Stupak defending himself poorly

The Washington Post has printed an editorial by Bart Stupak responding to a column by Kathleen Parker.

It’s really just a reciting of his past arguments where he asserts that it was “clear that the House leadership would eventually obtain the 216 votes” and he acts like all executive orders have the same intent and consequences.

Another thing that stuck out to me is that I don’t think the editorial was written by a prolifer. For example, the editorial says,

Some, including Parker, have criticized Obama's executive order as unenforceable in the courts and therefore just a "fig leaf." Yet the language that critics point to is standard language with any executive order, including Bush's ban on embryonic stem-cell research.

Ban on embryonic stem cell research? Hmmmm.... That’s the kind of misleading language proponents of killing human embryos for research continuously used to describe Bush’s policy of limiting the federal funding on embryonic stem cell research.

Second, the description of Bush’s executive order seems to have been written by someone who doesn’t know what executive order they’re talking about. Here’s Executive Order 13435. It wasn’t Bush’s order to limit the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research (that order came in August of 2001). This executive order instructs the Department of Health and Human Services to support research on pluripotent stem cells which didn’t require the killing of human embryos.