Briefly Noted
- President Bush, on stem cell funding: "'I am confident I have achieved the right balance between science and ethics. ... There are ethical dilemmas when it comes to science, and I think it's very important for a government to recognize those ethical dilemmas. The dilemma I was faced with was do I allow the destruction of life in order to advance science." Of course, since the current bill would only allow research on stem cells from embryos that would otherwise be destroyed, it's apparently quite acceptable to the president to allow the destruction of life in order not to advance science.
- Supreme Court nominee Judge John Roberts has submitted 83 pages of responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee, on everything ranging from his financial status to his judicial philosophy. I have not yet read through them all, but the files are here and here (PDF). The Times has some initial analysis (as does the Post, here) mainly highlighting Roberts' answer to a question about judicial activism. Nothing particularly worrisome in the quotes they choose, at least. I'll have more on this once I've read over the documents.
- Bush has spent more than a fifth of his presidency on vacation, says the Washington Post. His five weeks in Crawford this summer mark the longest presidential "retreat" in at least 36 years.
- Federal judge Martha Pechman, ruling from Seattle, said Monday "that the Bush administration broke environmental laws last year when it cleared the way for more commercial logging of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest and Northern California," reports the LA Times. The Administration had argued that conducting endangered-species surveys mandated under the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan "were expensive and time-consuming and had made it impossible for the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to conduct the volume of logging permitted under the Northwest plan." Pechman called the survey requirement "a necessary part" of the overall strategy to protect endangered species in the region. Three cheers for Judge Pechman!
- USA Today examines some new elements of the Christian conservative movement, focusing on Ohio. I hope to have more on this later as well.
- I agree with Slate. Whoever wrote this NYT editorial ought to be run out of town on a rail. Talk about trivializing an important issue.
posted by JBD @ 9:02 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Glad to see you can't stop posting to get a rest. :)
Where's the posting on the Ohio election of the Veteran from Iraq and his quest to unseat a Republican in Congress?
No rest for the weary ... just lots of delightfully boring Supreme Court nominee submissions!
I have been leaving the Hacket-Schmidt discussions to the Kossacks and the Red-Staters (not that it hasn't been interesting to watch, but I just didn't get as into it as those on the fringes. Both sides wanted to (and are) making it into a much bigger "thing" than it probably should be. I certainly was suprised that Hackett got as close as he did, considering the district's history - but I don't think it was as much a "referendum" on anything as either left or right wanted it to be.
I agree with you and I would add I do think that it may say something about some Republicans in Ohio and the Democrats, of course, getting fed up with this lack of a real Plan to secure Iraq.
I made a breif posting and reference to the elction on my Blog a few minutes ago.
As I democrat I'm exhausted of both the democrats and republicans having no solutions, just a lot of tired rhetoric. They have (in my mind) achieved no formidable agenda this session, and have done nothing but cat-attacked one another on statements, and have continued to nit-pick to avoid having to acutally work for the constituency.
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