Christian Bourge at UPI is reading the legislation he is reporting on even if Members of Congress are not.
In this article just reported shortly ago, he writes about provisions in the intel and the recent omnibus spending bills:
Another unadvertised provision in the intelligence-reform bill would ban butane lighters from being carried into the passenger section of commercial aircraft.
Lighters would join the existing list of banned items in flights on airlines, including scissors, box cutters and penknives. Such items can only be checked on airplanes.
Democratic Sens. Wyden and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota pushed for the provision, which takes effect 60 days after President Bush signs the legislation.
A little-noticed provision in the $388 billion 2005 omnibus appropriations bill given final clearance by the House on Monday and signed into law by Bush Wednesday would end the 33-year-old ban on the sale of wild horses for slaughter.
The provisions — reportedly put in the measure by Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., before Thanksgiving — orders the Bureau of Land Management to sell any horses captured that are at least 10 years old and are not adopted, with the money earned going to the agency.
More than 14,000 captured wild horses are being kept in holding sites in Oklahoma and Kansas. The animals are often captured because they are foraging on government land leased by private farmers for grazing of other types of livestock, typically cattle.
The United States exported 8,750 tons of horsemeat in 2003, around one-third of which was destined for consumption in France.
Consumption of the meat is prohibited in the United States.
Staffers I just spoke to have reported that all lighers will be banned from airplanes, but matches will be allowed.
I don’t smoke and don’t usually need a lighter — but those smokers out there are going to be irritated. Lots of them are red state folks, maybe the majority — but slaughtering and selling wild horse meat to France might assuage their frustration.
Another UPI piece by Mark Benjamin that just hit the wires is that one million U.S. troops have gone to war in Afghanistan or Iraq since those wars were initiated.
— Steve Clemons
