Think Progress

Franken reportedly ahead by 22 votes in recount. - Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

Democratic senatorial candidate Al Franken has “unexpectedly picked up 37 votes due to a combined machine malfunction and human error on Election Day.” Today, Franken’s counsel Marc Elias said Franken is now up 22 votes, with “approximately 138,000 ballots left to count.” “This would be the first time that Franken has claimed a lead in [...]

Hitting Back At Obama Team, Perino Insists Bush Did Not Ban Stem Cell Research - Monday, November 10th, 2008

On Fox News Sunday yesterday, John Podesta, President-elect Barack Obama’s transition chief, said Obama would move swiftly to overturn a range of executive orders by President Bush, “whether that’s on energy transformation, on improving health care, on stem cell research.” Podesta explained, “I think across the board, on stem cell research, on a number of [...]

ThinkFast: September 25, 2008 - Thursday, September 25th, 2008

The Congressional Budget Office director yesterday told Congress that the proposed bailout may worsen the current financial crisis. “Ironically, the intervention could even trigger additional failures of large institutions, because some institutions may be carrying troubled assets on their books at inflated values,” Peter Orszag said. “Establishing clearer prices might reveal those institutions to be [...]

ThinkFast: October 17, 2007 - Wednesday, October 17th, 2007

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) said he was not prepared to grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies for their participation in the warrantless wiretapping program. “I certainly would not give them immunity retroactively on programs that we don’t know what they are,” he said.
The White House agreed yesterday to give Senate intelligence committee members and staff [...]

NIH Agency Suppresses Whistleblowers By Forcing Them To Record All Contact With Congress - Tuesday, August 21st, 2007

For the past several months, House and Senate committees have been investigating David Schwartz, the director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), which is a branch of NIH. They are examining whether Schwartz “disregarded conflict-of-interest guidelines,” broke government spending rules, and violated ethics rules. Since Schwartz’s arrival in 2005, three top [...]

REPORT: Public Strongly At Odds With Bush’s Position on Stem Cells - Saturday, March 31st, 2007

Last year, Congress passed legislation with broad bipartisan support to expand funding for embryonic stem cell research beyond the 2001 limits set by President Bush. In response, Bush issued the first veto of his presidency. When Congress returns from recess, it will again revive debate on funding for new embryonic stem cell research. Bush has [...]

NIH Director Breaks From Bush, Calls For Repeal Of Stem Cell Ban - Tuesday, March 20th, 2007

When President Bush nominated Dr. Elias Zerhouni to be the nation’s top medical researcher — director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — he said that Zerhouni agreed to restrictions on embryonic cell stem research. 3/26/02:
Dr. Zerhouni shares my view that human life is precious, and should not be exploited or destroyed [...]

Fitzgerald: Crossing Ts, Dotting Is - Saturday, December 3rd, 2005

Each day the complexity of the CIA leak scandal grows. Recent developments concerning TIME reporter Viveca Novak are particularly difficult to decode.
The center of the storm still appears to be Karl Rove and his failure to tell Fitzgerald about his conversations with TIME reporter Matt Cooper during his initial testimony. But these two graphs, [...]

The Incredible Shrinking Stem Cell Lines - Tuesday, January 25th, 2005

Many scientists believe stem-cell research could one day be used to treat spinal injuries as well as Alzheimer’s, strokes, brain injuries, Parkinson’s, diabetes and heart defects. They also recently the discovery that the cells “also produce druglike compounds that can help ailing organs repair themselves.” Other advances show the versatile cells can be used as [...]