This weekend news came that the Bush Administration had approved the sale of Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation (a.k.a. "P & O"), the fourth-largest port operations firm in the world, to DP World, the seventh-largest. P & O is a British company, and DP World is owned by the United Arab Emirates. P & O runs the shipping operations in Newark (New Jersey), Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami, New Orleans, Vancouver, and twenty-three other ports around the world.

The bipartisan outcry over this merger is fascinating for several reasons. Take, for example, the mayor of Baltimore, Martin O'Malley, who called on the President to step in to stop the sale:
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Can we, as a country, take a gamble by allowing another country to be in charge of our security? This is not Republican or Democrat. This is about the safety of our country. We're going to take this as far as we can, because our national security is at stake.
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Or, my own Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton, who just proposed a bill to block foreign governments from buying port operations:
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