…in 2007, Blunt, a Missouri Republican, was the lone member of the Congressional leadership to participate in a controversial method of providing earmarks to those represented by former-staffers-turned lobbyists.

Since 2004, Hartley has been a registered federal lobbyist for EaglePicher Technologies Inc., a Joplin, Missouri-based manufacturer of battery management systems for defense and other purposes. In that capacity, public disclosure records show, he lobbies on the company’s behalf on the annual defense appropriations bill.

Blunt obtained an earmark for $3,920,000 in the 2008 bill for “Advanced Lithium-Carbon Monoflouride Combat Portable Batteries,” according to Taxpayers for Common Sense. And from 2006 to present, Blunt has received $11,783 in campaign contributions from Hartley, according to data provided by the Center for Responsive Politics.

By hyping it, we only provide Iran with “free power,” in Leslie Gelb’s apt phrase. This is an insecure Third World country with a GDP that is one 40th the size of America’s, a dysfunctional economy, a divided political class, and a government facing mass unrest at home. It has alienated most of its neighboring states and cuts a sorry figure on the world stage, with an international embarrassment for a president. Its forays in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Gaza have had mixed results, with the locals often growing weary of the Iranian thugs who try to control them.

I do not believe the Iranian regime, at its core, wants normalized relations with America. Isolation from the West and hostility toward the United States are fundamental pillars that prop up the current regime—the reason that this system of government came into being and what sustains it every day…They benefit from a closed economy that they can manipulate. An opening to the world, which would mean more trade, commerce, and contact with the United States, would strengthen Iran’s civil society, its trading class, its students, its bourgeoisie, and thus strengthen opposition to the regime.

In fact, we are already moving toward a robust, workable response to the dangers of an Iranian nuclear program—one that involves sustained containment and deterrence.

The country is in a box and, if well handled, can be kept there until the regime becomes much more transparent and cooperative on the nuclear issue. To do so, we should maintain the current sanctions but should not add broad new ones like an embargo on refined-gasoline imports. Any new measures should target the leadership and factions like the Revolutionary Guards specifically. And we should think more broadly about other ways to pressure the regime. There should be a structure within which those countries that are worried about the threat posed by Iran can meet and strategize. We should work to further align the interests of moderate Arab states with those of Israel, which could be one of the strategic boons of the circumstance. It’s clear that Iran fears this potential alliance, which is why Ahmadinejad has worked so hard to present himself as the chief spokesman for the great Arab cause of Palestine. By spouting his nonsense about the Holocaust and professing his support for the Palestinians, he’s trying to make it harder for leaders in Saudi Arabia to effectively take Israel’s side in opposition to Tehran.

We talked to the Soviet Union even as we implemented a far more extensive policy of containment toward Moscow. But talks should not involve a final normalization or sanctification of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Unless there is a Gorbachev-like reversal of Iran’s basic approach to the world—a Persian glasnost and perestroika—there should be no reciprocal integration into the Western world.

But we should not do anything to preclude internal evolution or more dramatic change in that country. The country is clearly deeply divided, and these divisions are not going to disappear.

Deterrence worked with madmen like Mao, and with thugs like Stalin, and it will work with the calculating autocrats of Tehran. The Iranian regime has amply demonstrated over the past four months that it is interested in hanging on to power at all costs, jailing mullahs and ignoring its own clerical elite. These are not the actions of religious rulers about to commit mass suicide.

Gov. Rick Perry was blasted Wednesday after he swept three appointees from their jobs just two days before they were set to critically examine a flawed arson investigation that contributed to the execution of a Corsicana man.

The hearing of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, scheduled for Friday in Irving, was abruptly canceled by the new chairman the governor chose, Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley. He is considered one of the most conservative, hard-line prosecutors in Texas.

The commission was to hear from Baltimore-based Craig Beyler, a nationally recognized fire expert, who had been hired by the panel to review the Cameron Todd Willingham case. Beyler's long-anticipated report, released in August, called the Willingham fire investigation slipshod and based on wives' tales about how fire behaves and possible arson evidence.

Gerald Hurst, a Cambridge-educated chemist who was the chief scientist for the nation's largest explosives manufacturer, was the expert who authored a report sent to Perry shortly before Willingham's execution. His report found that the arson evidence used against Willingham was based on since-discredited junk science.

He said he is not surprised by the governor's actions, although "I didn't think he would go this drastic."

"Look at the situation: He appoints a commission and the first case they take up is an execution that was signed off on by the governor who had a chance to interrupt it," Hurst said.

He added that Perry apparently didn't want the public to hear from Beyler because he is an impeccable source.

"He is one of the top fire scientists in the nation. He's not to be confused with anti-death penalty nuts," Hurst said. "There are only a very few who are at the top of their fields, and he is one."

Wow. I grew up under a scary, corrupt, third-world regime where government officials were removed or silenced when they said anything negative about those in power. And Texas is the same way! Is complete disregard for science and truth in Republican genes or what?

No one in public life should ever be afraid of the truth. In the final analysis, truth is the only thing that serves justice.