Lou Dobbs Creams His American-Made Jeans

Still watching the fallout from the ports deal. In the comments below, Brandon observes:

...you've still got wonder what the administration was thinking.

Well, it's a foreign company being bought out by another foreign company. The US administration doesn't have any business thinking anything much on the subject, and, assuming there's no threat to US interests, Congress doesn't have any business screwing around either. Do the security check, and hoist the rubber stamp.

Again, if the deal was to hand over responsibility for port security to a foreign company - any foreign company, not just one run by swarthy people - that would be a Bad Idea. Unless some radical proposition involving the US Coast Guard has been floated within the last few hours, though, it's a Bad Idea that has absolutely, precisely nothing to do with the matter at hand. Take the charmingly naive idea that a change in the parent company of this enormous seven-billion-dollar operation, with its investments spread over four continents, will somehow manifest itself in its local employees; sprinkle it with some good old-fashioned George Bush conspiracy mania, add some sinister Arabs, and the result is: They're giving away the ports! So that they can... uh... so that they can torture people!

This is entirely on-point. Here's an interesting dKos diary, together with the obligatory horrifying comment thread. And as for the argument that the deal should be opposed because it seems wrong "on a gut level" - one promulgated even by sensible people like James Lileks - Virginia Postrel says it best:

All I can say is my gut reaction was, "This is stupid."

I can't wait for opponents of the ports deal to wake up to the next terror in our midst: Arab-run airlines such as Emirates flying planes right into the US - many of them crewed by actual foreigners. It's amazing this has been allowed to go on for so long, really.