Senate votes to lift stem-cell ban
By Sean Lengell
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 12, 2007

The Senate yesterday passed a bill to lift a Bush administration ban on federal funding for research on new lines of human embryonic stem cells, disregarding the president's vow to veto it again.

The chamber also approved a second stem-cell-research bill endorsed by the White House that its Republican authors say skirts the moral concerns of destroying human embryos for research.

The more expansive of the two bills, introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, was approved by a vote of 63-34 -- the same number of yes votes that a similar bill received last year.

It's uncertain whether the measure has enough votes to override a veto in the Senate, which would require 67 votes if the full 100-member Senate is present. A similar bill to fund embryonic stem-cell research passed the House in January by a vote of 253-174 -- a margin even further away from the needed two-thirds majority. the rest