Yay for Congress!
Finally, the House of Representatives has done something worthwhile. That body just passed the “Flying Imams Shield Law” by a far closer vote than it should have taken.
Here’s what the law does:
* Grants immunity from civil liability to any person that voluntarily reports suspicious activity that could be a threat to transportation security.
* Provides attorneys fees for defendants victimized by frivolous lawsuits.
* Is retroactive to activities that took place on or after November 20, 2006 – the date of the Minneapolis incident, and authorizes courts to award attorneys fees to defendants with immunity.
Basically, it says that if you can act as a responsible citizen in good faith without feare of being hauled into civil court. That’s a common sense measure that, quite honestly, should never have been needed. Unfortunately, these days, it is, and I’m glad the House recognized that and took steps to make sure that we all are protected from what Jeff Goldstein calls “procedural terrorism”.
Opponents of the bill said it would have “unintended consequences”. I don’t see where there would be any more consequences now than there have been for the past five years. What will happen is that groups like CAIR, which openly flack for terrorists and oppressors, won’t have a shiny new toy to impose their unamerican and undemocratic way of life on the rest of us.
Good on the House. Bad on the 121 members who voted against it.
UPDATE: The amendment passed only because the Republican minority used a procedure called a “motion to recommit”. Such motions force a bill back into committee with instructions to alter the bill in some specific way. They generally pass with little opposition, mostly because they aren’t used very often and because they don’t kill the bill outright but send it back for specific revision. Since the Democrats have threatened to stifle Republican attempts to amend bills, the Republicans have been using these motions much more than they’ve been used in the past.
The Democrats are looking to stifle that ability also not because it’s a bad procedure or because the motions suggest bad changes but because the motions put some of them in politically-awkward positions. In the case of the DC Voting bill, the Republicans wanted to make sure the bill granted the residents of DC all their Constitutional rights, not simply the one that would give the Democrats a greater political advantage on Capitol Hill.
In other words, it’s not about what makes a bill better. It’s about protecting Democrats from having to take a firm political position on something.
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Category: Fighting the Islamists, Political Pontifications
