Michael J. Fox, the popular former actor afflicted with a particularly nasty form of heritable Parkinson's disease, had been making the rounds in lectures and advertisments endorsing candidates who favor increasing stem cell research, until Rush Limbaugh called him out on it, claiming that he was mugging for the camera in some dastardly partisan ploy that was probably somehow Bill Clinton's fault. Fox showed a level of maturity unusual for the political arena, essentially ignoring Limbaugh and focusing on his agenda; to increase funding and availability of stem cell based therapies. Parkinson's disease is considered to be a particularly likely candidate for stem cell based therapeutic approaches, as it involves the selective death of a very specific neuron type in the brain, and researchers have been turning stem cells into these neurons in laboratories for several years.

But the GOP attack machine isn't finished chewing up Fox just yet, as it unleashed one of its big guns today, first lady Laura Bush stepped up the partisan attacks on Fox today, all the while making up facts about her husband's supposed devotion to stem cell based therapies.

The fact is that stem cell research did begin under President Bush. George H. W. Bush, that is. The work began in 1990, but it was Bill Clinton who expanded available funding for stem cell research, only to have George W. Bush change those rules to a more restrictive set during his first year in office, limiting all research done on embryonic stem cells to existing cell lines, despite a variety of problems with those lines. So both she and Tony Snow pushing this ridiculous line that all stem cell research is available courtesy of George W. Bush is flat out lying to try and boost the GOP this close to the election.

And she's complaining that Michael J. Fox is manipulative?