Those of who you are regular readers of my posts here and at Central Sanity are likely already aware that on the subject of embryonic stem-cell research, I am not a moderate voice. I am a raving lunatic.

While the majority of the country continues to redden with anger over the President’s handling of the war in Iraq and his absolute refusal to even listen to an approach that might contradict the one Cheney has convinced him is the right approach — in our house, it is the stem-cell issue and the President’s intractability on that issue that sets our collective blood to boiling.

Our passion on this issue is essentially anchored in three points: (1) My son has Tourette Syndrome and a dear family friend has Parkinson’s. (2) Embryonic stem-cell research could potentially uncover new and more effective treatments or even cures for both of those disorders, among many others. (3) Cells in a petri dish are nowhere near the moral equivalent of our son and our friend.

Hence, our family did everything we possibly could to support passage of Missouri’s Amendment 2 last November. More recently, we have spoken up and will continue to do so as certain members of the Missouri legislature attempt to undo last year’s victory, ignoring the clear will of a majority of the citizens of this state. Yesterday, we simultaneously applauded and cringed when the U.S. Senate passed the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act … four votes shy of the veto-proof majority they needed.

We’re now at the point of questioning why the President, any President, should continue to hold such strong veto power — i.e., is a veto-killer two-thirds majority still a valid construct in a country of 300 million people and 535 combined federal legislators, or does it skew the validity of our esteemed checks and balances?

Think about it this way …

Take just the Members of the House: 435.

Take just the registered voters who actually voted in the last major (i.e., Presidential) election: 126 million.

The two-points above suggest the 435 total Members of the House each represent, on average, approximately 290,000 constituents who thought the race for President in 2004 was important enough for them to take time to vote. (Granted, some House districts may have had higher turn-out than others, but this exercise is not for an academic paper; it’s for illustration purposes only, and I do believe the scale of this math would ring true even under tougher scrutiny.)

Next, let’s assume the 253 Representatives who voted for the stem-cell bill passed by the House in January this year (58% of the total House Members) are probably confident that a minimum majority (call it 50.1%) of their constituents would agree with their vote on stem cells and hence return them to office in the next election.

So … 253 Representatives x 290,000 constituents each who voted in 2004 x 50.1 % of those constituents = approximately 36,758,370 Americans.

Now, let’s add the number of Representatives who voted against the House bill in January (174) plus the others who either abstained or were absent (8). That gives us a total of 182 Representatives.

So … 182 Representatives x 290,000 constituents each who voted in 2004 x 50.1 % of those constituents = approximately 26,442,780 Americans.

In summary: A margin of approximately 10 million American voters (8% of the total voting in the Presidential election of 2004) is not sufficient to prevent 1 man, the President, from negating the will of nearly 37 million total voters. The opinion of 1 man counts for more than the consensus of 10 million people who represent the estimated delta between the yes’s and no’s in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Now, regardless of what you think about this issue or this particular piece of legislation — regardless of your beliefs about whether or not the veto-proof Hope Act is a viable alternative to the not-veto-proof Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act — regardless: I’d really like to see anyone legitimately argue that we should keep the two-thirds veto-killer rule when it allows the opinion of 1 man to matter more than the opinion of millions. That’s not a valid check and balance and it’s time for it to go.