A Stem Cell Research Proposal
-Anthony Congiano

To indulge in offering a solution for the current Stem Cell Research debate one must first agree that both sides present convincingly persuasive points.

Approaching my solution from a Centrist/Libertarian view, I first see an authoritarian Administration compelled to insert itself into the personal lives of ‘We the People’ at every turn. Matched with a Scientific & Medical community wishing to take embryos, which would otherwise be discarded, and experiment on those cells with the hope of eradicating a plethora of diseases. However, those stem cells, unintentionally floating in a Petri dish, are no more the property of the Doctors & Scientists eagerly seeking research, than they are the property of those eagerly seeking to preserve them.

I would reaffirm the mantra that a "Government that governs least governs best" and that the rightful owners, some might even say ‘parents’, of those stem cells should be the only ones with the right to make a decision concerning their fate.

Those couples, whom in their efforts to get pregnant initially created the embryos, should either make the choice to donate the unwanted stem cells for research, have them preserved, or simply allow them to be disposed of .

Both those politicians droolfuly seeking re-election and the medical community, along with those carrying slogans emblazoned across their picket signs, should simply step back from a debate in which they do not belong.

The only involvement of Congress should simply be to pass the funding for Stem Cell Research and the President should sign it into law. Then the rightful owners of the Stem Cells will determine which Petri dishes will be utlized in research and which shall not.

 

Keith Olbermann (D)
"The administration jumps on the necks of the news organization with both feet — or has its proxies do it for them. That’s beyond shameful. It’s treasonous."

Gen. Westly Clark (D)
"The Constitution gives us the right and the duty to question our government during good times and bad. Criticism and questions are patriotic."

Sen. Russell Feingold (D)
"The Supreme Court's decision concerning military commissions at Guantanamo Bay is a major rebuke to an administration that has too often disregarded the rule of law."

Anthony Congiano (D)
"In harmonious chorus, the ACLU defends the Bill of Rights and those minorities too unpopular to defend themselves; simultaneously this pedestals them as both the greatest defenders our Nation’s Freedoms and plunges them into the scourging distain of the authoritarian conservatives."

Gov. Howard Dean (D)
"DeLay is a symptom of a larger disease -- a sick Republican culture of corruption that touches everyone who took his dirty money, voted for his corrupt leadership, or sat silently while their party has sold our government to the highest bidder. The corruption extends to the House, the Senate, and the Bush Administration -- and this November the accountability must reach just as wide. "

Rep. Steve Israel (D)
"I agree that when you enlist in the military, you should be able to expect that you will be provided with the protective equipment needed to do your job. Reports [4-3-06] that one-fourth of the 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq are still waiting for the latest body armor are totally unacceptable."

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D)
"Over the past ten years, Members of Congress have raised their own pay by $31,000, but the minimum wage hasn't gone up a cent... In the wealthiest country on the face of the earth, no one who works for a living should have to live in poverty."

Amb. Joseph Wilson (D)
"...this administration has tried to manage and direct the news from the very beginning. As I point out in the book, they have made the lives of journalists very unpleasant. One journalist said he was afraid to go to print because he might end up in Guantanamo, which I take to be a metaphor for being cut out. Another journalist said I've got kids in a private school and a mortgage to pay..."

Sen. John F. Kerry (D)
“No one is going to question my commitment to the defense of our nation. I don't know what it is these Republicans, who didn't serve in any war, have against those of us who are Democrats who did.”

Rep. Craig Washington (D)
"I prefer a man who will burn the flag and then wrap himself in the Constitution to a man who will burn the Constitution and then wrap himself in the flag."

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D)
“The ultimate terrorism in a democracy is the sacrifice of civil liberties.”

Pres. Bill Clinton (D)
“I like that about the Republicans; the evidence does not faze them, they are not bothered at all by the facts.”

US Supreme Court
“We conclude that the military commission convened to try Hamdan [Gitmo Detainee] lacks power to proceed because its structure and procedures violate both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions.”

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R)
"I want to set the standard there that it is not optional for this president or any president or people in the executive community not to keep the intelligence committees fully informed of what they are doing... [the failure to brief the intelligence committees] may represent a breach of responsibility by the administration, a violation of law and, just as importantly, a direct affront to me and the members of this committee..."

Joe Scarborough (R)
"For me it comes down to double standards. I always apply the test of what we Republicans would have done had this happened during the 1990s. During the Clinton administration when I was sitting on the Judiciary Committee, I tell you what would have happened, we would have raised hell."

Sandra Day O'Connor (R)
[the Supreme Court has] "made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."

Sen. Arlen Specter (R)
"It's a challenge to the plain language of the Constitution... I'm interested to hear from the administration just what research they've done to lead them to the conclusion that they can cherry-pick."

Jack Cafferty (R)
"We better all hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, because he might be all that is standing between us and a full-blown dictatorship in this country."

Pres. George Bush (R)
"We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involed with the September eleventh"

John Dean (R)
"In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison… To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be 'a high crime' under the Constitution's impeachment clause."

Lou Dobbs (R)
"The Bush administration, corporate America, business groups, and their surrogate think tanks contend America must be able to kill U.S. jobs and move them to cheap foreign labor markets in order to be more productive, more competitive, and even more innovative…. We now have a half-trillion-dollar trade deficit, and our surplus in services is falling like an anvil. We're exporting jobs senselessly and importing debt held by foreigners that amounts to $3 trillion--and is rising fast.

AG Patrick J. Fitzgerald (R)
"Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer. In July 2003, the fact that Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer was classified. Not only was it classified, but it was not widely known outside the intelligence community. Valerie Wilson's friends, neighbors, college classmates had no idea she had another life. The fact that she was a CIA officer was not well- known, for her protection or for the benefit of all us."

CIA Larry C. Johnson (R)
"Instead of a President concerned first and foremost with protecting this country and the intelligence officers who serve it, we are confronted with a President who is willing to sit by while political operatives savage the reputations of good Americans like Valerie [Plame-Wilson] and [Ambassador ] Joe Wilson."

Justice Anthony Kennedy (R)
"The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech." 

Tony Snow (R)
“George W. Bush and his colleagues have become not merely the custodians of the largest government in the history of humankind, but also exponents of its vigorous expansion... Bush has “lost control of the federal budget and cannot resist the temptation to stop raiding the public fisc.”