The New York Times provides a summary of current initiatives and recent history in stem cell politics. It's a pro-government piece at heart, of course, conveniently forgetting that politicians are the ones who got us into this mess in the first place - and by "got us into this mess" I mean "are creating a future of millions of avoidable deaths by blocking medical progress." The terrible human cost of anti-research policies and restrictions on medicine - there are approximately 6000 deaths each day due to age-related conditions in the US alone - is somehow never quite as important as printing quotes like this: "You hear a lot of negatives about government, but if you go and talk to your congressman or senator, they listen."
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/06/politics/06STEM.html