Story at No Agenda.

If members aren’t supposed to have to go through the metal detectors shouldn’t they all be wearing their ID prominently?

There are 435 members of the House, 100 members of the Senate. That’s a lot of people. Add in all the other people that have to go through security and how can you expect those responsible for security to recognize each and every one? Especially since any of the House Members may be replaced at two year intervals (as [tag]McKinney[/tag] herself was).

McKinney may think that everyone should recognize her, but frankly, most Americans probably couldn’t pick her out of a group photo.

Security should mean [tag]Security[/tag]. It shouldn’t matter whether or not someone is “recognized”. ID should have to be presented each and every time. Sure it’s a hassle for members of congress, but they should follow the same security measures as everyone else.

Update: Kim Priestap at Wizbang! has more and a quote from Tim Dees at Officer.com which mentions some of the same things that I did.

Some critics of the conduct of the police in this incident have declared that the officers of the Capitol Police should simply know what their protectees look like. There are 535 Members of Congress, and 435 of them get reshuffled every two years. Each one of these Members has a complement of staffers, and then there are the lobbyists, other government employees, and constituents that come through the Capitol on business. This makes for an unmanageable number of faces to memorize (especially if they change their appearance, as Ms. McKinney did), and the reason that Members are given those little pins to wear. Most Members don’t seem to regard the wearing of these as a burden. Ms. McKinney refuses to wear hers.

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 31st, 2006 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.