Countdown to Christmas

Legislative Update

• Foreign Policy: Iraq, Intelligence
• Domestic Policy: Taxes, Spending
• Heartland Issues: Energy, Farming, Global Warming
• Expiring Health Care
• Stem Cell Research

Congress returns from its Thanksgiving recess on Tuesday, December 4, with a lot on it's Christmas shopping list. In terms of foreign policy, Iraq and intelligence bills top the priority list. Domestically, taxes and spending will be the most noticed issues Congress addresses this month.

In terms of issues affecting the Heartland, Congress also intends to take up bills related to energy, farming, and global warming. The President is not pushing any of these bills and has threatened to veto at least one of them.

Yesterday's political compromises are today's political emergencies, and nowhere is this clearer than where politics and science intermingle: expiring health care funding.

Two days before Thanksgiving, news broke on the front pages of mainstream newspapers, that researchers in Wisconsin and Japan had turned ordinary human skin cells into what are effectively embryonic stem cells without using embryos or women's eggs.

We have been handed an opportunity to turn the tide!

Read today's edition of Inside the Mountain for more.


12/2/2007 Update:
A Daunting 3 Weeks Ahead for Congress
Congress returns to Washington on Monday with a full slate of must-do legislation, just three short weeks before the Christmas recess and with four members of the slim Democratic Senate majority likely to miss votes as they campaign for president.