Sen. Barbara Boxer: Activate National Guard to Protect Schools
Senator Barbara Boxer is showing how far she will go in her endeavor to do something, anything in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre.
Appearing on Ed Schultz's radio show yesterday, Boxer says she is filing legislation that would allow governors to activate up to 4,000 National Guard soldiers nationwide to provide security at schools. (audio after page break)
There's a wrinkle -- the soldiers wouldn't actually be assigned to schools in Boxer's plan. Instead, they'd fill in for local police working "desk jobs" who would then protect schools themselves.
No, I am not making this up.
Here's a clip of Boxer describing her creative scheme to Schultz (audio) --
BOXER: We have 300 million weapons out there in America, so no matter what we do, we're not going to get rid of those weapons. So we need to keep the schools safe and I'm working on bills to allow the schools in an affordable way to be able to protect the students by having more personnel who are trained personnel.
SCHULTZ: Well, we have heard from a number of different states actually that are bringing forth legislation on a state level that they would arm the teachers!
BOXER: Well that's ridiculous! Arming the teachers is ridiculous and you're saying it's happening in many states. This is not a teacher's job. And, you know, what's really very interesting is, as I introduce my bills, one of which would allow the National Guard to become available to the governors who requested them. This is the current status now for the drug interdiction program where governors ask the Secretary of Defense to provide National Guard, up to 4,000 of them, to help in drug interdiction. My bill would say, it's called SOS -- Save Our Students -- allow the Guard without any problems with Posse Comitatus because they would really be relieving some of the police officers who are at desk jobs and allow those police officers to just go in front of the schools. This would allow the schools to not have to put the burden on a teacher. Imagine! A teacher goes to school, as you've pointed out, and to college and gets degrees to teach, not to learn how to kill!
Yes, it's clearly unrealistic to expect teachers to learn any more than necessary, not with union contracts to honor, thank you very much. Beyond that, do we really want to trust them with the safety of our children?
Suffice it to say that if the "SOS" bill were in effect now, National Guard soldiers would be filing paperwork and making coffee at the Newtown police station while local police were assigned sentinel duty outside local schools.
Then when the next rampage takes place elsewhere, local police would again guard a school after children were slaughtered there. It would not be long before any police officer assigned this duty was tagged with an unfortunate nickname by embittered residents -- The Cop Who Got Here Too Late. One can easily envision police officers lining up for this assignment, or at least Boxer can envision it.
It doesn't take much in the way of imagination, except perhaps to the honorable Democrat from California, to see the majority of deployments along these lines coming in response to bogus threats phoned in by teenage scofflaws and various miscreants.
Just wondering -- would a declaration of war be necessary before doing this or only if a Republican is president?
Appearing last night on "The Rachel Maddow Show" on MSNBC, Boxer did not bring up her proposal, except to mention that she's working on legislation for "school safety."
