Off the freakin' rails

The Senate passed an exemption to the FDA ban on importing drugs from Canada as an amendment to the Homeland Security bill. (That's not as strange as it sounds because it was tacked into the section on Customs and Border Protection.)

This is politically interesting as it throws a very popular measure towards the House in this year of contentious midterm elections. Republican leadership has resisted this in both houses because of pressure from the pharma industry, but their cover story has been concerns about safety of the drugs.

But we've got a new cover story. If you ever need an example of the misuse of the terrorism threat to justify completely unrelated political goals, I offer this:

But Republican leaders vociferously opposed the plan for fear, they said, the drugs could be unsafe for consumers — or even present a terror risk.

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., said the proposal was an attempt to push the FDA into reversing itself while "creating a massive hole on our capacity to secure our borders and protect ourselves."

"If I were a creative terrorist, I would say to myself, 'Hey, listen, all I've got to do is produce a can here that says 'Lipitor' on it, make it look like the original Lipitor bottle, which isn't too hard to do, fill it with anthrax," Gregg said.

Right, because manufacturing anthrax into pill form in a garage or basement would be so much easier than putting it into a baby power container, or hiding a package the size of a pill bottle on one of the unchecked NAFTA trucks, or swallowing it in a condom, or mailing it Fed Ex, or hiding it in a car tire, or carrying it on a ferry, or.....

Oh, and I think you just gave the Bush administration their next argument in the softwood lumber dispute with Canada in front of the WTO.

Dear Mr. Greg, marijuana comes across the northern border by the truckload. Just admit that you are a drug company shill and move on.

As a runnerup for rhetorical misuse of terrorism, perhaps I should add Rep Peter Hoekstra who is calling for a crackdown on leaks saying that such leaks are a nefarious plot by intelligence agencies sympathetic to Al Qaeda. (According to Hoekstra's theory, Dana Priest's and Eric Lichtblau's and Ron Suskind's sources must have all been an Al Qaeda sympathizers.)

Key line: "I don't have any evidence. But from my perspective, when you have information that is leaked that is clearly helpful to our enemy, you cannot discount that possibility," he added."