Arlen Specter (pictured right), the Senate sponsor of a bill that would force taxpayer funded embryo and cloning research, lost his seat several months back.

And last week 1 of 2 House sponsors of the same bill, Mike Castle, met his congressional demise.

Now I’m thrilled to report the 2nd House sponsor of that bill – and its driving force – Diana DeGette (pictured left with Castle), had better watch her own political stem cells. Reported WhoSaidYouSaid.com September 20:

In any other political year, a Republican challenger to… DeGette, D-CO, would not even make a stir. DeGette has held her seat since 1997 and beat her GOP opponent by more than a 3-to-1 margin in 2008.

But this is no ordinary year.

The National Republican Congressional Committee today sent out a new list of candidates new list of who’s “on the radar” and who are “contenders.” Most notable for CO is the placement of Mike Fallon “on the radar,” which is the first step in the NRCC’s “Young Guns” program and brings with it additional exposure and fundraising opportunities….

Fallon, a Denver emergency-room doctor who has also started urgent-care clinics, decided to take on DeGette after he watched ObamaCare pass Congress….

In a Denver Post column on Sunday, former CO Senate President John Andrews wrote, “Is Republican Mike Fallon a longshot in Democratic Denver? Yes. Is DeGette a lock? No, not in this year of the Tea Party and Glenn Beck’s half-million on the Mall.”

That this race is getting any attention seems an indicator of a serious wave building toward Nov. 2….

It appears anxious Democrat members want to cut Congressional hours short to go home and defend their turf. According to Politico September 20:

This works tremendously in our favor. As I wrote last week, our goal has been to run out the clock before session ends. Indeed, it appears this has happened. According to CQ Today (only available by subscription) September 16:

Senate Democrats pledged Thursday to pass legislation that would allow federal funding of embryonic stem cell research… but they said action would wait until after the November elections and might even spill into next year.

“This would take some debate and time, and we just don’t have it,” Tom Harkin, chairman of the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee, said after holding a hearing on escr. “It’s not going to happen before the election.”…

Measures approving federal funding for the research have gotten bipartisan support in the past. But one Republican who has backed stem cell research, Orrin Hatch of UT, said Thursday that legislation addressing the matter “is not going to go anywhere” this year….

House Democrats, led by… DeGette… are also pushing embryonic stem cell research legislation, but an aide said a bill was unlikely to come to the House floor until after the elections….

If either bill comes up for a floor vote later this year, it will face a strong lobbying effort from opposition groups, which say such legislation would open the door to federally funded research on human cloning.

David Christensen, senior director of congressional affairs for the Family Research Council, which opposes abortion, called Specter’s bill “worse than anything else that has been introduced.”…

So another pro-life round won, although a monkey wrench would be if the courts rule in our favor this week and reinstate the injunction against Obama’s executive order authorizing taxpayer funded escr,  DeGette will have added impetus to press for a vote NOW.