With the Senate’s passage of S.5, a bill that will allow for the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, and Bush’s promised veto, the pundits are beginning the bioethics debate once again.

The New York Times can’t seem to understand Bush’s opposition to embryonic stem cell research, but they ask concerned voters to “ratchet up the pressure on recalcitrant Republicans to help stop the president from killing the second enlightened stem cell bill in less than a year.”

The Washington Post thinks that both sides in the recent Senate debate stretched the science to make their point. The Post says that we need federal funding that is “open to supporting as many avenues of stem cell research as a considered look at the morality of the issue allows.”

Steve Benen doesn’t buy the president’s “culture of life” talk. On the one hand the president opposes federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, but on the other hand he praises the fertility clinics that produce the extra embryos that are at issue.

Michael Sandel asks why so little of the recent senate debate and so few of the ensuing opinion pieces addressed the real question of embryonic stem cell ethics: are embryos persons? Sandel says that it would be a mistake to pass that question by.

The LA Times believes that Bush’s position on embryonic stem cell research is “bad science and bad policy.” They say “he should thank Congress for the chance to do it all over.”

The President’s Council on Bioethics gave Bush guidance on his stem cell policy. Reading their report on stem cell research is enlightening for anyone who wants to understand why the president is opposed to expanding federally funded embryonic stem cell research.

Brent Rasmussen, writing on Daily Kos, believes embryonic stem cell research may hold the promise to treat “virtually every major cause of death in the US.” To restrict federal funding for such research, he says, may kill “more Americans than all other White House sins combined.”

Ed Morrissey doubts the honesty of congress in pursuing the stem cell bill. He says that they are using “junk science” as a wedge issue to score points against the Bush administration.

Cardinal Justin Rigali writes that the issue at concern with embryonic stem cell research is not whether one is for or against progress. It is a question of whether or not technology will be a “servant to humanity” or our “cruel master.”