Obama Puts U.S. Back Into The Scientific Community-- Reactionaries Like Eric Cantor Bray In Horror

Bush couldn't-- quite literally-- watch TV and chew a pretzel at the same time. But he isn't living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue any longer. And the mess he and his foul regime left behind may take as long to clean up as it took to create. Fortunately we have an elected president-- responsible to the American people who elected him, not the special interests-- living at that address now, one who can do many things at the same time. And his team is made up of public servants not of self-servers operating at the expense of the public. Clearly, President Obama's #1 priority-- as he's always said it would be and as his actions have shown it is-- is the economy, the area Bush and hypocritical Republican rubber stamps like Eric Cantor, did the most damage.

At the same time his administration is working to unfoul the foreign relations messes Bush created in every corner of the globe. And the hash Bush made of the U.S. Justice system isn't something that can exactly be left on the back burner either. Obama is determined to move fast and to move NOW on a wide variety of problems left by years of Bush-Republican misrule. Republican obstructionists are determined to block him from accomplishing his agenda, the one that got him elected just a 3 months ago. Today President Obama is lifting the ban on stem cell research that the medieval minds who had been formulating the Bush Regime's policies towards all things science-based had put in place.

When the president signs the executive order reversing the Republican right's position, which has endangered America's standing in the international research and development community, he is expected to make an announcement about a broader initiative to restore scientific integrity to government processes.

Critics of the Bush administration accused it of inserting ideology into the scientific process -- from the stem cell issue to climate change and even contraception. The Obama administration has been working to overturn these policies.

Count on Virginia's most reactionary congressman, Eric Cantor, to run to the media and squeal like a stuck pig on behalf of his obstructionist caucus. Yesterday on CNN he called the executive order "a distraction." I think to the thousands and thousands of families who have been hopeful that cures to serious diseases, from Lou Gehrig's disease, Parkinson's disease, and diabetes to spinal-chord injuries, heart disease and cancer, would be in the works for the last 8 dark years, it's anything but a distraction. Although if the Eric Cantors of the world want to squabble about science and stop obstructing the president's plans to revitalize the middle class, that would be no one's loss.

Obama will leave the thorny issue of whether or not to allow federal dollars to be used in stem cell research to Congress.

The order will allow research on countless stem-cell lines already in existence, as well as ones yet to be created, typically from embryos left over from fertility treatments that would otherwise be discarded.

The order comes just in time for researchers to take advantage of money in Mr. Obama’s economic recovery package and use it for stem cell studies. But because of the Dickey-Wicker amendment, federal researchers would still be unable to create their own stem cell lines.

Mr. Obama has no power to overturn the Dickey-Wicker ban. Only Congress, which attaches the ban to appropriations bills, can overturn it. Mr. Obama has not taken a position on the ban and does not intend to, Melody C. Barnes, his chief domestic policy adviser, said Sunday. The president believes stem-cell research “should be done in compliance with federal law,” she said.