New Site

I am now blogging on a new site, http://ruah.dlbwebdev.com.

And Now for Some Good News

This article is via Wesley Smith at Secondhand Smoke. Louisiana's governor has just signed a new bill that prevents the spouse of a disabled person from making a decision to end life support if said spouse is currently cohabiting with someone else or has a history of conviction for violent crimes. Had such a law been in place in Florida, Michael Schiavo, who was living with another woman and had children with her, would not have been able to end Terri Schiavo's life. A lot of things have been alleged in the Terri Schiavo case, but one thing is certainly true. Michael had ample reasons for wanting to get rid of Terri and, as a result, should not have been allowed to make medical decisions for her.

Good for you, Louisiana! I'd love to see a lot more states enact such a law.

Tempest in a Teapot

I've been working on some changes to ruah including a move. Therefore, I haven't been doing any actual blogging lately, but this business about Valerie Plame and Karl Rove is such nonsense, I had to chime in.

Valerie Plame was working under "nonofficial cover" (NOC) status, although she had not really been doing any undercover work for years. After her last overseas assignment, she had returned to the country, married Joseph Wilson, and had twins. It has been years since her last overseas assignment, but her status was never changed.

The important point to make about this is that the law that the Democrats claim has been broken does not apply here. It applies to agents working under NOC status who have had overseas assignments within the last five years. Since Ms. Plame has not been overseas in years, no law has been broken. Some of her friends and neighbors knew that she worked at the CIA headquarters and assumed that she was an overt employee of that organization since she had apparently told people that she worked there.

Any number of people could have told the press that she worked for the CIA, but the Democrats hate Rove and would love to use this to get rid of him. They, and their friends in the media, keep the chant going, but the special prosecutor says that Rove is not the target of the investigation.

Shouldn't this make us mad that there is even a special investigation using up our tax dollars? The investigation should have been over the moment it was understood that no law had been broken.

Pandora and the Supremes

I rarely, if ever, agree with my sister or my husband on things political, being the uber conservative that I am, but for once we all agree on something. We all think that this recent 5-4 Supreme Court ruling allowing cities to use eminent domain to seize property for private development stinks.

Thought I'd do some checking on what the polls, unscientific though they are, are saying. Here's a collection:

MSNBC: Was running 98% against the Supreme Court ruling out of 113,001 respondents when I visited.

CNN: Out of 177,974 respondents, 66% said eminent domain should never be used, 33% said it was OK for public use activity only, and 1% thought it was OK to use for private development.

Christian Science Monitor: 97.3% against using eminent domain for private development out of 2036 respondents.

There are virtually no restrictions now on state and local governments' ability to seize private property. Justice O'Conner wrote in her dissenting opinion:

Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms. As for the victims, the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The founders cannot have intended this perverse result.

Justice Thomas joined the dissent, writing as follows:

The Framers embodied that principle in the Constitution, allowing the government to take property not for 'public necessity,' but instead for 'public use.' Defying this understanding, the Court replaces the Public Use Clause with a 'Public Purpose' Clause, (or perhaps the 'Diverse and Always Evolving Needs of Society' Clause), a restriction that is satisfied, the Court instructs, so long as the purpose is 'legitimate' and the means 'not irrational.' This deferential shift in phraseology enables the Court to hold, against all common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation, is for a 'public use'.

I cannot agree. If such 'economic development' takings are for a 'public use,' any taking is, and the Court has erased the Public Use Clause from our Constitution, as Justice O'Connor powerfully argues in dissent. I do not believe that this Court can eliminate liberties expressly enumerated in the Constitution and therefore join her dissenting opinion. Regrettably, however, the Court's error runs deeper than this. Today's decision is simply the latest in a string of our cases construing the Public Use Clause to be a virtual nullity, without the slightest nod to its original meaning. In my view, the Public Use Clause, originally understood, is a meaningful limit on the government's eminent domain power. Our cases have strayed from the Clause's original meaning, and I would reconsider them.

Despite the recent story about an effort to seize Justice Souter's property for the "Lost Liberty Hotel", I suspect that those with power and influence--and properties that bring taxes into the public coffers--will not be the targets. It will be low income families who pay little property tax. And it will be churches, because governments make no tax money from them.

Update: Today, bipartisan bills were introduced in both the House and the Senate to pull federal funding from any project by state or local governments that would force people to sell their property for private development. And Nancy Pelosi said, "Wait! That has the effect of nullifying a Supreme Court decision!" (or words to that effect) So, Nancy, does that mean you wouldn't have supported it if legislation had been introduced to nullify the Supreme Court decision in the 2000 presidential election?

Embryonic Quality Stem Cells Can Be Extracted from Blood of Adults

I hadn't intended that this blog would be on nothing but stem cell research, but every day I keep hearing about how the U. S. is going to fall behind the rest of the world in stem cell research because the President won't let scientists clone embryos or use IVF embryos. I've gone over that ad infinitum elsewhere on this site and won't repeat myself here.

Today, I came across another piece of good news on adult stem cell research. It was announced in April, but I haven't heard anything about it in the MSM. Why doesn't that surprise me?

Scientists from the University of Leipzig have discovered a way to extract the most primitive stem cells (embryonic quality, or pluripotent) from the blood of adults.

According to the article, adults have around 10,000 stem cells circulating in the blood stream but only about 500 of them are the primitive stem cells. Since millions of such cells are required for research, and because the only way to identify them has been to dye them, making them useless for medical purposes, this hasn't been previously possible. Even though the drug, G-CSF, can be given to a donor to mobilize 200-300 million stem cells from the bone marrow, the dye process would still prevent the 5% primitive cells from being useful.

Now scientists have discovered another way to identify those cells. They have a more elastic "cytoskeleton" than other cells. The elasticity can be measured with an "optical stretcher", a laser that can test the cells without harming them.

Currently, the optical stretcher can test about 3,600 cells per minute, which isn't fast enough for industrial purposes; however, scientists believe that this can be improved. Meanwhile, this process is already being used to treat elderly patients with non healing wounds. Once they have extracted the primitive stem cells from the patient's own blood, they apply them to the wounds to speed healing.

Once again, adult stem cell research is leading the way. Do you suppose God is trying to tell us something?

Read the original press release here.

WOW!

St. Louis made the national news today. A fire and series of explosions occurred in a South City company, Praxair, that processes gasses for industry. It touched off blazes nearby, shook buildings, and sent fiery shrapnel hundreds of yards away. Although the property damage is probably going to be pretty significant, so far there have been no injuries!

There are two situations to be a little concerned about, however. Firefighters are wearing heavy gear, and the heat index is currently about 97 degrees, not to mention the much higher temperatures at the site, so they will need to be monitored for heat exhaustion. They are also monitoring the area for chlorine gas, since there was at least one tank of it on the site. Thus far, the tank appears to be stable, and the fires have burned down. They are continuing to monitor the air for anything toxic. Thank the Lord, apparently that hasn't happened either. What a miracle!

At the height of the fire, there were fireballs shooting into the air and heavy black smoke rolling over the area.

An Honest Scientist

James Thomson, the man who discovered human embryonic stem cells, is a developmental biologist and veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Thomson does advocate loosening of President Bush's limits on federal funding for ESCR; however, he certainly does not believe in lying about what ESCR is, what it might eventually be capable of, and the state of the science today. If you think that I have been prattling on without a reasonable understanding of this research, you might find this MSNBC interview with Dr. Thomson interesting. It's a long one, but a very interesting read, and he is very truthful. At one point, the interviewer tried to get him to say that cloning does not produce a human being.

Q: The people who use nuclear transfer generally say that the technique is optimized for producing the stem cells rather than making babies. They would not want to equate this with the process that produces embryos that were fit for implantation, and they’d argue that they’re using the reproductive process differently …

A: See, you’re trying to define it away, and it doesn’t work. If you create an embryo by nuclear transfer, and you give it to somebody who didn’t know where it came from, there would be no test you could do on that embryo to say where it came from. It is what it is.

It’s true that they have a much lower probability of giving rise to a child. … But by any reasonable definition, at least at some frequency, you’re creating an embryo. If you try to define it away, you’re being disingenuous.

And that's the problem with the MSM. They are either ignorant or disingenuous when it comes to these subjects. Dr. Thomson lays it on the line.

His Essence

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. A husband and wife team from South Dakota, Karen and Bob Tosterud, have come up with a scented candle that is supposed to smell like Jesus! My first reaction when I heard this was pretty negative, but wthen I read what they said about it, I started to change my mind a little bit.

The inspiration of His Essence comes from the Holy Bible. Psalm 45:8 tells us when Jesus returns, the scent of his garments will be of myrrh, aloe and cassia. We carefully combine these ingredients and the result is a fragrance which serves as a reminder of His Presence.

They believe that Psalm 45 is a Messianic Psalm referring to Christ's return, as do I. They claim that a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the candles support Christian ministries (but they don't say what Christian ministries, and there are a lot of heretical teachings that hide under the Christian banner.) They intend it to be a reminder of Christ's presence in our lives. Is that a bad thing? Hmmm, I still feel a little uncomfortable with this. I guess the jury is still out.

Our Big Spring Project

I know I haven't been blogging a lot lately. The weather outside has been beautiful, and my mind has just not been on it, especially since we've been making some landscaping changes to our backyard. I'm enjoying getting out and digging in the dirt. Must be some holdover from when I was a child doing the mud pie thing.

Anyway, we've decided to plant Missouri native wildflowers on our new berm, particularly wildflowers that will attract butterflies and/or birds. Even though we have one of those tiny backyards one sees in the city and live cheek-by-jowl with our neighbors on either side, the changes have made it feel like another room, private, even though it is outdoors. The next thing is to get actual patio furniture instead of those resin chairs, but that may have to wait until next year. This has been a rather big project for us.

Check it out.