BP had to halt its ambitious effort to plug its stricken oil well in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday afternoon when engineers saw that too much of the drilling fluid they were injecting into the well was escaping along with the leaking crude oil.

A technician at the BP command center said that pumping of the fluid had to be stopped temporarily while engineers were revising their plans, and that the company hoped to resume pumping by midnight, if federal officials approved.

Back to golf balls?

Recall that in 2002, President George W. Bush’s National Security Strategy centered around a declared right of the United States to “if necessary, act preemptively” against “rogue states and terrorists.” But the international legitimacy of preemption depends on the imminence of a threat — a foreign force coming to attack you. Bush considered that archaic, and sought to “adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today’s adversaries.” To many international-relations scholars, that collapsed the distinction between preemption and aggression, and its direct result was the invasion of Iraq, which turned out not to have the weapons of mass destruction Bush claimed as the justification for invading. The point is: these documents have real-world consequences.

So what will Obama’s National Security Strategy say? The document is still a work in progress, and it’s not clear if there’s a rollout date in mind. (Bush’s came out in September of his second year in office.) But the draft QDR is written as if it knows what the 2010 National Security Strategy will say. The relevant part of the leak concerns the definition of U.S. interests.

As outlined in the President’s 2010 National Security Strategy, America’s enduring interests are:

? The security and resiliency of the United States, its citizens and their way of life, and of U.S. allies and partners;

? A strong and competitive U.S. economy with a leading role in a vibrant and open international economic system that promotes opportunity and prosperity

? Respect for values such as civil liberties, democracy, equality, dignity, justice, and the rule of law at home and around the world; and

? An international order underpinned by U.S. leadership and engagement that promotes peace, security, responsibility, and stronger cooperation to meet global challenges, including transnational threats.

Leveraging and strengthening multilateral institutions for positive-sum action. Human rights and human dignity. Prosperity in an open global economy. All of this used to promote and protect American security. None of this is really new. In fact, you can read a piece from me during the 2008 campaign that, if I say so myself, discusses a whole lot of it. Or you can listen to Jim Jones, the president’s national security adviser, say earlier this week that “the challenge of restoring the reputation of the United States as a nation willing to commit to leadership, willing to commit to a new era of engagement based on mutual interests and mutual respect is probably the defining feature of our foreign policy.” That’s pretty much what the QDR draft claims the National Security Strategy says.

“Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’?” asked one headline. Another piece called the scandal “one of the greatest in modern science.” Today, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) called for an investigation.

So what exactly in these emails is causing such celebration among the deniers? The Daily Telegraph compiled “the most contentious quotes,” and while they’re certainly embarrassing for their authors, they don’t come close to undermining the very basis of climate science. Here are three of the six they list:

From: Michael Mann. To: Phil Jones and Gabi Hegerl (University of Edinburgh). Date: Aug 10, 2004
“Phil and I are likely to have to respond to more crap criticisms from the [global warming-denying] idiots in the near future.”

From: Phil Jones. To: Many. March 11, 2003
“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome [global warming-denying] editor.”

From Phil Jones To: Michael Mann (Pennsylvania State University). July 8, 2004
“I can’t see either of these [global warming-denying] papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

These emails demonstrate a deep disdain for global warming skepticism that does not befit scientists in objective pursuit of the truth. But disdain is a far cry from intentional falsification, which is what they’re being accused of. These scientists could — and maybe should — suffer consequences for presenting their findings, and those of their colleagues, in a way that jibes with their broader agenda. But that this leak threatens to undermine next month’s climate negotiations in Copenhagen strikes me as more than a bit excessive.

As Josh Micah Marshall at Talking Points Memo reported Saturday, Rep John Conyers (D-Mich), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee wrote an angry letter to Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Dept. of Homeland Security, saying the disclosure, by at least one “federal law enforcement official,” according to The AP, was “very disturbing” and warrants an investigation.

In fact, the disclosure wasn’t just disturbing –- it was either illegal, or it was approved directly by the U.S. attorney general. And, it endangered Onyango and any of her family that continue to live in Kenya.

According to the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, 8 CFR 208.6, it is illegal to disclose that a noncitizen has applied for political asylum, without her explicit consent “or at the discretion of the attorney general.”

The Supreme Court, in United States v. Ray, explained the reason: because the applicant or her family could be subject to retaliation in their home country.

As an immigration authority fact sheet, cited by the court, explains: “Public disclosure of asylum-related information may subject the claimant to retaliatory measures by government authorities or non-state actors in the event that the claimant is repatriated, or endanger the security of the claimant’s family members who may still be residing in the country of origin.”

According to Amnesty International, the last year in Kenya has seen a crisis of deadly political violence and grave human rights violations.

In other words, this leak wasn’t just a typical ugly attack against the Democratic presidential nominee — it may have been an unusually dangerous one.