CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, May 30, 2005

Stem cells, 14 Dwarfs and Amb. Clint Eastwood?

Stem-cell research. Contrary to the mainstream media (MSM) hype, the United States Government has not banned stem-cell research. In fact, the Bush Administration is spending a record $566 million on stem-cell research that does not require the destruction of potential human life. That is over double the stem cell-research spending of the Clinton Administration.

Also contrary to the MSM, the on-going harvesting of no longer needed umbilical cords and placentas is providing an abundance of stem cells for research, and without the destruction of viable human embryos. Meanwhile, private-sector stem-cell research and development companies that do not need to be concerned about spending tax dollars for some forms of stem-cell research that some taxpayers find objectionable, are swamped with investment dollars.

So, if you or your loved ones are suffering from the currently incurable diseases or conditions that might be fixed by some future stem-cell development, rested assured your federal government and the private sector are moving forward at flank speed. Read Jeremy Rifkin’s The Biotech Century. Your mind will be boggled by what stem-cell nanotechnology is doing, and about to do.

The U.S. Senate and the 14 Dwarfs. Last week, seven Democrat and seven GOP Senators signed an agreement designed to prevent the U.S. from resuming the 214-year-old practice of affording presidential judicial nominees an up or down vote on the Senate floor.

Indeed, Senator Majority Leader, Senator Bill Frist, was on the brink of returning the U.S. Senate to its 214-year-old tradition when the votes Frist needed to prevail were undercut when GOP Senator John McCain got six other Republican Senators to join with seven Democrat Senators in an agreement that dodged the issue of getting the Senate to afford an up or down vote to presidential judicial nominees.

The McCain-engineered agreement wounded, but did not kill, the presidential aspirations of Senator Frist who is seen by his supporters as the victim of McCain’s betrayal. At the same time, McCain killed his chances of ever becoming the presidential nominee of the Grand Old Party.

The GOP’s core activists, the folks who stuff the envelopes, lick the stamps and attend the off-year GOP party meetings, will never forgive McCain’s latest duplicity. Now, McCain’s best shot would be to switch parties and try to win the Democrat nomination. While McCain might switch parties, his chances of getting the Democrat nomination would be somewhere between slim and none.

John Bolton vs. Mr. Peepers. Those who see the United Nations for what it is -- a criminal enterprise controlled by a collection of thugs and tyrants -- are hoping the U.S. Senate will confirm Ambassador John Bolton to represent the U.S. inside that slab-sided Tower of Babel along New York City’s East River. Actually, it’s not a river. It’s an estuary. But nothing is real about the U.N. to begin with.

Conceivably, President Bush might have preferred Arnold Schwarzenegger or Clint Eastwood. But Arnold is busy managing the world’s seventh largest economy. No longer the Mayor of Carmel, Mr. Eastwood might be available if the Democrats filibuster the Bolton nomination to death.

Those who see the U.N. as humankind’s last best hope for peace on earth are hoping President Bush will give in and send either Mr. Peepers or the exhumed corpse of Rev. Fred Rogers to make those naughty U.N. bureaucrats see the error of their ways.

But the Bush Administration isn’t about to send a Mr. Peepers or a Mr. Rogers to make nice-nice in swank upper East Side apartments with the folks who tried, and so far succeeded, in pulling off the biggest scam in world history -- the U.N. Oil for Food Program.

Admittedly, an Ambassador Eastwood would need some language training so he could say, in French, German and Russian, “Make my day.” Better yet, he could use schoolboy Latin and say: “Fac diem meum.”

William Hamilton, a syndicated columnist, a featured commentator for USA Today and self-described “recovering lawyer and philosopher,” is the co-author of The Grand Conspiracy and The Panama Conspiracy – two thrillers about terrorism directed against the United States.

©2005. William Hamilton.

Dr. Hamilton can be contacted at:

Email: william@central-view.com