The Boston Globe is not a media outlet known for its sympathetic view towards fundamentalist religious types. Everyone is aware of this. The Globe coverage of fundamentalist religious types is never particularly positive. Iran is a repressive fundamentalist theocracy. Everyone knows this.
But this morning, the Boston Globe has rapturous praise for the repressive fundamentalist theocrats in Tehran. In this front page story, the Globe manages to praise the freedom and openness of a regime that won't let women go out in public without having their heads covered.
The white-coated scientists at Tehran's Royan Institute labor beneath a framed portrait of the turbaned, bearded supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the head of a state that enforces strict religious rules governing everything from how women dress to what kinds of parties people throw.But in the cutting-edge field of human embryonic stem-cell research, the scientists work with a freedom that US researchers can only dream of: broad government approval, including government funding, to work on the potent cells from early-stage embryos that researchers believe hold the promise to cure many diseases.
In 2002, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gave his blessing to research on surplus embryos created for fertility treatments -- work sharply restricted in the United States under pressure from religious conservatives -- calling it a ``lofty" effort that fit his goal of making Iran the scientific leader of the Muslim world.
It's laughable to suppose that the Boston Globe would actually prefer to live under the leadership of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than President George W. Bush and a Republican congress. But if you read the paper regularly, that's the impression they leave you with...
(H/T: Dean Barnett at HughHewitt.com)
