….or not. MO Governor Blunt has an outraged letter in NRO, explaining his position on cloning, etc., and taking pro-life leaders to task for keeping unborn children "hostage". The NRO editors reply:

Blunt continues to mislead with the discussion of legislative “hostages.” Pro-life organizations opposed the weakening of pro-life bills to accommodate the biotech industry. That’s not evidence of unworthy “personal or political” motives. And even if the governor were playing it straight here, it would hardly make his position look better. If the pro-life groups were unreasonably adamant that anti-cloning provisions should be included, a governor who really supported the bill “fervently” could have let them have their way.

Gov. Blunt would have us believe that cloning isn’t cloning if he calls it SCNT, and that cloning doesn’t create a human life if he has prayed about it. But whatever we call the procedure in question, it creates a living organism of the human species. And in any case, the legislation the governor sank would have prohibited the “creation of a human being by any means other than by the fertilization of an oocyte of a human female by a sperm of a human male.” If the governor thinks that SCNT doesn’t create a human life — for some mysterious reason — he should have been able to support this bill.

Conservatives have many reasons to cheer the record the governor has compiled so early in office. His support for cloning is, however, dismaying. So is the fact that he is defending his position with nearly Clintonesque spin.