[Infowarrior] - Congressional paranoia hysterics

[Richard Forno]

(here's another example of fear-based proposals.....what about when a  
terrorist invents a plexiglass-dissolving pen ink that can melt that  
shield before tossing in their bomb?  do we need plexiglass-shielding  
shields?   What's next? Worrying about the theft of our precious  
bodily fluids by a rogue tourist? ---rf)


Congressman proposes enclosing Capitol gallery in Plexiglas
By John Byrne

Published: June 22, 2009

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/22/congressman-proposes-enclosing-capitol-in-plexiglas/

A Republican Indiana congressman has a new plan to protect members of  
Congress from a terrorist attack: enclose the Capitol gallery with a  
Plexiglas shield.

In a little-noticed proposed amendment to a bill last week, Rep. Dan  
Burton (R-IN) sought a study to examine the feasibility of enclosing  
the Capitol gallery chamber with a protective shield.

“What this bill does is it would authorize a study to look at  
enclosing the chamber, the gallery chamber, with Plexiglas so that  
somebody can’t throw a bomb down on the floor and kill a lot of us,”  
Burton told the Rules Committee Thursday.

To the shock of onlooking congressmembers, Burton described how a  
terrorist could kill the lot of them. Someone could kill “half the  
Members of Congress right now,” he said.

“You could take a detonating device that looks like a watch so you  
could get through the metal detector,” Burton explained. “And when  
everybody was on the floor, as many as you wanted, you could put that  
into the plastic explosive, toss it out on the floor, and there is no  
way you would lose half of us if we were on the floor, at least, or  
more. I don’t know how much damage it would do.”

Plexiglas, he said, would protect legislators from a disaster –“and  
you can do it in a way that would be very attractive,” he quipped.  
“They do it in the Knesset in Israel.”

The Washington Post’s Mary Ann Akers noted: “Before rejecting his  
amendment, members of the committee stared at Burton dumbfounded,  
according to sources in the room, as if wondering to themselves how to  
delicately explain to the Indiana Republican that he may be more in  
need of Xanax than Plexiglas.”

Burton’s spokesman was quoted as saying his boss “hoped the Rules  
Committee would think outside the box.”

The Indiana legislator is most famously known for re-enacting the  
alleged murder of former Clinton aide Vince Foster by using a gun and  
a melon (the type of melon is in dispute).