I have to say, I've been seeing a lot of searches for details on
Obama's train trip. Maybe people just want to know, but maybe there's another motive. I always say, if you want to know how nutty some people are, check out freerepublic.com. You'll see that people are having a tough time dealing with President Obama there. Then of course, there are the skinheads. I saw way too much overt prejudice during the campaign by normal people to know that some folks shouldn't be dismissed.
By way of the Swamp: Two leading environmental groups, the Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, have written a letter to the Secret Service warning about the potential danger of a catastrophic terrorist attack on a hazardous chemical facility along the East Coast rail corridor while Barack Obama and Joe Biden make a highly-publicized pre-inaugural whistle-stop train trip to Washington, DC, on Jan. 17.
Obama and Biden have announced plans to travel by rail from Philadelphia, PA, to Wilmington, DE, to Baltimore, MD, and on to Washington, giving speeches in several cities that day, according to the 2009 Presidential Inaugural Committee.
"This means that during a period of some days of heightened vulnerability to terrorism, Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden on this day will be highly visible and relatively approachable together on the difficult-to-protect Eastern Urban rail corridor," wrote Friends of the Earth President Brent Blackwelder and Greenpeace legislative director, Rick Hind, to Mark Sullivan, the Director of the Secret Service, in a letter dated Dec. 23. Read the rest
The groups' recommendation:
GSN: The two environmental groups recommend that DHS and the Department of Transportation should remove temporarily from the Philadelphia-DC rail corridor the most hazardous industrial chemical cargoes, such as chlorine gas and ammonia, and should push commercial facilities to shut down their most dangerous high-pressure chemical operations and significantly reduce their on-site chemical storage.
"Our main focus here is how such a poison gas attack from nearby chemical cargoes or chemical facilities could harm the President-elect's train entourage," said the letter.
They're also recommending Obama and Biden change their plan to take the train.
