Wall Street Journal Chastises ‘Rookie’ McCaskill

The national media is keeping a close eye on Claire McCaskill even if the Missouri media will not. The Wall Street Journal took McCaskill to task yesterday for putting Big Labor ahead of national security. Not surprisingly, McCaskill received more than $350,000 from Big Labor political action committees, according to PoliticalMoneyLine. At issue is Democrat attempts to try and impose collective bargaining rights for all 43,000 screeners at the Transportation Security Administration. As The Journal correctly points out in an editorial, Congress expressly denied such organizing ability when it created TSA in 2001 “on the sensible grounds that union work rules would compromise security.” With Republicans stepping up to oppose the measure, McCaskill offered an alternative in which airport screeners would still be forced into collective bargaining, though the TSA head would have the right to put union rules aside in case of "emergency" or "imminent threat." That’s when Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina called McCaskill on the carpet: “Mr. DeMint asked on the Senate floor last week if Ms. McCaskill considered the global war on terror to be such an ‘emergency,’ and she said no--but that a hurricane might qualify. We didn't know TSA screened for bad weather,” opined The Journal. “Mr. DeMint also asked if al Qaeda constituted an imminent threat. Ms. McCaskill largely dodged the question, noting instead that denying union rights because of ‘world-wide terror’ was ‘specious reasoning.’ We realize that rookie Senators feel obliged to repay their supporters, but someone more senior should protect Ms. McCaskill from embarrassing herself so publicly.” To read the editorial, go to: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009751