Let’s admit it: Public Affairs is often strange and inexplicable. Take, for example, Pat Robertson’s bizarre endorsement of the pro-abort Rudy Giuliani. Who could have predicted such a calculated sell-out of fundamental principle? But that is a subject for later writings.

The week’s other odd development is much more welcome: New Jersey voters soundly rejected the Abortion Lobby’s proposal to borrow $450 million in order to fund stem cell research on human embryos. Despite liberal Governor Corzine’s personal financing and endorsement of the effort – 53% of voters opposed the scheme.

News reports from Bloomberg and others suggest that opposition had more to do with the oppressive state of New Jersey’s finances than any moral objection to killing preborn children to harvest some of the cells. Whatever the cause of the victory – we’ll take it, especially from a state more renowned for corrupt liberalism than sound judgment.

The truth is, there are both financial and moral reasons for opposing this grand hoax.

Despite hundreds of millions of dollars in public money; despite great media hype and hoopla – human embryonic stem cell has failed to produce viable results. Nor does it seem likely to ever produce more than subsidies to various institutions, pharmaceutical companies and questionable researchers. After all, if these projects were likely to produce viable cures, these huge international companies would be putting their own dollars on the line. Instead, they prefer to scam the public.

New Jersey’s wisdom in rejecting this scheme may help apply the “airbrakes of logic” to the national drive to compromise all of us in the killing of preborn children.