Get a clue.

Here.

Here.

And here, from an honest liberal:

ABC should release the entire, unedited interview, so that Americans can judge her more fairly.

The biggest concern is that she appeared to not know what the Bush Doctrine is. There are, in fact, different definitions of it – but all have had an impact on this nation. One hopes Palin is more up to speed than she seemed.

Of course, she needs to be questioned on many issues – but this interview left us with little new information about her.

Americans already know she lacks foreign-policy experience (as, by the way, did Democrats’ 2004 VP candidate, John Edwards). All we could learn from Gibson’s grilling on that topic was how well she’s memorized McCain’s positions. Why ask her whether Georgia and Ukraine should be admitted to NATO? Her position will match McCain’s, just as Joe Biden’s stands will mirror Barack Obama’s.

Plus, her answers last night are already being misrepresented. She said – quite correctly – that, if Georgia and Ukraine are admitted to NATO, the United States may be obliged to defend them. This has been morphed into an assertion that we might invade Russia. And ABC News bears much of the blame: It actually sent out a pre-broadcast alert to that effect.

So now we can play this stupid game, pretending she wants to invade Russia instead of debating real issues.

ABC’s errors didn’t end there. The interview seemed to show a lack of good faith, with the blatant misrepresentation of comments she’s made about the Iraq war.

Gibson – probably relying on a sloppy Associated Press report – told Palin she has said that, “Our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God.”

In a part of the interview that was edited out (but is available on ABC’s Web site), Palin says, “You know, I don’t know if that was my exact quote.”

Gibson snaps: “Exact words.”

Sorry, Charlie – let’s go to the tape.

In the video of her remarks, Palin says “Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [US soldiers] out on a task that is from God.” She is clearly praying for wisdom for our national leaders – praying that they are following God’s will.

This is Christianity 101, not some fundamentalist plot to wage a holy war. Presumably, Obama, as a Christian, utters similar prayers for our country as well.

There’s more: Gibson also accused her of saying of Iraq, “There is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”

Here’s what she really said: “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”

Despite Gibson’s insistance that she’d said things that she clearly hadn’t, Palin was polite and seemed unrattled.

And that is what is rattling so many members of the unhinged MSM.

The e-mail exchange seemed vaguely familiar.

Hmmmm. Where have I seen those e-mails before? What intrepid investigative techniques did the superior left-wing blogger use to obtain those e-mails?

Thinking, thinking….

Oh, wait a minute. I’ve got it! They’re the same e-mails I published on this blog more than a month ago.

Way to go, Scoop.

Big props to Mary Katharine Ham for calling out the one-eyed, left-wing women bloggers (who still won’t admit their blind spot) and for demonstrating tough, but civil disagreement by example. Brava.

Salon’s Joan Walsh argued on Howard Kurtz’s TV show that it didn’t really matter that she failed to mention female hate-mongers like “Sandpaper sn**ch” Jane Hamsher or the racist, sexist ping-pong ball jokers at Wonkette because I received “plenty of attention” when I’ve pointed out vulgarity aimed at conservative women.

Really? I don’t remember The Guardian asking Kate O’Beirne to pen an op-ed for them about Hamsher’s filthy attack on her. No one put our pictures in the NYTimes for weathering epithets, sexist putdowns and death threats–many of which, unlike Sierra’s, were signed and endorsed by major bloggers–and not just random, obscure, anonymous commenters.

Walsh also argued that the reason she decided to pay attention to misogyny in the blogosphere now is because Sierra is a “techblogger” trying to “make the web a better community.”

As opposed to us Christofascist wingnut women bloggers who deserve what we get because we’re just trying to use the web to spread poisonous conservative ideas…

***

Here’s a review of my “code of conduct” on how to cope with Internet threats:

1) Report the serious threats to law enforcement.
2) Keep blogging.

***

Previous:

A message to the techblogging elite

There’s no comparison between the levels of profanity and hateful venom you’ll find at left-wing sites such as Huffington Post and the comments posted at Little Green Footballs. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at Howard Kurtz’s lame attempt at moral equivalence though; it’s what mainstream media does, whether the topic is blogs or “terrorism” or the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Note that he mentions that the Washington Post message boards also have a problem, although he basically brushes it off before attacking LGF. What he doesn’t say about WaPo’s boards is that the venom there is posted almost exclusively by left-wingers—and it’s not a sudden surge. It’s been out of control for quite a while.

See also here.

And remember: It’s an Amazon.com phenomenon and a Digg phenomenon, too.

***
Related:

Assassination chic, Cheney edition
Comments, trolls, and the left’s whore fixation
Comment commentary

On Fox and Friends this morning, Chris Wallace had some interesting comments about his interview with the Finger-Jabber:

His reaction to Clinton accusing him of having a “smirk:”

“What it was was sheer wonder at what I was witnessing.”

Heh. On what happened after the interview:

“There was no making up with him. He was angry. And when he left, he chewed out his staff.”

The Finger-Jabber. Always, always blaming someone else for his failures.

Noel Sheppard at The American Thinker weighs in on “Bill Clinton, Bin Laden, and Hysterical Revisions.” Howard Kurtz does a brief take on Clinton’s finger-wagging moment.

Our take on Slick Willie’s Day of Rage is here.

Scott Johnson at Power Line:

The most striking feature of Bill Clinton’s bloviations on FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace yesterday was the incredibly low ratio of facts to whoppers. If Chris Wallace could prompt that red-faced response with such an innocuous question, I wonder if a few minutes with Richard Miniter (author of Losing bin Laden, interviewed by NRO here), might not send him to intensive care. I would love to hear Miniter ask Clinton a few questions about Clinton’s treatment of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center — an attack that Clinton shrugged off in a few paragraphs of his subsequent Saturday morning radio talk, never to return to the subject. (Miniter quotes the relevant paragraphs of the radio address at pages 28-30 of his book.)

Ronald Cass at RCP minces no words:

Presidents often find it hard to leave the stage. The day of Bush’s first inauguration, Clinton lingered for hours at Andrews Air Force base trying to hang on to the attention he had so enjoyed as President. He still seeks the limelight.

But desperation to be noticed after leaving office, to have the respect and affection Clinton craves, isn’t a substitute for doing the right thing when in office – any more than lies are a substitute for honesty, or indecision a suitable alternative to moral courage.

On the golf course, Bill Clinton is known for his dislike of playing his ball where it lies, scoring honestly, and taking his lumps as the rest of us duffers must. He makes his own score, always a good deal better than the real number.

Someone else should be trusted to do the scoring when it comes to Clinton’s time in office. In the history books, he deserves to be counted as the President who did not protect us against al-Qaeda, who left the impression they could attack us without penalty, whose wasted opportunities contributed to the travesty of 9/11.

Tough talk now should not be allowed to obscure that fact. Lies now should not go unanswered.

***
Previous: He doth protest too much

Early on, prosecutors claimed they had evidence of over ten felonies. They demanded that Rush plead guilty to some felony—any felony. He refused, always insisting on his innocence. So, they leaked more lies to the media, hoping to intimidate him. They seized his medical records. They gave his medical records to the media. The media took those records and turned them into graphics for television. Reporters and commentators were studying his prescriptions, discussing both the kinds and amount of medicine he had taken. They were beside themselves with glee. Newsweek, AP and the Palm Beach Post, Rush’s local paper, were especially vicious, serving as lap-dogs for the prosecutors.

In court, Rush fought these people every step of the way—all the way to the Florida Supreme Court. He spent millions of dollars defending himself—despite the fact that he had been a first-time abuser, went to rehab, and was clean. And then last October, the lead prosecutor sauntered into court and in response to questioning told the judge—we have no evidence that Rush Limbaugh has committed any crime! None.

So, I am very angry. You will hear commentator after commentator speaking sympathetically about Patrick Kennedy and his addiction to painkillers. You will hear people say that he is addicted, he has a serious health problem, he deserves to be praised for his forthrightness today, and we should leave him alone. And many of these commentators will be the same people who were giddy in their ceaseless attacks on Rush.

I am angry at the double standard, where liberals are regularly treated one way and conservatives another. I am also glad Patrick Kennedy won’t be abused as Rush was. But you can be sure that the next conservative with a problem won’t be treated like Kennedy.

But there are some aspects to the Kennedy matter that require answers. If Patrick Kennedy, who is not a first offender, is addicted to painkillers, from where did he get them? And there are news reports that he had been drinking earlier at a Capitol Hill bar and alcohol was later smelled on his breath. So, why was the officer on the scene prevented by more senior police officers from performing a routine sobriety test?

I truly wish Patrick Kennedy well. But you bet I’m angry.

***update: Fox News confirms announcement coming Wednesday morning…more…Lucianne G.: “Tony’s courage in the face of the horror he has endured for the last couple of years sets an example for us all. Take heart from it. I will miss doing his show every Monday. I will love watching him work.”***

Through the magic of David Lunde’s photoshopping, here’s an exclusive first image of who may soon be standing at the White House press secretary’s podium:

Breitbart/AP reports:

Fox News commentator Tony Snow is the front-runner to become White House press secretary and a decision on his appointment is near, Republicans close to the White House said Tuesday.

Snow has told associates he would like to take the job and he has had serious discussions with White House officials, the Republicans said on condition of anonymity because of President Bush’s dislike of news leaks.

As a conservative columnist and commentator, Snow has been sharply critical of Bush and Republicans in Congress at times. The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, circulated unflattering observations by Snow about Bush.

“His (Bush’s) wavering conservatism has become an active concern among Republicans, who wish he would stop cowering under the bed and start fighting back against the likes of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Wilson,” Snow wrote last November after Republicans failed to win the governor’s race in Virginia. “The newly passive George Bush has become something of an embarrassment.”

Last month, Snow wrote that Bush and the Republican Congress had “lost control of the federal budget and cannot resist the temptation to stop raiding the public fisc. (treasury)”

Snow, in an Associated Press interview Wednesday, said: “It’s public record. I’ve written some critical stuff. When you’re a columnist, you’re going to criticize and you’re going to praise.”

He’s exactly what the White House needs.

Quip of the day from Barbara Comstock (hat tip – reader Joshua):

“We see him handle cancer with good humor, I think he can handle David Gregory with that same great humor.”

Howard Kurtz at WaPo reports in Wed’s edition:

Fox News commentator Tony Snow has decided to accept the White House press secretary’s job after top officials assured him that he would be not just a spokesman but an active participant in administration policy debates, people familiar with the discussions said yesterday.

Snow’s appointment could be announced as early as today. The only potential obstacle would be the results of a CAT scan taken Thursday, which he hopes will reveal no recurrence of the cancer that forced him to have his colon surgically removed last year, these sources said.

A director of speechwriting for President Bush’s father, Snow views himself as well-positioned to ease the tensions between this White House and the press corps because he understands both politics and journalism, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the appointment has not been announced.

White House officials said they expected an announcement this week but declined to comment publicly on the search to replace outgoing press secretary Scott McClellan.

Snow would be the first Washington pundit — in his case, one who has been an outspoken ideological voice — to take over the pressroom podium.

“President Bush hates responding to the press, hates responding to political enemies — he thinks it’s beneath him,” Snow said on Fox News in March. “He’s got a stubborn streak.” What the president needed, he said, was “a series of vigorous defenses” of his position.

Brian Maloney: The smear campaign is underway.

“Am I going to be able to get devoted readers of the New York Times to watch Fox News? Maybe, but it would be heavy lifting,” he says. “We are in some respects the antidote.”

***

Speaking of the NYTimes, a reader e-mails:

The NYT editorial page today is even by their standards abnormally
biased.

It includes:

An editorial claiming the US foreign policy is biased in favor of Israel
to the detriment of the US

An editorial stating they would rather have a nuclear Iran than another
war led by Rumsfeld

Six letters to the editor lambasting Bush on Iraq and warning of a
similar debacle in Iran

Not included: any opposing view point.

All the better for Special Report!

And from The Street, investors continue to be unhappy with NYT management:

Morgan Stanley Investment Management said Tuesday it withheld votes for the Times’ director nominees because it believes the company’s board and management have become unaccountable to shareholders.

The firm, which says it owns more than 5% of the Times’ Class A stock, called for the elimination of the dual-stock structure that leaves control of the board with minority shareholders led by the founding Sulzberger family. The Times and a number of other big media outfits have left voting control in the hands of founders, under the rationale that long-term owners look after the long-term interests of the business rather than chasing short-term profit. But Morgan Stanley said the company has failed to keep up its end of the bargain…

This is a courageous young woman.

I must say, though, that I found her first interview yesterday rather odd. Carroll seemed bent on giving her captors a positive review, going on about how well they treated her, how they gave her food and let her go to the bathroom. And they never threatened to hit her. Of course, as we all saw in those chilling videos, they did threaten to kill her. And they shot her Iraqi translator to death.

Why make a terrorist group who put her family and friends through a terrible three-month ordeal sound like they were running a low-budget motel chain?

Now perhaps this is unfair, for there is much we do not know. We don’t know why Carroll was kidnapped and why she was abruptly released. She says she doesn’t either, but surely she must have gotten some clues about her abductors’ outlook and tactics during her 82-day captivity. Maybe she was just shell-shocked right after being let go. Maybe she won’t feel comfortable speaking out until she’s back on American soil.

We’ll find out soon enough: Carroll could be on her way home as early as today.

Kurtz also wants to know more about Carroll’s statements on this video. As I said yesterday, there’s no way to tell — yet — whether they were coerced or not. For exactly that reason, Jim Geraghty is reserving judgment.

Debbie Schlussel, however, has seen enough.

LGF has a transcript of Carroll’s jihadi interview in an update here. And here’s the Christian Science Monitor’s full report on Carroll’s release.

UPDATE: The blogosphere’s go-to guy on Jill Carroll news is also cutting her some slack.

Says Rusty in an e-mail:

After devoting considerable time to the subject I’ve become a bit more sympathetic to the plight of hostages. Whether or not she was anti-American to begin with is irrelevant since she was a civilian operating in a war-zone. Her political views do not change the fact that her captors are savages operating outside the laws of war. I think we should give people the benefit of the doubt, especially when they are victims….

Once she’s home if she starts acting like Giuliana Sgrena we’ll call her on it. Until then, my advice to the blogosphere is to have some class.

UPDATE: The gentle souls who took such good care of Carroll allegedly warned her before her release that if she cooperated with America, she might be killed.

UPDATE: Karol’s giving Carroll the benefit of the doubt.

UPDATE: Carroll’s captors claim the U.S. negotiated her release by agreeing to release Iraqi women prisoners. Zalmay Khalilzad denies it.

UPDATE: Robert Zelnick at Comment Is Free notes that Carroll’s captors were Sunni and that, since the Samarra mosque bombing, Sunnis need all the goodwill they can get. As such, says Zelnick, killing her would have been worse than a crime — it would have been a mistake.

UPDATE: Xrlq: “Blogosphere, stand down.”

I just got home from Pittsburgh and am late heading out the door for the Abdul Rahman event in D.C., but I can’t let this blog sit silent about the plagiarism debacle now engulfing young conservative Ben Domenech, the Washington Post’s “Red America” blogger.

I cheered for Ben, the editor of my last book at Regnery, when he announced his new position. I criticized unhinged bloggers on the Left who leveled vicious ad hominem attacks against him. It’s clear, as the good folks at Red State (which Ben co-founded) note, that his detractors were on a search-and-destroy mission from the get-go.

But now the determined moonbat hordes have exposed multiple instances of what clearly appear to me to be blatant lifting of entire, unique passages by Ben from other writers. It is one thing to paraphrase basic facts from a wire story. But to filch the original thoughts and distinctly crafted phrases of a writer without crediting him/her–and doing so repeatedly–is unacceptable in our business. Some of the cases occurred while Ben was in college; he is blaming an editor for these transgressions. But at least one other incident involved a piece he wrote for NRO after he graduated. The side-by-side comparisons of these extensive passages is damning.

I certainly understand the impulse on the Right to rally around Domenech. But I can’t ignore the plain evidence. And the charges can’t be dismissed as “lies” or jealousy attributed to Ben’s age.

As someone who has worked in daily journalism for 14 years, I have a lot of experience related to this horrible situation: I’ve had my work plagiarized by shameless word and idea thieves many times over the years. I’ve also been baselessly accused of plagiarism by some of the same leftists now attacking Ben.

The bottom line is: I know it when I see it. And, painfully, Domenech’s detractors, are right. He should own up to it and step down. Then, the Left should cease its sick gloating and leave him and his family alone.

***

Conservative blogger Rick Moran weighs in. And Junkyard Blog.

Domenech resigns.

Stephen Spruiell says the Post should salvage the “Red America” blog.

More fallout:

Howard Kurtz
Editor and Publisher
The College of William and Mary student newspaper
Vaughn Ververs
Ankle Biting Pundits

Fishbowl DC is looking for Red America candidates.

NRO posts at The Corner:

As the previous links on the matter mention, at least one of the pieces Ben Domenech is accused of having plagiarized was a movie review for National Review Online. A side-by-side comparison to another review of the same film speaks for itself. There is no excuse for plagiarism and we apologize to our readers and to Steve Murray of the Cox News Service from whose piece the language was lifted. With some evidence of possible problems with other pieces, we’re also looking into other articles he wrote for NRO.

Ed Morrissey wishes the best for Jim Brady.

Sayeth the WSJ:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is the latest Republican to broadcast his “independence” from President Bush on homeland security, yesterday joining Senator Lindsey Graham, Representative Peter King and numerous state politicians in calling on the Administration to stop a deal that would allow a United Arab Emirates company to manage six major U.S. ports.

The Democrats are also piling on, and we’ll speak to that in a moment, but this behavior of Republicans strikes us as peculiar coming from people who claim to support the war on terror. Mr. Graham told Fox News that the Administration’s decision allowing the state-owned Dubai Ports World to run commercial operations at U.S. ports was “tone deaf politically.” The voluble Senator said this is no time “to outsource major port security to a foreign-based company” and that “most Americans are scratching their heads wondering, ‘Why this company, from this region, now?’ ”

Some of us are scratching our heads all right, but we’re wondering why Mr. Graham and others believe Dubai Ports World has been insufficiently vetted for the task at hand. So far, none of the critics have provided any evidence that the Administration hasn’t done its due diligence. The deal has been blessed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a multiagency panel that includes representatives from the departments of Treasury, Defense and Homeland Security.

Contrary to the Journal editorial board’s assertion, critics have indeed provided evidence that due diligence was not done. As I noted on Monday, Rep. Peter King revealed the following:

The House Homeland Security Committee chairman said that, despite Chertoff’s explanation on ABC’s “This Week,” he still has strong concerns about the inquiry. “When I talk to the people actually involved in the process, it was very cursory, it was very superficial,” King said.

He said he found out about the purchase, which transfers operations at ports in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia to the Persian Gulf company, last Tuesday in meetings with senior Bush administration officials. “As I understand it, the whole process took only 20 to 25 days,” he said of the transaction. “There’s no way you can do a complete analysis in 20 to 25 days and that includes financial analysis.”

And there’s this:

The administration’s review of the deal was conducted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a body that was created in 1975 to review foreign investments in the country that could affect national security. Under that review, officials from the Defense, State, Commerce and Transportation Departments, along with the National Security Council and other agencies, were charged with raising questions and passing judgment. They found no problems to warrant the next stage of review, a 45-day investigation with results reported to the president for a final decision.

However, a 1993 amendment to the law stipulates that such an investigation is mandatory when the acquiring company is controlled by or acting on behalf of a foreign government. Administration officials said they conducted additional inquires because of the ties to the United Arab Emirates, but they could not say why a 45-day investigation did not occur.

And this from AP:

Bush didn’t know about ports deal

President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates until the deal already had been approved by his administration, the White House said Wednesday.

Defending the deal anew, the administration also said that it should have briefed Congress sooner about the transaction, which has triggered a major political backlash among both Republicans and Democrats…

The Journal approvingly cites the blessing of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which “includes representatives from the departments of Treasury, Defense and Homeland Security,” but offers nothing more.

Do not be reassured. The business-as-usual Journal editorial writers may have complete faith in this panel’s dealings. You should not.

Fact: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged in his press briefing yesterday that he only learned of the deal over the weekend.

SEC. RUMSFELD: There were Defense Department and — I think as I said, there were six departments that were involved in the process in one way or another, and the Defense Department was one of them. The lead was the Department of Homeland Security.

Q Are you confident that any problems with security — from what you know, are you confident that any problems with security would not be greater with a UAE company running this than an American company?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I am reluctant to make judgments based on the minimal amount of information I have, because I just heard about this over the weekend.

Fact: The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has been little more than a rubber stamp on sensitive foreign acquisitions since its founding. Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, who has followed the panel’s dealings extensively, pointed out:

This is not the first time this interagency panel – called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States – has made an astounding call about the transfer of control of strategically sensitive U.S. assets to questionable purchasers. In fact, as of last summer, CFIUS had, since its creation in 1988, formally rejected only one of 1,530 transactions submitted for its review.

Such a record is hardly surprising given that the committee is chaired by the Treasury Department, whose institutional responsibilities include promoting foreign investment in the United States. Treasury has rarely seen a foreign purchase of American assets that it did not like. And this bias on the part of the chairman of CFIUS has consistently skewed the results of the panel’s deliberations in favor of approving deals, even those opposed by other, more national security-minded departments. Thanks to the secrecy with which CFIUS operates, it is not clear at this writing whether any such objection was heard with respect to the idea of contracting out management of six of our country’s most important ports to a UAE company.

Moreover, it’s not clear who exactly reviewed the approval at the Pentagon and Homeland Security. Gaffney observes, “Past experience suggests the job may have fallen to lower-level career bureaucrats who give priority to maintaining good relations with their foreign ‘clients,’ like the UAE.”

Contiuing on with the blithe spirits at the WSJ:

Yes, some of the 9/11 hijackers were UAE citizens. But then the London subway bombings last year were perpetrated by citizens of Britain, home to the company (P&O) that currently manages the ports that Dubai Ports World would take over. Which tells us three things: First, this work is already being outsourced to “a foreign-based company”; second, discriminating against a Mideast company offers no security guarantees because attacks are sometimes homegrown; and third, Mr. Graham likes to talk first and ask questions later.

First, the deal will outsource port operations not just to any “foreign-based company”–but to a state-owned entity based in a known transit point for al Qaeda operatives and a key transfer point for shipments of smuggled nuclear components sent to Iran, North Korea and Libya. Second, of course, there’s no such thing as a perfect defense. Should we never subject any Mideast companies or individuals to heightened scrutiny because it would offer “no security guarantees?”

Can the Journal editorial board be that dense? Well, this is the open-borders editorial board that routinely misstates immigration law, resorts to pathetic ad hominem attacks on immigration enforcement advocates, and believes that since we can’t deport all illegal aliens in the country, we shouldn’t deport any and just amnestize them all instead. Andy McCarthy had the same reaction.

Continuing:

Besides, the notion that the Bush Administration is farming out port “security” to hostile Arab nations is alarmist nonsense. Dubai Ports World would be managing the commercial activities of these U.S. ports, not securing them. There’s a difference. Port security falls to Coast Guard and U.S. Customs officials. “Nothing changes with respect to security under the contract,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday. “The Coast Guard is in charge of security, not the corporation.”

Missing. The. Point. The issue is not whether day-to-day, on-the-ground conditions at the ports would change. They presumably wouldn’t. The issues are whether we should grant the demonstrably unreliable UAE access to sensitive information and management plans about our key U.S ports, which are plenty insecure enough without adding new risks, and whether the decision process was thorough and free from conflicts of interest.

The Journal and the Bush administration make no persuasive case that it was.

(The Washington Times adds that “company officials would be briefed on security procedures and countermeasures that, if compromised, could allow foreign terrorists to get through various screening procedures.” Moreover, while the Coast Guard is responsible for port security, tracking ships, crews and cargo and search vessels based on intelligence, “there is no cohesive hiring or screening process for port workers.”)

And more from the WSJ:

As for the Democrats, we suppose this is a two-fer: They have a rare opportunity to get to the right of the GOP on national security, and they can play to their union, anti-foreign investment base as well. At a news conference in front of New York harbor, Senator Chuck Schumer said allowing the Arab company to manage ports “is a homeland security accident waiting to happen.” Hillary Clinton is also along for this political ride.

So the same Democrats who lecture that the war on terror is really a battle for “hearts and minds” now apparently favor bald discrimination against even friendly Arabs investing in the U.S.? Guantanamo must be closed because it’s terrible PR, wiretapping al Qaeda in the U.S. is illegal, and the U.S. needs to withdraw from Iraq, but these Democratic superhawks simply will not allow Arabs to be put in charge of American longshoremen. That’s all sure to play well on al Jazeera.

On the hypocrisy of the Democrats, I completely concur with the Journal. See my column: They are all profilers now. But that’s about the only thing I agree with in the piece.

It’s time to get heads out of the sand and stop drinking the Kool-Aid: In a post-9/11 world, the first-ever sale involving U.S. port operations to a foreign, state-owned company demands much more than a business-as-usual rubber stamp. Outside the Beltway, this is gob-smackingly obvious. James Lileks speaks for many:

We’re told we’re at war, and we reach back for the wartime memories we all saw in the movies and read in the novels: Yanks walking along fences with a dog, rifle on the shoulder, searchlight playing on the ground, stealthy foes ever at the perimeter. It was never that tight, of course; it was never that dramatic. But there were the constant imprecations to be vigilant, because peril lurked. That would have been undercut, perhaps, if the Roosevelt Administration had given port control to Franco.

Well, not the best analogy, perhaps. But the specifics don’t matter; arguments about the specific nature of the Dubai Ports World organization’s global reach and responsible track records don’t matter. Because it feels immediately, instinctively wrong to nearly every American, and that isn’t something that can be argued away with charts or glossy brochures. It just doesn’t sit well. Period. It’s one thing for an Administration to misjudge how a particular decision will be received; it’s another entirely to misjudge an issue that cuts to the core of the Administration’s core strength. That’s where you slap yourself on the forehead in the style of those lamenting the failure to request a V-8 in a timely fashion. Doesn’t matter whether it was a deal struck between the previous administrators and the UAE; that’s not how the issue will be seen. And it certainly doesn’t matter once the President gets all stern on the topic and insists he’ll veto any attempt to keep the deal from going through. At that point, millions of previously resolute supporters stand there with their mouths open, uttering a soft confused moan of disbelief.

The White House isn’t merely tone-deaf on this matter. It is stone-blind.

***

Afterthought: Some Bush defenders are accusing opponents of the deal of emotional hyperventilation. But it’s their own blustery rationalizations that are light on evidence. And the only hyperventilating I see is coming from UAE officials crying “Islamophobia.”

***

Dafydd at Big Lizards has a concrete proposal for addressing the port sellout’s political and security concerns:

Neither side has noticed that there is a fairly obvious compromise staring us in the face, which Big Lizards believes would resolve the very real security concerns without losing the equally real security benefits from this deal.

Both the actual national-security risk and also the political danger come, not from the ownership of the company, but rather from the day to day management — the actual control of operations. The emirate wants the profits that accrue from ownership; rational Americans want to see control of the port, even the cargo areas, in friendly hands, preferably American.

This suggests a workable compromise: an American company should be chartered — American owned and American managed — that is a wholly owned but independently operated subsidiary of Dubai Ports… call it American Port Services, Inc., or somesuch name that makes clear the nationality; and then let all the actual management of the ports be handled by the American APS, not by Dubai Ports.

President Bush’s obstinate veto threat notwithstanding, someone in Congress should investigate this option.

***

Rick Moran:

On its surface, there really is little to be upset about with allowing the Dubai based company to handle the management of the ports. DPW has contracts at ports all over the world and has proved itself competent enough. There would be a minimal change in employees at the six ports in question. Ships would still have to be offloaded by the Longshoremen, as patriotic and security conscious bunch as there is in the United States. And as AJ Strata rightly points out, actual security of the ports would still be in the hands of the Coast Guard and the Port Authority.

So what’s the problem? The problem is in the atmospherics of this deal.

The problem is with the tone deaf bureaucrats of CFIUS who okayed this deal in the first place. They may have gotten some DoD flunky to vote for it in Committee but not bothering to brief the Secretary of Defense or the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff about it only contributes to the notion that they are not taking port security very seriously.

The problem is with the incompetence (or arrogance) of the supposedly vaunted White House political operation in treating this deal like a routine transaction when the involvement of a Middle Eastern country whose toleration and support for the Wahhabi brand of Islam was sure to cause trouble on the Hill. Then there’s also the minor matter involving the UAE being a banking Mecca for terrorism. I find it more than a little ironic that monies we’re pouring into the banking system of that country could be used to plan and carry out attacks against our own country.

The problem was in not recognizing that the deal would give your ravenous and out of control enemies on the left and in the press a great big T-Bone steak of an issue to chew on in the immediate aftermath of the Cheney debacle. These are people who were gnawing on your leg while bodies were still floating in the floodwaters of New Orleans. Just what in God’s name were they thinking?

The problem is that given the lukewarm response of our government to the cartoon jihad, the President’s strongest and most vocal supporters would see this deal as one more nod, one more cave-in to Muslim sensibilities rather than the good business deal it almost certainly is. Taking the base for granted in anything is bad politics. In this case, it demonstrates an ineptness that would be troubling if we weren’t getting used to it by now…

Jim Geraghty has a different take.

Howard Kurtz sketches out a chronology.

***

Previous:

Bush digs in
Sen. Frist on the port sellout
How the port sellout was financed
Chuck Schumer hearts Halliburton
Protect our ports: steam builds
Banned in the UAE
Our ports, our sovereignty
Stop the port sellout

Oh.

See.

How.

They.

Whine.

Hugh Hewitt wonders: “How bitter at cable eclipse can you be?”

Howard Kurtz rounds up opinion and blog reax.

The letter from the Joint Chiefs in response to Tom Toles’ cartoon, blogged here yesterday, appears in today’s Washington Post.

No response from Toles or the editors. Maybe the ombudsman will have something to say. Or more likely, given the rabid reaction she provokes on the Left, maybe not.

Update: Responses from Toles and his editor included in Howard Kurtz’s piece. Hat tip: Newsbusters.

***

Just a point to add…

Many moonbat readers are equating criticism of Toles’ cartoon with the Muslim world’s violent reaction to the Danish forbidden cartoons.

So, there you have it. Another example of liberal math:

Writing a letter and posting blog entries = issuing fatwas, threatening suicide bombings, and conducting armed raids.

Blogmeister USA is on the same wavelength:

Some on the left will probably cry that the Joint Chiefs are trying to subvert the First Amendment rights of Toles and the Washington Post. That, of course, is ridiculous. They wrote a letter to tell the Post how they felt about the cartoon. They didn’t have the newspaper offices stormed by soldiers or special agents and its staff taken away in chains while the building was set on fire.

So there you have it. American papers aren’t afraid to print controversial cartoons that feature our military in unflattering circumstances. They aren’t afraid to offend our troops and their families. Will they take up the cause of Denmark and show solidarity with their European counterparts in the name of free speech? Will they risk upsetting Muslims?

I doubt it. But I could be wrong.

***

Instapunk is having a contest: Rewrite the Toles cartoon.

President Bush has been summoning newspaper editors lately in an effort to prevent publication of stories he considers damaging to national security.

The efforts have failed, but the rare White House sessions with the executive editors of The Washington Post and New York Times are an indication of how seriously the president takes the recent reporting that has raised questions about the administration’s anti-terror tactics.

Here’s an idea. Instead of going hat in hand to the liberal media elite to prevent these security-compromising disclosures, the White House should try this:

1. Strengthen collective spine.
2. Subpoena reporters.
3. Find the leakers.
4. Prosecute the lawbreakers.

Six days ago, the President said he had not ordered an investigation into the leak, but that, “There’s a process that goes on inside the Justice Department about leaks. I presume that process is moving forward.”

Well, is it?

Jack Kelly, who blogs at Irish Pennants, writes in his latest Toledo Blade column:

It is despicable, but not illegal, for the news media to publish vital national secrets leaked to them. But the leakers have committed a felony.

Those who have demanded severe punishment for whoever it was who told reporters that Valerie Plame worked at the CIA have been remarkably forgiving about who leaked the existence of the NSA intercept program, which – like the earlier leak of secret CIA prisons for al-Qaeda bigwigs and unlike the Plame kerfuffle – has done serious harm to our national security.

But fortunately, by clapping New York Times reporter Judith Miller in irons until she talked, overzealous special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has set a valuable precedent.

Attorney General Gonzales should subpoena Mr. Risen and Mr. Lichtblau, and have them cited for contempt of court if they do not disclose their source or sources. Maybe they could share Judy Miller’s old cell.

***

AJ Strata is keeping an eye on recently resigned FISA Judge James Robertson.

Fausta at The Bad Hair Blog is fed up.

***

Reader S.M. e-mails:

I’m certain you get numerous e-mails such as this one following any item you blog about regarding leaking classified information. My fiancee and I both work in the defense industry and hold security clearances of varying degrees. What strikes us both, and anyone else in our sphere of professional aquaintances, is the seeming double standard in place where the protection of classified information is concerned. While it seems that senior managers (and I use “manager” as a term of derision) and policymakers are cozy enough with the oversight comittees and agencies that they feel at liberty to divulge carefully selected pieces of classified information whenever it suits their purpose, I *KNOW* that anyone at my level would be swiftly and thoroughly wrung out following anything but the most benign security violation.

For example, if I should happen to accidentally leave my cellphone in my briefcase and bring it into a SCIF or other classified area, I would be guaranteed a trip to the security office to explain the breech of policy, sign a counseling statement and perhaps be re-briefed on local security policy. Two or more such violations would likely result in a suspension of my clearance or an outright revocation of such. This would kill me professionally and financially. Additionally, if I were to deliberately place a phone call to the editor of a national media outlet to discuss classified information, or willfully stuff classified documents down my trousers, I would be standing before the security officer as the first step towards prosecution under the laws that I am subject to in regards to my job. This does not seem to be the case for those at higher levels of “management” than mine.

…This double-standard cannot stand and I worry that the ongoing leaks that do not result in any attempt to prosecute the guilty parties may set a dangerous precedent in the future. This topic needs to have the spotlight thrown on it for open examination by people of all political stripes, and the electorate of this country needs to know that national security, both in policy and in practice, is a joke.