War on the Ports Deal

The problem with things like this is that the House is structured to disallow pretty much any opposition party bill from reaching the floor. So inevitably, any bold legislation has to come from the Republican side. They opportunistically jumped on the ports deal, and in the aftermath I'm sure they'll say "we blocked it." You also can't help but be disturbed with the rhetoric about "Democrats trying to get to the right of Bush" with regard to scuttling this deal, as if protecting America is solely a conservative value. If Republicans were trying to "get to the left" of Democrats, what would that involve, in the eyes of this media narrative? Welcoming terrorists with flowers? It's not only insulting, it is ignorant of the real lapses in national security under the oversight of this Administration.

At least in the Senate, the Democrats took the lead:

Also Wednesday, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, introduced an amendment that would bar a company from operating in a U.S. port if the company is owned by a country that recognized the Taliban's regime in Afghanistan. The UAE is one of those countries.

After Schumer introduced his amendment, Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, asked for a quorum call, which essentially gnarled proceedings.

Uhh... "Paging the Oval Office... what do we do???"

Then there's a subcontracting option put forth by Susan Collins (R-Maine), where DP World still gets the profits, but a US company does the management. Guess what company?

Some unconfirmed reports this weekend suggested Halliburton could be in the running, but the Bush administration could never be that...(Never mind..)

None of these options end up looking good for the President and his judgment. There's still 5 weeks left in the investigative review of the deal, which means 5 more weeks of bad headlines. As Harry Reid said, "This issue is going to go away like the sun's not going to come up in the morning."