remarks.

.....The Bush administration's stem cell policy, adopted in 2001, has been to allow federal research funding only for existing lines of embryonic stem cells. Researchers and patients groups have complained that the policy hinders vital research into treatments for diabetes, Parkinson's disease and other illnesses.

So who would benefit from vetoing this legislation?

"We were all an embryo at one point, and we ought to as a society be very careful about being callous about the wanton destruction of embryos, of life," Rove said. Recent research, he said, shows that researchers "have far more promise from adult stem cells than from embryonic stem cells."

Rove is locking up the all-important Blastocyst-American (and right wingnut) vote, I see. The War On Science continues!!!!!

(Note: Rove lied. Adult stem cells are very limited in their potential, and research has proved unpromising; most researchers prefer to use embryonic cells because of their potential to differentiate into any cell type. And I have doubts about his former emrbyonicity.....)