by JAMES TARANTO
Friday, March 10, 2006 2:41 P.M. EST

Best of the Tube This Weekend
We'll be appearing this weekend on Fox News Channel's "The Journal Editorial Report." Topics are the Saddam documents and South Dakota's new abortion law. Paul Gigot interviews The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, who broke the Saddam story. Tune in tomorrow night at 11 EST or Sunday at 6 a.m. (For a complete list of airtimes in the contiguous U.S., click the link atop this item.)

If you live in the Washington area and think we have a face for radio, you can hear us on "The Julian Tepper Show" Saturday at 8:30 p.m. on WTNT, AM 570.

Bye-Bye Dubai
"The decision by the United Arab Emirates on Thursday to order state-controlled Dubai Ports World to end its control over US port facilities marks the lowest point yet in the relationship between President George W. Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress," reports the Financial Times from Washington:

With [the president's] public approval ratings at record lows and his Republican party abandoning him, one of the US's closest allies in the Arab world concluded that he was no longer in control in Washington.

The decision by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al- Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, is likely to avert the political backlash that hit Washington last month and may prevent any further damage to diplomatic and security relations between the countries. But it underscored that Mr Bush, who still has nearly three years to go in his second term, has become perilously weak.

What does it mean if the Emiratis think the president is "no longer in control?" John Fund writes in OpinionJournal's Political Diary (subscribe here) that "it may cost the U.S. valuable intelligence on terrorism," which the UAE has been providing since 9/11, "and some American workers their jobs" if Air Emirates decides to repay the snub by buying planes from Airbus rather than Boeing.

The New York Post's John Podhoretz, however, is sanguine:

Just as with his last serious political miscalculation, Bush has actually been saved by the very forces in his own governing coalition that are opposing him.

When the president foolishly nominated the clearly unqualified Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, conservative intellectuals and pundits were so relentlessly negative that they forced him to withdraw Miers' name and appoint Samuel Alito in her place. That move simultaneously helped reenergize and calm a key part of the Bush coalition.

Republicans in Congress did Bush an even bigger favor. The president may have been right on the economic and foreign-policy merits of allowing the government-owned Dubai Ports World to manage stevedore operations inside the United States. But he was clearly wrong when it came not only to the politics of the deal, but also to its symbolic significance in the midst of the War on Terror. . . .

The public reaction to the ports deal indicates that the American people are still very much committed to the War on Terror. They understand that Arab nations of the Persian Gulf cannot be and should not be deemed reliable colleagues in our struggle against militant, extremist Islam. . . .

It is wrong to ascribe popular feeling against the deal to isolationism. The American people can't make sense out of which side Dubai is on, and they don't think it should be that hard a call. They believe in the fight, and their continued support for it is the best news the embattled Bush presidency could have.

Podhoretz is surely right that a quick defeat is better for Bush than a slow one would have been. But the rest of his analysis strikes us as far too complacent. How does the campaign against the UAE demonstrate a commitment to the war on terror? In war, after all, it is sometimes necessary to deal with dubious regimes; the Soviets were a U.S. ally in World War II. A wariness of dealing with Arabs reflects not a willingness to embrace the rigors of war but the opposite: a fastidiousness that at least takes us in the direction of isolationism.

Hear No Evil
"The Sept. 11 hijackers made dozens of telephone calls to Saudi Arabia and Syria in the months before the attacks, according to a classified report from the office of German Chancellor Angela Merkel," the Chicago Tribune reports:

According to the report, 206 international telephone calls were known to have been made by the leaders of the hijacking plot after they arrived in the United States--including 29 to Germany, 32 to Saudi Arabia and 66 to Syria.

These are calls between al Qaeda terrorists and their associates, in which one side of the call is in the U.S. and the other is in another country--that is, just the kind of call the National Security Agency listened to under the terrorist surveillance program. Had such a program existed in 2001, it might have prevented 9/11--but if some journalists and Democrats are scandalized now, imagine how they would have howled in outrage if 9/11 hadn't happened.

Pennsylvania Dutch Courage?
"Rep. John Murtha, a Vietnam veteran who has denounced the war in Iraq, was named a recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award on Thursday," the Associated Press reports. The award is given out by the JFK presidential library:

Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat, was recognized "for the difficult and courageous decision of conscience he made in November 2005, when he reversed his support for the Iraq war and called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the conflict," the foundation said in a statement.

What's weird is that when Murtha proposed withdrawal, many of those who cheered him on denied that he had done any such thing. Here, for instance, is a MediaMatters.org item denouncing us:

Taranto also falsely referred to a previous proposal (House Resolution 571) for immediate withdrawal as Rep. John P. "Murtha's" (D-PA). The proposal that Taranto labeled as "Murtha's" was, in fact, a one-sentence Republican proposal sponsored by Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) that news reports described as a "political trap" that was "aimed at embarrassing war critics." As Media Matters for America has documented, Taranto has also falsely attributed this position to Murtha in the past.

Granted, Murtha doesn't run MediaMatters, but if he's so courageous, why are his backers so eager to distance him from his own views?

Docs for Starvation
"More than 260 doctors yesterday called on the American authorities at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp to allow detainees to starve themselves to death," reports the Daily Telegraph of London. We guess that explains hospital food, but if the docs want the prisoners to die, aren't there quicker and more humane ways of accomplishing it?

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports from San Francisco that the ACLU is eager to watch people die:

The American Civil Liberties Union claimed Wednesday that California's lethal injection method violates the First Amendment rights of execution witnesses by not allowing them to see if the inmate is experiencing pain before death.

The federal lawsuit says the only reason San Quentin State Prison officials inject a paralyzing agent is to sanitize the execution and prevent witnesses from perhaps seeing convulsions.

The paralyzing drug, according to the lawsuit, "makes it impossible for witnesses to determine whether death row inmates in California are being subjected to substantial and unnecessary pain before dying."

The induced paralysis, the group argued, conceals significant information to which the public is entitled.

It does seem as though the political left is turning into some sort of weird death cult, doesn't it?

Great Moments in Public Education
In Chicago, where dead people vote, blind high-schoolers are required to take driver's education, reports the Chicago Tribune:

Mayra Ramirez scored an A in driver's education this year, but sitting through the 10-week class felt like a bad joke to the Curie Metropolitan High School sophomore.

Ramirez is blind. She knows she's never going to drive. She can think of a lot of things she'd rather be studying than rules of the road, but she didn't have a choice.

Chicago Public Schools requires all sophomores to take the class and pass a written road-rules exam--a graduation requirement that affects about 30 blind and visually impaired students in specialized programs at Curie and Payton College Preparatory High.

"In other classes, you don't really feel different because you can do the work other people do," said Ramirez, 16. "But in driver's ed, it does give us the feeling we're different. In a way, it brought me down, because it reminds me of something I can't do."

So that's why drive-up ATMs have Braille on them!

Hat tip: Steve Bartin.

Spot the Idiots
"Faith Hill and Tim McGraw--two stars who usually stay out of politics-- blasted the Hurricane Katrina cleanup effort," ABC News reports:

McGraw specifically criticized President Bush. "There's no reason why someone can't go down there who's supposed to be the leader of the free world . . . and say, 'I'm giving you a job to do and I'm not leaving here until it's done. And you're held accountable, and you're held accountable, and you're held accountable.

"'This is what I've given you to do, and if it's not done by the time I get back on my plane, then you're fired and someone else will be in your place.' "

Well, there's no reason, except maybe that the president has a few other responsibilities.

Meanwhile, the Boston Herald reports on

Natalie Portman told a "Terrorism and Counterterrorism" lecture at New York's Columbia University the other day that "censorship is bad," and "I don't think it's right to take down the Twin Towers." Did she think she was teaching kindergarten kids? The Harvard grad imparted these bits of wisdom as part of a MTV-U promotion for her latest flick, "V for Vendetta." A 20-minute Q&A with Portman, 24, was offered after the showing of a "Frontline" documentary on al-Qaeda, Guantanamo and the CIA's counterterrorism tactics, wrote a Blogger Who Was There. Another one of Portman's pearls of wisdom: "My immediate reaction is that torture is wrong." Yes, she really graduated from Harvard.

Who was it that observed Hollywood is Washington for dumb people?

What Did the President Know and When Did He Know It?
"Two Die as Storms Slam South"--headline, CNN.com, March 9

Now They Can Graduate and . . . Become Scientists?
"Scientists Discover How to Pass Exams"--headline, Financial Times, March 10

Who Says Chivalry Is Dead?
"Spain and Finland to Open Doors"--headline, Financial Times, March 10

A Smaller Task Force Might Move Faster
"Slow Going So Far for Home-Size Task Force"--headline, Austin American-Statesman, March 10

Bottom Story of the Day
"Rat-Squirrel Not Extinct After All"--headline, Associated Press, March 10

Kim Ill Sang
"North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il may launch a sneak attack on the world's pop charts--with the love-song I Am a Front-line Soldier's Wife," reports Australia's News.com.au:

For music-lovers tired of silly love songs, say the new North Korean hit tune, A Girl Innovator Dashing Like a Steed is a refreshing change of pace.

Other popular airs include Song of Coast Artillerywomen, Girl Silk-weavers of Nyongbyon and I Am a Front-line Soldier's Wife, the KCNA news agency reported.

Songs promoting family values include Love your Wives and My Mum Who Worries Herself About Her Child.

"A lot of songs have been composed in the country in reflection of the pride and happy life of the women who are playing a great role in all fields of social life," official media said.

It is unclear whether the tunes have a beat that people can dance to.

And to think, we had Kim pegged as a one-hit wonder.

(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Barak Moore, John Williamson, Monty Krieger, Rosanne Klass, Bob Barlow, Dan O'Shea, Larry Tanner, Joseph Tully, Brian Carlson, Mike Glasgow, Mark Schulze, Brendan Schulman, Phil Hord, Jo Atkins, Dennis Powell, Ethel Fenig and Peter Iorio. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: How to create a real security crisis.
• Daniel Henninger: New media still need the Old West.
• The Journal Editorial Report: Tune in this weekend for a discussion of Saddam's documents and South Dakota's abortion law.

And on the Taste page:

• Review & Outlook: The NFL owners' agreement would make Adam Smith smile.
• Tony & Tacky: The dark side of women's liberation.
• Bret Stephens: In America "dissidents" like Lewis H. Lapham are widely published.
• Karlyn Bowman: The division of chores does not cause much marital discord after all.
• Brendan Miniter: The IRS threatens church leaders who talk about politics.