March 27, 2005 by s.z.

Free the Microscopic-Americans! My column at American Street is up.  It's called "Man's Inhumanity to Teeny. Tiny Man," and it's about the Snowflakes. And speaking of the Snowflakes, Deroy Murdock has an NRO column on the subject that is almost as good as the General's.  Deroy  tells us the Snowflakes program is "finding loving homes for these Microscopic-Americans," and that the program is so named because "each of these souls on ice is as unique as every snowflake." He adds: Snowflakes is working with Rep. Joe Pitts (R., Pa.) to introduce House members to 17 young Americans between the ages of 3 months and 7 who once were frozen (in Gabriel Vest’s case, for nine years). Previously deprived of the opportunity to be carved up for research, these kids will be on Capitol Hill today to illustrate that frozen embryos need not wind up drawn and quartered inside Petri dishes. Instead, they can be allowed to grow up into constituents. What a great way for the Republicans to increase their constituency: adopt lots of frozen embryos, and raise them to be their unholy army!  Or possibly just give voting rights to Microscopic-Americans. 7:29:53 AM

From AMERICAN STREET: Man’s Inhumanity to Teeny, Tiny Man From President Bush we learned about some remarkable families who “answered the call to ensure that our society’s most vulnerable members are protected and defended.” It turns out that those vulnerable fellow citizens are frozen blastocysts, and the families are remarkable because they adopted unwanted pinpoint-sized blobs of frozen protoplasm The outfit that helps arrange the adoptions of these really young foundlings is Nightlight Christian Adoptions, through their “Snowflakes Frozen Embryo Adoption Program.” Maybe it’s just me, but I found the following items from the Snowflakes FAQ section rather incongruous: Most importantly, at Nightlight we recognize the personhood of embryos; we treat them as precious pre-born children, not property to be transferred. […] If you are matched with a family from another area, the embryos will be transported to the clinic of your choosing. The embryos will be shipped via Federal Express in a dry shipper. Um, if Nightlight REALLY recognized the personhood of the little tikes, wouldn’t they buy them plane tickets, or send them to their new families via taxi, instead of transporting them like property via Federal Express? Anyway, courtesy of the Boston Herald, let’s meet a family who adopted eleven of these most vulnerable member of our society: With noise from her 3-year-old daughter in the background, Kate Johnson of Reading, Pa., speaks of the children she and her husband will someday “recognize on the other side.'’ “We basically have 10 adoptive children that went on before us and we basically have one” here now, said Johnson, who with her husband, Steve, “adopted'’ an embryo through a Christian-based organization committed to bringing frozen embryos into the world. So, they adopted eleven kids, but ten of them are now dead. Shouldn’t the authorities being looking into this? It sounds like Tom DeLay would think so. Here’s part of a Washington Post piece: DURING THE DEBATE in the House on Tuesday over the stem cell research bill that passed on a bipartisan vote, Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) leveled a remarkable accusation: Supporters of liberalizing President Bush’s restrictive approach to funding stem cell research, he said, were voting “to fund with taxpayer dollars the dismemberment of living, distinct human beings for the purposes of medical experimentation.” If it’s wrong to dismember these pin-point sized humans (even though they don’t actually have appendages or organs), then it surely isn’t okay to send so many of them on missions to inhospitable wombs where they have less than a ten percent chance of survival. Please, won’t somebody think of the little, tiny, pre-born children? By S. Z.   5:45 am     Comedy & Satire preznit giv me turkee Says: May 27th, 2005 at 8:27 am Reading, Pa., speaks of the children she and her husband will someday �€œrecognize on the other side.’�€™ so is she A) pals with Sen Man-on-Pooch and the stillborn kid and/or B) going to the hereafter with an electron microscope so she can tell them damn kids apart? Earl Dunovant Says: May 27th, 2005 at 9:27 am God, I’m SUCH a sucker… That I took this seriously for 2.376 seconds means I really need to take a nap. Rachel Says: May 27th, 2005 at 9:30 am It does sound strange, but FedEx really is the safest way to ship these embryos. It’s true that the survival rate in the womb is low, (it varies from clinic to clinic) but better some make it through than none! This is a partial and imperfect solution to a number of tremendous problems… but you gotta do what you can. Ian McGibboney Says: May 27th, 2005 at 10:55 am You know, I had an ant farm when I was 11. I received a tube of ants via FIRST-CLASS mail, literally in an envelope. Most had lived, though a few had died and had become entangled with the live ones. They looked like raisins. Anyway, they all eventually died. Not because of the mail adventure, but because I forgot to feed them three times a week. I’d like to see these bozos TRY this with embryos. You might be joking, but I wouldn’t put it past them! I hope somebody I know does this one day. I’d donate an ant farm, complete with sand. DrBDH Says: May 27th, 2005 at 11:08 am Were the Johnson’s 10 adoptive blastocysts baptized when they died or are they the literal snowflakes in Hell without a chance? Socraticsilence Says: May 27th, 2005 at 2:31 pm So, just out of curiousity, if I wanted to adopt a couple of the little buggers to use as gag drink coolers (a variation on the old fly in the ice cube gag, though admittedly far less funny because the bastocyst are microscopically small, and invisble to the naked eye, it;’d be more of a “my that’s a a fullbodied cocktail” then you snicker sort of joke) how much would it run me? Socraticsilence Says: May 27th, 2005 at 2:37 pm Wait a minute why are Johnson’s “pre-born Americans” dead? Did she improperly store them, mix them into a smoothie, make lil’ baby sangria (unintetional humor given the relationship of Sangria to Sangre), or what? CupaJoe Says: May 27th, 2005 at 4:16 pm Personally, I hate cleaning out the refrigerator. People Too Stupid To Be Allowed to Watch TV Those people being the Corner's Tim Graham and Media Research Center's Brent Baker. First, here's Tim: From the LAW & ORDER: LIBERAL INTENT [Tim Graham] MRC's Brent Baker has the goods on last night's gratuitous Tom DeLay slam on the season finale of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, complete with video. The script writers trashed DeLay as a hero to white supremacist gun nuts suspected of murdering two judges, one of them black, and who had expressed the view that the white woman judge who was murdered was a "race traitor" who raised her family in the "Zionist enclave of Riverdale." The chick-detective character suggested to her fellow detectives and an Assistant District Attorney: "Maybe we should put out an APB for somebody in a Tom DeLay T-shirt." Posted at 12:31 PM  Tim probably didn't see the ep, and is just relying on the first paragraph of Brent's report for his Corner post, since there are remarkable similarities between the two items. Here's Brent:   Law & Order: CI Tags DeLay as Hero to  White Supremacist Murderer  The season finale of NBC's Law & Order: Criminal Intent, which aired Wednesday night, portrayed House Majority Leader Tom DeLay as a hero to white supremacist gun nuts suspected of murdering two judges, one of them black, and who had expressed the view that the white woman judge who was murdered was a "race traitor" who raised her family in the "Zionist enclave of Riverdale." When the ballistics on the bullet which killed the black judge showed it was fired by the same rifle which was used to kill the white judge, New York City Police Department "Detective Alexandra Eames" suggested to her fellow detectives and an Assistant District Attorney: "Maybe we should put out an APB for somebody in a Tom DeLay T-shirt."  IMHO, Brent (who is not to be confused with Brent Bozell, the head of MRC) shouldn't try to analyze shows aimed at grownups, since he apparently can't follow the plots.  The ep, which is sorta ripped from the headlines of the Lefkow case (with some "D.C. sniper" for added tension and pathos) begins with the murder of a judge and her son.  At first, the authorities suspect that a jailed white supremacist gun nut ordered the hit, but this is ruled out very quickly, because the white supramacist gun nut knew that the judge had moved to the Zionist enclave, while the real killers had first tried the judge's former home. And then a second judge is killed.  It turns out that the second judge had just ruled in a controversial euthanasia case.  It is clear from the context that Detective Eames makes the quip about Tom DeLay not because Tom may or may not be a hero to white supremacist gun nuts, but because of his anti-judge rhetoric. Remember this, Tim and Brent? The majority leader said Thursday he wants to examine what he called the "failure" of state and federal courts to protect Schiavo, who died 13 days after the court-ordered withdrawal of her feeding tube. DeLay issued a statement asserting that "the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior." He later said in front of television cameras that he wants to "look at an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president." As in the Lefkow case, the white supremacist gun nuts were innocent of the killings.  The real killers had started off by murdering the judges who had ruled against them in family court matters, but then decided to follow DeLay's advice and hold responsible those judges whom they thought were being arrogant, out-of-control, and unaccountable.  Hold them responsible PERMANENTLY!  (Note: the killers in this ep actually had a Libertarian view on how the judiciary should operate, and wanted judges to stay out of family matters.  So, they would have been killing DeLay and those who involved themselves in the Schiavo matter, not the judges DeLay was railing against.)    Anyway, I hope Tim and Brent have found this helpful. P.S.  Last week's CI ep was the second time the L&O franchise ripped from the Bernie Kerik headlines.  This time, Judith Regan was his ambitious PR person, not his publisher.  She found out about his other mistress from a note left in the Ground Zero love nest (just like in the real Kerik case, only in reverse), and manipulated Kerik into killing the other mistresses's husband by playing on his mother's sordid history.  And then they killed the mistress together, to protect his political career.  The message is clear: taking up with Bernie Kerik can be dangerous to your health!   As you will recall, in the "L&O: Original Recipe" take on the story, Bernie killed his two mistresses, Judith Regan and Jenna Jameson, when they threatened his Homeland Security gig.  (I think L&O writers love the Kerik saga mostly for the "juggling two mistresses" aspect.) Personally, I'm waiting for the "L&O: Trial by Jury" version, where Bernie kills his two lovers (Judith Regan and John Bolton), and then claims that he did it because Tom DeLay told him to. 5:59:44 AM