Three Democrats (one, Mary Landrieu, who faced a December 7th runoff, didn’t vote until the GOP had won) voted with Bush to achieve that 52-47 victory. But had McCain succeeded in passing Daschle’s amendment writes the Washington Times, the legislation would have died. The Times counters the media’s gushing over McCain’s supposedly principled stand, and says the
This company “became the poster child for all that was wrong with private airport screening companies” post-9/11. “Employees fell asleep on the job, knives and guns passed by undetected, worse still, the company’s senior staff willfully concealed from the federal government the criminal backgrounds of many of its employees.” This is the corporate citizen that McCain wanted to get liability protection for so that you couldn’t sue them for their negligence!
Here’s the kicker: “So, why was Mr. McCain trying so hard to protect Argenbright from unlimited liability for their negligence? A possible clue to his insistent pleading might be found in the fact that one of the lead lobbyists for Argenbright, the Cormac Group’s John Timmons, was a longtime aide to the senator.” Here’s a company that originally was going to be left out of protections, and McCain basically said that he didn’t care how badly they’d screwed up in doing their job of protecting air passengers, he wanted them given immunity! I hope some enterprising reporter out there asks Senator McCain to explain himself.