Here’s a roundup of opinion about the Dubai Ports World bruhaha:

A Dubai Finesse – Charles Krauthammer

Port Hysteria – Rich Lowry

Overboard – Jonah Goldberg

The Politically Correct vs. the Politically Ridiculous – Andrew C. McCarthy

Good for America – James K. Glassman

Where’s common sense? – Charles Schumer and Peter King

We tend toward the Lowry position – There are concerns about the ports deal, but the hysterical overreaction has been unfortunate. There are legitimate security concerns, but if they can be reasonably addressed, then the deal should be allowed to go forward. We cannot prod Arab governments to moderate and modernize, then reject them with a knee-jerk reaction because they’re an Arab government.

Some people seem to have rejected the idea of the deal simply as a reaction to the fact it involves a Middle Eastern country, the United Arab Emirates. And some others have characterized any expression of concern over the deal as based solely in anti-Arab bigotry. Both of those reactions are incorrect. It’s entirely reasonable to have heightened scrutiny in dealing with companies and governments from that part of the world; we don’t have to ignore the history of the region and the current environment they operate in.

It’s good that the deal has been delayed and will be given greater scrutiny, but hasn’t yet been killed off completely. Hopefully the additional time will allow cooler heads on both sides to prevail.

More from California Conservative, who notes the actual deal is not as sweeping as it’s been portrayed. And more from Captain’s Quarters and Irish Pennants. More stuff at The Mudville Gazette.

Ever since George W. Bush became president, some have been complaining about “the politicization of science” or the idea that the current administration is undermining, ignoring, and stifling science in the United States.

But what the complainers are usually doing is conflating science and policy. Various policy preferences can be supported with scientific evidence, but that doesn’t make the policy preferences themselves “science.” One can disagree with a scientist’s political or policy views without “undermining science.”

The NY Times yesterday reports on a gathering of disgruntled government-employed and -funded scientists who think the administration isn’t listening to to them enough when making policy. This, of course, is hysterically portrayed as “an attack on scientific freedom.”

At a Scientific Gathering, U.S. Policies Are Lamented

ST. LOUIS, Feb. 18 “” David Baltimore, the Nobel Prize-winning biologist and president of the California Institute of Technology, is used to the Bush administration misrepresenting scientific findings to support its policy aims, he told an audience of fellow researchers Saturday. Each time it happens, he said, “I shrug and say, ‘What do you expect?’ “

No examples of any misrepresentation were offered.

But then, Dr. Baltimore went on, he began to read about the administration’s embrace of the theory of the unitary executive, the idea that the executive branch has the power or even the obligation to act without restraint from Congress.

Hopefully Dr. Baltimore knows more about science than about legal theory. The “unitary executive” has nothing to do with “the idea that the executive branch has the power or even the obligation to act without restraint from Congress.” That’s the kind of nonsense one would read on some nutty Angry Left blog. The idea of the unitary executive, recall, merely holds that executive power resides in the executive branch. So we can begin to see where Dr. Baltimore is coming from here. Knee-jerk lefty talking points are not science.

Dr. Baltimore continues:

“It’s no accident that we are seeing such an extensive suppression of scientific freedom,” he said. “It’s part of the theory of government now, and it’s a theory we need to vociferously oppose.” Far from twisting science to suit its own goals, he said, the government should be “the guardian of intellectual freedom.”

But of course his freedom is not being suppressed, he can do all the scientific inquiry he wishes. First, he doesn’t have to do his experiments on the government’s nickel. Second, his real problem is that his favored policies aren’t being implemented. Again, science and policy are not the same thing.

Another speaker, Susan F. Wood, former director of the office of women’s health at the Food and Drug Administration, said administration interference with the agency’s scientific and regulatory processes had left morale there at a “nadir.”

“Administration interference” – note that the FDA is an executive branch agency; they work for the administration, not the other way around. Ms. Wood forgot that she was an employee, not the boss. And again, she’s objecting to a policy decision, not any suppression of scientific inquiry.

Dr. Wood, who received a standing ovation from many in the audience, resigned in August to protest agency officials’ unusual decision to overrule an expert panel and withhold marketing approval for Plan B, the so-called morning after pill, a form of emergency contraception. She said she feared that competent scientists would leave rather than remain at an agency where their work was ignored because “social conservatives have extreme undue influence.”

Uh oh, not “social conservatives.” This gives us a good idea of Wood’s political leanings. Note that “social conservatives” is not a scientific term. In other words, people, some of whom are also scientists (yes, some of those dreaded “social conservatives” are also scientists!), have different policy priorities than Wood. Differences in policy priorities are not an “attack on science.”

The Times piece ends with this:

Leslie Sussan, a lawyer with the Department of Health and Human Services who emphasized that she was speaking only for herself, drew applause when she said she saw the administration’s science policies as “an attack on the rule of law as a basis for self-government and democracy.”

A lawyer spouting some liberal political boilerplate at a conference supposedly opposed to politicizing science. Classic irony.

Previous:
Embryonic stem cells, science and morality
Who’s politicizing science?

Also linked at The Mudville Gazette

The attack on the Boy Scouts continues. Read about it here, at the blog Stones Cry Out.

Arguments in a major Boy Scouts case unfolding in Pasadena, Calif., before a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals – a case that is certain to be headed for the Supreme Court — centered on the contention that the revered organization is actually a religion and should therefore not be given a lease of public land.

There are two things wrong with this contention. First, the idea that an affirmation of God makes an organization a religion is ludicrous. “God” and “religion” are not synonyms.

Equally ludicrous is the notion that the Constitution requires a local government agency to discriminate against a group based on religion or an affirmation of God. There is nothing in the Constitution that requires such discrimination; in fact the free exercise clause prohibits discrimination based on religious belief. If the city had a rule that only religious or God-affirming groups could lease space, that would clearly be unconstitutional. The converse, excluding groups based on religious belief, is equally discriminatory. So the judge has things completely backwards.

There is nothing in the Constitution, or the intent of those who wrote it and ratified it, that requires the state to banish God from the public sphere. Those who are pro-banishment have twisted the constitutional prohibition of establishment of a state church to absolute absurdity.

Also linked at The Mudville Gazette blog.

Hillary Clinton has loads of nerve, if nothing else. Via Yahoo News:

Asked at a press conference for her reaction about how the White House has handled the incident, US Senator
Hillary Clinton called the Bush administration’s failure to be more forthcoming “troubling.”

“A tendency of this administration — from the top all the way to the bottom — is to withhold information … to refuse to be forthcoming about information that is of significance and relevance to the jobs that all of you do, and the interests of the American people,” Clinton said.

“Putting it all together, going back years now, there’s a pattern and it’s a pattern that should be troubling,” she said at a press conference calling for a more robust federal response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

The former first lady continued: “The refusal of this administration to level with the American people on matters large and small is very disturbing, because it goes counter to the way our constitutional democracy … is supposed to work.”

Hello? Rose law firm billing records? Lying to a grand jury? Specious executive privilege claims? Vincent Foster? Does Hillary not remember the 1990s? Sometimes you just have to laugh at their unmitigated gall.

The Washington Post is reporting on “new” photos from the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

An Australian television channel today broadcast more photographs of abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. The graphic images, which included naked, blood-soaked prisoners, were quickly picked up by Arabic television stations and Web sites around the world.

The abuse pictures were similar to or the same as the now-infamous images that came out in April 2004, sparking public outrage, a congressional investigation and the military trials of several U.S. soldiers. But their release could be significant because it comes at a time of already heightened tension between Muslim nations and the West over European newspaper cartoons satirizing the prophet Muhammad.

As the Post noted, the original photos came out almost 2 years ago, in April 2004. Legitimate outrage ensued, congessional investigations were held, military trials for the abusers were held. There’s no news value to showing more photos of the same event two years later. The only reason to show them is to generate an emotional reaction to the graphic images, and ratings for the news outlets that show them. Too many people already substitute emotional reactions for thinking about issues as it is.

The Sister Toldjah blog contrasts the treatment of these photos with the alleged “need to show sensitivity to Muslims” regarding the Mohammed cartoons the Post would not show to their readers.

The editors of the Washington Post (and any other American news outlet that chooses to show these photos) should be compelled to explain why these photos, but not the Mohammed cartoons, should be shown. Unlike these photos, which add nothing to any story, the cartoons actually have news value, providing context for stories about Muslims rioting in response to seeing them.

Update: Michelle Malkin is asking the question. And Blackfive has some more Abu Ghraib photos, ones the MSM won’t want to show.

From the AP ( via The Washington Post):

“That’s the argument of flexibility and it goes something like this: The Constitution is over 200 years old and societies change. It has to change with society, like a living organism, or it will become brittle and break.”

“But you would have to be an idiot to believe that,” Scalia said. “The Constitution is not a living organism, it is a legal document. It says something and doesn’t say other things.”

Proponents of the living constitution want matters to be decided “not by the people, but by the justices of the Supreme Court.”

“They are not looking for legal flexibility, they are looking for rigidity, whether it’s the right to abortion or the right to homosexual activity, they want that right to be embedded from coast to coast and to be unchangeable,” he said.

That just about sums it up.

Incidentally, how do those who argue for a “living, breathing Constitution” then turn around and argue that the president does not have the Constitutional authority to wiretap al Qaeda? Isn’t a “living breathing Constitution” the answer to any objection?

“The president can’t wiretap terrorists without a warrant! It’s unconstitutional!”

. . .”The Constitution is a living breathing document. Times change, the law evolves, etc…”

“The president can’t detain foreign combatants without all the legal protections accorded a citizen of the U.S in a criminal proceeding!”

. . .”The Constitution is a living breathing document. Times change, the law evolves, etc…”

The possibilities are endless. Liberals really can’t have it both ways.

The Washington Post has another article today about the mean, heartless Republicans cutting the budget for a list of healthcare programs. And surprise! – the doctors, facilities, state agencies, etc. who receive all that money don’t want to lose a nickel of it and predict dire consequences.

Bush Budget Would Cut Popular Health Programs

President Bush has requested billions more to prepare for potential disasters such as a biological attack or an influenza epidemic, but his proposed budget for next year would zero out popular health projects that supporters say target more mundane, but more certain, killers.

If enacted, the 2007 budget would eliminate federal programs that support inner-city Indian health clinics, defibrillators in rural areas, an educational campaign about Alzheimer’s disease, centers for traumatic brain injuries, and a nationwide registry for Lou Gehrig’s disease. It would cut close to $1 billion in health care grants to states and would kill the entire budget of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Resource Center.

….

To meet his twin goals of taming a rising deficit and increasing spending on national security, Bush proposed $2.2 billion in cuts to discretionary programs elsewhere in the budget. The Department of Health and Human Services would absorb $1.5 billion of that total, in part to direct more money to mandatory programs such as Medicare.

It’s so easy to look at the proposed “cuts” (the federal budget is ballooning – roughly doubling just in the last five years. $2.2 billion out of a $2.8 trillion budget is 0.08%. That’s less than a rounding error they’re fighting over folks.) and say “oh look, the mean president is attacking the poor sick people”, but that’s a knee-jerk emotional reaction, not a serious policy analysis. In other words, typical behavior from the left.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said the administration chose “tax cuts for the wealthy and giveaways for the drug industry” over services for needier patients.

It’s just so much easier to belch out that kind of emotional appeal than to make an argument. Incidentally, how one can be against the drug industry but for the patients who take the drugs produced by the drug industry is a mystery, but no one accuses old Ted of being a deep thinker.

Anyway, every dollar spent by the federal government is received by someone, obviously. So you can always point to the recipient that’s being cut off and moan about how unfair it is. (There are obvious exceptions – no one is going to cry much when they learn some big corporate subsidy is being cut.) The only way to avoid these complaints is to never cut any federal program, ever. Federal spending can always go up, by any amount, but it can never go down. And any program, once started, can never be ended. Even if there are 20 other programs or agencies that do the exact same thing, if you cut one there will be complaints about the poor unfortunate wards of the welfare state who are being kicked to the curb by the heartless, mean Republican president and his “draconian” (0.08%, remember) budget cuts (Only Republican presidents are mean of course. Democrats are nice by definition, Republicans are mean by definition).

Notice finally that nowhere is there any discussion of the constitutional authority, or lack thereof, for all these federal programs. That doesn’t seem to even be a consideration any more in the budget process. It’s simply taken as a given that the federal government should be doing anything that needs to be done.

The mainstream press reaction to the accidental shooting of a fellow hunter by Vice President Cheney has been hilarious. It’s just another testament to their own self-absorption.

The opening line of a column by Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post:

Why isn’t Dick Cheney on TV right now?

Froomkin also gives a roundup of media reaction to the accident —

From the NY Times:

“Asked why the vice president’s office had made no announcement about the accident, [Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride] said, ‘We deferred to the Armstrongs regarding what had taken place at their ranch.’ ”

From The Boston Globe:

“Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a hunting partner Saturday in Texas, and the White House did not confirm the shooting until nearly 20 hours later.”

From the AP:

“Armstrong said everyone at the ranch was so ‘focused’ on Whittington’s health Saturday that it wasn’t until Sunday she called the Caller-Times to report the accident. . . .”

From the Chicago Tribune:

“How is it that Vice President Cheney can shoot a man, albeit accidentally, on Saturday during a hunting trip and the American public not be informed of it until today? . . .”

Of course by “the public” they really mean “the Chicago Tribune”.

From Good Morning America on ABC:

Charlie Gibson: “We’re going to go next to the growing political fallout from all this. Why didn’t the White House tell everyone when this accident happened? Why did they wait so long? And did that make a bad situation even worse?”

So if you’re a public figure and get involved in an accident, remember – before you call an ambulance, or a doctor, call the Washington Post or the NY Times. It’s all about them.

In fact, the accident happened late afternoon Saturday, and it was in the news on Sunday, the next day. Failing to cater to the obsession of the news media for instantaneous saturation reporting of every event hardly amounts to a coverup. These folks really need to get a grip.

Now we’re just waiting for someone in the tinfoil hat left section of the blogosphere to ask “was it really an accident?” Maybe they’ll restrain themselves, but we won’t be surprised if they don’t.

Michelle Malkin has video of the media frenzy at the White House press briefing today. They’re all outraged they weren’t told quickly enough.

Al Gore gave a pretty disgusting, even seditious speech over the weekend in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, declaring among other things (via Yahoo News):

…Arabs had been “indiscriminately rounded up” and held in “unforgivable” conditions. The former vice president said the Bush administration was playing into al-Qaida’s hands by routinely blocking Saudi visa applications.

First, it’s just a lie – no one is being “indiscriminately rounded up” in America. To go to another country, especially to that one, and tell such lies about your own country is simply despicable. For a former vice president of the United States doubly so. Just more evidence how fortunate we are this deranged man never became president.

Blogger Tigerhawk sums it up nicely:

There is simply no defense for what Gore has done here, for he is deliberately undermining the United States during a time of war, in a part of the world crucial to our success in that war, in front of an audience that does not vote in American elections. Gore’s speech is both destructive and disloyal, not because of its content — which is as silly as it is subversive — but because of its location and its intended audience. He should be ashamed. But he won’t be. The leadership of the Democratic party should disavow Gore’s Jiddah speech. But it won’t.

Michelle Malkin has a fine rebuttal to Gore’s slander here. And more from Ed Morrissey. Also linked at The Mudville Gazette.

The Washington Post once again flogs the “Bush lied us into war” meme:

The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of “cherry-picking” intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Paul R. Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, acknowledges the U.S. intelligence agencies’ mistakes in concluding that Hussein’s government possessed weapons of mass destruction. But he said those misjudgments did not drive the administration’s decision to invade.

The consensus view that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had WMD didn’t drive the decision to invade? Huh? Huh???

Stephen Hayes at The Weekly Standard once again rebuts:

According to the Washington Post, Pillar’s forthcoming critique will be “the first time that such a senior intelligence officer has so directly and publicly condemned the administration’s handling of intelligence.” Nonsense. In recent weeks, Pillar has trashed Bush administration policies to the Los Angeles Times and reporters for the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain. And before that, Pillar put many of these condemnations in a book. The relevant sections were published more than two years ago. Not exactly breaking news.

Later in the Hayes article, on the Iraq-al Qaeda connection the Bush administration “made up”:

Consider: In a January 23, 1999, article in the Washington Post, then-National Security Council counterterrorism director Richard Clarke, no friend of the Bush administration, defended the Clinton administration strikes on al Shifa and said that “intelligence exists linking bin Laden to al Shifa’s current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan.” In an email he sent on November 4, 1998, to National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and made public by the 9/11 Commission, Clarke concluded that the presence of Iraqi chemical experts in Sudan was “probably a direct result of the Iraq-Al Qaeda agreement,” whereby bin Laden promised not to agitate against the Iraqi regime and Saddam Hussein pledged assistance on weapons development.

It’s really not complicated. All this stuff about “cherry-picking” and “misleading” is a canard. All intelligence information is incomplete and subject to interpretation, that’s the nature of intelligence gathering. There had been a worldwide consensus of concern about Iraq’s WMD programs for years. In the months after 9/11, that concern was necessarily heightened. When the Director of the CIA tells the president the existence of those programs is a “slam dunk”, the president simply cannot ignore that.

Those who are more interested in defending the United States from our enemies than cheap partisan point-scoring understand these basic concepts.

Here is another take from Outside the Beltway.

Lots of Democrats have been trying very hard to drag President Bush into the Abramoff scandal in a transparent guilt-by-association maneuver. They hit a speed bump yesterday when the AP reported that Senator Harry Reid, yes Democrat Senate minority leader Harry Reid, had extensive contacts with Abramoff’s lobbying firm and clients. From the Washington Post report:

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid wrote at least four letters helpful to Indian tribes represented by Jack Abramoff, and Reid’s staff had frequent contact with the disgraced lobbyist’s team about legislation.

The activities — detailed in previously unreported billing records and correspondence — occurred over three years as Reid (D-Nev.) collected nearly $68,000 in political donations from Abramoff’s firm, lobbying partners and clients.

As the story of these contacts broke, many liberals began trying to explain how this is different, it’s still an all-Republican scandal, etc. etc.

We got a kick out of this effort from MyDD, a popular lefty blog, trying to help distance Reid from the scandal in spite of those contacts, in a post yesterday:

Abramoff is a convicted criminal. He pled guilty, in Federal courts, to the following:

* Defrauding the Indian Tribes
* Tax evasion
* Conspiracy to bribe a Congressman (Bob Ney) with material gifts and lavish trips
* Bank fraud in the purchase of the SunCruz casino deal

Now, looking at this article, how is Harry Reid implicated in any of these charges? He wasn’t.

Ok fair enough, now let’s just doctor that quote up a tiny bit, and see how it looks:

Abramoff is a convicted criminal. He pled guilty, in Federal courts, to the following:

* Defrauding the Indian Tribes
* Tax evasion
* Conspiracy to bribe a Congressman (Bob Ney) with material gifts and lavish trips
* Bank fraud in the purchase of the SunCruz casino deal

Now … how is President Bush implicated in any of these charges? He wasn’t.

We trust those on the left who want to excuse Reid will not try to make any further connections between the president and the Abramoff scandal just because the two may have met a few times. We have every confidence this will end the issue for any intellectually honest person on the left. We’re not going to hold our breath.

Also linked at The Mudville Gazette.

Columnist Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post tries to explain today why rapper Kanye West was denied the Grammy awards for album of the year and record of the year, asking in the opening paragraph:

Was his insolent claim that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” the reason Kanye West didn’t win the prestigious album of the year and record of the year awards he deserved at the Grammys the other night?

It’s almost funny, the assumption that an “artist” who can’t sing or play a musical instrument “deserves” awards for anything. Robinson desperately wants this affront to tell us something about race in America. For some, anything that happens to a black person must tell us something about race in America.

Rock group U2 won the Grammy for album of the year. Love them or hate them, at least they can legitimately claim to be musicians.

Robinson closes his column with the statement:

A young black man who’s smart, talented, political and uppity, too? Now that’s really scary.

There you have it. A group of people that sing and play musical instruments beats someone who can do neither for a music award, and it’s assumed by Robinson it must somehow be about race. We fear this sort of knee-jerk reaction is all too common on the race-obsessed left today.

Somewhat related – seldom has there been a more stark reminder of what talent-free rot rap is than when the Grammy telecast brought a collaborative performance featuring Paul McCartney, the band Linkin Park, and rapper Jay-Z. At one point, McCartney and the Linkin Park frontman (don’t know his name) were singing the Beatles classic “Yesterday.” Poor talentless Jay-Z was reduced to the occasional grunt of “Uh-Huh” or “All Right” and that was it. He was completely out of place, and there was no hiding it. It was a clear side-by-side display of music vs. non-music, talent vs. non-talent.