After three years of legislative delays, the most-visited memorial in the nation's capital will get a visitor center.

The U.S. Senate has unanimously approved legislation allowing a visitor center to be built at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a vote that memorial-fund founder Jan C. Scruggs calls "an enormous victory for America's young people."

"This educational facility will provide thousands of students each day with the opportunity to learn about service, sacrifice and patriotism at The Wall," he predicts.

Last May, after several failed attempts, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a Vietnam combat veteran, re-introduced legislation to build the center, along with fellow Vietnam-combat vets Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.)

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Virginia GOP Sen. John Warner also have been longtime proponents of the center.

When completed in three or so years, the center will provide an overview of the Vietnam War and the resulting memorial, as well as photos of those killed or missing in action and some of the more than 60,000 items that have been left at the Wall over the years. The center will be built underground within the Memorial's existing 2-acre site.

KEEP OUT

Montana has become the first state to prohibit the sale of land to the federal government.

"State land may not be sold to the federal government or to any agency of the federal government, except for the purpose of building federal facilities and structures," says the amendment introduced by Republican State Rep. Rick Maedje and signed into law by Republican Gov. Judy Martz.

"Not only does the federal government fail to pay taxes on land it holds, but even the PILT payments (Payments in Lieu of Taxes) it promises us never come through," Maedje explains to Environment & Climate News.

"Worse yet," he continues, "Montana has had nothing but serious problems in the last 30 years with virtually every acre the federal government claims to have jurisdiction over in this state. Selling the feds our state land is like rubbing salt in a wound."

MEMBERSHIP PASSES?

When a law is passed by Congress and signed into law, it's supposed to go into effect - or at least that's what Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) always assumed.

As author of the Terrorist Exclusion Act, which became law in 1996, Snowe, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has written to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell questioning his department's implementation of the law to deny - or even permit - a potential terrorist entry to the United States.

"In the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, I was astounded to learn that, with only limited exceptions, membership in a terrorist organization in and of itself was not sufficient grounds for visa denial," the senator writes to Powell.

"Instead, burden was placed on the U.S. government to prove than an individual was either personally involved in a terrorist act, or planning one - a threshold that made it virtually impossible to block dangerous aliens such as Sheikh Omar Rahman, the mastermind of that 1993 bombing, from entering the country legally."

Snowe says the intended effect of her legislation was to ensure that members of "foreign terrorist organizations" could be excluded from the United States based solely on such membership. She now wants to know how - or even if - the State Department is enforcing the law.

If it's not being enforced, she wants to know through what processes and mechanisms are waivers granted to those seeking visas who are members of "foreign terrorist organizations."

The senator even requests that Powell provide "the Department of State's definition of 'terrorist.'"

UNCLE SAM'S GUN SHOP

It sounds like a good thing - the Firearms Safety and Consumer Protection Act - but the measure introduced by Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) and Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.) is "gun grabbing" pure and simple, says the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

"The bill, if ever enacted into law, would in effect so transform the entire firearms industry that it would become completely dominated by federal bureaucrats," committee spokesman John Michael Snyder says. "The ability or inability of a law-abiding American citizen to own or use a gun would be something determined by a fiat of Washington federal bureaucrats."

As its authors would tell you, the Kennedy-Corzine proposal, now referred to committee, would give the Justice Department authority to set minimum safety standards for the manufacture, design and distribution of firearms, issue recalls and warnings, and limit the sale of products when no other remedy is sufficient.

Gary Mehalik of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, agrees with Snyder that "the ulterior motive here, as it has been in the past, is for the restriction on firearm rights under the false premise" of ensuring safety.

"The best way to ensure safety of the firearms," Mehalik says, "is to have a safe human operator."

SKIPPED ACTING

Hollywood High School opened its doors 100 years ago Sept. 13, a centennial observance that stretches all the way to the floor of the U.S. Senate. Continued...