Boom.

Michelle and HotAir have all the updates you could ask for regardingNorth Korea's nuclear testing.

I know the Democrats are cursing this morning. This darn nuclear stuff keeps the news off the really important things like more of Mark Foley's instant messaging.

As John Hood at NRO points out:

"America and its allies have new evidence today of a threat to civilization and to our very lives. The North Koreans already supply Islamic totalitarians with conventional arms. The risk of Korean nuclear devices or expertise being transferred to our deadly enemies is real. It is not a political invention. It is not a partisan talking point. Examining the constellation of forces on the peninsula and elsewhere, the madman of Pyongyang has little reason to fear retaliation or feel deterred. He knows that our military options are, at best, problematic. He likely doesn’t care about the prospect of new sanctions, as they will affect his subject slaves but not his own household or power. In exchange for resources he needs, he will trade with terror states who want at least the nuclear leverage to demand American withdrawal and quiescence in the Middle East and Central Asia, while they seek to recreate an Islamic paradise they imagine existed more than a millennia ago. And some want not just this ability to threat and blackmail, but the ability to kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of infidels in a single glorious act of submission to a vengeful God. "

It's time to focus. You're mad at Republicans? Thinking about sitting out of voting this year? Read the above once more and reconsider. Then read the following from Opinion Journal and take a peek at how Democrats handle missile defense:

"All of which makes the U.S. political debate over missile defenses worth revisiting, not least because some Democrats are still trying to strangle the program. In the House, John Tierney of Massachusetts this year proposed cutting the Pentagon's missile-defense budget by more than half. His amendment was defeated on the House floor, but it won the support of more than half of his Democratic colleagues, including would-be Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Meanwhile in the Senate, Carl Levin (D., Mich.) offered in June to cut off funds for the ground-based interceptor program that Mr. Bush recently activated in Alaska in anticipation of the North Korean launch. Mr. Levin wants to stop new interceptors from being built, but Senate Republicans wouldn't bring his proposal up for a vote. Mr. Levin has been waging his own private war against missile defenses for a generation, to the point of outflanking Russian objections on the political left...

Virtually none of this would exist had Democrats succeeded over the years in their many attempts to kill missile defenses. Going back to 1983, Senator Ted Kennedy dismissed Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative as a fanciful "Star Wars" program. Ten years later, with President Clinton in office, Democrats starved the program of funds. Republicans made funding defenses part of their Contract with America and spent most of the 1990s battling the Clinton Administration to keep the program alive.

Democrats also made a fetish out of the ABM Treaty, even after the end of the Cold War. Al Gore campaigned to keep it in 2000, promising only to build defenses that would abide by its tight limitations. Senator Biden predicted that dropping out of the treaty to build missile defenses would turn the U.S. into "a kind of bully nation." And Senator John Kerry cautioned that "we must not set aside the logic of deterrence that has kept us safe for 40 years." Neither logic nor deterrence are the first words that come to mind when we think of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

More from U.S. House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH):

"This reckless move by North Korea, coupled with their attempted missile test in early July, highlights the importance of a U.S. missile defense shield capable of protecting America against madmen with weapons of mass destruction. It is time for Democrats to recognize the need for missile defense technologies and abandon their long-standing policy of voting against missile defense programs. It is now clear that such a position would weaken America's national defense and put Americans in danger."

Update: Bryan Preston at HotAir has a CNS news archive from 6 yrs ago on how we got here. He also has an audio interview with the editor and chief of CNS news explaining it.

You have to listen to it.