A veto of darkness

President Bush tends to "veto" legislation through the backhanded use of so-called "signing statements" (which I recently addressed here). But now we have his first real veto:

President Bush issued the first veto of his five-year-old administration yesterday, rejecting Congress's bid to lift funding restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research and underscoring his party's split on an emotional issue in this fall's elections.

No surprise here. Karl Rove indicated some time ago that this was coming. As I put it then:

The first veto will say a lot about this president and his priorities. If he vetos this stem-cell legislation, he should go before the American people and tell them why he doesn't support this bipartisan effort. And he should explain to those who could benefit from stem-cell research, as well as to their loved ones, just why he refuses to help them.

Well, Mr. President? You talk about "a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect," which must sound nice to your base, but all you prove with this veto is that you are closed off -- politically and morally -- to the possibilities of science and to a beneficial (and hopefully benevolent) technology that will save the lives of the living.

A truly decent society would respect those lives. Your veto only threatens to keep your society in darkness.