According to the Library of Congress an amendment is "a proposal of a member of Congress to alter the language, provisions or stipulations in a bill or in another amendment. A bill may be amended at any stage of the legislative process: during the initial review or "mark-up" of a new bill by a subcommittee, during consideration by the full committee, during floor action in the House or Senate, or during conference between the House and Senate to reconcile different versions of the bill. In general, amendments are debated and voted upon in the same manner as a bill."

Yes, it's more on that amendment to H.R.4954, the port security bill with the anti-internet legislation connected to it. Today I am going to try and find the number (name) and wording to the bloody amendment which has upset my week.

This is going to take some time. There are one hundred and eleven amendments to this bill. While most of the amendments have some sort of description, such as, "To prohibit the issuance of transportation security cards to individuals who have been convicted of certain crimes," others have none. What their description will read is, "Purpose will be available when the amendment is proposed for consideration. See Congressional Record for text." This means you have to click further in.

I'm focusing on the last eleven amendments because they were done on September 14th according to the Library of Congress. I'm assuming that this website is up to date. I'm going to use my first search as an example. S.AMDT.5008 is one of the amendments with no description attached. My first click brings me to a page which tells me nothing. The "Amendment purpose" is the same useless sentence on the main page which made me click further through. I go to the bottom and click on "TEXT OF AMENDMENT AS SUBMITTED: CR S9641" which theoretically would bring me to the actual text. However, this is a government website, so it doesn't. Instead it brings me to "Page S9641 1 . AMENDMENTS SUBMITTED AND PROPOSED -- (Senate - September 14, 2006) 2 . TEXT OF AMENDMENTS -- (Senate - September 14, 2006)"

I click on the first option, "Amendments submitted and proposed." Does this bring me to the text? Of course not, instead I get another list. I click on the first number and finally I am at a page with information.

Has the Library of Congress ever heard of website usability? They could seriously use a GUI (graphic user interface) expert.

Back to the page with information. The information there is useless to me. It's about " SEC. __. PROHIBITION OF ISSUANCE OF TRANSPORTATION SECURITY CARDS TO CONVICTED FELONS" which sounds logical enough but doesn't do me an ounce of good. This all took a few minutes and a lot of clicks. My wrist is going to be sore today from all of this repetitive clicking.

Could this be where the "drags ass like Congress" phrase, that was so popular in Los Angeles before I became an ex-pat, came from?

The next amendment, Page: S9642, was "The Secretary of Health and Human Services, acting through the Assistant Secretary for Children and Families, shall award a grant to each eligible State to carry out a program for the purpose of making 2-1-1 telephone service available to all residents of the State with phone service for information on and referral to human services." I haven't a clue what they want from me on this one, so I moved on… and had no luck from the last two on the list.

Of the eleven amendments listed for September 14th eight of them have the no information here quote, yet all of them connect to the same useless list of four. None of which tell me anything about internet gambling. This is getting me no where.

Fortunately I did know of an organization which was watching this bill as closely as I was. Off to the PokerPlayersAlliance.org in the hopes that they were better at their homework than I was succeeding to be.

They had more information, but no actual link or text. Furthermore every page I clicked on for information turned out to be a bloody pdf which takes forever to load on my computer and is really annoying.

How is it that the Poker Player Alliance knows, "…the bill does not make poker playing illegal on the Internet at a Federal Level, although it will make it much more difficult to enjoy “your game” on-line." Yet I can't find the bloody text to this bill.

I had an epiphany. I thought, excitedly, that Republican Representative James Leach will have the text on his website! Sure enough, the top headline referred to the anti-internet legislation. The article, "Leach Wins Ban on Internet Gambling; Bill Caps Years-Long Drive to Protect Families", was basically one big gloat. At the bottom of his website he has links to legislation he has sponsored and co-sponsored. Upon trying both I was swiftly told I was barred. "You are not authorized to view this page".

Off to my last stop, Jon Kyl's website. He also had the gloating press release link front and center on his website, but it wasn't as annoying as Leach's. I guess he was more humble about it since it took him 9 tries to finally get a bill passed.

I'm back at the Library of Congress website doing a search for H. R. 4954 and I found it. "Sec. 803. Internet gambling in or through foreign jurisdictions". My glee couldn't be contained. I squealed and clicked. The page has the above sentence on top, then a bunch of stuff about maritime and seaport personnel. The "Definitions" below the original title say nothing about internet gambling. I did a search for 'gambling' and the only mention of it on the page is in the original sentence, same thing happened when I searched for 'internet'.

If the text doesn't exist online does that mean it's real?

Posted on: October 4, 2006

Add This Gambling Article To:
Del.icio.us	Digg	Google	Spurl
Furl	Simpy	Y! MyWeb

Back to October 2006's archive
Back to latest Articles