I'm glad that the House did this. I just wish they had some backbone and did the same with some of the more egregious Bush signing statements, namely ignoring a provision banning the torture of terror detainees.
The House rebuked President Obama for trying to ignore restrictions to international aid payments, voting overwhelmingly for an amendment forcing the administration to abide by its constraints.
House members approved an amendment by a 429-2 vote to have the Obama administration pressure the World Bank to strengthen labor and environmental standards and require a Treasury Department report on World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) activities. The amendment to a 2010 funding bill for the State Department and foreign operations was proposed by Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), but it received broad bipartisan support.
My wife and I are fans of Fox's House. If you're a fan of the show, you know that the formula of finding out the causes of mysterious illnesses aren't the reason to watch. It's the dysfunctional relationships the title character has with his staff, boss and best friend that keep you riveted.
We've dealt with the original cast's transitions to minor roles, deaths of loved ones in bus accidents and even a deranged patient (or was it a patient's relative) shooting House in the neck. But I never saw what happened in the last episode coming at all. And how could anyone?
There was news that actor Kal Penn (of Harold and Kumar fame - he's Kumar) was leaving the show to work in the Obama administration. I thought it was a very admirable thing, putting your career on hold to serve your country. So how did the writers on House deal with Penn's exit? They had his character, Lawrence Kutner commit suicide.
Wasn't expecting that! Shocking to say the least. The end of the previous episode, Kutner's fine, let's another doctor take credit for his work to save his job, and then the beginning of the next episode he's finds Kutner dead in his bedroom with a bullet in his head, an apparent suicide.
I don't know if it was done for ratings because I hadn't heard anything about Penn's exit or the details of his demise before the actual broadcast - a secret well kept. But here's the weirdest part of this whole thing.
So long, Kutner. You were my second favorite character.
[*Note - Sorry if this was a spoiler of any kind, but it's almost 48 hours after the airing, so... tough.]
UPDATE (4/9/09 10:55am):Montel Williams interviews Kal Penn.
Well, we all now know what the new, little game is for the leaderless Greasy Obstructionist Party. And it's pretty much the same, old game that they've played because... well, they can't think of anything new.
President Obama's Economic Recovery Bill (H.R.1) wasn't good enough for the Republicans. They cited it didn't spend enough soon enough to jump start the economy according to their non-existent CBO report, although the actual CBO report showed something different. What was the answer? Tax cuts. So Obama obliged in the interest of bipartisanship.
Then there was this nasty little business of $200 million in family planning. How in the hell was that going to stimulate the economy? Contraceptives? Phooey! So, ignoring the fact that preventing sexually transmitted diseases saves the economy tens of billions of dollars yearly, President Obama asked the Democrats to remove the family planning provision and save it for a later date, and they obliged in the the interest of bipartisanship.
What about grass? Yes, at this point I'd like to get high too, but I'm talking about resodding the National Mall at a cost of $21 million. Could create some jobs, right? Perhaps the Parks Department could hire a lot of extra help, or maybe they could contract it out and employ who knows how many people (1,000? 3,000? 5,000?) to give a much needed facelift to our capital; to the place where 16 million tourists come from all over the world to enjoy our monuments and museums; to the space we use to honor our national heroes. But the myopic GOP thinks that it's wasteful spending. So Obama obliged in the interest of bipartisanship.
President Obama met with leaders of the Republican Party three times in the last week in an effort to get votes from the other side of the aisle - three times. The same number of times that George W. Bush met with Democratic leaders over his entire eight years. All this was in an effort of post partisanship. So how did the Republicans in the House thank President Obama for including them in the process? Not one Republican voted for H.R. 1. Not. One. Vote.
Ultimately, the thanks the GOP gave to the President was to water down the bill with more tax cuts and less stimulus spending - now if the whole thing shits the bed, Republicans can say they were against it all along, when in fact they contributed to weakening it while making believe they were honoring the spirit of bipartisanship. And then they went to the White House and drank Obama's liquor anyway.
At this point, the partisan in me wants the President to shut down the bill and start again with the bill he wanted, including the family planning money, including the National Mall money, including everything he compromised away and to reduce the tax cuts that the Republicans insisted he add. If he's not going to get any Republican votes, then fuck 'em, right? Why should they get any say if they're going to reject it out of hand anyway? And has anyone heard any idea on the Republican side of the aisle, just one idea, that would help the stimulus package besides tax cuts? Anyone?
According to Moody's Economy.com (featured on Rachel Maddow's show last night) for every government dollar spent on Food Stamps, it generates $1.73 in stimulative spending. Infrastructure? $1 in spending crates $1.59 in stimulus. As opposed to tax cuts, $1 will get you a $1.03 return and the lovely corporate tax cut? $1 in corporate tax cuts will get you $0.30 on the dollar - negative territory. But tax cuts is all the GOP will say when you pull the string on their back. Mortgage crisis? Tax cuts. Unemployment up? Tax cuts. Economy going in the shitter after eight years of tax cuts? ... Tax cuts.
Rachel Maddow and Don Manzullo
Here's the Maddow clip from last night in which she interviews Representative Don Manzullo (R-IL) who voted against the bill. See if you can make any sense out of what he's saying when it came to the auto industry and car vouchers.
I want to get this right. Here is Manzullo's quote:
"How do you 'prime the pump' to restart, for example, manufacturing? I've got a Chrysler facility in my district. The big problem is lack of orders. So here's what you do, it's something very, very simple. You take a $5,000 voucher, you go to your Chrysler dealer or dealer of your choice, you buy the car. You knock 25% off that car and you can buy a nice Jeep Patriot for less than $300 a month. We have to restart the channels of the supply line and manufacturing..."
Huh? So, you're going to send a family of four who makes $30,000 a year, or better yet, someone who's just lost their job a $5,000 voucher to go out and buy a car and their incentive is that they only pay less than $300 a month on a car they can't afford in the first place?
"... You don't make jobs when jobs already exist save for the lack of orders. There are enough people in this country today that would like to buy a new car. We went from 17 million new cars down to 10 million new cars. If we could get up to 15 million new cars, that's $75 billion in vouchers, that would (triggle? trickle?) over a trillion dollars, and that way people go back to work. There is nothing in this bill that puts people back to work."
Congressman Manzullo seems like a nice guy, but is it me or does he have no idea what the fuck he is talking about? He wants people to drive their new Jeep Patriot to a job that doesn't exist? Did I get that right?! He's looking at this completely backwards because he's worried about the manufacturing jobs in his district due to lack of demand for the product. The reason there is lack of demand is the lack of jobs generating the money for those people to then buy the cars and increase the demand, thereby putting those manufacturing jobs back on the clock.
He thinks there's enough people out there who can still buy a car with a little push. He forgets that unemployment is currently at 7.5% and 8.2% in his home state, and it'll probably get worse before it gets better. He's forgotten that 2.6 million people lost their jobs just in 2008 alone. But there should still be enough people out there who still want to buy a car, right? And a gas guzzler at that. As long as those jobs come back to his district, it's all good.
Using his analogy of "priming the pump," Manzullo wants to pour stimulus into the carburetor to get the engine running instead of pouring it into the gas tank to keep the engine running for a much longer period of time. And this is what Maddow argues in my favorite part of the exchange as she's getting under the good Congressman's skin in the nicest way possible.
Maddow: "The idea that family planning programs, putting down grass on the National Mall, all of these things that you guys have demonized, are in fact things that would put people back to work. That's the problem here."
Manzullo: "Wait a second, I am not demonizing putting grass back to work. (Maddow smiles) Items should be budgeted and then you should have items that are stimulus that go... in, in, in... the spending for stimulus is off budget, it goes directly to the deficit. Based upon your definition, I don't mean to argue with you but I'm having fun with you, every, every item of spending can be stimulus, that means you don't worry about paying for it, that means you don't worry about budget, that means then $11 trillion in debt. This stimulus package will add $365 billion in interest over the next 10 years bringing it up to $1.16 trillion."
Asked whether he would ever vote for a stimulus bill, Manzullo responds, "You bet, if it was modest..." to which Rachel replies, "We don't have a modest problem, sir."
Big problems demand big solutions. Hopefully this stimulus package will be "fixed" and large enough despite the Republican tinkering to get us moving in the right direction after initially taking it to the wrong mechanics. Then we can wave goodbye to the Republican Party though the rear view mirror.
Steve Benen at C & L notes National Review's Andrew McCarthy and his latest editorial calling House Democrats out for playing partisan politics by not passing the horrible FISA bill with retroactive telecom immunity, which he admits is a bad bill, but what other choice do we have?
Here's another choice. No immunity. As Kevin Drum points out: , "...if it’s that important, there’s a simple answer: pass the bill without telecom immunity. Then come back and introduce immunity in a separate bill. If you’ve got the votes for it, fine. If not, too bad. I’m against immunity myself — though hardly hellbent on the subject — but whichever way the vote went, in the meantime we’d have the FISA extension and surveillance could continue normally."
Drum also notes that the "FISA extension" is shorthand for the Protect America Act, which passed last November and extended (i.e., changed) the then-current FISA legislation in various ways. PAA sunsets on Saturday if a new bill isn't passed, but the original FISA legislation will stay in place. It just doesn't magically disappear thereby materializing nasty Muslims on the streets who want to kill us for our freedoms.
As I said before, if it were truly a matter of life and death, why would the president effectively veto the bill by threatening to do as much without the immunity provision? Answer: Because there's no "there" there. The only reasons the administration wants immunity passed is so they can get away with the further erosion of the Constitution, protect corporations yet again while screwing its citizens and hide the crimes they have committed. Immunity equals no investigation.
So who's playing political football with national security? The Democrats who are trying to preserve Fourth Amendment rights for US citizens, or the Republicans who walk out of Congress, holding their breath til they get their way, crying "it's my ball and I'm going home"?
This false argument that we need to protect the telecoms from lawsuits or else they won't help us is complete bullshit. Case in point were the telecoms who stopped providing the information because the FBI failed to pay their phone bills! If they were really doing it "in good faith", then the information would have kept on flowing. So there goes that argument.
If the US government has a warrant, then the telecoms HAVE TO comply and no lawsuit would stand up in court. But the fact of the matter is that the US government doesn't want to pick and choose who they need to surveil on real facts and real leads. They just want to look like they're doing something so they record and read EVERYTHING from EVERYONE... how in hell can they effectively sort through all that data? It's the equivalent of the "no-fly"watch list being 800,000 people long (and including Senator Ted Kennedy). If everyone's on it, then it's absolutely useless.
I'll have more on this later because in skimming through McCarthy's editorial, it reads like your basic GOP talking points memo through and through, so I feel the need to stab a few holes in it when I have more time... much more time.
Washington Post: The first Democratic-led Congress in a dozen years limped out of Washington last night with a lengthy list of accomplishments, from the first increase in fuel-efficiency standards in a generation to the first minimum-wage hike in a decade.
But Democrats' failure to address the central issues that swept them to power left even the most partisan of them dissatisfied and Congress mired at a historic low in public esteem.
One of the major reasons the Democrats have given for not persuing articles of impeachment is the fact that it would take too long, and Congress would get little to nothing else done in the process. Well I'm glad that they have time for this little resolution because I don't know how the American people have gotten by without it so far.
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) plans to take the House floor today and introduce a bill (HR 847) recognizing the “importance of Christmas and the Christian faith.”
A spokesman for King told ThinkProgress that the bill was introduced in response to previous resolutions recognizing the Muslim celebration of Ramadan and the Hindu Diwali.
I shit you not. This is an actual resolution brought to the floor by a religious nutbag who couldn't stand the thought of other religious observances getting an offical resolution (also idiotic) in a country that has a federal holiday on December 25th, where some form of Christianity accounts for over 75% of the religious denominations and where 1/3 of the entire world is Christian. Do we really need a resolution to say Christmas is good? What a taxpaying waste!
The House passed this bill today. The vote, surprisingly, was 372-9, with 10 members also voting "Present," meaning they took no position on the legislation, and 40 not voting. One of the "Present" votes was cast by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.). More Democrats -195 - voted for the bill than Republicans, 177.
The nine members who voted against the bill - God bless them! - are Reps. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), Bobby Scott(D-Va.), Pete Stark (D-Calif.) and Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.).
Well, that's a relief. Since we can't get these bastards to go after the criminal syndicate occupying the White House, I suppose I'll petition for Kwaanza to be next. I wonder how that vote will go?
The squad car turned onto the quiet street. The dispatcher had gotten a call of a possible domestic disturbance on First Street, unusual for that part of the neighborhood a few years ago, but it was becoming more and more frequent over the past year. The dispatcher answered the call and then the caller hung up after dispatch heard yelling in the background. Officer Kay exited the car and approached the large house. “Nice place,” he thought. “I wonder what’s going on in here.”
There were lights on inside, but all seemed eerily calm. He knocked on the door and waited a seemingly long while before knocking again. A few seconds later, the door cracked open a bit.
A small lady was on the other side. Through the opening Kay could see that she was visibly upset. She had a bruise on her right cheek and a small cut over her right eye.
“Ma’am, we received a call from this house. Are you okay?”
“Yes,” replied the obviously beaten woman. “I... I just tripped and fell down the stairs. It happens a lot… I’m a klutz. … I called 911 myself thinking I might need an ambulance,” said Nancy as her eyes welled up with tears, “but I’m okay now. It’s not as bad as I thought.”
“Well is anyone in the house with you? Do you need medical attention?”
Just then, Kay heard a voice coming from inside the house. “Who the hell’s at the door?!” “Here we go…” Kay thought.
He heard steps coming toward the door and it forcefully swung completely open, Nancy visibly flinching as it whizzed by her.
“Oh… good evening, officer. Kin a help ya?” said a man of considerable size. He stunk of cheap whiskey and seemed agitated, sweat beaded on his forehead and he looked disheveled in his stained Ohio State tee shirt. He seemed to trip on himself a bit at the door as he reached into his pocket for a cigarette. Kay knew what he was in for.
He had seen this all before. An obviously battered spouse. A belligerent, overbearing man who pushed his compromising wife to the edge time and time again, and shoved her around if she dared talked back. He’d seen these types of cowards before.
Unfortunately, Kay’s hands were tied. The law prevented him from doing anything unless Nancy filed a complaint.
“Sir, we received a call and...”
“Yeah, she can be a bit of a klutz. She fell down a coupla’ steps. She’s alright now though, ain’tcha honey?” He put his arm around her and squeezed her in closer.
“Well, sir, I’ll need your name for the record, just to verify that we made the call.”
“John. And this is my wife, Nancy,” said the drunk with a scrape on his knuckle. Nancy stared down at the floor. She dared not look Kay in the eye. If she did, he would be able to see all the pain, all the frustration in her.
“And how long have you been living here?”
“Just about a year now,” Nancy said, still staring at the floor. John whipped his head around and looked at her with daggers in his eyes. How dare she speak. He squeezed her tighter.
“Nancy, can I speak with you a moment?” Kay stared at John as he said this to look for a reaction. John inched forward but immediately realized he’d better behave. If he did, it would all go away.
Kay took Nancy down the walkway. “Look Nancy, I know what’s going on. But I can’t help you unless you tell me. You need to take the first step. I’ll ask you again: Is everything alright? Will everything be alright once I leave?”
Nancy stood there. She didn’t say a word. She thought perhaps she could finally get out of this relationship. She’d tried to be compromising in hopes that John would see how good a person she is. Maybe the kindness would be reciprocated. But it never worked that way. John would take and take and take. He would never give anything. He wasn’t built for it. He’d been like this his entire life and an old biting dog doesn't like muzzles. Maybe this time she could call John out on his cowardice. Maybe this time, John would see that she wasn’t going to stand for it anymore. She wasn’t going to sit there and take his crap anymore.
“No, I’m fine… I fell.”
Kay gave Nancy a business card and told her to call him if there was any problem. She looked back at the door and saw John standing there, arms folded across his chest, watching her every move. She slowly took the card. Kay watched as Nancy slowly turned back up the walkway heading towards her front door.
“Goodnight, officer,” John said with a shit-eating grin on his face. “Thanks for stoppin’ by. Nice to know we got the city’s finest watchin’ our back.” The business card was snatched out of Nancy’s hand before the door was shut.
And that’s how the resolution to impeach Dick Cheney ended in the House of Representatives.
If only the Democrats were attentive enough to the people to realize that a majority of Americans, including a majority of independent voters, support the impeachment of Dick Cheney, they would've treated the resolution with a little more respect. If they acknowledged their mandate and discarded their predictably impotent political habits, they would have had the mettle to at least debate the resolution and entered into the record their collective objections to the vice president's malfeasance, as well as forced into the record the Republican Party's inexplicable support for the man's attempt to undermine their authority. History demands this.
Instead, by engaging in such an awkwardly amateurish fire drill on the floor of the House, [Steny] Hoyer managed to inject his misguided capitulation into the national debate. He might not know this, but there exists cable news and internet blogs, both thirsting for material. Now, millions of people know that the House Democrats dropped their short pants and stumbled away from the task of holding the vice president accountable -- their trousers bunched around their ankles restricting normal locomotion -- simply because the Republicans dared them to act.
And so in trying to avoid a so-called public embarrassment, they publicly embarrassed themselves anyway.
Here is another video from Brave New Films summarizing the resolution to impeach Cheney. Watch it and then honestly tell yourself that he doesn't warrant impeachment.
More from CESCA:
When the Democrats acquiesce on torture or impeachment or anything that might reunite them with their balls, they're only succeeding in begging the right's aggression. There won't be any favors returned from the Bush/Cheney right wing. I don't think the Democrats fully understand who they're dealing with. And if they do, well then, how dare they play along. How dare they patronize us with 'I'm against this but I'm voting for it because I'm smart and important and you wouldn't understand anyway.'
You stand up and vote NO on torture, Senator Schumer. You allow a debate about impeaching the vice president, Congressman Hoyer. And you sure as shit don't vote to support the administration's Iran policy, Senator Clinton.
In other words, compromising with the White House won't make the president go all limp and soupy -- it will in fact make him louder and more petulant next time around...
..."Shut him up or shut him down!" That's what the American people are expecting. Any failure on that score leaves the Democrats in this pathetic ass-up submissive posture. When it comes down to choice of nuance versus aggression, the answer has to be aggression. Take on those bastards with the fury and tenacity these historically imperative issues demand.
We don't expect hand-holding and mutual masturbation between the Bush Republican White House and the Democratic Congress. No one has ever assumed the president would compromise on anything anyway. But we assumed -- perhaps wrongly -- that the Democrats would stick him. We expected a fight, and that's why we voted for Democrats a year ago yesterday. And if they should ever decide to collectively stand up and fight, we will gladly elect more of them a year from now.
It took me a few days to wrap my head around what the hell happened in the House of Representatives on Tuesday. If the Republicans wanted a fight, if they wanted to attempt to "embarrass" the Democratic Party by forcing a debate on Kucinich's resolution to impeach Cheney, then the leadership should have gone to the coat check room where they usually leave their collective scrotum at the door, strapped it back on and said, "You wanna throw down?! Let's go! Game on, brohim!"
But the Rethuglicans know the battered wife game. They wrote the book on it. They dared the Dems knowing they would flinch. And flinch they did. It's times like these that I feel like changing my party affiliation to Independent.
And what embarrassment would they have saved? A July poll showed that 54% of Americans favored impeachment of Cheney (including 17% of Republicans)... and that was in July! Four months ago! It's got to be riding at 60%+ now.
What is an embarrassment to me is that the Democrats fold like a house of cards time and time again. It's an embarrassment to me that Nancy Pelosi says impeachment is off the table when it's not her choice, but a duty that the Constitution dictates. It's an embarrassment to me when a Senate Nominating Committee with a Democratic majority would allow Michael Mukasey to be approved as the next Attorney General after hemming and hawing on torture and that Harry Reid would allow a simple majority vote for his confirmation after a five hour debate.
It's an embarrassment to me that they don't fight. That's why they were elected, but they've gotten so used to being the red-headed stepchild, they've forgotten that they have fists, that they have strength, that they have the backing of the American people. Stop worrying about what your cocktail guests in Washington will think, and start worrying what your constituents back home will think. Because if you don't, you won't need to worry what will be said about you at the next dinner party. You'll be cleaning out your desks in November 2008.
Not only do we have to vote Democratic in the general election, but we have to be wary of who we're voting for in the Democratic Primary elections as well.
Not only have to vote Democratic, we must vote for the better Democrat.
NY TIMES: Congressional Democrats escalated a confrontation with President Bush over federal spending on Tuesday as the House overrode Mr. Bush’s veto of a popular water projects measure and approved a $215 billion bill to pay for health, education, labor and veterans programs despite a veto threat.
The vote on the water measure was 361 to 54, far more than needed to reject the veto. If the Senate follows suit, it will be the first time Mr. Bush has had a veto overturned.
...Democrats said it was Mr. Bush and his Republican allies who were acting irresponsibly by resisting slight increases to pay for improvements in health care and education while simultaneously seeking nearly $200 billion in new deficit spending this year to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What the hell is wrong with this guy? House Minority Leader John Boehner (pronounced Bay-ner although Bo-ner is more appropriate) stood on the House floor and cried for war. Literally cried. Was he drunk?! This blubbering idiot must have stunk like Jack Daniels when he stumbled into the House.
"When are we going to stand up to these terrorists?" he asks. What the hell have Bush and the Republicans been saying they've been doing for the last six years? These people make me sick.
But seriously, he's got to be drunk. I was waiting for him to yell out, "I LOVE YOU, MAN!" in the middle of his inebriated diatribe.
Last week, you spoke on the House floor and apparently misquoted Abraham Lincoln when you said, "Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged." I find it odd that Abraham Lincoln would have ever said something like that, and I was right. He never did. As you know probably know, just because you see it printed in a newspaper, especially the Washington Times or on a website that doesn’t check its facts, like Insight Magazine Online, doesn’t make it true. The same goes for the Nancy Pelosi plane request that she never requested and the madrassa that Barack Obama never attended. No, he isn’t a Muslim either.
Here is the Lincoln quote which I think you meant to recite:
"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure.
Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you 'be silent; I see it, if you don't.'
The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us."
Lincoln wrote these words while America was at war with Mexico, under the presidency of James Polk, and while Lincoln was a member of Congress. But Lincoln did more than talk about the fraud that had been used to launch that illegal and imperialistic war. He introduced a resolution demanding that Polk provide proof. Polk claimed to have launched that war only after American blood had been shed on American soil. Lincoln's resolution required Polk to identify the spot where that blood had been shed.
When President Polk did not answer, Lincoln and John Quincy Adams sought a formal investigation of the president's pre-war intelligence claims, and of his use of secret funds to launch his fraudulent and illegal war. Under this pressure, Polk announced that he would not seek reelection. Lincoln, Adams, and their allies in Congress then passed a resolution honoring the service of Major General Zachary Taylor "in a war unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States."
So it would seem that Lincoln opposed the war for its illegality while at the ame time supporting the troops... interesting.
My question to you, Congressman Young, is how can anyone in public office see a quote this inflammatory, attributed to Abraham Lincoln, and not check to see if the quote was accurate? On its face, the thought that Lincoln would advocate the arrest, exile, or hanging of congressmen in disagreement with a war based on the premise that it would undermine morale is incredibly suspect. The fact is that Lincoln did just that very thing you state as being a hanging offense and falsely attribute it to Lincoln, albeit through ignorance.
I hope with this new information, you will go to the House floor and correct your statements for the record, although since the actual quote doesn’t suit your needs, you’ll forgive me if I don’t hold my breath.
“By January 2009, we will have a president who favors embryonic stem cell research,” Ms. DeGette added, noting that at the moment the leading presidential candidates in both parties support it. Of the three most emotional social issues of the day — abortion rights, same-sex marriage and embryonic stem cell research — the last is the only one on which the public, by a growing majority, clearly favors the liberal position, said Michael Dimock, a pollster at the Pew Forum on People and the Press.
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