It's no secret that George W. Bush is opposed to embryonic stem-cell research. It's also no stretch to assume that George W. Bush was not a whiz at science in school. So it now comes as no surprise that the scientist unceremoniously dumped last year from the President's Council on Bioethics has won two international science awards within the last three weeks.

Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, "hailed as one of the world's leading medical researchers and cancer scientists," was "dismissed from Bush's Council on Bioethics last year, amid controversy over her support for embryonic stem-cell research." Dr. Blackburn received the $337,000 Gruber Prize in New Orleans last Tuesday and the Lasker award in September, a frequent pointer to the Nobel Prize. Dr. Blackburn had won another Nobel precursor in 1999 as the California Scientist of the Year.

Read the whole article here.

Should seats on a presidential "advisory" committee be limited to persons who already upport the President's well publicized views? Is one's position on a topic more important than one's credentials? And finally, how can an advisory committee "advise" when all of its members already agree with the president they're supposed to be advising? Inquiring minds and all tha