News and Views

Scientists have found a way to bypass embryos to make stem cells. This is good news for those troubled by using human embryos to harvest stem cells which they believe is ‘taking human life’. Nonetheless, some businesses and researchers will ignore the new technology and continue using human embryos but now they cannot say there is no alternative. By the way, it still hasn’t been shown that other stem cell sources are not equally effective for the intended purposes.

Help is on the way for borrowers who took advantage of low interest adjustable rate mortgages when rates were low but cried foul when interests rates when up. Once again prudent borrowers are at a disadvantage because they paid higher initial mortgage rates and no one wants to help them with their mortgage payments. It looks like it pays to be dollar foolish instead of penny wise.

Claiming bias and racism is the answer to anything if the facts are against you. The latest use of this accusation is the basis for the ACLU suit to strike down the workers compensation law that California enacted a short while ago to give businesses a slight break over the prior workers compensation law that drove many out of business. Under the current law benefits calculations are to take into consideration the health and physical condition of claimants at the time an incident occurs for which benefits are claimed. The ACLU says the law is biased because it leads to discrimination against older workers and women. However, the law is only trying to make sure employers are only charged for the percentage of disability the employment actually caused.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney just can’t catch a break. Despite the fact that the ‘leaker’ in the Valerie Plane case was well known, it was Richard Armitage, the liberal media is having a field day with a new book written by Scott McClellan that says he was made to lie to defend the administration. I must be missing something; if the real leaker was not part of the administration and press secretary McClellan was told the administration had nothing to do with leaking the name of alleged CIA agent Valerie Plane, exactly how was McClellan lied to?

News reports proclaim that the coming Cuban election (January 20th) will give us a clue as to Castro’s future. Now let’s see; Fidel is supposed to be near death (something he richly deserves for what he has done to his country) but the election is somehow considered important? After winning prior elections by huge margins as is common in communist countries where there is only one candidate, we are now expected to care whether Castro wins again? This is reminiscent of Chicagoans that want to be buried in Chicago so they can continue to be politically active.

Women should be happy they don’t live in Saudi Arabia. If a woman is raped in Saudi Arabia, they will be punished with jail and 200 lashes. Obviously the symbol of justice in Arabia is not a blindfolded woman with a scale.

If U.S. Secretary of State Rice and Israeli Prime Minister Olmert have their way, Israel will self destruct at Annapolis this month. There can be no other outcome when Israel cedes more land to Palestinian Arabs and agrees in advance to virtually all conditions Palestinian representative Abbas has insisted upon as necessary for him to show up at he useless ‘peace’ meeting. There is something wrong with a system that enables a political leader to enter into destructive settlements without his countrymen having a chance to vote on the ‘peace in our time’ agreement that will be the end of their country.

Olmert is not the only government leader that doesn’t want the citizens to have a say in what the government wants to do. In California Governor Schwarzenegger doesn’t want Californians to be able to vote on the Indian gaming compacts he and the legislature approved for selected Indian Tribes in the state. The governor sent a letter to the court that will decide whether the issue can be put on the ballot as a referendum; the governor believes the people shouldn’t be able to vote on this because the state needs the money the compacts will generate. If the governor succeeds, then why would any future referendum be put on the ballot because the state will always ‘need the money’ to fund more give away programs and unnecessary spending.

You may have eaten your last California Coho salmon. A Court of Appeal has approved the Coho as an endangered specie. We know what that means; the Coho you eat may put you in jail where you can be sure the menu does not include endangered species.