Nation roundup for December 4

House votes for plastic gun ban

WASHINGTON (AP) — With the advent of 3-D printers capable of producing plastic weapons, the House voted Tuesday to renew a 25-year-old prohibition against firearms that can evade metal detectors and X-ray machines.

A bipartisan bill extending the Undetectable Firearms Act was passed on a voice vote, a first for gun legislation since last year’s massacre at a Connecticut elementary school.

The Senate is expected to act on the legislation when it returns from a two-week Thanksgiving recess next Monday, a day before the current law expires.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said he and others will try then to add a new requirement that at least one component of the firing mechanism contain enough metal to be detectable in a magnetometer and also be undetachable.

But with the National Rifle Association opposed to any change in the statute and many Democrats eager to avoid a new fight over gun controls going into an election year, the Senate is more likely to just pass the House version unamended.

The House bill only requires that a plastic gun have some piece of metal in or on it, but it can be removable and doesn’t have to be used to fire the weapon.

“The House bill is better than nothing, but not by much,” Schumer said Tuesday. “…It’s certainly not enough.”

Schumber said plastic guns were “the thing of science fiction” when the ban was first passed in 1988 but such weapons are now a worrisome reality.

Brian Malte, a director of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said his group’s worries about the availability of plastic guns are “no reason to hold up renewal.”

Illinois OKs fix for pension crisis

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The Illinois Legislature approved a historic plan Tuesday to eliminate the state’s $100 billion pension shortfall, a vote that proponents described as critical to repairing the state’s deeply troubled finances but that faces the immediate threat of a legal challenge from labor unions.

The House voted 62-53 in favor of the plan, sending it to Gov. Pat Quinn, who has said he will sign it. The Senate approved the measure 30-24 just minutes earlier.

“There will be changes here, much-needed changes, but this bill is a well thought out, well-balanced bill that deserves the support of this body, the state Senate and the approval of Gov. Quinn,” House Speaker Michael Madigan said at the start of the House debate. “Something’s got to be done. We can’t go on dedicating so much of our resources to this one sector of pensions.”

Public employee unions, who oppose the bill, vowed to quickly take legal action. They say the legislation is unfair to workers and retirees who for years made faithful contributions to retirement systems but now will see benefits cut because of government mismanagement.

They also argue parts of the measure are unconstitutional.

“This is no victory for Illinois, but a dark day for its citizens and public servants,” the We Are One Illinois union coalition said in a statement soon after the votes.

“Teachers, caregivers, police and others stand to lose huge portions of their life savings because politicians chose to threaten their retirement security, rather than pass a much fairer, legal, negotiated solution …”

Frequent flyer’s lawsuit in doubt

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court indicated Tuesday it won’t offer much help to frequent flyers who want to sue when airlines revoke their miles or their memberships.

The justices heard the case of a Minnesota rabbi who was stripped of his top-level “platinum elite” status in Northwest’s WorldPerks program because the airline said he complained too much.

Rabbi S. Binyomin Ginsberg said Northwest, since absorbed by Delta Air Lines Inc., did not act in good faith when it cut him off.

The airline says the federal deregulation of the airline industry in 1978 rules out most lawsuits like the one filed by Ginsberg.

Most justices signaled they think that ruling for Ginsberg could give rise to state-by-state rules that the deregulation law was intended to prevent.

Justice Stephen Breyer said Ginsberg’s complaint also could apply to airline ticket prices, which are supposed to be set through competition among airlines.

“It sounds to me like I go in to, you know, get a ticket, my reasonable expectation is they’re not going to charge me what they’re going to charge, you know. I mean, it’s unbelievable,” Breyer said. Under Ginsberg’s view of the case, Breyer said he could sue over the prices.

“That might be a great idea, but I don’t think that’s the idea behind this act,” he said.

Train engineer allegedly nodded

YONKERS, N.Y. (AP) — The engineer in the commuter-train derailment that killed four people over the weekend caught himself nodding at the controls just before the wreck, a union official said Tuesday.

William Rockefeller “caught himself, but he caught himself too late,” said Anthony Bottalico, leader of the rail employees union, relating what he said Rockfeller told him.

During a late-afternoon news conference, federal investigators said they were still talking to Rockefeller, and they would not comment on his level of alertness around the time of the Sunday morning wreck in the Bronx.

Questions about Rockefeller’s role mounted rapidly after investigators disclosed on Monday that the Metro-North Railroad train jumped the tracks after going into a curve at 82 mph, or nearly three times the speed limit. In addition to the four people killed, dozens were injured.

“What he will tell everyone today is that he basically nodded,” Botallico said. “He had the equivalent of what we all have when we drive a car. That is, you sometimes have a momentary nod or whatever that might be.”

How long that lasts, I can’t answer that.”

Once he caught himself, “he powered down, he put the train in emergency, but that was six seconds prior to derailment,” Botallico said.

Separately, two law enforcement officials said Tuesday that the engineer told police who first responded to the scene that his mind was wandering before he realized the train was in trouble, and by then it was too late to do anything about it. One of the officials said Rockefeller described himself as being “in a daze” before the wreck.

The officials, who were briefed on the engineer’s comments, weren’t authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

National Transportation Safety Board member Earl Weener said Tuesday that it was too soon to say whether the accident was the result of human error or a mechanical problem.

But he said investigators have found no evidence so far of any problems with the brakes or signals.

Alcohol tests on the train’s crew members were negative, and investigators were still awaiting the results of drug tests, the NTSB official said.

On the day of the crash, Rockefeller was on the second day of five-day work week, reporting for duty at 5:04 a.m. after a typical, nine-hour shift the day before, according to Weener.

“There’s every indication that he would have had time to get full restorative sleep,” Weener said.

Botallico said Rockefeller “never said anything about not getting enough sleep.” But he said the engineer had switched just weeks earlier from the night shift to the day shift, “so he did have a change in his hours and his circadian rhythms with regard to sleep.”

The New York Police Department is conducting its own investigation, with help from the Bronx district attorney’s office, in the event the derailment becomes a criminal case.

Rockefeller himself, meanwhile, stayed out of sight. But his union and former co-workers spoke up in his defense.

“This is a man who is totally distraught by the loss of life, and he’s having a tough time dealing with that,” Bottalico said.

He added: “Once the NTSB is done with their investigation and Billy is finished with his interview, it will be quite evident that there was no criminal intent with the operation of his train.”

With the NTSB yet to establish the cause of the crash, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday the engineer could be faulted for the train’s speed alone.

“Certainly, we want to make sure that that operator is disciplined in an appropriate way. There’s such a gross deviation from the norm,” he said.

Rockefeller, 46 and married with no children, has worked for the railroad for 15 years and has been an engineer for 10, according to Weener. Rockefeller lives in a well-kept house on a modest rural road in Germantown, N.Y., about 40 miles south of Albany.

He started as a custodian at Grand Central Terminal, then monitored the building’s fire alarms and other systems, and ultimately became an engineer.

“He was a stellar employee. Unbelievable,” said his former supervisor, Michael McLendon, who retired from the railroad about a year ago.

McLendon said he was stunned when he heard about the crash, shortly after opening his mail to find a Christmas card from Rockefeller and his wife.

“I said, ‘Well, I can’t imagine Billy making a mistake,’” McLendon said. “Not intentionally, by any stretch of the imagination.”

Rockefeller’s work routine had recently changed. He had begun running that route on Nov. 17, two weeks before the wreck, said Marjorie Anders, a spokeswoman for Metro-North’s parent, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Bottalico said Rockefeller had changed work schedules — switching from afternoons to the day shift, which typically begins at 5 a.m. — but was familiar with the route and qualified to run it.

In case of an engineer becoming incapacitated, the train’s front car was equipped with a “dead man’s pedal” that must be depressed or else the train will automatically slow down, Anders said.

Bruno Lizzul, an MTA machinist who met Rockefeller when they both worked at Grand Central around 2000, described the engineer as honest, hard-working and helpful — so much so that he took it upon himself to show up and help Lizzul renovate his home ahead of a baby’s arrival.

“He went the extra yard. He just decided to extend himself to me,” Lizzul said.

Lizzul said Rockefeller was very serious about his work: “He would not do anything to upset anybody or in any way cause harm.”

___