Constitutional Law

Bring on the clowns

There was a move to add, to an emergency budget bill, a provision allowing Amtrak passengers to store firearms in checked baggage, the same as airline passengers have long been able to do. It succeeded.

Now there is word that the enrolling clerk fouled up, and wrote it as requiring the passenger and the gun to be boxed in stored baggage, and that is the version sent to the President and "signed into law."

So (1) the version signed by the President is not the version passed by both houses of Congress. Hmm... so is it law? (2) To my mind, this illustrates how the federal machine, originally designed as a government of limited powers, has gotten far out of hand. I remember decades ago, when I attended a Senate "mark up session," where the committee actually votes on amendments to a bill, being astonished. Because the Senate Judiciary Committee did not actually vote on how to change the language, but rather on abstract ideas, and "the staff will redraft the legislation along these lines." Here, the decisionmaking was that of someone in a clerk's office. The report is that Speaker Pelosi wanted to change it without requiring a second vote ... but what was there to vote on? Both houses had passed certain words, those are the words that should go to the president for his signature or veto.

Full post as published by Of Arms and the Law on December 17, 2009 (boomark / email).