The Senate Brandishes a Gun at Amtrak

NOTE FROM GREETINGS: This is an utterly ridiculous stand from the Senate. And these are the same folks who keep "forecasting" a terrorist attack under Obama. Well, they're doing everything they can to help that along with this passage. Guns on trains in the heavily traveled Northeast Corridor? This is true insanity, thanks to the below-mentioned U.S. Senators. Look up the names and call their offices. Guns can NOT be sealed on a transportation system like Amtrak or U.S. buses. Would they let people carry them onto airplanes? How do they decide if someone CAN'T carry them on versus someone who CAN? This will show up as the act that helped create the next terrorist attack. And these names will be held responsible.

NY Times Editorial, Sept. 18, 2009

In a shocking genuflection to the gun lobby, the Senate has voted to deny Amtrak its indispensable $1.6 billion federal subsidy unless it allows passengers to transport handguns in their checked luggage. The budget support would be stripped in six months unless Amtrak scraps the gun ban that it wisely adopted five years ago after the terrorist railroad atrocities in Madrid.

The majority vote was bipartisan and not even close, with 27 Democrats and one independent (the ultraliberal Bernie Sanders from gun-friendly Vermont) joining all 40 Republicans versus 30 opponents. The hope is that the House or President Obama will ultimately reject the Amtrak measure, but security-wary citizens cannot count on that as the gun lobby choreographs political cravenness.

The budget cudgel was approved despite pleas from Amtrak that it lacks the manpower, equipment and extra financing to effectively meet the deadline and that it faces a shutdown if federal funds are lost. Among other changes, baggage cars would have to be securely retrofitted and manpower increased. The warning cut no ice with the majority as the chief sponsor, Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican of Mississippi, intoned a lock-step mantra: “Americans should not have their Second Amendment rights restricted for any reason.”

Proponents said the change was needed to put Amtrak back to its pre-9/11 gun policy and equate it with airline security measures that allow unloaded, locked handguns in checked baggage. This is lunatic reasoning for a nation supposedly sensitized by the 9/11 attacks. Why should gun owners be treated as privileged travelers?

Amtrak has none of the hermetic procedures where airport passengers are screened shoeless at detectors while their checked baggage is separately secured. Trains stop at stations and passengers come and go. Amtrak presently has a system of checking passengers and screening baggage at random, much the way New York police monitor mass transit.

If the Senate wants to pass a bill on Amtrak, it should provide the money to hire more security guards and create a real passenger rail system. Generally, it should just stop its demeaning homage to the gun lobby.

The House Strikes Back

(From Greetings: FINALLY! And God Bless, Silvestre Reyes for defending the rights of Americans... again... finally. Below, from Dan Froomkin's washintonpost.com blog)

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.comFriday, February 15, 2008; 2:02 PM

After years of going belly-up before President Bush, particularly on matters of national security, Democrats in one chamber of Congress yesterday apparently decided they'd had about enough.

Defiantly rejecting what they called Bush's fear mongering, House Democrats refused to vote on a broad surveillance law their Senate colleagues had sent them the day before.

And, for good measure, they voted to hold Bush's chief of staff and former counsel in contempt.Several Democrats said yesterday that many in their party wish to take a more measured approach to terrorism issues, and they refused to be stampeded by Bush. 'We have seen what happens when the president uses fearmongering to stampede Congress into making bad decisions,' said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). 'That's why we went to war in Iraq.'

"White House officials and their allies were angry that the Democrats did not 'blink,' as one outside adviser said."

The back and forth between the Hill and the White House yesterday was bitter.

Here, for instance, is a letter to Bush from Silvestre Reyes, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence: "Because I care so deeply about protecting our country, I take strong offense to your suggestion in recent days that the country will be vulnerable to terrorist attack unless Congress immediately enacts legislation giving you broader powers to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans' communications and provides legal immunity for telecommunications companies that participated in the Administration's warrantless surveillance program. . . .

"If our nation is left vulnerable in the coming months, it will not be because we don't have enough domestic spying powers. It will be because your Administration has not done enough to defeat terrorist organizations -- including al Qaeda -- that have gained strength since 9/11. . . .

"I, for one, do not intend to back down -- not to the terrorists and not to anyone, including a President, who wants Americans to cower in fear.

"We are a strong nation. We cannot allow ourselves to be scared into suspending the Constitution. If we do that, we might as well call the terrorists and tell them that they have won."

Senate Gives in on Wiretapping. 16 Dems Go Along.

From the Daily Kos (Judging by our Democratic Senator's vote, we're not so Blue anymore. But he'll have to account for this vote in the next election, as will the House Democrats who helped to pass the bill.)

by Meteor Blades
Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 10:00:24 PM PDT

The Senate has surrendered to Mister Bush on domestic spying, yielding ignominiously to the White House’s demands that the unitary executive be given more authority when it seeks to wiretap suspected terrorists without warrants. The vote was 60-28. If passed by the House, the bill would be law for six months. Meanwhile, Congress would use that time to put together a permanent one.

The New York Times notes:

The White House and Congressional Republicans hailed the Senate vote as critical to plugging what they saw as dangerous gaps in the intelligence agencies’ ability to detect terrorist threats.

"I can sleep a little safer tonight," Senator Christopher S. Bond, the Missouri Republican who co-sponsored the measure, declared after the Senate vote.

The measure approved by the Senate expires in six months and would have to be re-authorized. The White House’s grudging agreement to make it temporary helped to attract the votes of some moderate Democrats who said they thought it was important for Congress to approve some version of the wiretapping bill before its recess.

The White House and Republican leaders pressed the point throughout the day that a vote against the measure would put the nation at greater risk of attack.

No Republicans voted against the bill.

The following Democrats voted for it: Evan Bayh (Indiana); Tom Carper (Delaware); Bob Casey (Pennsylvania); Kent Conrad (North Dakota); Dianne Feinstein (California); Daniel Inouye (Hawai‘i); Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota); Nancy Mary Landrieu (Louisiana); Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas); Claire McCaskill (Missouri); Barbara Mikulski (Maryland); Bill Nelson (Florida); Ben Nelson (Nebraska); Mark Pryor (Arkansas); Ken Salazar (Colorado); Jim Webb (Virginia).

Senators Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd and Barack Obama all opposed the bill, as did 23 other Democrats and Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont.

Joe Lieberman voted ...well, you know how he voted.