WASHINGTON -- Bill Kristol, Republican pundit extraordinaire and cloning prohibitionist, has a new ban-cloning ad that's making critics see double.
The TV spot was created by Stop Human Cloning, a group Kristol chairs, and features a "Harriet" and "Louis" couple who complain that scheming scientists want to create "embryos to destroy them for medical experiments."
It's a winking response to a pro-cloning ad that features a similarly named "Harry" and "Louise" couple.
And it's drawn fire from opponents, who accuse Kristol of willful dishonesty. InstaPundit.com's Glenn Reynolds wrote on Tuesday: "It portrays real, human clones as walking around now because of cloning research (they're not) -- and suggests that if they existed they'd be patented, and hence owned, by big pharmaceutical companies, presumably leading to armies of subhuman cloned slaves. That's not true."
Both sides are jockeying for position before a key Senate vote this month on a proposal to outlaw any successful or unsuccessful "attempt to perform human cloning." Championed by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), the bill would impose fines starting at $1 million and prison sentences of up to 10 years.
Last July, in a 265-162 vote, the House of Representatives approved similar anti-cloning restrictions.
Orrin to the rescue: Orrin Hatch, one of the Senate's most ardent conservatives and the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, is breaking ranks with his Republican colleagues.
On Tuesday, Hatch said that while he would always oppose any attempt to clone a human -- "this would directly interfere with God's sacred plan for human reproduction by a man and woman within the bounds of marriage" -- he also wants to permit limited similar research for medical purposes.
Hatch threw his support behind a different bill introduced this week that allows "somatic cell nuclear transplantation" into unfertilized human eggs. The measure includes Brownback's criminal penalties against human cloning.
No to Hollings: The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) adored Congress' previous attempts to limit online piracy.
Years ago, lobbyists from the trade association swarmed onto Capitol Hill, linking arms with their colleagues from the movie and recording industries, and successfully persuaded the politicos to enact the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the No Electronic Theft Act. Now, of course, the DMCA is the subject of at least three court challenges currently underway.
And the SIIA is now saying that the copyright-rewriting plans of Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina) go way too far.
In a letter on Tuesday, SIIA president Ken Wasch said that a bill supported by Hollings and some Hollywood studios is a problem because it "applies to just about all hardware and software. For example, the bill covers PCs, PDAs, software, Internet services and consumer electronic products."
Wasch wrote: "Government intervention in creating, imposing or approving a security standard is not the solution to the industry's piracy problems. The high-tech industry has worked with the content community to reach consensus on ways to address similar piracy problems in the past. Given sufficient time, there is no reason to think that the stakeholders cannot again reach consensus."
Hollings' Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act is the entertainment industry's boldest attempt yet to compel the computer industry to adopt software and hardware standards aimed at reducing illicit copying. It requires that "any hardware or software" that could be used to copy digital content include anti-piracy technologies.
ICANN not: Commerce Secretary Don Evans is a master of the fine art of talking a lot while saying nothing at all.
In a letter to the House Commerce Committee, Evans reassured the legislators that his aides are "following" the controversy swirling around Internet domain names -- but didn't say anything more.
In February, the president of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers candidly admitted that the group created to manage the Net's resources had run aground -- an admission that prompted some folks on Capitol Hill to wonder what the Bush administration was going to do about it. The top Republican and Democrat on the House Commerce Committee wrote to Evans at the time: "We look forward to hearing your views on these matters."
Evans' carefully worded answer sent on April 26 says: "I assure you that the department is following the ICANN reform activities and process closely."
