Democrats must pass any and all legislation the President wants to tighten the screws on ordinary Americans, and bolster the President’s right to do what he whatever he wishes. They must appoint a nominee for Attorney General who isn’t sure that water boarding is torture, or that he has to enforce contempt of Congress citation’s against the President’s men and women. They have to continue to fund a war that our intelligence agencies have determined is making us less safe, because otherwise they would fail to support the troops. They must not clutter up that bill with amendments that would help the troops by insuring they had adequate rest and had been adequately re-equipped before redeployment to a war zone. That is what Democrats must do if they don’t want to be called terrorist appeasers, traitors and unamerican scumbags.
Bush, on the other hand, doesn’t have to worry that much about protecting the homeland, at least not if his corporate buddies insist that he roll back security measures against potential terrorist attacks which they consider too onerous:
The Department of Homeland Security yesterday eased rules requiring tens of thousands of U.S. chemical plants to protect their stockpiles from terrorists, pleasing chemical industry lobbyists but disappointing environmentalists and some Democratic lawmakers, who said they will beef up requirements next year. […]
For instance, DHS increased the reporting trigger for stored chlorine from 1,875 pounds to 2,500 pounds, exempting a standard one-ton shipping cylinder used by industry. Insurgents in Iraq have used bombs to disperse liquid chlorine into toxic gas clouds.
DHS also increased the disclosure threshold for ammonium nitrate from 7,500 pounds to 10,000 pounds. That substance was a component in fertilizer-based bombs used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.
“There are 10 widely recognized ultra-hazardous chemicals. . . . To a chemical, their thresholds increased,” said Rick Hind, legislative director for Greenpeace Toxics Campaign. “When push comes to shove, Homeland Security here folded like a sheet to industry pressure. . . . It’s clear for whom these laws and loopholes were written.” […]
P.J. Crowley, director of homeland security at the Democratic think tank Center for American Progress, said that security standards should be higher than safety standards, “since the risk associated with a deliberate terrorist attack is more severe than the potential for an accidental release.”
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) also said the new regulations are not strong enough. “Putting a Band-Aid on a broken leg is not fixing it,” said Thompson, adding that he expects to press for tougher rules next year.
Nice to know we can all breathe a lot less easily because the Chemical industry owns the Department of of Homeland Security, lock stock and both barrels. Not that this is much of an issue for Republicans, or even for the Senator from Connecticut (Party for, by and always of Joe Lieberman) who had this to say about the Bush administration’s most recent effort to make us less safe from a devastating terrorist attack:
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the Senate’s homeland security panel, called the new rules “good news.” The American Chemistry Council, which represents the nation’s largest chemical companies, including Dow Chemical, DuPont and BASF, also said it “strongly supports” DHS’s approach.
Yes, good news indeed, if you own stock in a chemical company, or receive campaign contributions from them, or from industries that use large quantities of chemicals. For the rest of us? Hey, I just report. You can decide the answer to that question for yourself.
