Politics as usual

The New York Times has an editorial lamenting the tying of a gun-carry amendment to credit-card legislation:

The gun lobby and its all-too-willing political accomplices have struck again. The Senate’s version of urgently needed legislation to protect credit card users has been saddled with a dangerous and utterly nongermane amendment allowing visitors to openly carry loaded firearms into national parks and wildlife refuges.
A disappointing 27 Senate Democrats, whose party once led the fight for gun control, eagerly signed on with 39 Republicans— fawning together before the lobby’s lethal diktat. None of that 66 dared to ask: What on earth does laissez-faire gun toting have to do with credit card fairness? And why should the national parks, which are supposed to be peaceful preserves, be filled with loaded AK-47s and other war weapons?
The House has passed a gun-free credit card measure, and members must muster the courage to strip this amendment from the Senate’s version.
The gun lobby already has poisoned the proposal to let the District of Columbia have a voting representative in the House. The Senate’s gun lackeys tacked on a vindictive amendment to strip the district of basic gun control powers, inviting assault and sniper rifles designed for military battlefields into homes and businesses.
The House passed its own clean version of the District of Columbia bill, but the lobby is threatening retaliation if members dare to do their duty and strip guns from the final version negotiated with the Senate.
Turning the national parks into fields for firearms has been an obsession of the gun lobby. The Bush administration catered with disgraceful regulations that had to be struck down in federal court for ignoring public safety and environmental standards. The Obama administration has been hedging on the issue, as if further review might justify a terrible idea. And now Senator Tom Coburn, a Republican of Oklahoma, happily rehauls the same water, imposing it on to the vital credit card bill.
Senator Coburn is hinting that he may have more lock-and-load mischief ready for the next big bill that comes along. This raises a bigger question: Who is running the Senate? Apparently, and shamefully, the gun lobby.

Rico says that he, of course, doesn't get their issue, but then he and the NYT rarely agree on many things, much less gubs... But he doesn't understand the Senate's blithe concatenation of unrelated issues into one bill; what, indeed, does gub carry in National Parks have to do with credit card reform? But it's our form of gummint, and we're stuck with it.