Somebody please tell the president that grown-ups are alive, too.

"If this legislation became law, it would compel American taxpayers for the first time in our history to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos. I will not allow our nation to cross this moral line."

That was President Bush's justification for his latest veto of an embryonic stem cell research funding bill. What about the the deliberate destruction of human children and adults? American taxpayers have been compelled throughout our history to fund wars that kill thousands and thousands of civilians, most of them as "innocent" as an embryo. You could argue this killing is not deliberate, only "collateral damage," but since such killings are inevitable in war, anyone who engages in war is, if not deliberately killing, at least knowingly causing it. Why is this form of killing acceptable whereas the killing of embryos crosses a "moral line"? Despite what some talking heads will tell you, war is not a necessary evil. Ask Switzerland. Ask Costa Rica. Ask post-war Japan. Much of the world has outgrown our species' barbaric past. We haven't. And yet, our leaders presume to assume moral superiority on issues of life and death, all along ignoring the likelihood that stem cell research could produce treatments for diseases that kill thousands every year.

I'm not suggesting that it's OK to destroy embryos. Maybe it's not. Maybe it does cross a moral line. I'll give you that. But I would suggest that the killing of a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians also crosses that line. So if you're going to play the sanctity-of-life card, please, for the sake of my sanity, at least clean the blood of your hands first. You're getting the cards all dirty.