Fertile Imagination

Pulling the common thread

Adam Clayton Powell III from the July 1995 issue

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And because fertilizer can damage the environment, the Environmental Protection Agency could be enlisted to help in the detection and enforcement effort. The Justice Department, too, could add fertilizer to the list of substances under the jurisdiction of the Drug Enforcement Administration, because of the DEA's experience in hunting down and arresting traffickers in dangerous substances.

The U.S. Postal Service, too, can be enlisted. Just as they already seize explicit depictions of sexual acts, postal workers could be empowered to seize explicit depictions of fertilizer and fertilizer- related acts, and to keep fertilizer information out of the hands of would- be terrorists.

Since some evildoers may choose to use private mail services, federal authorities may also need to examine UPS and Federal Express shipments to check for violations of FC. And the FBI may need to eavesdrop on telephone traffic, to learn who may be conspiring by fax or conference call to obtain illicit fertilizer.

Similarly, with the rapid growth of Internet, the proximity of university Internet terminals to college chemistry laboratories, and increasing use of Internet by innocent children (including babies), all online communication must also be monitored.

But among federal agencies, the Treasury Department must take the lead through an expanded Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Fertilizer. The BATFF would be able to build on its existing network of enforcement offices around the country, easily adding fertilizer to its list of hazards from which the American public must be protected.

There will, of course, be naysayers and nitpickers who will claim this is some infringement of their constitutional rights. Nonsense: Nowhere in the Constitution is there any explicit right to own fertilizer. Some, perhaps including the American Civil Liberties Union, may try to construe fertilizer ownership as protected by the constitutional privacy right. But such an alleged right is not found in the Constitution, and its existence is at best ambiguous.

In any event, the Constitution was written long before fertilizer was used by criminals to create explosives, and as legal scholars tell us, it must be a "living" document. The Constitution can only be interpreted as permitting the government to maintain order through fertilizer control.

Besides, the politics of fertilizer control will be irresistible. The narrow technical argument of musty academics and legalistic extremists will be swept away by television news clips showing the dead and injured, especially the horrifying images of innocent children (including babies) who were maimed and killed by these heinous instances of fertilizer abuse.

This should sweep through Congress and be signed by the president by autumn. And then the nation can turn its attention to another threat to the nation's children, an annual threat that has silently crept up on the nation, as stealthily as the most insidious Arab terrorist.

That threat is ice.

Every winter, hundreds fall through the ice that forms quietly, imperceptibly, on rivers, lakes, and ponds. Many children (including babies) can die gruesome deaths by drowning. Congress can act to address this menace and have a bill on the president's desk by midwinter. There is no time to lose.