When the facts don’t work, try appeals to national or “homeland” security.
That seems to be the tactic of the Jones Act lobby, which has been increasingly hard-pressed in recent years to make the case that the 101-year-old Jones Act — which requires goods shipped between US.. ports to be transported by U.S.-flagged ships — really is essential to America’s military and economic security.
This past November, Jones Act supporters seized on a relatively minor case of alleged terrorism along the Ohio River to suggest that all hell might have broken loose if not for the Jones Act.
In a Townhall commentary titled Jones Act Patriotism Protects the Homeland, which was widely shared by Jones Act supporters, Donna Jackson wrote that crewmembers of Jones Act-qualified tugboats and barges found “three explosive devices” — materials consistent with pipe bombs, according to police — that allegedly had been dropped onto their vessels from a bridge.
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