Prima facie evidence.

I wasn't going to write about torture this year. Last year, I wrote a feature on the subject, and I also reviewed several books about it. Given its gruesome nature, given that it has received a lot of attention elsewhere (including in The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books), and given that you tell me The Progressive is already depressing enough, I figured I'd lay off.

But while reading through two recent, voluminous reports by Amnesty International USA and Human Rights Watch on U.S. torture and impunity, I saw one phrase pop up in both: "prima facie evidence." That's a legal term for evidence that is strong enough to establish a case. Both groups said there was such evidence against Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes. And Amnesty International USA said there was such evidence against Bush, too. I was further amazed that Amnesty International USA issued a call to foreign governments to apprehend Bush and Rumsfeld if there is no accountability here. No wonder Bush and Rumsfeld denounced Amnesty International.

So you'll have to forgive me. I think this is a story.

Bush's low-water marks are hard to plumb. But his May 24 statement on embryonic stem cell research was way down there. He seemed to place on an equal level the "emerging human life" of the embryo created in the lab and that of an already living, breathing human being who is suffering from a terrible disease. But actually he privileged the embryo. That's why he surrounded himself with families that used frozen embryos to have babies.

He didn't invite victims of Alzheimer's, Parkinsons, Lou Gehrig's disease, or diabetes to the White House for his statement. And lucky for him. He'd have been heckled out of the East Room.

But he did invite the leaders of Nightlight Christian Adoptions, a group he twice singled out for praise. According to its website, one of its goals is "to share God's love by ... recognizing and advocating the personhood of pre-born children."

To grant personhood to embryos is something the Supreme Court refused to do in Roe v. Wade. And granting it to embryos that have not yet--and will never be--implanted in a woman's uterus is even a bigger stretch. Yes, frozen embryos that are implanted in women can grow into fetuses and then be born. But there are 400,000 frozen embryos in the freezers at fertility clinics, and Nightlight Christian Adoptions has managed to bring all of eighty-one into being. Thousands of frozen embryos are being discarded, and Bush won't let scientists near them. For anyone who is suffering, or knows someone who is suffering, from a disease that could be cured by embryonic stem cell research, Bush's stance is heartless.

Congratulations all around. Kate Clinton has just published a fine collection of her funny essays, many of which appeared here first. The title: What the L? John Ross, who reports from Mexico for us again this month, won the 2005 Upton Sinclair Award from the South Bay chapter of the ACLU. And Molly Ivins is finally getting her due. She is the recipient of the International Women's Media Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award. And she also won a lifetime achievement First Amendment Award from the Reporters Committee for Freedom Of the Press. "If you're not scared, you should be," she said at the awards ceremony for the reporters group, according to Jesse Oxfeld of Editor and Publisher. True to form, she added: "In Texas, we recommend imagination and beer."