MOsanthrope

Posted by Chris on April 28, 2006 at 12:10 pm.

Now that the “national security” party has secured America’s airlines against the grave threat posed by nail clippers, its work, apparently, is done:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A House of Representatives committee on Wednesday rejected a Democratic proposal to require physical inspection of all U.S.-bound marine containers but approved a separate plan that may lead to expanded screening.

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Currently, only a fraction of the millions of cargo containers that enter U.S. ports each year are inspected upon arrival or before entering U.S. waters.

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The cargo screening gap has prompted warnings from some lawmakers and security experts that sea cargo is still one of the nation’s most serious security vulnerabilities more than four years after the September 11 attacks.

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The Republican-led panel rejected, on a mostly party-line vote of 16-18, a Markey amendment to require overseas inspection of all U.S.-bound cargo and tamper-proof seals.

That doesn’t make any sense. Why would they…?

The Markey plan was strongly opposed by the shipping industry.

Oh. Right.

Filed under: Politics, U.S.