a 4 - Tuesday, January 29, 2008 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com L74c Mic4t"*pan4,Jat'*lv Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@umich.edu IMRAN SYED JEFFREY BLOOMER EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR MANAGING EDITOR Whatever it costs to defend our country we will pay." - President Bush, responding to the one of the largest budget increases in decades for defense spending in the State of the Union on Monday. When letter editing oes awry 4 KARL STAMPFL EDITOR IN CHIEF Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. The Daily's public editor, Paul H. Johnson, acts as the readers' representative and takes a critical look at coverage and content in every section ofthe paper. Readers are encouraged to contact the public editor with questions andcomments. He can be reached at publiceditor@umich.edu. The state ofthe damage Bush's State of the Union leaves agenda of problems to fix Look out everyone, President Bush is trying to "liberate" things again. As one of the many oddly offensive, barely coherent and blatantly instigative components of his trite, largely rehashed State of the Union address last night, Bush stated that his plan to create the equivalent of Pell Grants for public school students would "help liberate poor children trapped in failingpublic schools." While semantic suicide is nothing new to Bush, many ofus hoped that in this speech - his eighth and final State of the Union address - Bush would rise above partisanship and propose more challenging, daring initiatives free of the arrogance that plagued his presidency. As usual, the president failed us. Teston Bruner wanted to have his say. He wanted to explain that even though he believed that the LSA Honor Coun- cil should not be a part of student government, he found as president of the LSA Honor Council he believed that student politi- cians had in fact PAUL H. treated him fairly. This dispelled his JOHNSON belief that student government is full of careerists with no concern about ethics. So he carefully wrote a letter to the editor hoping to get his point of view heard on the editorial page. "They have 80 percent of that page to say what they want to say, I get 300 words, I want to be able to say what I want to say," Bruner explained. But the letter that ran, "Stu- dent government still serves cam- pus faithfully" (Letters to the Editor, 01/23/2008), was riddled with mis- takes. The letter said he was an LSA sophomore instead of an LSA junior. The letter said the honor council had recently become a part of LSA Student Government, when in fact the honor council had always been part of the LSA-SG, prompting the Daily to issue a correction. The correction, Bruner felt, didn't make clear that the mistake was an editing error and not a mistake he made. And to top it all off, when the correction ran, his name was mis- spelled in the correction. He was so upset with the experience he didn't feel it was worth it to tell the Daily to correct the correction. Incoming Editorial Page Editor Gary Graca said the errors were just that, unfortunate mistakes. The let- ter had been edited for clarity but the editing resulted in a mistake. He said the Daily does not have a policy of sending back each letter to its writer before it runs. But Graca said that he does not call letter writers unless there are major changes. Time and staff constraints prevent the Daily from talking to each letter writer, Graca explained. But each letter is fact-checked and if errors appear, the authors are contact- ed, Graca said. What happened with Bruner's letter showed the diawbacks of this system. Brunerrealizes that the Daily has the right to edit letters before they run, he just wishes the Daily would send him the letter before it ran so he could make sure everything that is in the letter is something he would say. It matters, he says, because his name is at the end of the letter. "If I known they could make changes and run it without telling me, I probably wouldn't have sent.the let- ter," Bruner said. And he's right. The Daily should contact letter writers when changes are made to the letter. First, unlike a news story, a letter to the editor is the actual words of a speaker. The writer deserves the right to approve of any- thing that runs in the paper that he or she authors. Letter writers are not writing for fame and fortune but consumers and customers of the Daily. They deserve to be treated with the utmost respect or they'll become angry consumers and spread the word about their bad experience with the Daily. No news- paper wants this to happen and the Daily should take steps to ensure that such errors never happen. Incoming Editor in Chief Andrew Grossman did respond to Bruner's concerns after Bruner e-mailed him. That was a positive step,Editors and writers should always try to be respon- sive to the concerns of readers. Daily should revisit letters policy Students do work a busy schedule balancing schoolwork and running a daily newspaper, but they should 'not lose sight of the fact that they need to be sensitive to the concerns of readers. Readers are the ones who make the Daily aware of many of the mistakes that have been made and if they don't feel comfortable talking to the staff, they won't tell us about mistakes. This will only result in the decline of the Daily's quality and reputation, this newspaper's main selling points. Paul H. Johnson is the Daily's public editor. He can be reached at publiceditor@umich.edu. I I But at least we naive idealists aren't alone in feeling the sting of vapid disappoint- ment: Bush proposed almost nothing new, choosing instead to gloat of "victories" past and awkwardly threaten Congress so it carries on his malignant tax cuts, wiretap- ping and other indiscretions. Regardless of who will give this address next year - be it that stalwart champion of the-long ignored bipartisan majority, Barack Obama or one of the several raving lunatics looking to triple the size of the prison at Guantanamo Bay - we can at least rest assured that no speech could be as offensive to the Ameri- can constitutional conscience as this 2008 address. Bush's first tactic was to treat the Ameri- can electorate as toddlers with a 10-second attention span and no long-term mem- ory. Does he really think he can slip the Iran must "suspend nuclear enrichment" line by us without us noticing something awry? This is awfully similar to what Bush said about Iraq in past State of the Union addresses. Who can forget the 16 infamous words he uttered five years ago, the lie upon which the invasion of Iraq was justified? Did Bush really think we wouldn't notice the same doublespeak packaged with the same aggressive intention as five years ago? Is another unconstitutional, undeclared war in order? Bush mostly presented more of the same nefarious nonsense on other issues. He talked up his No Child Left Behind Act with the air of a proud father showing off his son's perfect spelling test at the office the next day - never mind that the kid is a high schooler spelling three-letter words. Actually, that's more than a parallel; it's exactly what Bush was doing. He may have boasted that more schools are meeting the marks set by NCLB and more black and Hispanic students are meeting those marks than ever before, What he didn't say is that those increases can largely be attributed to falling standards and artificially inflated scores, not actual progress. When he wasn't insulting our intelli- gence, the president was busy engaging in constitutional fudging that even he didn't bother to actually justify. We can all agree that riders tacked on to bills at the last moment before they pass into law are bad for democracy. However, Bush's solution to this small house fire is to flood the entire city: He promised to sign an Executive Order directing federal agencies to ignore such riders on legislation that has passed into law. What right does a president have to tell federal agencies to ignore the law? Working to change bad laws is our duty as citizens, but encouraging federal agencies to ignore any laws would normally amount to a constitutional offense. Bush kindly recounted for us the many failures of his disastrous presidency last night, refreshing in our minds the hor- rendous effects of tax cuts for the wealthy, warrantless wiretaps, counterproductive education reform and unjust wars. As our attention moves from this last declaration of the hapless Bush Manifesto back to the campaign trail, we must remember with renewed passion what is at stake in this election. Anyone who heard last night's speech knows that there is a whole lot of damage to be undone. 40 Brave New World.? Not really. loning. Are you afraid yet? America sure is. While this two-syllable word immediately instills imagery of mad sci- entists cackling as they create armies of Hitler replicas who will revive the Third Reich, it is f also a word used to - describe a scientific lit, - process, that isn't ARIKIA nearly as exciting: the transferring of MILLIKAN genes from one cell- to another.Yet when a private research company, Stemagen, announced that it successfully made cellular clones of two human men earlier this month, politicians, media fear-mongers and the Vatican took it upon themselves to blend dystopian sci-fi fantasies with what was actually a pretty boring accomplishment that happened years ago. , From all of the hysteria, one might think that the products of the proce- dure were two walking, talking adults who could have passed for the guys who donated their DNA if you saw them on the street. But what actually resulted were a few unfertilized egg cells whose own genetic material had been emptied out and replaced with that from skin cells of the men, making a kind of patchwork embryo. The cells were allowed to divide for a few days, and then their growth was halted. Researchers want to be able to grow the cells - which are referred to in the scientific community as nuclear trans- fer products (not clones) - into some- thing they can collect stem cells from. But this lab didn't accomplish that yet and neither has any other, although it is theoretically possible. What is not possible anywhere on the planet we live on, however, is to produce an army of adult replicas from this procedure. The point of doing nuclear transfer is so doctors can someday treat patients who have crippling diseases by transplanting genetically identical tissue to them that their bodies won't reject. This process is called therapeutic cloning, and it doesn't involve aborted fetuses - contrary to what some politicians might think. Yet, many Americans have heard this buzzword and made the illogical leap that researchers are attempting to conduct reproductive cloning, which is the sci-fi nightmare that's so fun tofantasize about. Ann Curry, a news anchor on NBC's "Today" show, frantically grilled the show's medical expert the day after Stemagen's announcement. "It sounds as though (reproductive cloning) could have happened had these embryos been implanted in a woman's womb," she ranted. Credible newspapers like The Washington Post jumped on the bandwagon as well, claiming that this new discovery (which was also discov- ered four years ago), "offered sober- ing evidence that few, if any, technical barriers may remain to the creation of clonedbabies." But there are several barriers that continue to prevent science fiction from becoming science reality. Sean Morrison, the director of the Univer- sity's Center for Stem Cell Biology said the slope isn't quite as slippery as peo- ple think. He pointed out that the eggs the adultDNA is beingtransferred into in this procedure are not fertilized. While the transferred genetic materi- al does have two sets of chromosomes because its adult donor did, the result- ing cell is not going through any kind of normal development. When the most famous product of reproductive cloning was born, Dolly the sheep had all sorts of genetic problems and even- tually died a tragic death at the age of six. But the problems began long before her birth. When researchers tried to clone Dolly's mother, it took almost 300 attempts with 300 differ- ent eggs before a viable embryo was ever produced. "If somebody actually tried to do this in humans, you wouldn't wake up and have a dozen clones on CNN, you would have this abnormally high rate of miscarriages among scores of women who would have to agree to participate in these experiments," Dr. Morrison told me. But for the skeptics who remain, there is one more point to be made: If it were possible to make the kind of clones you see on the "TheX-Files," somebody would have to make them. But who wants to do such a thing?Accordingto Dr. Morrison, no one does. "Virtually all scientists and scien- tific societies have gone on record as opposingreproductive cloning and say- If you are still worried about cloning - don't be I ANDREW KURLAND The road to the promised land In the aftermath of the 2004 presidential election, political pundits attributed the success of the Republican campaign to the genius of Karl Rove, President Bush's seem- ingly all-knowing media and culture guru who convinced 11 states to include a mas- sive on the general election ballot banning same-sex marriage. This move proved to be a specific attempt to pander to evangelical Christians, a group that encompassed about 26 percent of Americans in 2004. Not only did the legislation pass in all 11 states, but it also passed with a convincing 71-percent of the vote on average, displaying the impres- sive power of evangelical mobilization, especially in crucial swing states like Ohio. By igniting the "morality" debate, the Republicans successfully and continuously defined what is and what should be moral in America. Journalist Thomas Frank wrote that the Republicans depicted their "age-old folkways" as "under siege from a cabal of know-it-all elites." Official exit polls from the 2004 election showed "that the most important consid- eration for those who voted for Bush was "moral values." The Democratic approach of using elitist language to mobilize voters around reforming a dismal economy effec- tively distanced them from those who might have benefited from their policies. New York Times columnist David Brooks noted, "In the information age, social values and cultural capital shape a person's economic destiny more than the other way around." The Dem- ocrats missed that boat entirely in 2004. After Bush's victory, constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage failed in Congress, and Republicans pursued a tax policy that proved harmful to the many reli- gious voters who had tipped the scales for them in 2004. The Republican leadership essentially exploited religious and values voters. Democrats should bring these inconsis- tencies to the voters' attention in the upcom- ing presidential election. Yet the Democrats, as the GOP demonstrated in 2004, must successfully discuss moral values with the American people in order to be successful, changing their campaign philosophy by honestly engaging in this conversation. A two-fold plan for success first requires that Democrats no longer fear the Chris- tian Bible. They must relay the message that the Bible encompasses many liberal beliefs - Jesus himself was a reformer. Further, the progressive civil rights movement that many Americans now accept and revere was grounded in religious beliefs and led by ministers like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Second, in order to resonate with values voters, Democrats must encourage voters to view the platform through a moral lens. If the candidates hope to make the lackluster economy a major issue in 2008, they need to emphasize the moral questions surrounding massive the outsourcing by General Motors, Ford Motor Company and other manufac- turing companies whose policies tend to further.exacerbate the gap between the rich and the poor. In the fall 2005, John Edwards took a national tour, which included a stop here at the University, speaking to college students about poverty, "the moral issue of our time." Edwards used simple rhetoric to describe the 37 million Americans living in poverty everyday. He referred to the fact that not only is charity a central theme for religious people, but it would also benefit the many religious voters who are poor. This model can also apply to the war in Iraq. Because Pentagon data suggests that almost two-thirds of U.S. Army recruits in 2004 came from poorer areas of the coun- try, Democrats could take a moral stance on the massive cost of the war by reminding voters that the government can ameliorate hunger and lack of health care by spending the same amount of money here at home. If Democrats can then present this not as an elitist issue but a moral one, the chance of victory in 2008 becomes much greater. The Democrats must swallow their pride and discuss issues in a manner that makes sense to Americans. The moral road is the one to travel; the Democrats must merely pave it in order for values voters to follow. Andrew Kurland is an LSA and School of Music senior. ing that it should be banned," he said. "In states like Michigan, it's against the law, and nobody has suggested that it should be otherwise. So people shouldn't have this impression that there's a subset of crazy scientists out there who just can't wait to try this." While it is fun to fantasize about where science might lead the human race, uninformed sources have been periodically distorting the facts and leading the public down a line of hys- terical thinking. It's crucially impor- tant to ethical medical progress to remember that some aspects of science fiction are still just that - fiction. Arikia Millikan is a former Daily news reporter. She can be reached at arikia@umich.edu. 4 SEND LETTERS TO: TOTHEDAILY@UMICH.EDU Coverage of Gaza vigil shows Daily bias TO THE DAILY: The outstanding bias present in The Michigan Daily when it comes to covering events concern- ing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is reflective of the bias present in the mainstream American media on when it comes to coverage of the same issue. Since last week, Gaza has faced a growing humanitarian crisis, because Israel cut off all exports to Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on earth. Gaza is under siege by Israel. The Gaza population of 1.5 million people is enduring collective punishment at the hands of Israel, with dwindling electricity, fuel or food supplies. The occasional incident when the Israeli government decides that Gazans deserve a little humanitar- ian aid is not enough to sustain the entire population for more than a couple of days at a time. Gazans are living in darkness and utter pover- ty, with their few hospitals practi- cally running on empty. Yet, where is the reporting of this large-scale humanitarian cri- sis in the mainstream news? Why aren't the stories of people suffer- ing in Gaza heard? By the tens of thousands, Gazans flooded into Egypt last week in order to buy sup- plies, because they were essentially starved. The breakdown of the bor- der wall between Egypt and Gaza shows the kind of pressure cooker the Gazans were forced to live in, with the top finally coming off. A vigil was held Thursdaynight on the Diag in which organizers count- ed up to 180 people attending., Stu- dents, communitymembers,families and many more people attended the vigil that was held in solidarity with the people of Gaza. Yet the front- page story that covered the event reported only 20 people showing up to the vigil - a gross mistake. Like the national media, it seems appar- ent that the Daily also shows bias when it comes to issues and events that concern the Palestinians. Hena Ashraf LSA senior The letter writer is the co-chair of Students Allied forFreedom and Equality 0 a EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS: Emad Ansari, Anindya Bhadra, Kevin Bunkley, Ben Caleca, Satyajeet Deshmukh, Milly Dick, Mike Eber, Gary Graca, Emmarie Huetteman, Theresa Kennelly, Emily Michels, Arikia Millikan, Kate Peabody, Robert Soave, Neil Tambe, Matt Trecha, Kate Truesdell, Radhika Upadhyaya, Rachel Van Gilder, Rachel Wagner, Patrick Zabawa.