Bull's-eye on credit cards is a disconnect

When I receive a missive from my credit card company explaining the latest changes to "our" terms of agreement, I have a ritual. I remove my glasses, hold the teensy print close to my nose, squint mightily and bellow, "Yeah, but what's this mean for my right to carry a gun into my friendly neighborhood national park and/or wildlife refuge?"

Congress, at last, has provided a definitive answer. Sort of.

As you may have read, the solons on Capitol Hill recently passed legislation that (1) imposes restrictions on credit card company billing shenanigans and (2) eases limits on toting firearms into our nation's natural treasures.

Some of you may be puzzling over what could possibly be the link between concealed fees and concealed weapons.

There isn't any. The connection exists only in the minds of lawmakers desperate to win approval for measures they might not get passed otherwise.

In this instance, Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma, offered the controversial gun proposal as an amendment to a relatively popular crackdown on duplicitous credit card practices.

Rather than risk losing support for the credit card restrictions and/or incurring the wrath of gun groups for opposing weapons in parks, the Democratic-controlled Congress gazed upon the non sequitur in the original bill and said, "Ah, yes. Quite logical. Well played, Tom. Well played!"

The Senate passed the measure 67-29. In the House, the two measures were split to allow Democrats who wished to record a "no" vote on the guns-in-parks portion to do so. Then, the two unrelated items were recombined for a final vote.

After President Barack Obama signed the bill, officials at the Interior Department announced that the change in gun policy wouldn't take effect until next year, the same time as changes in credit card regulations.

This wasn't Coburn's intent. He wants people to be able to carry guns into parks as soon as possible, so he's said he'll draft a new version with a new effective date - and drop it into another unrelated bill as an amendment, of course.

Purists find this supermarket-bulletin-board style of legislation distasteful. They want every item lined up neatly for everyone to see, not tacked on willy-nilly.

Lawmakers, of course, have long used the amendment process to slip contentious proposals into bills, either to ensure passage of the contentious proposal or to kill the larger bill. In politics, expedience trumps principle. Why fight it?

In the spirit of the National Credit Card Reform and Just in Case Bambi Is Packin' Heat Act, here are a few more suggestions for Congress to consider:

- Democrats and Republicans can't agree on what to do with Guantanamo detainees. How about sending them to Dick Cheney's former secure, undisclosed location? Clearly, he's no longer using it, having chosen instead to live in TV studios. And since no one knows exactly where his old bunker is, moving the detainees there won't likely draw not-in-my-backyard opponents. Unrelated amendment: The Joe Biden Moment of Silence Act. As a sop to Americans who support school prayer and to an even larger number of people who pray for a little more VP-on-the-QT, this measure would require Biden to lead the nation's schoolchildren in a moment of quiet reflection each day.

- The Free Housing for Coal Company Executives Act would express the nation's gratitude to the folks who oversee the delicate process of mountaintop-removal mining. Coal kings would be provided spacious, stream-side homes, right beneath their handiwork. Unrelated amendment: To help lawmakers - say, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi - mine the meaning from complicated briefings by the CIA and others, a special team of courtroom artists would provide stick-figure renditions of the proceedings. For a fee, special picto-briefings also would be offered to Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Rupert Murdoch and other members of the media elite.

- The Internet is overrun with message-board posters who get their jollies harassing folks who'd like to engage in a civil conversation about public issues. With federal stimulus funding, the Internet Troll Crisis Intervention Center would send a team of unemployed actors - portraying friends and loved ones - to confront these cyber scoundrels, cajole them out of their rat holes and into the world, where they might find real friends and loved ones. Unrelated amendment: a proclamation declaring June as National Vitamin D Deficiency Awareness Month.

Daryl Lease is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot.

E-mail him at daryl.lease@pilotonline.com.