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To contact your senator see about this important vote on stem cell research see: http://capwiz.com/pan/mail/oneclick_compose/?alertid=7827456 Specter, Frist Head for Stem-Cell Showdown: by Margaret Carlson July 21 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Senator Arlen Specter and Majority Leader Bill Frist are headed for a showdown. But it's not over President George W. Bush's first Supreme Court nominee, as I expected back when Frist temporarily held up Specter's rise to Judiciary Committee chairman for being too moderate. No, the confrontation that's looming is over something close to Specter's heart, his stem-cell bill. Co-sponsored with Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, the bill would override Bush's ban on federal funding of stem-cell research that uses frozen embryos, a prohibition that has stymied research into cures for the incurable. The bill looked as if it would sail through the Senate as easily as it passed the House. That was before conservatives threw up a roadblock in the form of competing bills proposing methods of creating new stem-cell lines that don't involve the destruction of embryos. There's no evidence those methods will yield stem cells anytime soon. What they will yield is a safe harbor for some senators who would have voted for the Specter bill. More Studies The Frist substitutes for the Specter bill offer a haven for those Senators who want to support Frist and the president, but not risk the ire of a majority of Americans, who've come to feel almost as strongly in favor of expanding stem-cell lines as the minority does in opposing it. Leon Kass, head of the President's Commission on Bioethics, whose position is always to drop-kick the embryo problem for more studies by more committees, has weighed in and found the unproven methods ``encouraging.'' If Frist gets his way these untested processes will prove successful in stopping Specter's bill. Last week, Specter fought back at hearings and a press conference attended by Michael J. Fox, who has been the famous face on the battle to get more money for research into Parkinson's disease. But Specter, who has been battling Hodgkin's disease, is his own draw now. Never weaker physically, never stronger mentally, Specter says he is propelled out of bed each day by his work and by the hundreds of letters he's received from patients who await a cure for the now incurable. The Hourglass His former chief of staff, David Urban, calls his former boss the Lance Armstrong of the Senate. ``If you close your eyes and don't look at his bald head and gaunt cheeks but just listen to him, you'd think he was a well man at the height of his powers,'' Urban says. At the press conference with Fox, Specter placed an hourglass on the table, Urban says, to remind us we don't have forever on this bill. Frist has got to bat down what he calls these 11th-hour ``stalking-horse alternatives,'' which might work someday but not now. Before Specter turned the microphone over to other speakers, he asked for a personal moment to make the point that if the country had waged the full-fledged war against cancer President Richard Nixon pledged, there might be a cure for the lymphoma ravaging him today. He doesn't want the same thing to happen to cures for diseases awaiting stem-cell research. Specter may be weak physically, but Frist enters this fight crippled by his own mistakes. Stung by a string of mistakes, miscalculations and transparent pandering, he's made some members wax nostalgic for the good old days under Trent Lott, who wasn't distracted by dreams of being president. Bet on Specter Earlier this year, Frist was unilaterally disarmed by Senator John McCain, who stole seven Republicans to form the Gang of 14, taking Frist's ``nuclear option'' on filibusters off the table for the time being. He couldn't get a vote on the floor on John Bolton's nomination as ambassador to the United Nations. Aware Republicans had gone too far on Terri Schiavo, he went on ``Good Morning America'' to claim he hadn't diagnosed the Florida woman by videotape. Problem was there was a videotape showing him doing just that. Frist didn't look like much of a leader last week when he tried to pre-empt the Democrats' empty threat to remove Karl Rove's security clearance (for being the source of Valerie Plame's outing as a CIA agent) with his own. He introduced an amendment to an unrelated bill to strip Senator Dick Durbin and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of their security clearances. The Senate hadn't seen such hand-to-hand combat since Frist broke with the body's traditional courtesy to take off for South Dakota and personally campaign against former Senator Tom Daschle. Frist's amendment was defeated, with 20 Republicans voting against it. Although Frist controls the Senate, my money's on Specter. To Frist, who favored more stem-cell research before changing his mind to comport with Bush's stance, this is not a matter of life and death. Specter has conservatives like Senators Orrin Hatch and Gordon Smith and Ted Stevens with him. Specter's going to get this passed, if it's the last thing he does. To contact the writer of this column: Margaret Carlson at [log in to unmask] http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&refer=columnist_carlson &sid=aRy8H_130tWA# ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn