I wish to stand and second the remarks made by the Senator from Maryland, Ms. Mikulski, related to the Ayotte amendment. I think it is important for us to reflect on recent history. It was last week that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab pled guilty in Federal court to trying to explode a bomb in his underwear on a flight to Detroit, MI, on Christmas Day, 2009. Mr. Abdulmutallab, who will be sentenced in January, is expected to serve a life sentence. I wish to commend the fine men and women at the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for their extraordinary work on this case. America is safer because the Obama administration chose the right investigative agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as our article III court system, to try Mr. Abdulmutallab. One would never know this from the speeches on the floor and from the amendment which has been offered by the Senator from New Hampshire because the suggestion is, it was a big mistake--a mistake for us to consider trying a terrorist in our criminal courts. She suggests, and others have joined her in this suggestion, that all these cases should be tried before military tribunals, military commissions. I wish to put on the Record, in support of what Senator Mikulski said earlier, the facts in this case.…
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