The presidency of the United States is a big, big job. Every day, dozens of decisions are made, statements released and executive orders issued on a host of subjects, all in the president’s name. No president could find enough hours in the day to sign all the documents personally, much less delve into the policy details, even if he were inclined to do so, which most presidents are not. Jimmy Carter was inclined to seek out the details; look where it got him.

Anyhow, the office of the president, not the president himself, does many things every day. You might think that even with a president as clearly evil as George W. Bush, one of those thousands of actions taken in his name, some offhand, afterthought action – could be a good thing. You might think that, but you’d be wrong. Evil presidents hire evil aides who carry out those dozens of daily tasks and each is more evil than the last.
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George W. Bush has always needed a bad guy. Bill Clinton was his original bad guy – more of a bad boy, really. During Mr. Bush’s first months in the Oval Office, any and all problems were blamed on “the previous administration.” Just when Mr. Bush had pushed that excuse to the limit of credibility, along came Osama bin Laden, the bad guy of George Bush’s dreams – tall, dark and terrorist. Mr. Bush could unload on Osama in ways he never could on Mr. Clinton; he could puff and strut before joint sessions of Congress, threatening to “smoke him out” and bring him in “dead or alive.”

As is so often the case with relationships that begin with great promise, the object of the suitor’s attention – in this case, Mr. Bin Laden – shows himself to be fickle and coy and the suitor’s ardor cooled as quickly as it had once flared. Weeks turned into months and Osama remained unsmoked, undead and un-brought in. Worse, he’d periodically pop up on video, as if he had nothing better to do than tease the POTUS. Mr. Bush’s passion turned to petulance and White House spokespeople – in a twist out of “Casablanca” – are now prohibited from mentioning Mr. Bin Laden’s name.
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The International Herald Tribune Wednesday reported that 300 peacekeeping troops will be sent to the Darfur region of Sudan to protect an African Union fact-finding team. The peacekeeping force will consist of 150 Nigerian troops and – ironically – 150 Rwandan soldiers. It is the 1994 Rwandan massacres, in which one million Hutus and Tutsis died, that are haunting the current Darfur crisis, making everyone wonder if history is about to repeat itself.

Will it? The one million number already applies. Over a million people have been dislocated by the violence between rebel groups on one side and government troops and their paramilitaries on the other. There have been mass killings and rapes and burning villages, but now, with people wandering homeless or packed into refugee camps, does the efficient killing of starvation and dehydration and disease begin.
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During and since the funeral services for the late President Ronald Reagan, there’s been a good deal of discussion about stem cell research. Stem cells are animal cells that have the capacity to generate new cells. There are two types of stem cells – adult and embryonic. Bone marrow contains adult stem cells and bone marrow transplants have been used for decades to generate a healthy blood supply in patients with leukemia, lymphoma and immune disorders. The limitation of adult stem cells is that they can only generate similar cells. Bone marrow, where blood is produced, can only be used to generate blood products.

Embryonic stem cells, however, can be used to generate any type of cell in the body. In 1998, researchers at the University of Wisconsin were the first to develop lines of human embryonic stem cells that were capable of ongoing generation in the lab.
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